My First Time: Kevin P. Keating

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Kevin Keating, author of The Natural Order of Things, a finalist for the L.A. Times' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.  After working as a boilermaker in the steel mills in Ohio, Keating became a professor of English and began teaching at Baldwin Wallace University, Cleveland State University, Lorain County Community College, and Lakeland Community College.  His essays and stories have appeared in more than fifty literary journals, including The Blue Lake Review, The Fifth Street Review, The Mad Hatter's Review, The Avatar Review, The North Coast Review, The Licking River Review, The Red Rock Review, Whiskey Island, Juked, Inertia, Identity Theory, Exquisite Corpse, Wordriver, and many others.  The Natural Order of Things is his first full-length book and garnered praise from Publishers Weekly and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler, who called it "a dark and utterly compelling work."  Keating currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio and is working on a second novel, The Captive Condition, scheduled for a hardcover release with Pantheon in 2015.

My First Trip to Los Angeles

From Culver City in the northeast to Venice Beach in the southwest, the immense concrete slab of Venice Boulevard runs diagonally through some of the least scenic terrain in all of Los Angeles, passing under Interstate 405 and bisecting the Mar Vista neighborhood until it reaches, after seven interminable treeless miles, the freakiest beach in North America where middle-aged men wearing floral pattern Speedos do drug-induced dances on the boardwalk with their 1980s boomboxes pressed to their ears and where thickly muscled acrobats hopping around on pogo sticks mesmerize large crowds of weekend sun-worshipers.

As I boarded the number 33 bus near Culver City I asked the driver, “How long does it take to get to the beach from here?”

The driver was strangely evasive.   “Uh…maybe…oh…twenty minutes or so,” he said, and I knew he was lying.

“Really?  But it’s only seven miles away.”

Standing behind me, swaying back and forth like a deckhand in stormy seas, a stout man of fifty tugged on his stylish el capitán mustache and slurred with indignation, “Twenty fucking minutes, my ass.  We’ll be on this fucking bus for an hour before we get close to the fucking beach.  Twenty minutes.  Fuck.  Ain’t no twenty minutes on this bus.”

Even though his breath already reeked of high octane gasoline and a carton of stale cigarettes, the poor fellow was probably parched and desperate for another cold cocktail, it being two in the afternoon and an unusually warm April day, but he seemed a far more reliable source of information than our duplicitous driver, and I appreciated his honesty.  The man tipped his greasy baseball cap, and for the next seven miles he shouted insult and slander at anyone who dared cross his path.

His colorful language would have been a lot more amusing, of course, had it not been for the fact that accompanying me on this impromptu excursion to the sea were my retired parents, my wife and my impressionable ten-year old daughter who, I’m ashamed to report, began to weep after mile three.  The bus was hot and overcrowded and stank of fast food.   Passengers taunted and threatened each other.  Infants wailed.  A man in a wheelchair kept fiddling with his colostomy bag.  A teenage couple molested each other with impunity.

All of this was my fault.  I had been warned.  Moments earlier, at the Metro stop, I had inquired about which bus went to the beach.  A jowly police officer leaning against one of the turnstiles looked at me for a moment, his sleepy eyes slowly growing wide with mirth, and answered, “Oh, you wanna take the number 33, pal.  I’ll tell ya what, you’re really gonna enjoy that ride.  You sure will.  You and your little girl.”  As a college instructor I’ve come to abhor sarcasm from my eighteen-year old students, and I wasn’t especially impressed when it came from a cynical civil servant.

This was my first visit to Los Angeles, and because I was unfamiliar with the lay of the land, as it were, I had to rely on luck and instinct, neither of which has ever served me well, to navigate this labyrinth of dusty thoroughfares and chaotic bus lines.  I was in town because my novel The Natural Order of Things (Vintage Contemporaries, 2013) had been selected as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize/First Fiction Award, and during my brief stay I had grown accustomed to the finer things.

The ceremony took place on the beautiful campus of the University of Southern California (“The old joke,” a graduate later told me, “is that USC stands for the University of Spoiled Children”), and for the first time in my career as a struggling scribe I felt like a pampered brat.  For an entire weekend I had the extraordinary and rather disquieting experience of being treated like a celebrity, a very minor one needless to say, the sort of celebrity who has to tell people that he’s a celebrity, but I soon discovered that there is something truly magical about possessing even a modicum of fame.  For example, if someone important casually dismissed me at a reception I would simply lift my chin and say, “But, sir, I’m a finalist for an L.A. Times Book Prize,” at which point the sycophantic smiles and vigorous handshakes and embossed business cards and free drinks would appear.

Over the weekend I attended swanky parties, participated in panel discussions, hobnobbed with scholars, signed a whole box of books, and gorged myself on the fantastic food in the so-called “green room,” which turned out to be an enormous banquet hall with beveled glass doors, crystal chandeliers and stained glass windows.  Anyone craving humility in that ostentatious setting could find, conveniently located next door, the Little Chapel of Silence where for a small fee they could purchase white votive candles and beg God’s mercy for these neo-Gilded Age excesses.

My own lesson in humility came early on.   Prior to the awards ceremony, the finalists and their guests were treated to an informal reception on the outdoor patio of the hotel where I imprudently imbibed in a glass or two or three of pretty decent red wine.  I was giddy and spoke to a man at length about his biography of James Brown.

It was almost time to go when the Xanax started to kick in.  Feeling confident that the prize was in hand, I marched with the other finalists along the cobblestones of the picturesque campus and turned to the genteel old lady walking next me and said, “Aw, to hell with this silly awards ceremony.  Hey, whaddya say we sneak out and grab us a drink at the bar?”  The scandalized septuagenarian pursed her already tight lips, adjusted her silver-stranded bouffant, and with a practiced flourish of her silk scarf (evidently she was used to dealing with bores and vulgarians) she pulled ahead of me by about ten strides.  An omen.

That evening my novel did not receive the prize for First Fiction, and after two hours without an intermission the ceremony started to drag.  I squirmed in my seat and loosened my tie.  Jet lag was beginning to play terrible tricks on my mind.  Finally, at the end of a very long night, a star-struck presenter introduced the recipient of the prestigious Innovator’s Award.  “Ladies and gentleman, Margaret Atwood!”

Imagine my horror as the old lady who only hours earlier regarded me like some kind of insect took to the stage and quietly regaled the reverent audience with stories about her charmed life as a writer.  “Oh, I do so love Loose Angeleeez,” she said.  “Loose Angeleeez has been so very kind to me,” etc.  I stewed in my seat, my cheeks burning with this ritual humiliation.  I have a knack, you see, for always sticking my foot in it.

For the remainder of my stay I tried to purge from my mind all memory of this embarrassing encounter with Ms. Atwood, and I did all of those touristy things one is expected to do when in La La Land--the studio tours, a stroll along the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a guided tour in an open air bus to ogle and envy the homes of Lucille Ball and Joan Crawford, a drive through Beverly Hills with a quick stop on Rodeo Drive to admire a fleet of Maseratis parked outside the boutique shops and stylish cafés.  We visited old friends who lived in the city and had cocktails in the hotel lobby and dressed up like F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald for an uproarious night on the town.  But nothing seemed to do the trick.  Until I boarded the number 33 bus for Venice Beach.  And then nothing in the world mattered except the survival of my family.

The bus dumped us a few blocks from the beach, and from there things got progressively worse.  Instead of the plentiful hyacinths that scented the palatial homes in the Hollywood Hills, the infamous boardwalk of Venice Beach reeked of urine and medical marijuana drifting from newly established dispensaries.  As a twenty-one year old kid fresh out of college I would have been in heaven, but as a forty-one year old dad with a miserable little girl clinging to my arm, I thought I was in Dante’s third circle of hell.  In Canto VI of his Inferno, the inimitable Florentine poet tells us that it’s in the third circle where, in the Robert Pinksy translation, “the triple sparks of envy, greed, and pride ignite the hearts” of the damned.  And so it was for me.

Perhaps as punishment for my unwarranted pride, for daring to believe even for a single moment that I might have a real shot at taking home the coveted Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, I was transported to this madcap place so I could say to my whimpering daughter, “Look, honey, look what Daddy has accomplished.”  The Festival of Books had been a fantasyland of celebrity writers, but here, on the cigarette-strewn boardwalk of Venice Beach, I had an opportunity to see the real stars of L.A., a spinning constellation of spaced-out drifters, derelicts and drug peddlers, a vast pinwheeling galaxy of bronzed bodybuilders, tattooed ladies and Spandexed drag queens gracefully shimmying in and out of pedestrian traffic on rollerblades, my kind of people, the same genuine and unpretentious characters who on sweltering summer days roamed the wicked streets of my hometown and who always managed to worm their way into my fiction.

Several days later, back in Cleveland and confronted by the blank pages of my novel-in-progress, I thought often of my bus ride along Venice Boulevard and how I inadvertently managed to offend a highly esteemed Booker Prize-winning author.  My fifteen minutes were over, but still I craved celebrity, fame, recognition, and somewhere in the back of my disordered little brain I heard the unrepentant sinners of the third circle beckoning to me.  Then I remembered.  While in Los Angeles I reluctantly visited Madame Tussauds where my wife photographed me sitting next to an unnervingly realistic wax figure of Jack Nicholson decked out in a tux, bowtie and signature black shades.

Now I couldn’t help myself.  I logged into Facebook and posted the picture with the caption: “Look who showed up to the L.A. Times Book Prizes ceremony.”  Within seconds the comments started pouring in: “I am so jealous!”  “That’s a definite framer for the living room!”  “It doesn’t get any better!”  “This is fantastic on so many levels!”  “It looks like he’s negotiating a role for the movie adaptation of your novel!”  “By far the most incredible moment of your trip!”  Ah, yes, the timeless allure of stardom meets the brave new world of instant gratification.

I let the gag run its course for twenty-four glorious hours before guilt got the better of me, and then with my ego in check I meekly confessed to my Facebook friends the disappointing and unremarkable truth.

Sunday Sentence: Return to Oakpine by Ron Carlson

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I've read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.

The two men sat in the quiet bar.  Suddenly the light dimmed again under a cloud, and it was a moment that went out on them, through the big plate-glass window across the gray street and up above the town in a moment, reaching past the last house and the few bad roads newly bladed into the prairie and the antelope in clusters on greengray hillsides beyond that and then hovering beyond and beyond, the world, their lives, the full gravid sense of afternoon.

Return to Oakpine by Ron Carlson

Cooling off with Mr. and Mrs. North

It was too hot to do anything but seek the cool comfort of the snappy, cocktail-party repartee of Mr. and Mrs. North.

While I'm enjoying the literary pleasures of Ron Carlson's new novel, Return to Oakpine, I was in the mood for something a little lighter at the end of an unbearably hot day.  (Did I mention that our home in Butte, Montana doesn't have air conditioning and that the mercury in the thermometer has taken up residency north of 85 degrees* for the past two weeks?)

So I set aside Oakpine and went on a browse through my vintage mystery novels shelf.  That's when Jerry and Pam North waved their hands and called out, "Oh, hello, darling!  Nice to see you again."  I'd visited the Norths once before in the 1941 novel Murder Out of Turn and really enjoyed their company.

For those who have yet to make their acquaintance, a brief primer: book publisher Jerry North and his charming wife Pam always happen to be in the right place at the right time to assist the New York Police Department in solving whatever murder has just fallen into their laps.  While most police departments in amateur detective novels are conveniently inept, the gumshoes in the North novels are good fellows--Lt. Bill Weigand and his assistant Sergeant Aloysius Mullins--who just happen to work for an inept department.  The Norths are childless (at least in the two books I've read so far) and lead sparkling lives of champagne, laughter and parties in their Greenwich Village social circles.  The writing is so good in these books, solving the mystery is almost beside the point.

You'll find echoes of Mr. and Mrs. North in the Nick and Nora Charles Thin Man series, but for my money they more closely resemble Susan St. James and Rock Hudson in McMillan and Wife, a Sunday night television mystery series to which I was glued as a young boy.  Pam North, like Sally McMillan, is the prime crime-solver.  While neither Jerry nor Mac are merely dense lugs just along for the ride, it's the women who really have the bold pluck and gumption to get to the bottom of things.

The Mr. and Mrs. North series of 26 novels were written by the husband-wife team of Frances and Richard Lockridge starting in 1940 and continuing until Frances' death in 1963.  After she passed away, Richard wrote no new North novels (though he did continue to write other series which he and his wife had started, including books featuring Lt. Heimrich, Nathan Shapiro, and Paul Lane).  According to this post at MysteryNet.com,

The characters were originally invented by Richard for some vignettes he wrote for the New York Sun during the early thirties and which he later resurrected in the short domestic comedies he contributed to The New Yorker, by which time the Norths had acquired their full names but not yet their abilities as amateur detectives.  A collection of the stories was published in 1936 as Mr. and Mrs. North.  The crime novels originated when Frances Lockridge started writing a mystery during one summer vacation.  Stuck on a plot complication she called on her husband for help and the writing team was launched.  Because the Norths already had some name recognition, the Lockridges decided to use Pam and Jerry as their central characters and retain the humorous tone and the playful interaction between the couple from the earlier stories.

As with many amateur sleuths in the Golden Age of Mystery Novels, the Norths spawned a TV series, a radio show, a Broadway play, and a movie (starring Gracie Allen as Pam).  You can see a couple of the TV episodes on YouTube here and here.

As for me, I decided upon the 1955 novel Death of an Angel which opens with the Norths attending a Broadway play written by one of their friends, Sam Wyatt, and starring the enormously popular actress Naomi Shaw.  During an after-show party, rich playboy Bradley Fitch announces he's going to marry Naomi and whisk her away from the theater, causing quite a stir and more than a few astonished tete a tetes among the guests.  Young Mr. Fitch is later found dead as a doornail--poisoned!--in his apartment and the Norths soon find themselves at the center of the case when one of their cocktail napkins is found in the corpse's apartment.

I pulled the book off the shelf, poured myself a drink (whiskey, neat), settled into a relatively cool spot in the house (the living room), and started to read.  I found this amusing passage early on in Chapter 1 in which the Norths are discussing the writer Sam Wyatt--who is oddly down in the dumps about the success of his play--as they return to their seats after intermission:

     "Writers are strange things, aren't they?" Pam asked.
     "Yes," Jerry said.
     They went down the aisle, found their seats.  The house lights were still up.
     "Has he always been like this?"Pam asked.
     A good deal like this, Jerry told her.  When Wyatt was a novelist--merely a novelist--it had been very hard to get him to read proofs.  When he was got to read them, it was very hard to prevent him from rewriting, in entirety; a practice of which publishers disapprove.
     "Once he's done with anything, he hates it," Jerry said.  "Sees no possible good in it.  If critics like it, the critics are fools.  If it sells, the public is a fool."

Ah, writers....I could compose an entire blog post on how I am Sam Wyatt incarnate in this regard.  But I'll save that for a later day.  For now, I've got to help the Norths solve a mystery.


*I know 85 would be a relatively arctic pleasure to those suffering in the triple digits elsewhere in the U.S. this summer; but trust me, anything above 75 in Montana makes me feel like oven-baked Shrinky-Dinks.

Friday Freebie: Ballistics by D. W. Wilson

Congratulations to Kelly Dolson, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer and Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer.

This week's book giveaway is Ballistics, the new debut novel by D. W. Wilson (author of the story collection Once You Break a Knuckle). Here's more about the book from the publisher:

It is summer and the Canadian Rockies are on fire.  As the forests blaze, Alan West heads into their shadows, returning from university to his grandfather's home in the remote Kootenay Valley, where the man who raised him has suffered a heart attack.  Confronting his own mortality, the tough and taciturn Cecil West has a dying request for his grandson: track down the father Alan has never known so that the old man can make peace with him.  And so Alan begins his search for the elusive Jack West, a man who skipped town before his son could walk and of whom his grandfather has always refused to speak.  His quest will lead him to Archer, an old American soldier who decades ago went AWOL across the border into Canada.  Archer has been carrying a heavy burden for many years, and through him Alan learns the stories of two broken families who came together, got too close, and then fell apart in tragic ways.  Ballistics is a remarkable first novel, about family ties and the wounds that can linger for generations when those relationships are betrayed.

If you'd like a chance at winning Ballistics, all you have to do is email your name and mailing address to thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line.  One entry per person, please.  Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on Aug. 1, at which time I'll draw the winning name.  I'll announce the lucky reader on Aug. 2.  If you'd like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words "Sign me up for the newsletter" in the body of your email.  Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning?  Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter.  Once you've done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying "I've shared" and I'll put your name in the hat twice.

Jennifer Miller and the Year of the Book Club

Jennifer Miller is a firecracker whose fuse is a quarter-inch away from the gunpowder.  She's a tea kettle whose lid is rattling from pent-up steam, ready to burst out in a hot whistle.  She's irrepressible, infectious, and would be the first to describe herself as "bubbly."  If you're in a book club and invited Jennifer ("Jen" to her friends) to join you for a talk about her debut novel, The Year of the Gadfly, she'd be the focal point of the room, the tractor beam pulling the Millennium Falcon into its force field.  I guarantee that even if you arrived at that book club meeting at the end of a bad day of bitter disappointments and grumpy frustrations, you would walk out of there that night with a smile plastered on your face.

Just ask any of the 80-plus book clubs who have hosted Jennifer this month and they'll undoubtedly agree: this is one author who is out to spread enthusiasm about writing and publishing like a cheerleader shaking her pom-poms.  Call it the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Debut Novelist.

Wait a minute, you say.  I think you had a typo back there--you mean 80 book clubs this "year," not "month," right?

Nope, nothing wrong with your eyes or my typing.  I meant 80 book clubs this month.  You see, Jennifer Miller is out to break a world record for a single author visiting the most book clubs in one month.  Her original goal was to do 100 Book Clubs in One Month to celebrate the paperback release of Gadfly.  With only a week left in the month, she's probably going to fall short of that century mark (unless Quivering Pen readers rally behind her at the last minute and start inviting her to their get-togethers).

That doesn't matter to Jennifer at this point.  It's all about connecting readers with The Year of the Gadfly, a novel that tells the story of a 14-year-old high school journalist who talks with the ghost of Edward R. Murrow as she sets out to expose a secret society at her school.  Glamour magazine called it "Part Dead Poet's Society.  Part Heathers.  Entirely addictive."

Jennifer Miller loves her novel with the parental devotion of a first-time novelist and now she's out to spread the gospel of Gadfly to as many book clubs as she can during this peak month of a hot summer.  To do this, she's combining live, in-person visits with virtual appearances via Skype.  As Ron Charles noted in the Washington Post's Style Blog at the start of Miller's quest:

For the purposes of her record, any group of five will count as a separate book club.  Rather than racing around the country, she plans to make most of these appearances over Skype.  But there will be some racing around the country.  “I’m trying to set up some events at book stores where multiple clubs will come together,” she says from her home in Brooklyn.  “I’m already going to Fountain (Bookstore) in Richmond, Va., for one such event.”

The Guiness Book of World Records attempt isn't the first thing Miller has done to garner more visibility for her novel--which, as she admits, is just one drop in a sea of 60,000 titles published last year.  She described her other marketing ideas in a short profile in the Washington Post's Lifestyle section:

I organized an out-of-pocket three-month book tour last fall, and I invented the Novelade Stand: a lemonade stand for books, in which I set up a sidewalk table with colorful signs, homemade cookies and copies of Gadfly.

I first "met" Jennifer when she introduced herself via email after we bumped into each other on Twitter in early 2012.  Then, during my trip back to New York City last month, I had the joy of meeting Jen in person when she came to an event I was moderating at Barnes & Noble.  When she and I, along with several other friends, descended on a nearby bar afterwards, I was immediately caught in her tractor beam of positive energy.  (I also made sure to keep all open flames away from her powderkeg.)

That night in the bar, Jen started describing her plans for the 100-Book-Club project and I made a note to feature it here at the blog.  Sadly, life intervened, I got distracted with other writing projects, and now here we are at the end of the month when Jen is sprinting hard for the finish line.  Nonetheless, she was kind enough to answer a battery of questions I recently sent to her about the book club tour.  Jen being Jen, she decided to answer me via video (with assistance from her husband and videographer Jason).  Buckle your seatbelts, and press Play:



So now you're dying to sign up to be part of the 100 Book Clubs, right?  Maybe you even want to be the 100th.  Cool!  All you have to do is gather at least four other people for the "event" and you'll get the following swag from Jennifer:

• One FREE copy of The Year of the Gadfly
• Signed book plates
• An official mention on RecordSetter.com
• Entry into the "Prep School Pack" giveaway. (Jennifer's favorite prep school novels, movies, and after school snacks.)

If you'd like to participate in The Month of the Gadfly, contact Jennifer directly at jnymlr (at) gmail (dot) com

If you don't have a book club, or are unable to arrange a visit from Jen, you can still participate in her infectious ambition to plaster the world with Gadflies.  Take a photo of yourself with her paperback and you can be part of her People Wearing My Book Cover Tumbler page.  Like this:

Don't be shy.  Jennifer Miller certainly isn't.

My First Time: David Samuel Levinson

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is David Samuel Levinson, author of the novel Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence, which has just been published by Algonquin Books.  His story collection, Most of Us Are Here Against Our Will, was published by Viking Penguin in 2004.  His stories have appeared/are appearing in The Brooklyn Review, West Branch, Prairie Schooner, and Post Road.  Currently, he's the fiction fellow at Emory University.  Click here to visit his website.

My First Editors

Don’t tell anyone but Jenny Schecter was a big hero of mine.  Played by Mia Kirchner, Jenny was the neurotic, sanctimonious young novelist on the defunct hit show, The L Word.  Beautiful, tetchy, and unpredictable, she was the girl we all loved to hate.  She entered the show a suicidal, repressed bisexual, then transformed herself into a lover of all things labial, going so far as to write an autobiographical novel, Les Girls, based on her friends and lovers.  Yet I didn’t adore Jenny for any of this.  I adored her for what and who she represented—a writer with an unyielding, unbreakable spirit.

Sure, she was a conniving monster and, sure, she brought out more insincere, cheesy grins than Britney Spears, but she was also a girl with chutzpah and integrity, someone for whom to root, an inspiration to writers everywhere.

Having been beaten down by various writing instructors, who told her she’d never be a professional writer, Jenny did write and ended up selling Les Girls to a big NYC publishing house.  Yet after a visit to meet her new editor, who had a completely different take on the novel—this editor saw the book as too dark and wanted Jenny to go in a completely different direction—Jenny fired her, saying, to her publisher, “She’s just not the right editor for my novel.”

I cringed while watching this episode, though secretly I cheered Jenny on.  What kind of person—what kind of writer—dissed her editor like that?  As far as I could tell, she had committed literary suicide.  She was finished, done in by the very integrity that had kept her writing.  I felt for her, yet hated her all the same.  “Idiot,” I roared at her.

This was TV, I reminded myself, not real life, yet somehow I felt tethered to Jenny and her struggle, which for me was a story of perseverance and determination.  It is for this reason and none other that I remain a devoted fan, as fascinated by Jenny today as I was all those years ago.

Like Jenny, I too had been told I’d never be a professional writer and like her, I too had persevered.  After three different agents, a hundred rewrites and a bidding war, I finally sold my first novel, Antonia Lively Breaks The Silence, in August 2007 to a big NYC publisher.  And like Jenny, I thought I’d finally made it.  Even after I’d met with my new editor and she subsequently dismissed the second half of the novel, saying it needed a total overhaul, I’d gone away happy and excited.  Our editorial collaboration was under way, and I basked in the certainty of our budding relationship—I had an editor!  I had a publisher!

After that first meeting, I feverishly revised and had a new batch of pages to hand over a month later.  On the phone, however, my editor told me that I’d rushed, that she wanted me to slow down and not worry about the deadline.

So I didn’t worry about the deadline and I slowed down.  I sent her new pages again in January of 2008, yet I was met with the same refrain.  “I just don’t think we’re seeing eye to eye on this,” she said.  “Tell me what your novel’s about.”

Back in May 2007, I’d spoken to many editors—including her—all of whom were keen on the sale.  All of them, except my future editor, gushed over the novel, telling me how amazing the story and writing were.  One of these editors, a gentleman who worked for a small publisher in North Carolina, talked about it so beautifully that he brought tears to my eyes.  In complete contrast, my conversation with my future editor was hurried and brusque, as if she were squeezing me in.  When her bid came in, however, it outmatched everyone else’s, including the gentleman’s in NC.  I went with the money.  Who could blame me?

Well, Jenny for one, especially in light of what happened.

Having spoken to my editor for the last time in February, I’d outlined what I planned to do during this round of revisions: I’d take every single one of her suggestions.  She was giddy when I told her and said, “I just want to see the first one hundred pages.  And, David, don’t rush.”  Again that warning—Don’t rush—but I was in a better place, reinvigorated and ready to dive into the novel again.

Five months later, I sent the first one hundred pages to my agent, who loved them.

“The novel feels like it has a heart—a heartbeat.  You seem to have a real handle on the story at this point,” she wrote in an email.

I sent the pages to my editor and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  A week later, I called my agent, who told me she’d talked to my editor that morning.

“She’s read the first fifty pages and thinks it’s 300% better!”

I felt the possibility of everything again, but mostly I felt my editor and I were back on track and that we’d go far with this novel, if not many more.  Yet less than a week later, on a Monday morning, my agent called to tell me my editor had ended up disliking the pages.  “I just don’t think she’s the right editor for your novel,” she said.

As she said this, I thought about Jenny again and her meeting with her editor, the confusion and pain in her face when she’d stood up for what she believed, and took the book back.  After I hung up with my agent, I watched that episode of The L Word again, trying to see where I might’ve gone wrong and how I might have done things differently.

It’s not that I didn’t believe in or trust my editor’s opinions, it’s simply that it turned out I’d written a novel that she herself didn’t believe in or trust.  When we finally parted ways—an amicable parting, I might add—I wanted to call Jenny and tell her.  I wanted to sit across from her over coffee and discuss our respective experiences.  I wondered what she might have told me, although I’m pretty sure it’s exactly what I had been thinking all along: when the time is right, you’ll find another editor.

And I did.

And that experience—working alongside Chuck Adams at Algonquin Books—completely restored my faith, not only in myself as a writer but also in the world of books in general.  There has been nothing greater than seeing my novel—my creative vision, which I worked on for a decade—come into being.  Working with Chuck—always a gentleman, one of the last old-school editors—was a blessing.  Not that it wasn’t challenging, because it was, but it was also full of magic.  From my first editor, I learned a lot about myself as a writer and am still thankful that I got the chance to work with her.  Without Chuck, however, I’m not sure I’d be the person I am today.  He helped me to see deeper into my characters, who are reflections of me, of course.  He helped me to bring out parts of them and the story that I might not have otherwise.  Mostly, though, he helped me understand that I was writing to be read and that I needed to be aware of my readers, whoever they might be.

If Jenny had worked with him, I’m pretty sure she would have had a similar experience.  Sometimes, I still think about her and how proud she would have been of me.  I see her sitting across from me, applauding my tenacity and determination.  My courage.

“Congratulations.  You did it,” she’d say.

“If it hadn’t been for you,” I’d say.

“No, David,” she’d say, grinning her Jenny grin.  “If it hadn’t been for you.”

Sunday Sentence: Her Last Death by Susanna Sonnenberg

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I've read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.

She didn't see herself, the penetrating stare of mania gone soft, her jerky motions.  She couldn't hear the random and incoherent lurch from phrase to phrase.

Her Last Death: A Memoir by Susanna Sonnenberg

The Quivering Pen is looking for contributors

This blog would like to see your pen quiver.

I'm looking for contributors to write book reviews, author interviews, and essays on topics of interest to readers and writers.  For more than three years, I've been the sole captain at the helm of this blog-ship and now I'd like to open it up to outside submissions.  Read on for more details...

Book Reviews:  Lively reviews which objectively examine a book's merits and, if warranted, demerits.  The great John Updike had a set of rules which are the guiding philosophy of The Quivering Pen; potential contributors are well-advised to read them.  While the focus of the blog is primarily contemporary literary fiction, I'm also open to considering reviews of poetry, genre fiction, classic literature, and some non-fiction (biography/memoir, history, and narrative non-fiction).  [Please note: at this time, The Quivering Pen is not accepting reviews of books which have been self-published or author-subsidized.]

Author Interviews and Profiles:  Traditional Q & A or feature profiles of contemporary writers are always welcome.  Please query first before submitting the interview/profile.

Essays and Features:  General interest articles of interest to readers and/or writers.  Topics range from examining trends in fiction, anecdotes about the reading life, current issues in publishing, and just about anything which would appeal to people who are accused of "going around with their nose stuck in a book."

My Library:  Readers are encouraged to send high-quality photos (minimum 150 dpi) of their personal home libraries or bookshelves, along with a description of particular shelving challenges, quirks in sorting (alphabetically? by color?), number of books in the collection, and particular titles which are in the To-Be-Read pile.

Fiction:  The Quivering Pen is also open to publishing flash fiction (250-1,000 words) or, in some very rare cases, serialized novellas (as we did last year with Henning Koch's "The Bones").  When submitting fiction, please indicate this by beginning the email subject line with "Fiction submission."

My First Time:  The Quivering Pen continues to welcome guest posts from published (or soon-to-be-published) authors for the My First Time series.  Have a story to tell about your first "virgin" experience in writing and/or publishing?  Send it to me, along with an author photo and a short bio note.  Email me for more guidelines.

Word length: Ideally between 1,000-2,500 words, but longer pieces will also be considered if the subject warrants.

Payment: At this time, I'm only able to compensate contributors with virtual hugs and handshakes of appreciation.  I wish I could pay you, but for now you'll have to settle for the satisfaction of knowing your words have reached an audience of about 20,000 per month.

Email queries or entire articles to thequiveringpen@gmail.com

John Updike's Rules for Reviewing Books

1.  Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2.  Give him enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3.  Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4.  Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.  (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants' revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative!  Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves.  And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)

5.  If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's ouevre or elsewhere.  Try to understand the failure.  Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.  Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like.  Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an idealogical battle, a corrections officer of any kind.  Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author 'in his place,' making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers.  Review the book, not the reputation.  Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast.  Better to praise and share than blame and ban.  The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

Friday Freebie: The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer and Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer

Congratulations to Kathy Poulson, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: High and Inside by Russell Rowland and The Raven's Gift by Don Rearden.

This week's book giveaway is another dynamic duo of fiction: The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer and Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer. One lucky reader will win a copy of both (The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells is a hardcover and Shine Shine Shine is the freshly-published paperback edition).  Greer's book, just released last month, is high on my To Be Read pile o' books (aka Mt NeverRest) and Netzer's novel was one of my favorites from last year.  Even if you don't win the contest, you should add them to your reading list.  Obey me.

Here's a little more about what waits for readers in The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells:

From the critically acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli comes The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, a rapturously romantic story of a woman who finds herself transported to the “other lives” she might have lived.  After the death of her beloved twin brother and the abandonment of her long-time lover, Greta Wells undergoes electroshock therapy.  Over the course of the treatment, Greta finds herself repeatedly sent to 1918, 1941, and back to the present.  Whisked from the gas-lit streets and horse-drawn carriages of the West Village to a martini-fueled lunch at the Oak Room, in these other worlds, Greta finds her brother alive and well—though fearfully masking his true personality.  And her former lover is now her devoted husband…but will he be unfaithful to her in this life as well?  Greta Wells is fascinated by her alter egos: in 1941, she is a devoted mother; in 1918, she is a bohemian adulteress.  In this spellbinding novel by Andrew Sean Greer, each reality has its own losses, its own rewards; each extracts a different price.  Which life will she choose as she wrestles with the unpredictability of love and the consequences of even her most carefully considered choices?

Blurbworthiness: “No one tells the secrets of the human heart more bravely or eloquently than Andrew Sean Greer. He has been called our Proust, our Nabokov, but with this novel he transcends all comparison. This is a genius-stroke of a book. Read it and weep.” (Julie Orringer, bestselling author of The Invisible Bridge)

In Shine Shine Shine, Lydia Netzer takes readers to equally fantastic and heartwarming worlds which we'd never be able to visit outside of fiction--unless, you know, we were an astronaut with a bald wife and an autistic kid.  Here's a little more about the novel which so delighted me last year (and continues to do so each time I think about it):

Sunny Mann has masterminded a life for herself and her family in a quiet Virginia town.  Her house and her friends are picture-perfect.  Even her genius husband, Maxon, has been trained to pass for normal.  But when a fender bender on an average day sends her coiffed blonde wig sailing out the window, her secret is exposed.  Not only is she bald, Sunny is nothing like the Stepford wife she’s trying to be.  As her facade begins to unravel, we discover the singular world of Sunny, an everywoman searching for the perfect life, and Maxon, an astronaut on his way to colonize the moon.

Blurbitude: "From the icy dead surface of the moon to the hot center of the human heart, Lydia Netzer's debut novel takes you on a rocket ride that will rattle your bones. This is an astounding first novel by a writer who is unique in her immense gifts." (Robert Goolrick, New York Times bestselling author of A Reliable Wife)

If you'd like a chance at winning both The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells and Shine Shine Shine, all you have to do is email your name and mailing address to thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line.  One entry per person, please.  Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on July 26, at which time I'll draw the winning name.  I'll announce the lucky reader on July 27.  If you'd like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words "Sign me up for the newsletter" in the body of your email.  Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning?  Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter.  Once you've done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying "I've shared" and I'll put your name in the hat twice.

No artist is pleased

Today's inspiring quote comes from legendary choreographer Agnes de Mille by way of Dani Shapiro's equally inspiring book about the writing habit, Still Writing, which will be published in October (I'm lucky to have an advance copy).  On the bulletin board above her writing desk, Shapiro has tacked part of the following quote, words of wisdom from dancer-choreographer Martha Graham to de Mille while the two were having lunch and discussing the famous "dream sequence ballet" de Mille designed for the musical Oklahoma!:

The greatest thing [Martha] ever said to me was in 1943 after the opening of Oklahoma!, when I suddenly had unexpected, flamboyant success for a work I thought was only fairly good, after years of neglect for work I thought was fine. I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. I talked to Martha. I remember the conversation well. It was in a Schrafft's restaurant over a soda. I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be. Martha said to me, very quietly: "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open....No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

No artist is pleased.  Boy, ain't that the truth!  I don't know about the rest of you creative types out there, but I'm filled with that "blessed unrest" every time I sit down at the keyboard or the open notebook, my pen queerly, divinely dissatisfied.  Every so often, a sentence of words will come together--syllables locking into place with a sharp snap!--and I'll be happy with the music I hear....but then the next day I'll wake up, read those same words, and think the whole thing is utter shit.  I call this voice of dissatisfaction my Grouchy Editor.  I picture him as this older, world-weary guy--maybe a little overweight, hair rumpled, food-stained shirt in a constant state of un-tuck--who's always frowning around the cigar he clenches in one corner of his mouth.  My GE is never happy with what I write--which is a good thing for me, actually.  He prods, provokes and encourages by way of insult.  "You call that good writing?  My grandmother could do better than that--and she was blind in one eye, only had eight fingers after that accident down at the tool-and-die factory, and dropped out of school in the fifth grade....plus, she's DEAD!"  He jabs his cigar-fingers into my chest and drop of his spittle lands on my cheek.  I look down at my page and sigh, "You're right."  Then I delete, revise, rebuild.  I am never pleased, I can only hope to reach a level of lesser displeasure.  And so I march forward, the lash of GE's words at my back.

Even now, he's grumbling, "And what the hell are 'cigar-fingers' anyway?"