The Million Dollar Novel

Ever hear of someone who wins in a state lottery? I have.  A couple from Indiana I knew won five million. They bought matching shirts and matching Cadillacs. White. They didn't change much but they were rich. Now there is the million dollar novel. In the industry they call it seven figures. Someone just got a seven figure advance. Someone just won the lotto. In a time when advances are going by the wayside this is nothing short of amazing.

So what is in the million dollar novel? A story of two half sisters in eighteenth century Ghana who don't know about each other. Sweeping. Epic. So if I wrote about two half brothers who didn't know each other in say seventeenth century Ghana I would get a million bucks? Ok. Maybe not. Maybe the writing is so unbelievable that the publisher just couldn't contain them self and the agent who sold it at William Morris knew he had a million dollar novel and it was all just a foregone conclusion

But what about the other writers who are writing about half sisters or half brothers in eighteenth century Ghana. They are out there. Actually it was out there a  long time ago in the Color Purple. Two sisters who lose contact and then find each other. But somewhere someone has written another sweeping saga of two sisters who don't know about each other until they do. And it is well written and well researched. And it will never see the light of day.

You can not quantify the million dollar novel. It is as capricious as the lottery and the couple from Indiana who won the five million. One novel gets rejected out of hand and one gets a million dollars. They could easily be the same novel. Many times they are.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
Jack Pine...
 

Time is the Difference For Most Writers

It really is time. After you have the talent it is time. There are many good writers out there who will never publish and that is because they will never write. The reason most artists don’t succeed is really because they do not have the time to develop their craft. Talent must be there but so also must there be time to create and in America that time comes at a high price.

So what is your day job? The standard question has the built in assumption you must support yourself to do your writing or your music or your acting. You have to do sometning to pay  the bills. But that something destroys most artists. Their energy goes into the support and not the art. Art takes time to come to fruition and it takes time to make its way in the world.

Take writing for instance. You only have so much psychic energy and then it is gone. Most writers support themselves by teaching. This drains the writer of his precious mental  reserve and by the time he or she sits down at the writing table there is simply nothing left.  It was given away to a student who will face the same thing one day. 

So really the great dividing line of those who go on to produce songs or novels or become actors is that they had years to develop their craft. Time it turns out is precious.

 

www.williamhazelgrove.com

 

Selling Fiction

You start off just wanting to get published. No small feat. This can go on for years. For me it went on seven years. Ridiculous you think. Seven years trying to break into print, but then you finally do and that first goal of just getting into print is quickly supplanted with the second goal: you want to sell. Why this should be when you were so satisfied, so happy to just see your name on a book cover that you should suddenly up your goal to this much heavier weight to bear. But you do.

And now the writer is confronted with the marketplace. Strange amorphous beast who seems to not give a damn about you or your book. You have in your mind a great populace passing on your book with a whispered, read this, it's great. But you have no proof this is occurring just your own faith in what you have written. Shouldn't that be enough? A man who self published a book never misses a chance to ask me if I have seen the reviews on Amazon. I assure him I have. In his mind those reviews will push his book along unit the world has seen the reviews and read his book.

But of course the other million books are also crying our with their reviews. And those dismal Amazon rankings tell the writer of fiction he must do more. And so you do. You tweet, write, post, talk, push, review, you do what you have to do to get the word out. If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it did it really fall? Probably not. And this comes to the writers basic fear: obscurity. That you will pass along and your books will not be read.

In nonfiction the hook is easier. You can tie it to what is happening right now. Fiction is trickier. The story has to be tied to something current and that is tough. Because the times are always changing, but your book is not. Your story is a constant. So you have to break it down to who will read your story. You hope everyone, but the truth is certain people will buy your books. Maybe women, maybe men, maybe kids. And you have to go find them.

Giant publishers confront this daunting task every day and only succeed with a few of their books. The rest of their titles are lottery tickets they hope will be a winner. But we know the odds on the lottery. So the best thing the writer of fiction can do at the end of the day is write a really great story. That you can control. Chasing the market is a futile gesture and bound to failure. But you can impact that basic law of selling fiction: books are still sold by word of mouth. To have someone say at the end, that was a great book! Is the ultimate marketing plan. 

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man 

Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning

Twain Brings on my Kindle Epiphany

I mean I didn't physically buy it. Not yet. But I get it. I understand why someone would own this flat rectangle for reading. It is not that it is more convenient to carry around and that you don't have to lug books although that is attractive. Or that it holds a thousand books. That's cool too. Or that you can whip it out anywhere and read it for a few moments then flip it off and slip it back in your purse or briefcase. What got me finally to understand the appeal of this technology is Mark Twain's Autobiography.

Alright. I am out of books to read. For a writer, death. I need to find something after Franzen's brick and the dog narrator book. So I want to read Twain's Autobiography. Perfect. So I trudge around to some bookstores. Nope. Sorry we have them here on reserve for other people. How about letting me buy one of those? Nope. Sorry. Huh. So I end up at the coffee shop with nothing to read because stupidly I forgot to bring any kind of reading material. Burn through the NY Times and there is...what? So I started thinking. Man I would do anything to read that biography, hell I would even read it online.

But here is the real epiphany. I wouldnt' have to trudge to a bookstore and have another salesperson tell me they don't have the book but I could order it. No. I don't want to order the book. I want it NOW. I want to read the book right now! So sorry. Shite! So I sit here in the coffee shop and yes I would gladly have a Kindle right now to download Twain and starting reading. I don't care about the texture, the cool photos, the cover with Twain looking like he is hung over...I just want to read the book.

So there is my Kindle epiphany. Ultimately convenience trumps all. If you can sit in a corner and zap in a book well it is better than driving into some strip mall and getting bombarded by all those books you don't want to only find they don't have the book you do want. I have even considered taking the train to the city to buy the book from a bookstore I know has it. So that journey would be hours and expensive and make me question my sanity for the thousandth time. Or, I could just download the book and like the ad says start reading in seconds. Hmmm...Maybe I should buy one. You think?

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

Publishing in the Age of the Great Yawn

The Internet is empowerment. This is what we always hear. It gives everyone a chance to be seen, heard from, opinion, publish, record, you name it and you an do it. We can go and launch podcasts, release press releases, twitter into our neighbors face. In Walt Whitman's words: "I will not be denied!" So this is a great thing...yes? Well it is here so it doesn't matter if it is a great name or not. But if you have sent out a resume, published a book, distributed your song, shot out your press release, blogged until your fingers fall off, then chances are you have experienced the great democracy of the Internets colossal yawn. Or to put it in a more direct way: nothing comes back.

This is a strange sided effect of our collective empowerment. Let's take publishing. Once upon a time there was a thing called a publishing industry and if you wanted to publish a book then you had to deal with this beast. Chances are some of you have caught the supreme back hand of that industry in a few form letters. You had a choice, make your work better or give up any idea of publishing. Even then of course there was no guarantee, but if you did manage to get through and your book published then you were let into an exclusive club. Your book may not become a bestseller but you were a published author and this brought a certain result you could count on--a book in a store, maybe one, books in libraries, maybe a few, and respect of your peers.

Let's take pubishing now. You want to publish a book, you do it. In fact you can do it in a week. Boom. Game over. You are a published author. Might get some reviews, sell a few, maybe your book will get bought by New York. The problem is not that you have sidestepped the old publishing industry its just that everyone in the new industry is publishing a book. So what does that mean? Think of a highway with a thousand hot dog stands. You all have a product but only so many people can eat hot dogs. It is at this point you experience the supreme indifference of the Internet. The great cyber void just doesn't give a damn.

Self publishing is honorable. Authors from Hemingway to Faulkner have done it, but rarely was the result so instantaneous or cheap. This kept a lot of people who did not have the passion for the word from attempting this very expensive and arduous endeavor. Indifference on this scale is something few of us have had to contemplate. We usually always had someone to register our work, our individuality. But with everyone wired into the same circle there is just not enough individuality to go around. So people don't respond. You send out a hundred resumes, a hundred books, a hundred CD's and nothing comes back. That's because we are talking numbers in the hundreds of thousands floating around out there. You are one of the many. And what is worse you can be dismissed with a keystroke.

While others had to deal with the supreme indifference of a country scattered and barely wired, we have to deal with cacophony of voices calling from every corner for our notice. And we miss their calls, because we are busy calling out too. Like ships in the night, we end up missing our own salvation.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel is Rocket Man due out in the fall.
www.billhazelgrove.com

Getting on Oprah 101

There should be a starting line with a guy waving a checkered flag. A man with a starting gun who looks at his watch and then fires his starting pistol. All authors then heave their books toward Harpo Studios and whoever hits Oprahs feet gets their book picked for her Book Club. The streets and the Chicago river would be littered with thousands and thousands of books not thrown with enough might, enough sweat, enough desire to break the magic boundaries of the Oprahs inner sanctum.

Franzen walks in after dissing her with his last book. Some guys have all the luck. Most authors cant' beg borrow or steal their way into her book club. It is a curious mix of what? A good story, a dog story, a story of Midwestern families? Maybe it isn't story at all. Maybe it is a curious mix of who you know and how much moxie your publisher has. Or maybe you just haven't had a hard enough life to lift yourself into the I saw the light crowd and overcame drugs, alcohol sex. Maybe you just don't have a story to tell.

Of course one doesn't really know what gets Oprah to pick a book. Some say you have to get her best friend Gail read the book. Some say  you have to hope that someone in her audience recommends a book to her. Some say there is simply no sure way to get into her book club and you might as well buy a lottery ticket. There used to charges of favoring minorities but that went away. Maybe, maybe you just have to write a really good book and let the chips fall. Nah.

William Hazelgrove's novel Rocket Man is out in the fall
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Monday Morning Writer

Monday morning comes for the writer just like everybody else. Long ago I set my schedule to the five day work week and I rarely write on weekends. So like everyone else I have to find myself again after two days of not writing or even thinking about writing. Add a little partying in there and you have a foggy swamp you have to navigate through and you aren't even sure where you left the paddle.

Somewhere there is a novel that ended back on Friday. Amazing you can still track the thing after a few days of  doing just about everything else. But like every person in the country you are sitting down at your desk to find that other world again. It is the world that gives you the circles under your eyes and the death pallor. Conversations from dinners, parties, errant bits of trash float through your brain as you drink coffee and read and try and fire up the motor. It has become a little cranky after two days rest.

Like the rest of the world you wonder again at what the life of doing nothing would be like. Maybe you really don't have to work. Maybe there is a better way. You let that one go as your computer looks for that last file you were working on. Ah here it is. Stuck in a rewrite. Well at least it's not a first draft. Those are a real bitch after two days off...where did you leave that character and what the hell is he doing in a brothel?

But a rewrite is a path through the forest. Let's see, ah yes, this scene. Right. Another sip of coffee. What is wrong here. Only everything. Did I really stop here? Must have. Ok. Second time through, still loaded up with all the redundancy of the first draft. Start here. No. Cut that. Start here. Much better. Another sip of coffee. Right. Here we go. Sigh. Mondays....

William Hazelgrove's latest novel, Rocket Man due out in September. The story of a man who loses his mind after moving to the suburbs.
www.billhazelgrove.com

A Pebble Could Start an Avalanche

You never know what could start an avalanche. In book marketing there is a feeling of being completely overwhelmed. You could concentrate on the big sites and press releases and try and get major media hits. This requires time and supreme effort and a lot of times does not pan out. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try for a People Magazine or a USA Today or the New York Times. But books are a funny thing. You never quite know what starts the big slide toward a bestseller and that is because books are still sold the old fashioned way--by word of mouth.

In the internet age we are constantly bombarded with notices. So and so wants to be your friend, so and so wants you to join their group, an email from an old friend who noticed you had published your book. Our email boxes bulge with unanswered queries as we go thundering down the road for Larry King or Good Morning America. But the truth is we just don't know what will be the stick, the rock that will break the precipice. I know lots of authors who have done the big shows and their books still didn't hit. That doesn't mean these shows didn't affect them, just not the way they thought they would. Big publishers put thousands of dollars behind a new author in promotion and the book falls from site. Why? No one really knows.

When I was trying to get my first book published I used to send out six queries a week. Sometimes I would just get out four or five and I would carry the last one around with me unable to find a mailbox or a stamp. Many times, the publisher or agent who would respond would be to that last query! Who knows why, but it happened more than once. It is probably just that last unturned rock, that final exhausted moment where you put the final three chapters in the mail that the Gods line up for you. Who knows, but you really can't afford to not do it.

I had an email the other night from someone I knew in college. They said they heard I published another novel. I was tired and had been traveling all day and almost didn't respond, dangerous because then other emails would flood in and I might never get to it. But just before I went to bed I responded and asked how he was doing and yes I published another book and here is a link to the book on Amazon. Maybe he will buy it maybe he won't. Maybe it didn't matter that I responded. But then again, maybe he is a film producer, a friend of a friend who knows Oprah or who is in a book club or who has a large network of friends he emails regularly. The point we just don't know what pebble might start an avalanche--so we better make sure we give each one a good kick.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

http://www.pantonnepress.com/chapter1.pdf

Preflight

My father is a traveling salesman, that peculiar brand of Willy Loman that actually loves the natural flight of American selling. When I was
a boy, I thought of him as a man who appeared on Fridays when we had a steak and ice cream for dessert. After dinner, my father would
watch whatever football game was on television and fall asleep with his mouth open, tie loosened, hand over his brow as if he had just finished
one hell of a race.

I usually waited until he woke to tell him of my latest
achievement and show him my banana bike and collection of baseball
cards. But I had a brother who demanded his small time with him also,
so when my time came, it was usually just before he ran for his car,
briefcase in hand, and waved away another week.
But there was one time I remember where I had him all to myself.
For Christmas, my parents had given me an Estes Rocket Set. It was an
amazing toy with a launcher, rocket engines and the giant Saturn Five
Rocket that had conquered the moon a decade before. I stayed up late
gluing the white fuselage together, packing the parachute and inserting
the four D engines. The day after Christmas, my father and I walked to
a field to launch my rocket. We walked through the tall weeds painted
orange by the sun low on the horizon. He kept his hands in his pockets
while I carried the rocket and the launcher packed with batteries to fire
the rocket. We crunched through the frozen mud until we reached the
middle of the field.

Twilight simmered beyond the big pines and thin blue
snow dusted the ground. I put the launcher down and stretched the wires
to the control pad. My Saturn Five rocket was a beast. It took four D engines with two parachutes and four wadded sheets to keep the ejection charge from burning the chute up.
“Looks like we are launching Apollo 11,” my father murmured while
I threaded the Saturn Five onto the launch wire and connected the igniter wires to the four D engines. All four engines had to ignite or my Saturn Five would go off at a crazy angle and heave
into the ground. I checked the igniters and made sure they were shoved
far up into the engines. My father stamped his feet and kept his hands
in his pockets.
“You think this thing will go, boy?”
I looked at the man smoking a Pall Mall, his long Brooks Brothers
coat waving.
“Think so.”
“So this is what you do all week while I’m gone, boy?”
“Yup.”
My father smoked without his hands.
“Well, hurry up, boy. It’s going to be dark soon.”
I turned and walked back to the launch control and inserted the key.
The light glowed ready.
“You might move back, Dad.”
He looked over and snuffed the cigarette out, crunching through the
frozen mud. He was already looking at the distant cars on the highway,
thinking about his next appointment, gassing up, pointing that company
car back to the highway. He turned back and nodded to me.
“Well, blast it off, boy.”
I stared at my Saturn Five, a colossus of white and black with USA
going up the side in red letters. I began to count down.
“Five, four, three, two, one …”
I pressed the button on my launcher as the ready light flickered out.
There was the slight hiss of the sulfur igniters and for a moment the
rocket didn’t move. Then the four D engines caught fire, and whoosh!
The fire bent out and burned the weeds below the launcher, and suddenly
the Saturn Five was gone. A fiery tail burned high up in the cold sky as

the rocket leaned over slightly and left a white vapor trail across the early
stars.
“Jesus Christ!”
My father continued staring up while I stamped out the weed fire.
The ejection charge fired and the chutes blossomed, but I could see the
Saturn Five had gone too high for the wind and the time of day. It was
getting dark, and that rocket was sailing fast into the west, a white
satellite against a darkening blue palate.
“I’ll be goddamned,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Boy, that
sonofabitch really flew.”
I put my hand up, and I saw the Saturn Five drifting away; a gold
colossus hanging by four parachutes.
“Aren’t you going after it, boy?”
I shook my head solemnly.
“No, it’s gone,” I murmured, watching the rocket drift past the field.
“There’s too much wind.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
My father kept his neck craned to the sky and put his hands on my
shoulders. That’s what I remember. I think it was the only time we
were really together, watching that rocket disappear into the coal sky.

Rocket Man--
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Bookscent

I was doing a book signing the other day and suddenly I looked around and had a very strange feeling--I felt I was looking at history. All those books in their pulpy pages on all those shelves. History. We will not see it again. Books will go away. The kindle and the IPOD and the downloaded book are here to stay. Technological revolution is that way. Imagine the uproar when the first printing press started cranking out hundreds of papers. Scribes must have thrown up their pens like Scrooge in the last scene of A Christmas Carol. Books are a good thing to have and I prefer them, but they are on paper and paper is a vanishing commodity. If a person can download hundreds of books and their newspapers all before their morning coffee, then yes, something has changed. How fast will it come? In a nanosecond. It is already here. The big publishers are in a tailspin, trying to figure out the new model. How do you replace all that revenue when one guy can download a book and zap it out to ten of his friends? Sounds like the Knapster mess all over again. Borders is teetering, publishers are not acquiring. Hmmm. Sounds like the automakers. Too much stock, not enough readers. But the plain fact is that a digital file is stored easily, does not require a publisher to print a bunch of copies he might not sell, and allows the reader the ease of carrying multiple works and reading literally anywhere. This means authors and publishers will have to embrace a new model. If the end result is the dissemination of the work, then it is a good thing. More people can get their hands on your book. As a writer I like that, but I cant' help but feel a little sad that the warm pulpy smell of a bookstore will be replaced by the clean ascetic smell of plastic. Maybe they will come up with a spray: Bookscent.

Mount Oprah

You should be on Oprah. Oprah would love your book. Maybe she would and maybe she wouldn't. But as a man with a book out I hear this about every other day. Strange dynamic. Publishing a book so the end result will be an endorsement by a single person. In the age of everyman fame, Oprah is certainly the lottery ticket to the sure milk of immortality if not wealth. But of course one has to get there. I received a call yesterday. Mr. Hazelgrove, we would like to publish your next book. Oh really. I can hear other voices in the background. Yes, this is blankety blank and we want to publish your book. I recognized the vanity press. Well my book has just come out I say and of course the call is terminated. No prospects here. Even self publishing is in a downturn. There is no shame in self publishing. Great writers have done it through time, but the wholesale Juggernaut of instafame is something new. All eyes on the prize we do whatever flips trained seals must to get to the top of the pyramid. I get it. I really do. The man who told Oprah he received food from a long lost lover in a concentration camp got it too. He just made it up. So did James Frey. Can you blame them? Morality says yes, but reality says they are just doing whatever they can to get to the final stop on Mount Rich and Famous. A lot of people talk about the American Dream, but of course the dirty little secret is that we are covetous old sinners who want that final branch, the one that says we are not just a blip on the radar screen of mortality but someone special, someone different, the star that flashes out of the night and we all sit in wonder. But there are only so many seats on that Oprah set, a couch that Tom Cruise destroyed his career on and another seat for Oprah. After that, it is every man and woman for themself.

The Call of Fame

The phone rings. I glance at the clock. Six A.M.
"Hello," I mumbled groggily."Mr. Hazelgrove, sir! I know it's early, but have you seen the paper?"
I stare at the ceiling with sleep circling somewhere above."No," I mumble."Sir," this very agitated voice continues. "You are PAGE ONE in the Chicago Tribune!""Page One," I repeat, sitting up. "YES SIR! This is John Tabot from Fox 32 television and we were wondering, sir, if you would consider being on the morning show?"
I hold my head, fog clearing by the second. "When?"
"This morning, sir! We have a crew standing by that can meet you at the attic, and we'll broadcast live! Can you meet us at 7?""I'll be there."I hang up the phone and run to the bathroom. My wife has just emerged from the shadow."That was Fox 32...They saw the Tribune article and want me live TV from Hemingway's attic," I say breathlessly."I'll watch the baby, "she says before I can ask.
Now I'm excited. It has all the earmarks. Awaked by a producer who wants me on television. I was being, dare I say, discovered! That was the way it always was, wasn't it? The writer from nowhere submits the dogeared manuscript to the sleepy editor and genius is discoveredon a nondescript morning. Wasn't that the way it happened to Fitzgerald and Hemingway? Waking one morning to find that and fortune hadknocked on their doors. I had opened that door many times to find no one there.



In the early part of the century, Fitzgerald was pulled from anuncertain career in advertising and Hemingway rescued from obscurity on Paris's Left Bank y the legendary editor Max Perkins. Their books published , the writers were left to explore the world. Fitzgerald went on a 10 year party from New York to Paris to Switzerland and back to New York. Hemingway drained absinthefrom cafes in Paris, then on Africa, the Germans, loyalist Spain, and basically had a hell of a time while his books propelled him on. That was the fare modern writers grew up hearing. That was the way it was then. Now lets take a modern writer such as myself. After more than 100 rejection letters, I found a printer in Chicago who would bring out my first novel. A printer. Max Perkins had changed vocations. My book, RIPPLES, recieved critical praise. I kept my job on the night shift in a bakery. My second book, armed with the good review of first, was roundly rejected again. I went back to the printer. My second go round started with a starred review from Publishers Weekly for Tobacco Sticks. After 10 years publishers came knocking, I sold the paperback rights, the foreign rights, Book of the Month Club rights, even the movie rights. I recieved money. it was time to explore the world as my predecessors had and reap forturnes bounty. But it is the late 20th century. Things change. Oh, it was time to hit the road alright. Muncie Indianna was where I started with a book signing. Then I was off to the South , pushing my novel in the area where it would be read, talking to newspapers, TV stations and radio along the way. This was gritty hard work. Not even remotely glamourous. Where the hell were the book parties? The tete-a-tetes on the Left Bank? The drunken brawls of the success in the Plaza Hotel?
The literary author of today must write what he or she believes in or perish. It is the only way one can stay with it. The money is scant for so long, the work outrageous, the future uncertain. But the work drives one. The novel becomes a grail that, like your children, you will do anything for. In todays mass culture the task is titanic. To quote a rejection letter from an agent, "You write well, but unfortunately, seriel sex muders are what is selling. Keep at it. Quietly good books get published."
Still, one cannot help but feel a little like the huckster. Wasn'ttalent supposed to be discovered? Wasn't a book supposed to catch fire like a lightning storm in a dry forest? It seems unnatural to fight for something that should be natural. Surely the days of Hemingway and Fitzgerald can't be completely gone. But now I'm writing in Hemingway's attic and the paperback of TOBACCO STICKS is just out. I dress quickly because fame has finally knocked on my door. I am about to leave when the phone rings.
"Mr. Hazelgrove, sir, this is John Tabot the producer at Fox 32.
"Yes, I'm on my way.""Yes sir, well...there is a fire on the west side and our crew has been called away...so we're going to have to wait on this.""I see," I say slowly.
"But listen, we can do this sometime in the future...Let me know if you get in PEOPLE magazine and we'll do it for sure."
I hang up the phone. Fame, that willowing ghost had slipped away again. I look at the front door then open it. There is the dewy morning and the sun on the porch. I close the door slowly and stand there. Maybe it was my imagination, but I swear I heard someone knocking.

The HIgh School Speech--Notes From the Book Tour

The golden dusk of youth slipping quietly behind the uprights on the empty stadium is now just a soft hue of magenta, but he was hurling down wood worn corridors of metal grey lockers with no tell tale mold, no mildew to speak of sixteen year old passage of hurrying Adidas and jeans, skinned knees and field dust a fine residue swept away seventeen years before by a janitor now gone. He could see him coming around the stadium. A golden retrievers breath is still a slight scent on hands as he skipped, stepped, jumped through unmasked sunshine of young days. He was young. Sixteen was a side of life not yet turned. He remember the white athletic socks and rolled jeans. He remembered a button down shirt and a Buick with dust blowing in one window and out the next. Dust of unlived days for him.
He remembered laying in a field waiting for a date. He remembered waiting to leave the high wheat for his first love. He had met her in his Alma Mater days. Halcyon kisses under a harvest moon may sound heavy--overdramatized-but there was no drama at sixteen. Peering now through the uprights he could see the cemetery that had no meaning before. They were just grey stones in the distance behind the yellow lit field. He ran on that field. He ran for glory in sixteen years, seventeen, eighteen finally. A complete glory. He ran for men now retired. Now dead. And those stones had left him too. They were a calling of another time now.
But he could feel the breath. He could feel the touch. It had not happened quickly. He had come to give a speech. A writers speech. Several writers speeches. He had been distant at first. The rooms still were warm. It was December after all, almost Christmas. The RCA loudspeaker bellowed the announcements of seventeen years since. He watched a clock he had seen with unlined eyes.
The speech was automatic. He had already given enough. But between he went to the BOYS room. There were no men in this world. Just teachers and BOYS. He went into the tiled museum. Palace of his own pimple forays, kinky hair inspections. The mirror was the same. He looked better than then. He was uglier then. Uglier by comparison, but quite beautiful and gawky for sixteen. The stall was still small and he sat where he had sat for years. Graffiti had vanished of course. But it was his BOYS room and he became again. He had some time and crept around. The gossamers of time allowed him that in the slanting rays of a bent moment. He was able to leave and float back. He could feel him now. He could feel the sixteen year old heart pumping fresh ideas, wounds, voracious pride. He walked past a blue locker. He had pulled on the lock before. Moments of books long gone and papers wasted. Moments of mussed coats and gloves--a scarf. Maybe there was a picture. Maybe. He could feel him now.He walked past athletic pictures of his time. Black and white ghosts long ago. He was not among them he was sure of that. He was never that official, but he was among the faces. A stairwell dimly lit. It was dimly lit with the halflight of his time also. He had run down it unthinkingly. He never thought then. He was an expert of emotion, of being. He was Zen master of his short destiny. He was contained.
Yellowed wood of a gymnasium peeked through a door. The smirks and squeaks of young feet and muscles stopping and starting with abandon. There were no warmups. There was no warmdowns. There was the moment of motion taken from other moments and replaced just as deftly. There was the fast breaths of hearts barely tested, barely creased. Still he walked on, floating down hallways of a biology class, a french class. They had sat in front of spring windows, dreaming of the outdoors. The sun had played beyond in the fields with real creatures just below. Crickets, cicadas, frogs. These were friendly sounds as were friendly days. Nostalgia this is not but an unremitting truth of who he was and now.
And the teachers. Oh the teachers had grayed. They had mellowed. Creased. He was their boy still. He ran from them down the long corridors of Indian summer afternoons. The long light of heat played down the sweet dusty scent of books and papers, pencils and erasers. They held their chalk to the boards he daydreamed too. They held their chalk while he laughed, humoring, encouraging, they laughed too. He could smell the lunches. They were indescribably brown and warm. They were milk and brownies, potpies and carrots. Trays of them floated down the corridor. He waved through the food of lusty appetites. He waved through the scent of unspent inertia. It was the fuel of little Gods--American high school fare. And he was there too. Passing on a cold morning across the courtyard. Full of confidence, worried about his hair, his face. To be preoccupied with one's looks again. Oh this would be a luxury. He was talking with friends, cracking jokes, laughing at nothing. Cold breath as he passed back into a corridor, passing pictures and trophies again. Dead matter of his time.
Then suddenly he was back in the old wing again. Back to the window he began from. There were the uprights of the field. The snow fence was up and the field browned. A coach he met didn't remember him. He shook his hand and walked on. But he remembered him. He remembered him as a God of his time. He was a naysayer, a maker of destiny. He had told him once he looked like an All American. How could anyone forget that? Another coach long retired. He would have to speak again soon. He would have to become who he was. He stared at the uprights. They were tinged with cold again. They were tinged with his cold of days waiting for breaks. There would be a Christmas break and he would be free. There would be a spring break and he would be free. There would be a summer break and he would be free. Absolutist, all of them. Free from their luxurious drudgery.
Still the uprights gleamed and he lingered. He looked for him coming from the parking lot. He looked for him bouncing with abandon. He would bounce with a scant dearth of years lived. He could not have thought he would look again at forty eight. There are no such parallels. Sixteen year olds are not required. The bell rang and he braced himself.
He touched the old wood of the windowsill. He touched the cold of the glass. He had touched these before he knew that. The field was fading with the day. He was leaving. A glance again--winters gold, youths maiden, life's opium, a necklace of unlined moments he took with him--snatched away--finally.

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The Great Quiet of Hemingway's Attic

These days, there is Marcelline's old steamer trunk, a wine bottle from Spain, a cello, two wrought-iron gas stanchions from the late 19th century and National Geographics from 1912, 1915, and 1918 complete with scribbling on the pages from Ernest's father, or perhaps from Ernest himself. There are two small lithographs from 1945 advertising bullfights in Spanish, parts of a Victorian bed and a crib, as well as boxes and boxes of bronze heads that look curiously like the great writer, marked "Hemingway Busts." There are doors propped up that are from the days when a young Ernest Hemingway burst through a screen door on a hot summer day in Oak Park. There's also the normal bric-a-brac of any attic at any time: a wrapped Christmas tree, ornaments, and sheets spread over nondescript boxes. But that is all that remains of the man and his era. The big adventure of the 20th century drew to a close and all those larger-than-life writers are making their exit along with it. I came up here to find the ghost of a man who did not grow up on television, a man for whom commerce was a necessary stream, not the flood we find ourselves in now.
I write on Marcelline's stremer trunk. She must have opened it many times while crossing the wide dark seas in the last adventure of our time. Marcelline would open her trunk and sit down to write in a room of wood paneling while the ocean liner crashed throught the stormy night. She may have felt the roll of the seas, and her one lamp was small in the baseless night as a yellow beacon of humanity against the black sea. There was no jet screaming overhead, no disembodied voice instructing her from afar. She was simply writing letters to her brother in Africa, Spain, Paris, and Key West. And while she sat with only the sounds of her pen scratching on paper and the distant howl of the ocean, she possessed what frustratingly eludes us now--the great quiet of the moment.
The trunk no longer makes voyages across seas to an old world. That world has come to rest here among the dusty rafters and the pattering of squirrels across the roof. My mind is not as hers. Mine is cluttered, over instructed, overfed. Flickering ghostly images crowd out the single moment, and at times there seem a hundred different voices competing for my attention.I realize now, that for all our progress, our technology, we still can't buy passage on that liner crossing the stormy seas of our dying tranquility.

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A Hand Up

When a writer gives you a hand up you are very thankful. Generally you don't get too many of these from other writers who are very busy with their own careers and writing. Maybe they don't like your work. Maybe they dont' give blurbs. Tobias Wolfe was very nice and said he was swamped with books as did Tom Poratta. I understand. Bestelling novelist David Liss did review my book and gave it a great one,http://www.amazon.com/review/R8NJQ80GXYO3O/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm. You always have to be appreciative to the writer who does give you a hand up. It is a long trecherous road and authors are a cautious bunch. The rug can be pulled at any time and many a writer has served as a cautionary tale. So when a writer goes out a limb and says they think what you have written is great then you can only hope that you will be able to do the same for somone some day.

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Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds

So went Hemingways famous quote about his hometown of Oak Park. A reviewer of my recent novel, Rocket Man compared my take on modern suburbia to this quote. I would have to say that Hemingways quote seems mild by comparison. Rocket Man deals with another phenomenon not thought of in Hemingway's time--the corporification of suburban American. If Rocket Man deals with anything it deals with this final rung of our oligarchy (rule by the wealthy class) that has gone so horribly bad. But for years this is what we have had. A rule by the corporations of America and they have literally changed the landscape. Corporations thrive on homgenity, organization, streamlining complexities down to general assumptions. If we have on man do one thing then he can do that one thing all day long and be efficient at it. So went the thinking of Henry Ford when he came up with the assembly line. This basic maxim has spread out over the land in our homes that all look the same, our schools that churn out good little soldiers, not original thinkers, and our institutions, from churces on down that quite literally look like corproate buildings. Rocket Man's main character Dale Hammer is at sea not because he is so different in this landscape, he is failing because he refuses to be a cog not unilke the character in Orwells 1984. Dale is losing his home and struggling to keep his family together which includes his unemployed father who has come to live over his garage. In a sense they have been corporate refugees, hanging on to see when the next shoe will drop. In that way, they certainly do mirror us all.

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