The Dark Tower: A must read

The Guardian recently charged its readers to “stop sneering at fantasy readers,” arguing that fantasy and science fiction should no longer be considered the realm of the geek, the dork and the socially awkward. “The genre has produced some of the most forward-thinking, influential and linguistically advanced literature of the past century,” the Guardian argues, yet writers of this brand of fiction and their fans are often relegated to second tier status.

Though a read almost anything save romance, I started my life as a science fiction and fantasy reader and have not put down the genre since.  Frank Herbert’s Dune, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the books of Madeleine L’Engle, Carl Sagan, and Isaac Asimov filled my childhood, and I still love these authors and their contemporaries today.  I read JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series with reckless abandon, lining up at the bookstore at midnight to get my copy of the next installment.  I’ve recently delved into the work of Philip Dick and found is short stories to be far ahead of their time.  And a few years ago my buddy and I listened to Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber series and still talk about those stories today.  I couldn’t agree more with the position of The Guardian.  The science fiction and fantasy genre are full of great stories.       

In this spirit, allow me to come out in defense of a series of books that I believe are simply spectacular: Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.

The story of Roland Deschain and his quest for the Dark Tower, inspired by Robert Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, is rich, unique, captivating, and often profound. King has written some outstanding novels (The Stand, The Shining, and It) and some real clunkers, but this, I believe, is his magnum opus, and as fine a story as I have ever read. I’ve read the series twice and am now in the process of listening to it on audio (equally amazing), and each time, the depth and texture of the story become more pronounced and the characters, Roland, Eddie, Suzanna, and Jake, become more and more real to me.

I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The actual book!

A carton of books arrived at my home today. My book! SOMETHING MISSING. The honest-to-goodness version of the book, the same that will be found in bookstores in two weeks. As required by my contract with Broadway, the publisher sent twenty-four copies of my novel to do with as I please. What that may be is still unknown, since most of my friends have insisted on making the trip to the bookstore and purchasing one for themselves, but to see and touch the book is just remarkable.

Truly a dream come true.

There have been many of these joyous moments in the process of publishing my first book. Signing on with my agent. The phone call with news of the publisher’s first offer. Signing my book contract. The first time I saw the cover art. The arrival of the review copies. My first review. The first check from the publisher, and every one thereafter. And now this… the book!

This day was long in coming but well worth the wait.

And I don’t dare read it. As much faith as I have in the many editors and proofreaders who worked on the book, I fear that a single typo might have slipped through, and if so, I wouldn’t want to ever know about it. I’m a bit of a perfectionist in this way, and right now, staring at that box of books, they look just perfect. I want them to remain that way in my mind forever.

RJ Julia

My wife and I (and Clara, our five-month old daughter) took a trip to Madison, CT, the hometown of RJ Julia, an independent bookstore that has been remarkably supportive of me and my book. It’s more than an hour away from my home, so up until now, we had never made the trip, but it was well worth the time we spent on the road.

The store itself is a charming, two-story, old fashioned shop with nooks and crannies filled with great books of varying genres. The displays are creative and well designed, and hanging on the walls throughout the store are signed photos of the multitude of authors who have come and gone throughout the years, lending an air of history and weight to the space, making you feel as if you are treading on the ground of giants.

Scattered throughout the shelves, hanging from below hundreds of books, are small slips of paper with written recommendations from the RJ Julia staff, including brief summaries, opinions on the plot and theme, and more. It’s like having a little elf on your shoulder at all times, pointing out and highlighting potential literary discoveries.

And the staff is excellent. Rather than a single checkout counter at the front of the store, two or three checkout counters, plus an information counter, are scattered throughout the space, providing quick and convenient access to knowledgeable employees. During my hour or so in the store, I was approached by two employees, one on each floor, and both offered to be helpful with enthusiasm but without being pushy. And though I’m not sure if it’s encouraged, I saw at least two employees reading when not busy with a customer, convincing me that these were serious readers and people with whom I could place my trust.

My wife and I just planned on browsing today, but more than $100 lighter, we were leaving the shop with a bag full of books, saddened that a bookstore so fine exists so far away but promising ourselves that we would return soon to visit their café and spend more time sifting through the stacks.

As an author of a future Border’s Bookclub Pick for July and a frequent browser and customer, I’m hardly dissatisfied with my local big-box book chains. In fact, Borders and Barnes and Noble are located within 500 feet of one another in the neighboring town, and I spend as much time in these stores as I do in the independent bookstores that dot the Connecticut landscape. If someone has a bunch of books for sale, I’m interested, regardless of the size or scope of the store.

But gems like RJ Julia are not found very often. Walking into the store felt like walking into someone’s home, a home filled with books and people who adore them, and that makes it quite a special place.

I suggest you stop by soon, if you haven’t already.

Odd business combinations. Again.

In the spirit of odd but perhaps brilliant business combinations, The Spin Cycle Cafe in Newington is a laundromat/bar/restaurant. They advertise dry cleaning beside the lunch specials.  Happy hour alongside wash-dry-fold.

I almost wish I didn’t own a washing machine and dryer. 

First a movie theatre/hotel.  Now laundry, chicken wings, and beer.  Ever since I began my new book, which centers on a combination chicken shack/funeral home, these unusual business combinations seem to keep popping up in my life. 

A good omen? 

Or perhaps a warning to finish the book before someone steals my idea in real life. 

 

Product placement

In reading some of my Amazon reviews (I know I shouldn’t, but they’re still very good), I noticed that two people commented on the specificity to which I wrote about certain brand names in SOMETHING MISSING, wondering if I received money from the companies mentioned as a form of product placement.

Certainly a fascinating idea, and one that I wouldn’t mind pursuing in the future, but the reason behind my specificity is two-fold:

Martin, the protagonist in SOMETHING MISSING, is more detail-oriented than anyone I know, and though he doesn’t tell the story first-person, I attempted to imbue the omniscient narrator of the story (me, I guess) with his characteristic obsession for detail as a means of enhancing and infusing the story with his character. My friend, Shep, referred to it as Martin-speak, and he heartily approved of the decision. So the use of brand names (Subaru Outback instead of station wagon, for example) was an attempt to do just this.

Also, I like to think that the reference to a Subaru Outback paints a different and far more specific picture in the reader’s mind than the word station wagon. Having grown up in the 1980s in the “way back” of a long, wide, wood-paneled station wagon, the word station wagon paints a very different picture than a station wagon of today.

But the idea of product placement in a novel is an interesting one. Would advertisers be intrigued by this idea at all? Unlike commercials, the references to specific products in a book could not be skipped over, but then again, if taken to the extreme, stories might become a morass of brand names and commercialism.

But it might be something worth exploring. For example, in my current manuscript, my protagonist, Wyatt, will eventually be driving a car. Probably a pick-up truck. If Ford would like to pay me to make that truck an F-150, with at least six specific references to it in the book, why not? As long as it fit the context and original intent of the story, would this be bad?

The businessman in me says no, but the writer and artist in me is beginning to wonder…

Writer’s Digest feature

An article about me and my book, SOMETHING MISSING, appears in the July/August issue of Writer’s Digest. It’s great. A full-page article that includes a photograph of me (27 pounds heavier than I am today) and the cover art of the book, which always seems to excite my agent.

The author, Jordan Rosenfeld, writes about the process by which SOMETHING MISSING originated, the process my which I write in general, and some of my personal history and how it relates to Martin and his story. I’ve had stories written about me in newspapers before, and never has any writer gotten all the facts correct, but Rosenfeld has done it here, and she has done it well. She’s a good writer, and it turns out, a fiction writer as well as a journalist, columnist and editor.

The article also contains a lovely quote from my editor, which I will cherish on those days when the words and the pages come slow and hard.

I have yet to find a link to this story online and fear that the article might only be available in hardcopy form, which will lead me to wonder if I can scan and post it here or if they would violate some copyright law.

I’m checking.

Odd business combinations

I spent the evening at the Latchis Hotel in Brattleboro, Vermont, at a writing and booksellers’ conference. My publicist arranged the accommodations, so I was not familiar with the hotel when I arrived. It turns out that the Latchis, an art deco hotel according to its website, is actually a combination hotel and movie theater, and this unique redesign afforded some interesting architectural features.

For example, a square support beam, about two feet wide on each side, ran through my bathroom from the floor to the ceiling, nearly adjacent to the edge of the bathtub, which required me to walk around the beam in order to turn on the water for my shower, then turn and go back around the beam in order to get into the bathtub.

An odd but memorable feature.

I also had the pleasure of catching the final minutes of The Hangover, a film I very much want to see. Sadly, I only caught the muffled sounds of the film’s audio track emanating through the wall, so following the plot was difficult.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. The hotel was clean, comfortable, and was equipped with Wi-Fi. And it was just a block from the site of the conference, in the center of Brattleboro, close to many restaurants and bookstores. 

What more could a guy want?

In fact, I found myself wondering if my publicist arranged this room on purpose, perhaps aware that my current manuscript centers on an equally odd combination of funeral home and chicken shack.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!

I don’t often recommend books sight unseen, but I saw this book on the NY Times bestseller list (trade paperback) and couldn’t resist immediately purchasing it. 

It’s published by Quirk Books, which also sounds right up my ally, and is described as “the classic story, retold with 'ultraviolent zombie mayhem.”

Awesome.

The fact that the book still retains Jane Austin as an author makes it even more fascinating to me. 

Drippy and syrupy and just plain inexplicable

Being a novelist and an English major, I truly believe that I love books just about as much as a person can, and while I hate to criticize the legitimacy of any written text, but could someone please explain to me who buys books like these:

Collection of ideas

I have a very important Word document saved on my desktop which contains ideas for blog posts, a long list of children’s book ideas, notes for a future memoir, a list of quotes that I might one day use in a book or blog post, a few inspirational emails sent to me through the years, revision ideas for MILO and my current manuscript, and a section entitled Book/Story/Research Ideas.

This is an odd collection of ideas for future novels (at least two that I am quite serious about), sociological experiments that I would one day like to conduct (an analysis on the number and type of compliments dispensed and received in a given week, broken down by the sex of the subjects, for example), reference material for future books, and some odds and ends like this:

• Serve doggie treats from the West Hartford doggie bakery to my friends (the treats look so much like human cookies and pastries that they wouldn’t know until after they had begun chewing)
• Take a typically stupid weather report of television and recreate it in my own vision
• Create a line of infant greeting cards that actually appeal to the infants

Like I said, it’s an odd but very important collection of thoughts, but some are clearly more important than others. 

Best place to think

I can’t explain it, and it might sound a bit cliché, but I make more breakthroughs in my writing while in the shower than anyplace else.

Today’s shower yielded an entire restructuring of my current manuscript, a means by which the story will reveal itself in a more logical, ordered way. I’ve discovered plot twists, new characters and the ending to at least one story while in the shower. Perhaps it’s because the shower is the only place where I truly unplug from my podcasts, my audio book, conversation with my wife and the other distractions of life.

Fortunately, I take at least two showers a day, so I always manage to get at least a little accomplished by way of productive thought.  Otherwise, I might be lost. 

What type are you?

Rocket Bomber describes the 7 types of bookstore customer. 

I lean towards being an Independent (anytime I must stop my current audio book to interact with human beings annoys me) with strong Browser tendencies. 

And yes, even though an online store like Amazon is more convenient, I like book stores.  It’s the one place in the world that I enjoy browsing.

Guilt-free book club

My book club has been attempting to arrange a meeting time after a six-month hiatus during which time my daughter Clara was born. The following is a string of emails that were exchanged between us over the past two days as we attempted to organize a meeting. Our friends’ names have been changed in deference to their anonymity.

In order to follow the emails, you should note that our book club consists of three couples: Boris and Svetlana Leningrad, Sonny and Cher, and my wife, Elysha, and me.

Here goes:

Boris: In the spirit of full disclosure, I have every bit of confidence I will not be able to finish the book by Saturday.  Truth be told, I can't find the bloody thing at the moment.

Svetlana: Boris lost my book.

Matt: This is not looking good. Brunch either way, though. Or was it dinner?  I forget. Either way.

Elysha: Well, I guess that wasn't really decided. Group, what do you prefer?  Dinner or brunch.  I know there's some sort of athletic thing in the morning. I'm leaning toward dinner to give me a little extra time to finish the book...

Svetlana: Dinner.

Sonny: Dinner.

Elysha: Perfect. See you at 6:30!

ONE DAY LATER

Boris: Sorry to put a wrinkle in this but the Leningrads have a commitment (my sister’s 40^TH anniversary party) for dinner on Saturday.

Svetlana: OK.  Leningrads forgot that we have Boris's sister's anniversary party in Northampton on Saturday night. You guys can go ahead without us- or we could try to find time next weekend.  Sorry to be so difficult. Leningrads are not on top of their game...maybe we need a little life coaching from Dr. Matt.

Matt: I just proposed to Elysha that we push it back a couple weeks. It'll be a lot easier for us to do an evening because we can put Clara to bed around 7:30 and enjoy the evening sans baby.  And school will be done so the schedules will be less jam packed. But I would expect Boris to have used the extra time wisely and read. Thoughts Elysha?  Maybe the first or second Friday in July?

Cher: First Friday sounds great.  Second Friday we may be out of town :(

Boris: Hey at least I’m willing to admit I haven’t read.

Matt: I never understand why people want credit for telling the truth. I thought the truth was to be expected. Not celebrated.

Boris: Don't want credit. Want others to join me

Matt: Mediocrity loves company!

Svetlana: I've barely started the book. There! Apparently honesty wants company....

Cher: OK, if confession is good for the soul... I read about three quarters of it months ago, didn't finish, but now I've likely got to start over!

Boris: I found the book...hidden under YOUR Kindle.

Cher: KINDLE!?  You DIDN”T!!!

Svetlana: What??

Cher: I’m as tech-addicted as the next person, but books on a screen just seem so wrong.  Hate reading screens all day. Don’t want to do it in my personal life.

Elysha: Well, that frees up my day! I was going to put poor Clara in her bouncy seat and try to power through the book! First Friday in July sounds fine. As long as Svetlana doesn't become a Kindle preacher like my dad I have no problem with it...

Sonny: What book are we talking about?  Has somebody chosen the next title?

Cher: Get with the program, Dear.  We’re all so pathetic that we haven’t even finished the book Elysha assigned six months ago!

Boris: I'm glad to be in such good company.

Cher: In Sonny's defense let's blame his memory deficiency on the birth of Clara and my inability to schedule our group in a reasonable amount of time...

Svetlana: I’m so proud to be part of this book group!

Customer reviews of SOMETHING MISSING

Reviews of SOMETHING MISSING have begun to pop up on Amazon as part of their Vine Program.  Amazon describes this program thusly:   

Amazon Vine™ is a program that enables a select group of Amazon customers to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make educated purchase decisions. Customers are invited to become Amazon Vine™ Voices based on the trust they have earned in the Amazon community for writing accurate and insightful reviews. Amazon provides Amazon Vine™ members with free copies of products that have been submitted to the program by vendors. Amazon does not influence the opinions of Amazon Vine™ members, nor do we modify or edit their reviews.

The reviews so far have been excellent.  On a five star scale, no one has rated the book with less than three stars, and it currently has an average rating of 4.5 stars. 

Even the most critical of reviews contain a good deal of praise.

I have a friend who has published a few books and he strongly advised me against reading reviews such as these, but I couldn’t resist.  It’s been thrilling to discover what people  think of the book, and a few of the more critical comments are probably true.

In fact, one of the critical remarks has altered my approach to the current manuscript ever so slightly.  I think the reviewer was quite right in his critique of my writing style, and as a result, I saw room for improvement.

So reading these reviews, both positive and critical, has been helpful.       

Besides, I’m known for having an exceptionally thick skin, the result of a lifetime of unwarranted attacks and persecution and a slightly inflated ego.  I can’t imagine that any single review or collection of reviews could dispirit me to any serious degree.

I hope. 

Twenty-car pile-up of ideas in my head

I’m not sure how or when I’ll use this in a story, but I am fascinated by the idea of slugging, a term used to describe a unique form of commuting found in Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Pittsburg and sometimes referred to as "Instant Carpooling" or "Casual Carpooling". It is the practice of forming ad hoc, informal, temporary carpools for purposes of commuting, essentially a variation of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking.

“The system of slugging is quite simple. A car needing additional passengers to meet the required 3-person high occupancy vehicle (HOV) minimum pulls up to one of the known slug lines. The driver usually positions the car so that the slugs are on the passenger side. The driver either displays a sign with the destination or simply lowers the passenger window, to call out the destination, such as "Pentagon," "L’Enfant Plaza," or "14th & New York." The slugs first in line for that particular destination then hop into the car, normally confirming the destination, and off they go.”

No money is exchanged because of the mutual benefit: the car driver needs riders just as much as the slugs need a ride. Each party needs the other in order to survive.

I have about a hundred different ideas on how I might use this unique form of commuting in a story, and at least a couple ideas on how this might be the centerpiece of a novel. It’s these odd, quirky and unique parts of our world that so enthrall me as a writer, providing me with a previously-unexplored landscape in which to place a character.

I have a bunch just waiting to be used.  In fact, they are starting to become backlogged in my brain.   

If only I had more time to write.

A word by any other name is not a word

The English language acquired its one millionth word today. 

Sort of. 

According to the Global Language Monitor, a website that uses a math formula to estimate how often words are created, the word Web 2.0 was added at 5:22 AM ET, making it the one millionth word in the English language. 

Need I point out that Web 2.0 isn’t an actual word but a phrase used to describe the social nature of the current iteration of the Internet? 

Or that the “word” Web 2.0 is about four years old?  Why has it taken so long for this word to officially creep into the English language, especially at a time when Web 3.0, or the semantic web, threatens to replace it?

And if we’re going to be foolish enough to characterize terminology like Web 2.0 as a word, could we at least make sure that the millionth word is an actual word, absent of digits and decimal points? 

Couldn’t we have left Web 2.0 for the one millionth and one word?

Popularity contest

The Guardian asks:

Who is the most famous fictional character of all-time?

Tough question, and I guess it depends upon what genres are included in the decision-making process and whether or not you extend the search beyond the traditional confines of the Western world. 

Ignoring these considerations, candidates that come to mind for me include Dracula, Snoopy, Romeo and/or Juliet, Odysseus, Harry Potter and James Bond.

The author of the article offers a list of candidates delineated by centuries, and it also included some of my candidates:

21st century: Harry Potter
20th century: James Bond
19th century: Sherlock Holmes (though other contenders may include Dickensian creations Oliver Twist and Scrooge and Peter Pan)
18th century: Robinson Crusoe or Gulliver
17th century: Hamlet (not easy to pick among the bard's strongest characters but the prince of Denmark probably pips Othello and Macbeth in the celebrity stakes).

I had no idea that Sherlock Holmes was so popular, and I can’t imagine how Hamlet would exceed the popularity and notoriety of Romeo and Juliet, but I may be biased. 

I’ve always thought that Hamlet was a putz. 

But otherwise the list makes sense to me.  I must have been asked to read Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe about half a dozen times each for various classes throughout my high school and college career, and James Bond and Harry Potter seem like solid choices to me. 

As for me, I kind of like Snoopy.  He’s been around for more than fifty years and is universally known and loved by the young and the old.  He’s been published in hundreds of newspapers around the world, appears on television every holiday season, and is incapable of saying anything that might offend a reader. 

Your thoughts?

New use for SOMETHING MISSING. I think.

Sometimes I can’t help but wonder what people are thinking. 

A teacher forever

Last night my fifth grade students performed Julius Caesar, using an abbreviated but otherwise unaltered version of Shakespeare’s original script. I’ve been teaching Shakespeare to my second, third and now fifth graders for the last ten years, and there is nothing more rewarding than watching my kids perform on stage and work as a team backstage in order to make the production happen without a hitch. By the time we actually perform for an audience, the kids are well versed in the story, the characters and the language, as well as the skills and techniques of theatre, so much so that for the entire fifty minute performance, I simply sit back and watch the kids work.

It’s one of my favorite moments of the school year.

This process began ten years ago with a class of second graders who also performed Julius Caesar. One autumn morning during my first year of teaching, I said to my students, who were shockingly inattentive at that moment:

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”

This phrase, stolen from Marc Antony, may not have been enough to get the class’s attention, but the fact that I had shouted it from atop my desk in an act of first-year desperation did get their attention. A student then asked me, “What’s that mean?”

Twenty minutes later I had summarized Julius Caesar to my students, and for the first time that year, they were blessedly quiet, attentive and engaged.

I had discovered something important: If I am passionate about something, so too will my students.

A day later the kids had begun to ask me if they could perform the play for their parents.

That first year the students and I adapted the script myself, translating most of the lines into modem English, and the kids loved it. We spent the rest of the year reading adaptations of many of Shakespeare’s other plays, and each time, the kids fell more in love with his plays, the stories behind them, and reading in general.

Since then, I have moved from modern English adaptations to the original scripts, and the students have responded well. In the past ten years, we have performed nine different plays, both tragedies and comedies, including MacBeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, and more. This was the first year that I performed the same play twice, but having never taught students using the original script, I thought it was time.

When I stepped on stage last night to greet the audience, I saw something remarkable: Five of the original twenty students in my first class were sitting in the audience, including my very first Caesar, the same girl who had piped up ten years ago and begun this crazy journey by asking, “What’s that mean?” Though our performances are not advertised and typically done just for family and friends, these kids had heard about this year’s play and had decided to attend. Juniors in high school now, they sat quietly in the audience until the show was over and then charged the stage with stories from ten years ago, moments and memories that I had long since forgotten that had lived in their hearts for all this time.

There are times when I wonder if I might one day quit teaching to focus solely on my writing, but it is moments like last night that remind me how much I love to teach, and how I will simply have to continue to find a way to fit both writing and teaching into my busy life.

Giving it up would break my heart.

Loving librarians

Thanks to my blessed Google alerts, I discovered some librarians chatting favorably about SOMETHING MISSING.  

I can’t express how simultaneously surreal and rewarding it is to find strangers online discussing a story that you made up in your head.