The Sweaty Author

You get there and the authors are already at their tables. One guy is taking pictures upon pictures and tweeting them all over the place. He has his table right in the middle. You are there with a bookstore and are standing by to sign books for whoever may buy. The self published contingent is there. They are organized and efficient with their books and their notebooks. They sit behind their tables and stare out at the people beginning to stream in.

You did not start this way. You came form the old world of publishing. Big advances and Big Media. Signings were exclusive affairs at bookstores for people who came to hear only you. Now you are a baker at a carnival in a sea of barkers. Everyone is selling something and a lot of the products are substandard but it doesn't really matter. Whoever barks the loudest gets the sale.

And so for the next five hours you bark at everyone passing by. Authors eye each other warily. Who has self published? Who has been reviewed? Who is selling? The arty crowd is there and they just want to make contacts. You are there to sell. People steer clear because you wear a sport coat and don't evince the tired Bohemia of so many literary festivals. Your book is heavy with reviews. Another violation. It goes like this and when the people stop the authors stare at each other.

And then it slowly dies. The guy who self published Goth Horror closes shop. The experimental guy with the crazy cover who sold a good amount of books leaves. Your bookstore takes off and leaves you with a few more books. You sell another one but that is really it. Time for a drink at a bar and the lingering vague dissatisfaction of the Literary Festival.

The era of the Sweaty Author is like that.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

The Pitcher
 

When You Become a Professional Writer

You come into your writing group full of great intentions and are delighted to find kindred souls, people who do this brain cracking work of writing and for a long time you glide along with your fellow scribes. You look forward to reading your work and getting the feedback and now you have a thick skin and are able to ferret out the good criticism from the bad and you all sort of move along at the same pace and then suddenly like high school, you graduate...you get published.

For me it wasn't such a draconian moment. My publisher was tiny and in Chicago. Still, I brought the galleys with me and showed them around and it was then I felt a sea change. Everyone nodded and murmured congratulations and then the group fell into its old routine. I was in the middle of editing the galleys so I hadn't really written anything new and  I read some of the novel.  The comments were muted, some were complimentary, but I felt I had brought a gun to a knife fight.

So I took a few weeks off and worked on my galleys. When I returned I was exhausted and hollow eyed  and only had my novel to read again. I sat and listened to the same works in progress, the bits of poetry, short stories, fragments of novels, then it came to Robert's piece. Robert wrote non fiction for a small magazine in the city. He tried to write fiction but it never worked. For years we had listened to Robert read these words that were like boxcars in a line but there was no ignition. We had all been in a secret conspiracy with Robert, who was a very nice guy, to give him a pass and not really criticize his work.

But this time I felt we were doing Robert a huge disservice. For two years I had been listening to Robert's bad fiction and for two years I had said nothing. He was a lifer. They existed in groups. People who came for the social aspect as much as the writing. And so you laid off. But l had changed. Something about working on those galleys with an editor had pushed me to the next level and I couldn't go back. So when it came to me, I blasphemed. I commented on Roberts work.

We are doing Robert a big disservice here. I looked around at the group. We haven't been honest with him...I paused. We haven't told him his fiction doesn't work. Someone dropped a pen. Someone coughed. I have violated a group taboo. A little man named Pee Wee who was also a lifer piped up. You have no right to judge Roberts fiction that way. I looked at him. Are you kidding? That's why we are here. No, Pee Wee persisted. You are assuming you know good fiction and Robert doesn't and you have no right to tell him he doesn't know how to write fiction.

And it was then I knew I was done. The group that I had been so much a part of for years was suddenly irrelevant. I couldn't stay if  I wanted too. So I sat through the rest of the readings and said nothing. There was no point. I never went back. It was much later I realized my crime wasn't that I had criticized Robert's writing, it was actually something much deeper and much more serious-- I had stumbled into becoming  a professional.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

The Beauty of a Book...Disconnecting 2.0

I have decided that most of the stuff coming over my phone is advertisements. In fact corporations have figured out and are figuring out that we now carry billboards in our pockets. And it is getting worse. Lets talk impressions. Every time information is presented to us even if we dismiss it there is an impression. It hits us and then we move on. Now once these impressions hit critical mass then we buy. This is why we are dunned at the gas pump now and every time we turn on Pandora. They know we  ignore it but the info is stored anyway

And what better way to capture us than to attack our devices. Like most people I have several email accounts and they hit my phone at different times. Now ninety percent of what I received is absolute garbage. It is services that hit my Google  profile for my buying habits. And I enable them to get to me by carrying my device with my all the time.  The phone boops and I answer and read the ad. An advertisers dream.

And our virtual world is being invaded daily. Contextual advertising or those annoying pop ups ignited by keywords are only getting more sophisticated. GPS positioning will track us we go past Portillos and suggest we have a hot dog because we had one before and wouldn't a hot dog taste great now. That is  already here. And what defense do we have? A simple one.

Turn the phone off and read a book.. Not a kindle, a book. They can't get you then.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...Junior Library Guild Selection

The Pitcher is on Air Force Two on the way to South Korea

So this is the way it happened. I know someone who knows someone who is part of the press corps going with Joe Biden to South Korea. So the someone who knows someone gave the book to the journalist and he is going to give The Pitcher to the VP. Now it is a long flight to South Korea and Joe is probably looking for a little escapism before confronting the North Koreans. What better than a baseball story right?

I imagine old Joe kicking back on Air Force 2 and maybe taking off his shoes and then plop The Pitcher lands in his lap. My guy says something like..."Mr. Vice President if you are looking for a great story of overcoming adversity and getting your dreams, then this is the book for you." Now Joe is probably pretty bored at about this point and so he opens the book and gets lost for a few hours while he is winging his way to the other side of the world.

By the time he reaches South Korea he has finished the novel and is a changed man. Joe gets off the plane with book in hand and waves to reporters and holds The Pitcher high as a question comes from the press. " Mr Vice President, do you think you can get the North Koreans to change their minds?"' Old Joe lifts The Pitcher high and says, "Hey, if this kid can do it...anybody can do it." And everyone claps as they try and see what book the Veep is holding.

Of course he might not read it at all...but that would be a different story.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...Sometimes a dream is all you have
 

Starting A New Book In Winter

Some people write in summer. Some write in fall...me...I write in winter. Something about the way the world slows down. At least in the Midwest it does. And the lack of light and the short days and everything dying. Time to grow a beard and sit by a fire and think about where you ended up and where you are going. And that's how books start. Some sort of reassessment of your whole life and hopefully you don't drink yourself to death or shoot yourself in the process.

But then a book starts. Kind of like a lawnmower that sat for a long time. Lots of smoke and cleaning out the pipes. Rough. Fitfully. Then it starts to turn over and you think that its been a long time since you used the thing. And you are amazed it still runs because every time you put it away you think maybe that is it and it wont start again. But it does.

And so the winter goes dark. And the world turns cold. And you figure what the hell. Might as well hide with the rest of the creatures and yeah you didn't get to where you wanted but maybe this time you might get it right. Who knows. So the snow falls and you wait and work and in the spring you will emerge again.

But for now... you're just gone.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

Best Book I Ever Dropped in the Bathtub

Alright so I read in the bath tub. It is one of the few places I wont be disturbed. I have written in the bathtub but the risk to the computer is very high and the screen clouds from the steam. But I read there and always pile up books around the edge of the tub. Just got Scott Bergs  monster biography of Woodrow Wilson. Beautiful book. Gorgeous cover. Heavy. So I took it into the tub with me and settled down among the suds and the steam. Just me and Woodrow. The book is so heavy it makes my wrists ache. So then I reach up to flip the page and that's when it happened.

Somehow I lost my grip and WILSON did this funny cartwheel and then KERSPLASH into the hot sudsy water. But I made a grab before the Titanic went completely under  and sort of juggled the book on the surface of the water before it disappeared below. And now I am tearing off the paper cover and grabbing a towel and blue ink is running down my arms form the very deep blue cloth cover and it is getting all over the tub but still I wipe frantically trying to keep the pages from becoming sodden sponges.

And I am mostly successful but now the ink is everywhere and I look like a mad printer with blue all over my fingers and forearms and the white towel is now blue but I have the book and get the majority of water before it becomes that heavy mass of pulp. And I even am able to read again moving the pages like thin wet tissue. By morning the book is dry and a bit wavy but I put the cover back on and except for the blue ink still stained all over my hands you would never  know Woodrow took a  bath.

Without a doubt. This could be the best book I ever dropped in the tub.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

Why Giving Advanced Copies to Friends Is a Bad Idea

First of all you have to examine your motives. It is a bit of bragging. Look I have a new book out. Look at me. This is the first reason you shouldn't do it. The second reason is the friend is now obligated to read his friends book. A problem. Your friend is in a terrible spot. If he likes it fine...but if he or she doesn't like it then the silence sets in and worse you might have something occur along the lines of...I didn't really like it. Whoa. Hold on daddy. Now your friendship is on the line.

And it wasn't fair to begin with. First of all by giving the book to a friend you are obligating them to read it. It might be something they would never buy. They might not be a reader. They might not read fiction. Maybe all of the above. But now there is that thing. Every time you meet there is the hovering question...did you read it? You both agree to not talk about it but it is there. The third person in the room hovering around until you migrate to...why didn't you read it?

I would say this goes double for family. I gave my brother a copy of my second third novel and he tossed it in the back of his car like an old shoe. The gesture will live in infamy. My hardcover that I has sweated bullets over for years tossed into the backseat with the McDonalds garbage. And then of course your family might not like it. Now you really have a problem. I mean these people are your family and they might not like your fiction. Nations have broken up over less

So I would say this in the end. Don't give it to anyone but reviewers, bloggers, movie people, agents, publishers...other authors you trust. After that just say: You know what I don't have any more review copies...you can get it on Amazon though.

Better.

The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have

The Politics of the F Bomb

I know a woman who was threatened with the loss of her job at a company because she used the Fbomb. Apparently the manager called her into the office and said that he had reports she had been throwing Fbombs around. The woman didn't know what he was talking about. The company was Christian based and very conservative. The woman was a liberal Democrat and had made her views known. The manager said that if he had any more reports of her using the Fbomb then he would have to think about terminating her. The woman admitted she had used the fbomb once in the office. The manager said he had numerous reports of her fbombing.

This woman said the manager said she had a bad side. He went on to say that she had to use her good side and not fbomb anymore. The woman didn't know what he meant by good side or bad side. Well obviously your bad side commits the fbombs he pointed out. But that is just a form of expression the woman protested. Well I don't want Corporate to hear about this he said ominously.  I can't have anymore reports of fbombs the manager finished. The woman was very nervous because she didn't know who said it. She sat in her cubicle and was very quiet. Apparently another woman whom she had a political discussion with had reported her use of the fbomb.

The fbomb is used in our movies and literature and television. We hear it at the Academy Awards. Clark Gable would have said it if he could have at the end of Gone With The Wind. Adults like to control people by what they can and cannot say. I know a man who said he cannot stand to hear the fbomb. He said it offends him deeply. I said it sounded like a personal problem. There are clearly two groups in the world now. Fbombers and those who would stop the fbombers. Freedom of Speech might be invoked. Political coercion might be cited. Pettiness. Venality. Childishness. Prudishness.
You know what...fuck it.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Advantages or Reading and Writing Fiction

The New York Times Sunday Review just had an article about the neuroscience of reading novels or fiction. The upshot is that reading fiction is good for your brain. Apparently all those neurons like the connotation of metaphors and description. Your brain lights up like its on crack from reading fiction and goes dark like a dead bulb watching television. But there is more. People who read fiction have more social intelligence and pick up on social cues faster. They seem able to decipher human relationships and understand people more quickly  as opposed to their nonfiction reading breathen. To those of us who have been reading and writing fiction for years there is nothing new here.

You always knew that your ability to finish other peoples sentences, pick the word for them while they said,..what that's word...I know it...was related somehow to all those books you read that no one else cared about. Or the way you could know somebody from a single sentence, gesture, nuance. It just happens like that. Reading fiction is probably the most intelligent thing anyone can do because as the NY Times article points out more of your brain is used in the process than sucking in information via digital land.This makes perfect sense.

You quickly saw your ability to speak when reading fiction shoot up. Reading a novel or a poem allows you to simply think faster. There is something totally engaging about a great story that probably allows your brain to play in a way it cannot when stuck in some turgid nonfiction task. Great fiction really gets you going because it engages your humanity and probably touches your soul. Now you are really getting a great bang for your buck from that novel...it is simply teaching you how to be.

And if you want to knock it down to a more utilitarian sense...fiction blows out your vocabulary and allows you to connect the dots quicker and understand situations faster that your non novel reading friends. So you can make the sale, get the friend, win the girl, and appear witty, conversant, and more than all that, well read.

What more can you ask of a book? Or a Kindle?

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Amazon is competing now with Libraries

Just when you thought the world of publishing couldn't get any weirder, it does. Why don't we just call publishing an entity of permanent change. Amazon is getting into the world of the librarians with brown brogans and reading glasses. Except the authors have to go along. I was contacted as I am sure many of you were who have books with Amazon in their kindle collection. KDPSELECT is the name of the program and basically you let people read your books for free...well its free to them. Let me explain

So Amazon has a big fund that you as the author get a part of when people read your books. The PRIME members get access to this vast library for free. They get to read your work and you get exposure and some remuneration. It is the wild west of ebooks and everyone is trying all sorts of new marketing gimmicks. Since libraries will now be heavily into Ebooks with lending going on in cyberland like never before, Amazon is hearing some footsteps and figured they  would create their own library.

And what does the author get out of it. For the bestselling authors it is not such a great deal. They probably lose on this deal with a smaller cut, but for the mid list authors who are still developing market presence it might not be such a bad thing. You can take the Kid Rock approach and not offer your stuff on Itunes because you believe people should pay for a quality product, but writers want to be read and this might get you a few more.

The cynical view is authors are just getting ripped off again, maybe, but then again you have to take the long view. I have tried it for ninety days with my books and I am not sure if it will make a difference or not. Maybe there are some who will not take a flyer on my books for the price of an ebook but with the enticement of a free download, a Hazelgrove novel might be just the ticket. Or maybe I'm just another writer getting screwed over again. Who knows.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...one mans war with suburbia

Art Alone Endures

We were doing the Chicago thing with the train and the kids and the rushing to the water taxi to Michigan Avenue to seeing Marilyn Monroe with her dress blowing up in front of the NBC building and then down to Billy Goats Tavern for some burgers that would kill a Tri Athlete then up and across the river toward Millennium Park to see the Bean. It was  a beautiful August night, one of those nights so rare in Chicago that feels more like Florida in Spring. We had just about reached the park when we heard music.

My wife said it looked like a concert in the park and so we drifted up to the fence and and there was a symphony. And then we heard a voice. It was an opera and the singers voice rose up across the city like a God. We just stopped and listened and all our worries and hurries fell away. We were transfixed by this man singing and the beautiful music. The park was filled as far as the eye could see with people quietly listening on a warm night on the end of summer.

And I looked around and I saw young and old just staring. No one moved. Everyone just listened and they were transfixed. And that is when I thought about our world with it's horrible problems and our cartoon culture and our grotesque politicians and the zealots who have take over our lives and I realized then the only thing that trumped all that was Art. It moved at a different speed and a different level and all these people will pass on, but Art will survive.

And they can't touch it. They can try and ban books. Wash out an opera with Rap or noise or sex or violence or whatever they can come up with, but Art survives. I saw it in the people who didn't speak, didn't move. They were mesmerized like I was. And even my seven year old who could barely see over the fence wanted to just stay and listen. It simply soothed the soul.

And then of course we left and hurried on to catch the water taxi to catch the train to get to our car to get home to go to bed to start all over the next day. But there was that interlude. It only lasted fifteen minutes but the world was in order. All was right. There is an engraved saying in the Fine Arts Theatre of Chicago. "All Passes, Art Alone Endures." Amen.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man Kindle

Got the Kindle Finally!

All my books are available on Kindle (Kindle Books)so I figured I better go get one. I had been eyeing them for a while and when I went past the GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign on Borders I swung in and eyed their KOBOS and almost bought one for the low price of seventy bucks. But after talking to the salespeople who would soon be walking the streets they let me know in their own way the KOBO ereader was not so great. Well, it's kind of slow one saleswoman said in beneath her breath. Say no more. After asking about several books Borders didn't have I beat it out of there and headed for Best Buy where I bought my KINDLE!

I haven't read one book on it  yet but today is the day. But I went into my library to grab something and there were all my books. I usually don't even think about them but suddenly they looked antique. Don't get me wrong I will still be a book reader of pulp and circumstance. But I know the way I look at CD's or records that the old delivery vehicle is on a time limit. Books will not be relevant to my seven year old the way they were to me. It is just a fact.

And maybe because I had to wrestle with the kindle environment for the last few weeks (In Kindle Purgatory)getting by books out there that I came to understand more about the power of the digital word. Even going into Borders hit me differently. Of course Borders is going out of business. The brick and mortar modality of selling books is already behind the curve. Those books just sit on the shelf and don't say a word. I can shoot out my chapters to people and they may ignore them they may delete them they may block me, but I just did something pro active while the muted pulp sits on the shelf.

The word I got was that Borders got into the Ereader market too late and that was one of the reasons they went down like the Titanic. The truth is publishing is changing at nanosecond speed and authors bookstores and publishers are still adjusting. Whoops. My phone just went off. That was my Kindle newsletter. I guess it's time to open the box and fire up my ereader. Maybe I'll try The Help. Everyone is reading it and of course it is the book Borders did not have. Guess I'll just download it. There...Done.

William Hazelgrove Website
Rocket Man Kindle or Paperback

Catcher in the Rye for the Recession Generation....

On Downloading Books

The fear for writers is that their books will all be stolen now. That a mass download will steal away all copyrights. This is happening. People are ripping books the way they rip songs. You can't stop it. So what does it mean to writers. A couple things. One. You will get read by more people. Two. You will probably get less money. A bad thing. But there is no way around it. The digital revolution is here and just about any medium is fair game. Look at the way the studios are freaking out now.

Limewire and Napster used to be the pirate sites. Amazing. You could just log in and start downloading songs. Suddenly you were not paying fifteen dollars for a CD. You were paying nothing. And you could get a thousand songs if you wanted them. Then Napster was shut down. Then Limewire, but now there is YouTube and UTorrent and a hundred other sites for music and movies and now books. 

The one saving grace for writers is this. A lot of people still like books. In fact the boomers prefer books and there are a lot of boomers. Reading on a screen is reading on a screen no matter how good it looks or sounds or even smells like a book. Not to say people won;t migrate into Kindle land but there will be a group that just won't go for the download. They will plunk down their money and take their pulp and hit their hammock and read a book.

For the rest of the populace Ok with reading on their PDA or their IPAD or their computer or their Kindle or their Nook or their Sony reader, then it is every writer for himself. Maybe we can get a few nickels from those downloads. Some have gotten millions. So it comes back down to a basic question for the writer. Why did you write in the first place? For the money? Or to be read. If your answer is both, then it might still work out for you. If your answer is be read, then no worries.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man Kindle or Paperback

When You Finish Your Novel

So for years you have been working on this thing. Every day your routine is  built around how much of the book you get finished. It is the structure that is your world. It  is your nine to five and you feel much like everyone else who trudges off to work and then returns exhausted at the end of the day. You trudge off to your desk your computer your office over the garage and your day is evaluated by the quality of work if not the amount that is completed on that amorphous jumble of words that grows everyday in your computer. And then one day, after many many rewrites and tweaks and cutting and expanding and reworking and re imagining, suddenly you are finished. You have just been fired from your job.

Because it no longer exists. The crucible that was your office is gone. Your desk has been cleaned and your name plate taken down and you  no longer go to the office. Your position has been eliminated and you have been handed your box of things and escorted by the security guard to your car. You say your goodbyes, get in and drive home. And then, like the newly unemployed, you wake the next day and have the vague feeling that somebody died. But you push that aside and attack all the things you have been putting off for months if not years.

That takes a few days and then you fill a few more days feeling good about your accomplishment. Then...then...you realize, you have nothing to do. Oh there are things to do, but the nucleus to your days is simply gone. Your raison det has vanished over the next hill and you become the stay at home daddy mom or you just stay at home or you go to work and become that person again. You have finished your novel and nothing will ever be as shocking as the realization that those days lived in that world are really over.

Until you begin again.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Our Mediocre Middle Class Colleges

If you think our public school system is mediocre then a new book out called Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses certainly puts the nail in the coffin of American education. Americans have been told ever since the GI Bill came around after WWII and sent all those middle class kids to college for the first time that if you went to college then you had better opportunity or to to put it more directly, you could get a job. Now if you watch Waiting For Superman, the documentary, the message is that our public schools are not good and they are not good because our teachers are not good. But now there is the thought that maybe our colleges aren't so good or that the students going there aren't so motivated or equipped.

Makes sense. You could also make a case that ever since the school of business appeared on college campuses vocational training pushed out Liberal Arts and students have been the lesser for it. In Academically Adrift the case is made that students are able to get good grades in college and learn very little. That in fact they are finding the current crop of graduates unable to articulate their thoughts or possess a critical intelligence, synthesize information into a thesis or write a coherent sentence. In other words it would seem the mediocrity of our middle class learning institutions extends all the way through college.

It really started with the whole go to college to get a job mentality. The fact is that is not even true anymore as the current unemployment rate of 17 percent among college graduates bitterly proves the point. The fact is our graduates are victims of a mediocre culture that does not value critical thinking nor does it see the need. I myself tumbled out of a State College with a Masters then sat down to read F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side Of Paradise and I had to keep a notebook because there were so many words I didn't know. This is not a heavy duty novel  by any stretch, but there I was basically unable to decipher a literary novel.

Of course the obvious remedy is to move Liberal Arts back to the front of college curriculums. The people who lead the country and who make the money and who are in the power band are able to think, formulate a thesis, and they do have a critical intelligence and are able to understand literature. The people who go to college to get a job should re evaluate if college is for them. Coming out with a hundred thousand dollars on your head is high price to pay for something that is no longer guaranteed. 

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off April 26th

The Down and Out of Writing

As a writer you are used to being on the other side of the moon for most of your adult life. When people are at work you are at  home and when people are home you are at work. You are always where you shouldn't be and it is during these times when most people are engaged in the busy work of the day you find yourself floating in the boat of the left behind. Of course this has always been the case, but now writers have much more company. There are legions of the left behind now.

They come the same day and writers are creatures of habit too so you recognize your fellow craftsman. There is the man who stares out the window all day with a cup of coffee in his lap. He is maybe fifty. Maybe. He has been sitting in the same chair for years and knows others who come in and look for the same mirage coming down main street. They talk about places they have applied. They talk about coming to each others apartment. Neither notices the man in the corner surrounded by books and a laptop.

Then there is the man who yells. He yells about sports. He yells about politics. He rides a bicycle everyday and wears a cutoff jean jacket. He hangs around sniffing for conversation among the staff and finds a few nods and then eventually gets back on his bike and slips into the early twilight. Or the  twenty something in the hoody and Converse tennis shoes whose boyfriend sports a cowboy hat and Coke bottle glasses. They take the same chair and huddle over her laptop. Then the new guys who dress in business casual who read the paper and talk on their phones like business men. There are lots of these guys now.

And then there is the writer looking to cool off after a first draft. Trying to punch up the brain for a second run by cramming Franzen, Twain, Russo, Dickens--anything to fire up the well. He drinks coffee and munches on walnuts, then slinks away until tomorrow.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off in April

3/5ths OF A Person, SLAVE, or that darn NWORD!

Seems the 'publicans don't like the word SLAVE that darn Twain scholar used for the NWORD and they don't like 3/5ths OF A PERSON neither. They just read the Constitution in the Senate and conveniently skated right over the part about a slave being 3/5 of a person which is exactly what that Twain scholar decided the NWORD in Huck Finn should be replaced with: SLAVE. Good thing that Twain scholar studied up because I'm sure he wouldnt' want to use a whole person when he can use three fifths. I wonder how much of a person an NWORD is? Makes you think don't it.

But the 'publicans don't believe there were SLAVES no how. Seems they forgot the part in the Constitution that said if a slave escaped up north to a free state then they were not automatically free. In fact Dred Scott proved they could be sent back down South. So I guess they were still 3/5ths, NWORD, or SLAVE. Seems we just don't like to think a-tall about our history and we can't decide what word we like. We would just assume it didn't happen except them pesky books keep laying around with those bad words that we sure don't want our highschool kiddies to read with their IPODS of Kanye and the boys. Lord knows they are virgin ears that might be scorched by them 3/5 people.

You know come to think of it maybe we should just get rid of the NWORD altogether and go with 3/5. Kind of has a ring to it and not as clumsy as NWORD. Course now the 'publicans don't seem to like 3/5 neither so that won't work. And SLAVE dont' work. And the NWORD don't work. How about we just call em 7/8? Its a little higher than 3/5 and don't have none of them slave connotations that the Twain scholar likes to use for everybody. We could just put 7/8 where ever an NWORD existed and we could maybe put that in the Constitution to show our liberality. Then 'publicans could read that and say if a 7/8 person escaped to a free state and picked up an 1/8 then they could become a whole.  Just to show they are forward thinking group of people. Huh. Wonder if that makes em' free?

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man should blast off in February

Twain and TRIGGER

When I was a boy in Baltimore i picked up a book called NIGGER by Dick Gregory. At the time there were riots in the city since King had been shot and I had been mugged a few times by kids from the very tough inner city school. Strife Strife Strife. My parents were big time Kennedy liberals from Virginia and my mom taught in the  inner city schools and everything just seemed to be falling apart. Robert Kennedy's assassination, Kings, Wallace. The Vietnam war seemed to be the fire behind everything. And in the middle of all this on the paperback rack in the Enoch Pratt library was Dick Gregory's book, NIGGER. I checked the book out under a librarians horn rimmed stare.
 
 I read NIGGER on our porch and on the roof of our house. I didn't want anyone to see the book because I was sure there would be punishment. NIGGER told of Dick Gregory's childhood in Chicago and his struggle to become a comic while enduring incredible racism. He was jailed, beaten, threatened, evicted, and all through it he just kept on going. By the end he was marching with King and others and then he wrote this book with the inscription to his mother that said if she heard this word again, then maybe they had published his book.

The thing that fascinated me about Dick Gregory's book, NIGGER, was the way he described his ordeal as a poor black boy in the ghetto. It was just so heartfelt and dead on in it's brutality. The way he shined shoes and got kicked in the mouth when he dared to look at a white woman. The countless times he was beaten by his mothers boyfriend Big Prez and the way he just kept on with his dream of becoming somebody. The way he started to use humor to his advantage and how he broke into show business against incredible odds. By the end of the book I understood (as much as a ten year old can) why he named the book NIGGER. He told the story of that word.

 I had to special order Dick Gregory's book from the library to read it again. It seemed it was nowhere to be found. And when I picked up the book the librarian stared at me the same way. My wife and my kids stared at that title on our kitchen table. NIGGER. It seemed someone was shouting in the house. My wife turned the book over to it's less offensive back. I reread the book and tripped back to those hot Baltimore days and I was back there with Dick Gregory struggling in the ghetto again, driving through a snowstorm with his pregnant wife to get to a comedy club. Dick did his routine and was heckled many times during his show and then someone called him a NIGGER during his monologue. Gregory paused as the audience went quiet and turned and said, "did you hear that, that man? He just called me Roy Rodger's horse: TRIGGER! The audience broke up.

Even though Dick Gregory named his novel NIGGER, it seems we haven't learned a damn thing. We still have fools who think they know best about our past and want to do things like take the NIGGER out of Huckleberry Finn so high school students can read the book.  I will say it was hard to find Dick Gregory's book, but I was glad to see no one had renamed the book, TRIGGER, so high school students could read it. The book stands as NIGGER. So it should.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man should be out soon

That Holiday Hangover

It has nothing to do with alcohol, but that could be part of it. It would be easy to ascribe the fuzziness, wooziness, utter exhaustion of the holiday hangover to making merry a bit much and once the alcohol filters out then the world would return to it's everyday equilibrium. But this hangover is a combination of money spent, days lost, family insulted, visibility lost, vocations nonexistent, while dancing with the ghost of Christmas past present and future. Because it is during the very holidays we celebrate our childhood that we glimmer mortality from drinking and eating horribly for weeks.

So it is part food coma as we trudge back to some semblance of reality and it really is a good thing we only see our relatives once a year lest we shoot them dead. What is is about siblings that become so horribly dysfunctional one can scarcely believe you occupied the same house for all those years? And parents lord in as part parent, friend, confidant, boss, irritant, until you just want to run back to your job or your office or your bedroom and repeat, I have grown up, I have grown I have grown up.

And while this rolls on you are Christmas in a very real sense and it is for the children beats in your head as you stay up until four AM and then stagger out a bleary eyed Santa ready to put it all on for the children who see only the glory of the season. And so you suck it up, drink some more coffee, inhale some more bad coffee cake and plow through the day before heading to the relatives. And isn't it amazing that Uncle Dick is still unemployed after twenty four years? And how long is Jennifer going to hang out in Hollywood as a waitress? And how did your brother marry such an idiot? Doesn't your sister see her husbands been screwing around on her for ten years!

But all this is swept under as you exchange gifts and drink champagne and Baileys and Vodka and beer and eat all the salty ham your poor blood pressure could ever manage and all the dry bland turkey you could ever stuff into your mouth and then the sweets the sweets the sweets! Is chocolate poisoning possible? You wonder as you sit straight up a three AM with your heart beating like a tom tom. Never never again you swear. I will never eat again! I will never drink again! I will never have my sister and brothers kids over to dismantle my house again and throw my cellphone into a cup of Diet Coke!

And so you emerge for a few days. Struggle to work with little sleep and all sorts of chemicals doing all sorts of things to your brain. You pass other fellow eye-creased revelers stumbling through their routines. And then, just about the time your colon adjusts, your credit card barks that it is still alive, and you begin to get your feet on the ground, it's time for....NEW YEARS!

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January

Paying Thirty Four Bucks for Twain's Book

So do you pay the big number and have a tombstone square of paper that you can either read or beat off an intruder and probably be charged with reading a concealed weapon? Twain's  book is big and it is expensive. Yeah I know so and so has it for blah blah. Well I couldn't find it anywhere except the little independent bookstore that supported my book and that thirty four bucks is with a ten percent author discount!

And I vacillate. Christmas. Blowing lots of dough on gifts and everything else commensurate with making merry and what I am going to go plunk down thirty four bucks for a book when people are downloading for ten bucks? No. I'm not going to to do it! Even though I special ordered the thing and they got it in and gave me to Friday (today) to come in and pick it up or they would sell it to the next person in line who requested a copy and by the way the publisher is totally backlogged and so good luck finding it somewhere else. Still, I hesitate and sit in the coffee shop across the way telling myself in a very Scrooge like way that it is ridiculous to pay thirty four dollars for a book!

My brother said he would wait for the paperback. Sensible. Very sensible. Wait for the price to fall and of course it will and paying thirty four dollars now for the book is just plain stupid. Why times being what they are that thirty four dollars could go a long way in food or other necessities and of course you can't eat a book and you can't pay your electric bill or gas up your car with a book so it is utterly ridiculous to pay thirty four bucks for something clearly I could do without. I mean I am still trying to finish Jonathan Ferris second novel and it has slowed down and I am reading Dickens again and I am thinking about cracking Portis's True Grit which is in my backpack as well and so it is ridiculous to add this monstrous book to my list and pay thirty four Somalians!

So into the car. Yes, Yes. All done and go pick up the kids and get the tires changed on the car. There. You cant' put a book on your wheels. Tires. Practical. Practical. Keep driving. Yes, well, I'll just stop in and let them know I don't want the book. That is only fair. They close at five and it is four forty five. Yes. Ok. Park the car. Yes. Just let them know. Hello. Oh, you are here for your book....let me get it for you. Wow! Look at the size of that thing. Ha! Wow! Just let him know now that you don't want it. Jesus, it is huge. Just let him know. Now.Well, we had a lot of people who want this book but I held it. So, will that be cash or credit? I stare at him and my mouth moves in the proper direction and I nod and let him know that I will be making the sensible decision right now! Ah, I say, you know what? Yes? Ah, I really think I should....Yes? I should, I should...I should really....Yes? I should, should, should, should, should. Yes? Yes? I should, should should, should, should, should, shoooould... Yes? Yes? Yes? ...PUT IT ON CREDIT!

 Fine, I'll wrap it up.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January