Not religious. Not spiritual.

The advanced review copies of SOMETHING MISSING have begun to pop up on eBay (thank goodness for Google Alerts). Even though the ARC seal on the book clearly states that the review copy is not for sale, apparently not everyone agrees.

Even so, the eBay seller indicates in their description of the book that:

This listing is for a softcover book titled "Something Missing" by Matthew Dicks. This softcover advance reading copy says not for resale on it.

It’s nice of the seller to acknowledge the rule against resale, even as they attempt to resell it themselves.

I don’t mind, to be honest. It’s exciting to think that someone wants to read it, regardless of how it ultimately finds its way into their hands.

But what is mildly disturbing is the means by which at least one eBay seller has characterized the book, labeling it as Religion, Spirituality, Christianity, Protestant.

SOMETHING MISSING may be many things, prospective readers, but my book is in no way religious or spiritual.

Acknowledgements page

Jonathan Black wrote a piece in the American Spectator about the Acknowledgements page (or pages) in novels, declaring that “The Acknowledgments page cannot make a bad book better, but it can ruin a good one.”

How utterly ridiculous.

First off, if Black truly believes that an Acknowledgements page can ruin a good book, why would he ever read one? It’s not like the acknowledgements are essential to the story. Just skip the page or two and preserve the sanctity and potential greatness of the book.

But my problem with the piece is that it is built upon cliché, myth and otherwise ludicrous assumptions. To Black’s credit, he refrains from expressing such stodgy, overly-analytical, psycho-babble notions, but he manages to find people to speak these silly aphorisms for him.

Like Sara Nelson, editor of Publishers Weekly:

"It used to be a writer spent 20 years alone in a room and came out with an ink-stained manuscript and made a deal with Bennett Cerf. Now it's publishing by committee. Everything's sales and marketing and publicity." 

Oh, c’mon, Ms. Nelson. Are we really going to continue to perpetuate the image of the lonely, tortured writer, laboring away for decades under a single, 40-watt bulb in order to produce a single masterpiece? My first book took two years to write and I thought that was quite a stretch of time. Writers profoundly better than I have done even better.

Edith Wharton, in the most productive period of her life, published The Valley of Decision in 1902, Sanctuary in 1903, House of Mirth in 1905 and Madame de Treymes and The Fruit of the Tree in 1907. No twenty year old ink-stained manuscripts for her.

Or how about F. Scott Fitzgerald, who published This Side of Paradise in1920, The Beautiful and Damned in 1922, and The Great Gatsby in 1925? Are we to criticize Fitzgerald for failing to spend the prescribed twenty years alone in a room?

And even if this image of the writer were once the case, Ms. Nelson, is there anything wrong with a writer producing a novel in less than twenty years, and (God forbid) with the help of others? Am I expected to believe that Dickens didn’t receive at least a few comments from friends and colleagues as Great Expectations was being serialized in All the Year Round? Or that Wharton didn’t pass on her manuscripts to friends such as Henry James, Sinclair Lewis or Jean Cocteau at least once in her life? Does the input, support and encouragement of friends, family or fellow writers somehow corrupt or otherwise invalidate the writing process?

Or how about the quote from Dan Menaker:

"Writing fiction is such a self-important business. It's not like you know a lot about elevators and someone suggested you write a book. You write a novel unbidden, because you believe people ought to know how you see things. Acknowledgments are an attempt to disavow that narcissism. They're a pose to mask egomania."

If Menaker is speaking about himself, that would be fine, but to offer up this generality about the thousands of writers who pen acknowledgements each year is just silly. While I may possess a streak of narcissism, and perhaps even a dash of egomania, I make no attempt to disavow these qualities. There are people who may find these qualities offensive, but they have helped me to stand in the face of the harshest of criticism and outright lies and continue to smile.

And there are also days when I fear that I am a complete fraud, a fortunate scribbler who managed to fool an entire publishing house into buying my book but will likely never do so again. To imply that writers are all one thing and none of another is nonsense. Menaker’s quote may be clever and well-phrased, but it is also overly convenient for Black’s piece while not accurately measuring the essence of every writer, or dare I say most writers. Narcissism or not, the acknowledgements in my book are not meant to mask my belief that I have important things to say. They are simply expressions of gratitude and a willingness to recognize that even someone with important things to say sometimes needs to the support of others in order to make people listen.

But my greatest complaint about the piece is Black’s sarcastic snipe at the author who acknowledges his or her spouse. Perhaps Black is not married and does not understand the value of a spouse who supports your work. Perhaps he is married but does not enjoy the same kind of partnership that my wife and I share. Perhaps he is one of those writers who prefers to toil away in solitude for decades before emerging with a completed manuscript. Perhaps his wife is invaluable to the writing process but does not desire any “syrupy praise.” But mocking the importance of some spouses, and my wife in particular, in the writing process for the sake of a laugh or a spat of highbrowed sarcasm, seems cheap and simpleminded.

How does one presume to understand the extent of a marital relationship?

In the interest of full discloser, I dedicated SOMETHING MISSING to my wife and acknowledged her in the Acknowledgements, which ran two pages and I will post under Other Writing. But I did not do so in hopes of currying favor with her or because she was “toting laundry and hunting for typos.” I thanked my wife because she deserved it. The story was better because of the questions she asked, the comments she made, and the encouragement that she offered.

To be honest, I did most of the laundry in our home until my daughter was born.

Black asks the question: Isn't writing supposed to be a grim and lonely pursuit? 

This is perhaps the most ridiculous comment of the entire piece, but still, I will attempt to answer it. In the movies, yes, it seems that writers are a lonely and grim bunch. In books it’s much the same. Writers are tortured and suffering souls. But in real life, writers are human beings, surprisingly capable of a wide range of emotions. There are lonely days and grim days but there are also days when the words seem to be leaping from your fingers, and these are days of sheer delight. Perhaps it’s true that Acknowledgement pages have grown unnecessarily long in recent years, and perhaps some of these acknowledgements ring of corniness and insincerity, but this has nothing to do with the stereotypes and clichés that litter Black’s piece.

Writers are not lonely, grim, ink-stained scribblers. At least not all of us. Some of us appreciate a kind word, a sharp critique, or the suggestion of a title from a friend or family member. We understand the value of these people in our writing lives and wish to express as much.

We’re not writing these acknowledgements for you, Mr. Black. We are writing to the people who have made are stories better.

Trade paper

The decision has been made to publish SOMETHING MISSING as a trade paperback original rather than as a hardback. Doubleday’s marketing department believes that the book will do better in trade paper. My agent explained it to me this way:

The price point would be lower (paperbacks sell for about $14 while hardbacks sell for $22). This means more people can afford to buy the book, which is particularly important in today’s economy.

Advanced orders from bookstores like Barnes and Noble would more than double if the book was published in trade paper, because trade paper sells better, especially in this economic climate.

Big retailers like Target will sell trade paper, and we want the book in the big retailers.

Most book clubs wait for the trade paperback edition to come out, so their members can afford the book. Trade paper eliminates this problem, which is especially good considering SOMETHING MISSING will be a Book of the Month at Borders.

For a first-time author, trade paper can be an excellent way to start a career by putting more books in more hands immediately and generating more buzz. Also, publishers typically divide marketing budgets between the hardcover and trade paperback releases of a book, which can be bad if the hardcover copy does not initially sell well. By coming out initially in trade paper, more marketing dollars can be invested in the book’s initial launch, which can be very good for a first-time author.

It is becoming more common for authors to publish initially in trade paper.

My editor also informed me that since this decision was made, small bookshops have increased their orders of the book significantly.

On the con side, trade paper doesn’t get as much review attention, so our hope is that the marketing department can find a way to mitigate this loss. If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears.

And of course, there’s a certain prestige to a hardback copy of your book, which will be lost with this decision. To be honest, this didn’t mean as much to me as it did to my wife and some of my friends (understandably), but in the end, I trust Doubleday and Broadway and simply want to put as many books in as many readers’ hands as possible. If trade paper is the way to make this happen, I’m all for it.

Loving the Germans

More news from my German editor:

The major publishing magazine, Boersenblatt, published their first announcement (not quite a review, but a kind of "best of upcoming novels preview") and SOMETHING MISSING (DER GUTE DIEB in Germany) is among them, including the cover. 

My wife has suggested that I could become the next David Hasselhoff.

I begged her never to say those words again.

News from the German front

My German editor was kind enough to contact me after seeing this website in order to cast some light on the reasons why the name of SOMETHING MISSING was changed in Germany.  I'm posting a portion of her email here, with her permission:

You mention that SOMETHING MISSING apparently doesn't translate well into German; it indeed doesn't - it would have had a rather negative connotation if we'd translated it literally - but there is more to it.  In Germany we have a law, Titelschutz (Title Protection) that states that one title (be it a book, movie or whatever) must not resemble another. 

So a person who goes into a book shop and says "I'd like to have this and that" must be certain to receive the book he or she is looking for and not a different one which only happens to sound alike.  A title like "Etwas fehlt" or "Fehlt etwas" would have been too close to titles which have already been published.  THE GOOD THIEF wasn't the most innovative of all titles but it sticks in one's ear and is unmistakable.

This rule causes quite a few problems in general by the way, since the number of combinations of words is, well, limited. At least the number of meaningful combinations.

Interesting, huh?  It's been hard enough trying to find a good title for MILO.  I cannot imagine having to also worry about using a title that is too close to a book published fifty years ago. 

She was also kind enough to send along the cover art of the German version of the book, which I like a lot. 

More kind words

Another blurb for SOMETHING MISSING came in yesterday, this one from David Rosen, author of I JUST WANT MY PANTS BACK.  He writes:

“A funny, suspenseful and thoroughly original debut that will keep you up to the wee hours flipping pages, having to explain your bloodshot eyes the next day.  Damn you, Matthew Dicks -- now everyone thinks I've been crying.”

I've already ordered Mr. Rosen's book.  He blurb struck me as amusing, so I'm hoping that the book will do the same.

More on the Border's Book Club selection

As a Border’s book club pick, SOMETHING MISSING will get three face-outs in a bay at the front of the store and will have 20% discounting. 

It also appears that I will have the opportunity to appear on Border’s book club channel, and that a Q&A, reading guide, and an excerpt of the book will also be posted on their site.

Exciting!

Border's Book Club selection

Good news! SOMETHING MISSING is going to be a Book Club selection at Borders!

Naturally I had no idea what this meant when I was first told by my editor via email, but based upon Melissa’s level of enthusiasm and the number of exclamation points that she used in the email told me that this was very good.

Though we don’t have any details yet, Taryn explained that this means that Borders likes me book and wants to help sell copies. “Having a huge chain on your team is GREAT news,” she says, and this means that the book will be featured on the book club portion of their website.

After forgetting to set my alarm, jumping out of bed two hours late, losing a chunk of prime writing time, and leaving the house without kissing my sleeping daughter goodbye lest she wake up, this was a much needed piece of good news.

Kind words

My editor sent me the first blurb about SOMETHING MISSING today, written by M. Ann Jacoby, author of LIFE AFTER GENIUS. She writes:

“A quirky and endearing first novel that makes you wonder if that misplaced stick of butter or can of soup means there’s a burglar prowling your pantry. If that thief is Martin Railsback, you might be glad. He’s the kind of burglar you could conceivably want in your house.”

I’m not silly enough to think that everyone will love my book, but it’s thrilling to discover that at least one person does.

Pieces of me

Nicholson Baker has a new book out, a non-fiction piece about World War II entitled Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, and I heard him speak about it and other topics on a recent New York Public Library podcast. He said something quite interesting during the talk, which I have since fallen in love with. When asked if a viewpoint in his latest book represents his own, Baker said that as a novelist, you “…take little pieces of yourself and grow them artificially.”

I couldn’t agree more.

When friends began reading the first drafts of SOMETHING MISSING, the question most often asked was if I had actually engaged in the kind of thievery that the book describes. Some of Elysha’s family members even took her aside and asked if I was a thief before meeting her.

While the answer is sadly no, there are certain parts of Martin’s character that come directly from me, though I did not realize it at the time. As I was writing the book, I was in therapy for post traumatic stress disorder, the result of an armed robbery from more than a decade before. The robbery had left me with constant, reoccurring nightmares and a host of other symptoms that I did not understand until I began speaking to a therapist.

My propensity to plan.

The ease to which I am startled.

My need to identify all exits in a building before feeling safe.

The ritual of analyzing alternatives to almost any situation.

My desire to sit facing the door of a restaurant whenever possible.

As the therapy and the book progressed, it became clear to me that Martin’s methodical, cautious, thoughtful nature was a piece of me, a part of myself that I was unconsciously expressing in words. My therapist brought this to my attention after hearing about Martin and his story in one of our session. When I finished outlining the book for him, he asked, “Where did you get the name Martin?”

“I don’t know. It just came to me.”

"You realize,” he said, “that you couldn’t have found a name closer to your own if you had tried.”

Ironically, I hadn’t.

Since then, I have come to find parts of myself in many of my characters, and this newfound awareness has helped me to empathize and embrace some of my less than savory characters. In my current manuscript, Milo, my protagonist, recently encountered a man named Louis, who is a bit of a hedonist. While Louis and I have little in common in terms of appearance, behavior or lifestyle, Louis’s hedonism comes from a belief that he and I both share in regards to the nature of individuality and normalcy as it relates to society. We share a common belief, but we choose to express that belief in divergent ways. In fact, a science fiction fan might think of Louis as a bizarre and misguided version of me from some alternate universe.

But the fact remains: Louis, Martin, Milo, and most of my characters are pieces of me, grown artificially, as Nicholson Baker so eloquently stated.

Good week

A couple of days of good news on the book front.

Yesterday my editor informed me that we made a deal with Japanese publisher Random House Kodansha for publication of Something Missing in Japan.

Just think: My words translated into Japanese characters. I must get a hold of a copy once it hits the Japanese bookstores, if only to see what it looks like when written like this.

Also, please note, as Melissa did, that this is a deal with another former enemy of the US.

This evening, I received word that we sold the rights to the audio version of the book to Recorded Books. Being an enormous consumer of audio books, I am extremely excited about this news and am left with the obvious question:

Who will be chosen to read the book?

I would imagine that I don’t have much say in this regard, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know where to begin.

Thoughts anyone? Any favorites?

Nicholson Baker and me

My book club meets today to discuss Nicolson Baker’s The Size of Thoughts. It was my turn to choose the book, and Taryn, my agent, turned me onto Baker’s work during my initial revisions of SOMETHING MISSING. Specifically, she suggested I read Baker’s first novel, The Mezzanine, and later, The Fermata, which she described as “dirtiest book that can still be called literature… filthy, hilarious and wondrous.”

She was right on all accounts.

Taryn explained that there were similarities in Baker’s writing style and my own, and while I understand what she meant, it’s simply absurd to think that Baker and I are even in the same universe. He is an amazing writer and thinker, full of insight, humor, wit and intelligence. I am a newbie who still hunts and pecks on his keyboard and worries that he’ll never sell another book.

One of the strangest and most surreal questions that I have been asked in this publishing process, by Taryn, Melissa (my editor), and the marketing department at Broadway was to compare my work to another author, and each time, I have found myself tongue tied.

First, to presume that my writing is comparable to anyone seems a little ludicrous. I’m a first-time novelist whose book has yet to hit the bookstore shelves. Comparing myself to anyone of any prestige seems presumptuous and insane, so I have yet to answer this question with any adequacy.

Second, even if I had a dozen successful novels under my belt, I still wouldn’t be sure where I fit in. As I’ve written before, it’s difficult for me to categorize SOMETHING MISSING or my latest manuscript. People ask me if SOMETHING MISSING is a thriller, a mystery, or a romance? Is it action adventure, or science fiction? But it’s none of these things. It’s just a story about a guy named Martin who leads an unusual life. I’ll take credit for an original concept, a well developed character, and moments of genuine amusement, but to classify my novel in any regard has been so challenging for me. More often than not, my attempts to categorize the book results in furrowed brows and more questions.

Last week Elysha forwarded me this link from New Yorker magazine, which provided an amusing list of the top ten most abusively blurbed authors. These are authors who are constantly used as a base of comparison for other authors. For example:

Chuck Klosterman (whose book Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs was quite amusing): If you write about pop culture, and the peoples of pop culture, and you're not visibly sexy in your jacket photo, you're a Chuck.

Sadly, I do not appear to fit anywhere on this list, nor do I think does Nicholson Baker.

International

My mother-in-law found SOMETHING MISSING listed on the Japanese version of Amazon today. 

Kind of neat.  Huh?

While I'm not certain, I think this is actually an English version of the book, being sold in Japan.  As far as I know, the international rights to the book have been sold to publishers who will translate it into German, Korean, and Russian. 

In Germany, it will be called The Good Thief.  Apparently SOMETHING MISSING doesn't translate well. 

Oddly enough, the book will only be translated into the languages of former enemies of the United States.

I found this amusing, until I realized that that the list of former enemies is quite long.  Even nations like Britain, Mexico, Spain, Italy and France make the list.

One step closer

The Advanced Reader Copy for SOMETHING MISSING arrived today! An ARC is (in the words of Wikipedia) is a copy of a book released by its publisher before the book has gone to press. ARCs do not have the final dust jacket, formatting or binding of the finished product. The text of an ARC may also differ from that of the published book if the book is edited after the ARC is produced (I’m not sure if mine was or not). ARCs are normally distributed to reviewers, bookstores, and magazines between three and six months before the book is officially released.

It’s very exciting. Though it is not be a true copy of the book, it’s a close facsimile, and it represents another step closer to the actual publication. July of 2009 once seemed so far away, but it’s starting to become a much more tangible reality. I also feel fortunate that my publisher has decided to produce an ARC for reviewers and the like, since this is often not the case.

A couple months ago, Melissa, my editor, sent me a hardcopy of the cover of my book, wrapped around another book for appearance sake. She wanted to give me an idea of what the book would actually look like with the cover. While the inside of the book did not contain my words, just seeing the cover on any book was thrilling.

The book that she wrapped the cover around was Quick, Before the Music Stops: How Ballroom Dancing Saved My Life.

While I’m sure that this is a fine book, it’s certainly not something that you would find me reading on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and as a result, some of my friends have taken great pleasure in ribbing me about Melissa’s choice.

I can’t help but wonder if she chose the book on purpose, just to be amusing.

How to make your wife cry

I have many reasons to write, and most are of the high-minded, creative sort. But I also like to make my wife cry.

It was a Friday in May, and I was at work. My students were in art class, gone for an hour. My student-teacher and I were sitting at my desk, discussing lesson plans for the coming week.

Just another Friday in a waning school year.

Then my cellphone rang, an exceptionally rare occurrence in the middle of the school day. Though I wouldn’t have normally answered it, the absence of the students, combined with the odd timing of the call, made me check to see who was calling. Whenever my cellphone rings in the middle of the day, I expect the worst, and rarely am I mistaken.

This day I was.

It was Taryn, my agent, with news on SOMETHING MISSING, my first novel. Doubleday had made a preemptive offer. Though my book was slated to go on the market for sale the following week, Taryn had passed a copy on to an editor at Doubleday, and they were now attempting to purchase the book before anyone else had a chance to make a bid.

Their offer was for more than I could have ever dreamed.

In that one moment, my entire life changed. Wedding debt that had saddled us for two years was suddenly erased. My dog’s recent spinal surgery was suddenly paid for. Our dream of purchasing a home and starting a family, one that we thought was at least three and probably five years off, was suddenly within our grasp.

Someone in New York City wanted to pay me for something I made up in my head.

I couldn’t believe it.

Teary-eyed and trapped between laughter and genuine weeping, I thanked Taryn as much as a person can do in one minute, told her to do whatever she thought was best in the ongoing negotiations for the foreign rights, and hung up the phone, almost unable to breathe. I had one thought in mind:

Find my wife.

I stood up, hugged my student teacher, who had been sitting beside me the whole time, and headed for Elysha’s classroom up the hall in order to tell her the news. I couldn’t wait.

But her classroom was empty. Her students were in music class, meaning Elysha could be anywhere, doing anything. Prepping lessons. Trapped in a meeting. Making photocopies. Grabbing a snack. I began a frantic search of the school, looking everywhere. The copy room. The faculty room. The main office. Her colleagues’ classrooms. Even the restrooms. I bumped into friends and coworkers along the way, some of whom saw the wild-eyed look on my face and asked me if I was okay, but I did not tell anyone my news.

I wanted to tell Elysha first.

After more than fifteen frantic minutes, I finally found her walking down a hallway behind the auditorium. I grabbed her shoulders and stopped her midstride. From my appearance, she thought that something was wrong. She asked if I was alright. Then I told her the news.

I thought she would be excited. I did not expect her to collapse to the ground, crying hysterically, but that is what she did. She fell to my feet, back against the wall, cheeks red, tears rolling down her face, weeping into her hands.

Colleagues poked their heads from classrooms, certain that something terrible had just happened.

Some were convinced that I had just broken up with her.

I was so happy. In fact, it’s one of the happiest moments of my life. The phone call from Taryn, and the subsequent calls from her that afternoon, informing me of the increase in the sale price as negotiations concluded, were great, but to knock your wife off her feet with news like that was indescribable.

I’d only done it once before.

Four years earlier, I had proposed to Elysha on the top steps of Grand Central Station, her favorite place in the world. It was three days after Christmas and about a week before her birthday, so she wasn’t expecting the proposal at all. Sprinkled amidst the multitude of holiday shoppers, business people, and the like were about thirty of our friends and family who had traveled to Grand Central ahead of us to take up positions in the crowd.

Exiting the train, we climbed the stairs, and when we reached the top, I grabbed Elysha’s hand and stopped her. The proposal went like this:

Me: I chose this place because I know it’s your favorite room in the world.

Elysha: Yeah…

Me: And I wanted a place that would always be here, so that someday we could show our kids, so…could you hold my book? (I had a book in my hand and wasn’t smooth enough to drop it to the floor. Elysha took the book and I removed the ring box from my pocket. Just then a policewoman stepped beside us.)

Policewoman: Please keep moving. You can’t block the stairway. (A second later she saw the ring box and smiled.) Oh… (stepping back)

Me: (Dropping to one knee)

Elysha: (Starting to cry)

Me: (On one knee) Elysha Green, I love you with all my heart and want to spend the rest of my life with you. (Opens the ring box) Will you marry me?

Elysha: (Starts crying and reaches out to hug me, NEVER ANSWERING THE QUESTION!)

Friends: (Screaming in the distance, immediately surrounded by National Guard Soldiers)

Me: That’s all of our friends screaming honey…

Elysha: (Continuing to cry)

Friends: After assuring the soldiers that they weren’t in some kind of distress or preparing to commit an act of terrorism, they raced up the stairs, shouting and cheering.

Elysha: Oh my God. Where did you all come from?

The rest was great. After the proposal, we all enjoyed lunch at Ruby Foos and then made our way down to Rockefeller Center to check out the tree. Snow was lightly falling, the streets were abuzz with holiday shoppers, and the day couldn’t have been more perfect.

Elysha, however, has yet to answer my question.

Nevertheless, she is crying in almost every photo taken that day. She would later cry throughout much of our wedding ceremony as well, but I can’t take full credit for those tears. The wedding was more than just me.

Which leads me back to the reason that I write, or at least one of them:

I want to make my wife cry once again. As I work on finishing my second book by the end of December, I have many goals in mind.

1.  Finish the book and discover Milo’s fate. I honestly can’t wait to find out what happens.

2.  Share my story with readers.  I can't tell you how satisfying it is to know that you've brought a little entertainment and insight into a person's life.

3.  Sell the book so we can remodel the kitchen, replace the windows, and increase our options in terms of childcare for the fall.

4.  Prove to myself that my first book wasn’t just a fluke.

But I also want to make my wife cry again, like she did that day in the hallway behind the auditorium. To bring so much joy to someone who I love so much might just be the greatest reward of all.

And so I write. With ten days of vacation in my near future, I hope to churn out the last 30,000 words of my latest manuscript.

Fingers crossed that there are more tears in my near future.

Something Missing on Facebook

My buddy, Tom, started a Fans of Something Missing group on Facebook last week. It’s already got about forty members, even though most of them have yet to read the book. Yesterday he assigned me a title: President of Writing and Publishing Department.

He is President of the Shameless Promotion Department.

It’s good to have friends.

Actually, it’s been surprising to experience the excitement and investment that my friends have had with the book. Because I had about a dozen or more people reading Something Missing while I was writing it, many of their suggestions, ideas, and thoughts were eventually embedded within the text. Whether it was a specific idea for revision or just a comment or thought that altered my way of thinking about the book, each one of my readers left an indelible mark on the story and its characters. Some of them even began to speak of the main character, Martin, as a real person, and even to this day, outsiders and strangers are sometimes confused when listening to one of my friends speak about Martin as if he were included in our circle of friends.

So as I went through the process of finding an agent and selling the book, my readers came along with me, celebrating my achievements, but in a way, also celebrating their own, since they each had a hand in shaping the story to what it has now become.

Including Tom.

If you have a Facebook account, check out the group. Once the book is actually available for purchase, perhaps these much appreciated fans will actually have something to chat about!

More excited than me

My book popped up on Amazon.com last week, available for preorder. I have a Google alert set up for my name, and last Tuesday, it alerted me to the novel’s appearance on the site. Since then it’s been popping up on sites like the Borders and Random House website.

Very exciting.

I told my mother-in-law about the news and she wrote:

WOW WOW

I will order it - I will be the FIRST!

Less than an hour later, she wrote:

I ordered it - I'm the first one and now I can't wait for it to come!

YAY YAY

Will you sign it when it comes?

Yes, I know that you will….

I'm so excited!

It’s almost as if she has co-opted my excitement. No matter the event, it's almost impossible to match this woman's enthusiasm.  This is the same woman who sent me this gem a couple weeks ago:

Behind every successful man is a surprised mother-in-law.

A few months ago I went into New York to record an interview with my editor that will be used in the promotion of the book (see the photo below). I decided to invite my mother-in-law along, giving us the chance to spend the day together. Never having parents who gushed over me or my accomplishments (as far as I can tell, my mother died never knowing that I was a state champion pole vaulter), it’s always amusing to watch my mother-in-law talk about my accomplishments to others. Wherever we go, she is constantly introducing me as “Her son-in-law, the author,” and that day in New York was no exception. When she first met my editor, Melissa, she pointed at me and said, “Isn’t he brilliant?”

How does one respond to a question like that?

I’ve heard about sons and daughters who are embarrassed by their parents for making a big deal out of their children’s successes and accomplishments, but I’ve always thought them to be foolish, unappreciative and narrow minded, unaware of their good fortune.

I must admit that I understand this embarrassment a little better now, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Character first

Penelope Pudding (a genius pseudonym) writes:

Do your books evolve as you write them, or do you know how they will end in advance?

Interesting question. As you probably know, every author is different. Perhaps the story behind my Something Missing will answer this for you.

The idea for Something Missing began on a November evening in 2004. My wife and I were having dinner with close friends, Charles and Justine. During the course of the meal, Justine told us that she had lost an earring earlier that day and was hoping to find it when they returned home. I asked Justine how she knew that the earring had been misplaced. “Perhaps some clever thief came to your house and stole just one earring, so that you wouldn’t suspect theft.” This idea lodged itself in my mind throughout the evening, and when I arrived home later that night, I jotted down the idea on my ever-growing list of possible story ideas.

Fast forward three months later to February of 2005. My wife and I are in Boca Raton, Florida to spend a week with her grandmother. After a day without Internet access or cable television service and a dearth of decent reading material, I found myself in a desperate search of something to keep me busy. With my idea of a thief who steals items that go unnoticed still rolling around in my mind, I decided to give the story a try. I wasn’t sure if it would be a short story or something longer, but by the time the trip was done, the first three chapters of the novel were complete and I was well on my way.

When I began the book, I had no idea where the story might take me. I’ve since learned to embrace the unknown and allow the story to come to me. Stephen King calls this “unearthing the fossil,” though I wouldn’t hear this expression until the book was nearly finished. A few years ago this would have sounded like nonsense to me, but now I believe it. There were many moments in the writing of Something Missing that I literally did not know what would happen next until I wrote it. In fact, as I closed in on the end of the book, I still didn’t know what my main character’s ultimate fate would be. I was writing the chapter in which much of the plot would be resolved when my wife called.

“I can’t talk. I’m about to find out what happens to Martin.”

“Really,” she said. “What happens?”

“I don’t know! I’m still writing it!”

If you are reading this chapter someday, remember that I experienced it just like you are: one word at a time.

Though many authors know exactly where their stories will ultimately go, I do not, and I’ve learned to trust this instinct. I start with character. I find a person who interests me, and then, in a vomit-provoking, disgustingly spiritual, earthy-crunchy way, I assume that the plot is already written in the character’s fate.

Once I’ve found the character, his or her fate is sealed. I just have to unearth it.

This philosophy seems to be working well in the book I am writing now as well. My main character, Milo, actually began his existence as a funeral home director, but after wrestling with him for three chapters, I finally put that book aside and planted Milo into the story in which he belonged. A story that’s still revealing itself to me.

Weird, huh?

But it’s true. I’d been trying to start a novel for more than five years before beginning Something Missing, but each time, I thought that I needed to plan the story from beginning to end before starting to write. While many writers work this way, I have found that I am better off beginning with a glimmer of an idea and discovering the rest along the way. I leave the story to fate, and things have seemed to work out so far.

I like to tell this story because I worry that too many writers sit around, waiting for their one great idea to emerge, when that idea might already exist, waiting to be unearthed.

So if you’re waiting for the next great novel idea to reveal itself to you, why not pick up a pen and starting writing while you wait?