Season's Readings: Summer 2006

Here be an account of the reading I accomplished over the past summer, with meager commentary.

-Lloyd Alexander "The Prydain Chronicles" [only faint flashes from when I read them in my youth, so they remained pretty fresh; an excellent fantasy series: a little contrived perhaps in how they get all the characters back together for each successive novel, but your emotional involvement with the characters supersedes this nicely. I especially liked the arch of Taran in "Taran Wanderer," a fantastic progression of character development.]

-Peter Mayles "A Year in Provence" and "Toujours Provence" [an amusing series of anecdotes; mostly enforced the idea for me that I'm more of an Italy person (after Frances Mayes' "Under the Tuscan Sun" and Bernardo Bertolucci's "Stealing Beauty") than a France person (though I've been to neither)]

-Melissa Bank "Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing" [a nice bit of short story interconnectedness; plus I'm a sucker for second-person narration, of which there is one.]

-Rick Moody "Demonology-stories" [Though obviously masterful in their construction, I didn't connect very much with the plots, or characters. Nice run-on sentences, though.]

-Jules Verne "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and "Around the World in 80 Days" [Finally got around to reading some Verne (how was my childhood complete without him? Buried under comic books, I suppose); fantastic adventures, particularly 20,000 (with a great Ray Bradbury introduction).

-Vladimir Nabokov "Lolita" [reread this, on audiobook with Jeremy Irons giving an utterly perfect performance. Some Great with a captitol G Great authors inspire by their greatness, but Nabokov is one of those authors that, if I were smarter, I would just throw up my hands and toss in my writing pen, and focus on something practical, for I find that greatness out of my reach.]

-Don DeLillo "Cosmopolis" [The literary equivalent of polished concrete: smooth, cold and hard. Polar opposite to his "The Body Artist."]

-Mitch Albom "Tuesday's with Morrie" [picked this up on audiobook, read by the author, when the audiobook I put a hold on was lagging. Belied my preconceptions by being not too schmaltzy; but only picked at my heartstrings - never quite giving them a tug.]

-Milan Kundera "Immortality" [Vintage Kundera. A great blend of the creative process of writing, self-reference, philosophical exploration and musing, and character. This guy had better get a Nobel some day.]

-Dan Brown "Angels and Demons" & "The DaVinci Code" [both entertaining, "Angels" infinitely more so; Brown, like Tom Clancy and Tim LaHaye, does a good job of pulling a narrative from mounds of research, but I just don't get what all the multi-million printing fuss is all about.]

-Franz Kafka "The Trial" [Excellent: hard to find an adjective to describe it other than Kafkaesque; though I will admit I found it less satisfying than his short work. As I writer, I enjoyed the deleted scenes of my "Definative Edition"; I wish this was a more common practice - I mean, look at all crappy movies released in two-disc special editions with 10 hours of extras! Wouldn't you readers snatch up "The Shipping News - The E. Annie Edition" or "Grapes of Wrath - The Writer's Cut" with running author commentaries, deleted scenes, making of, and on location features?]

A fairly productive Summer. And while I enjoy discussing any of the books I read, I recommend these as the ones I haven't forgotten the particulars of, and may have something interesting to discuss. Have a merry Fall of Reading!

Introductions and explanations

If you are meandering here because you have read and enjoyed my stories in print and wanted to learn a little more about me, then God bless you for reading independent literary journals and for finding this blog, because it seems you can only access it by search through Blogger.com (at least with my limited expertise).

About me then:

• I have been writing all my life, but seriously hunkered down with the intention of publication, fame and riches in early 2003.
• The bibliography so far: "Two Pink Lines" a microfiction story, in Illya's Honey, Fall 2004; "My Governors' House," in The First Line (http://www.thefirstline.com/), Summer 2005, Nominated for a Pushcart Prize; "Afternoon Cowboy," in Thema (http://members.cox.net/thema/) Fall 2005, whose publication was actually blown back to early 2006 by Hurricane Katrina paying an unwelcome visit to their offices; and "From Mamma to Mother and Back," also in The First Line, Spring 2006. Everybody be sure and do a little rain dance to sprout the two dozen other short stories I have tucked into the slush piles around the nation.
• My high score after putting approximately 4,897 quarters in Galaga is 168,540.
• This Spring I completed my first novel, "Alexander Murphy's Home for Wayward Celebrities," a literary novel of the pratfalls of celebrity in America, the challenge of defining yourself through popular culture, and the good ol' fashioned ache for companionship; for which I am seeking a midwife (agent) and doctor (publisher) to deliver it into your hands.
• I have read 442 books and seen 2923 movies (lists available upon request)
• I live in a satellite of the binary system of San Francisco and Oakland, with my lovely wife, a passionate high school History teacher, my high school and college sweetheart who I married immediately after, and look forward to dedicating the book to; a five-year old son and three-year old daughter who are the right kind of crazy; a porcine cat, and the odd couple of a gregarious red beta, and a hermitic plecostomus.
• My favorite Japanese filmmakers in no particular order are: Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Juzo Itami, Isao Takahata, Hirokazu Koreeda, Katsuhiro Otomo, and Takeshi Kitano.
• My greatest literary ambitions in life are to have a shelf's worth of novels with my name upon them in print, and to have read every book I own, provided I own or can borrow (though you should never lend me a book if you don't want it returned looking well loved) every book by Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Thornton Wilder, Michael Chabon, M. Allen Cunningham, Nick Hornby, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Annie Proulx, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Milan Kundera, Douglas Adams, Nicholson Baker, Don DeLillo, Charles Dickens, Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishigoro, Vladimir Nabokov, Ethan Hawke, George Orwell, Ken Kesey, Evelyn Waugh, David Mitchell, John Steinbeck...
• And why Oral Randomly for my blog title? Well, a couple years back I got the idea into my head to publish my own zine, where all of the stories and poems would be released in audio form, to reemphasize the oral tradition of storytelling, hence Oral (I considered Aural, but it just sounded too pretentious); and I figured that instead of a set publication schedule I would just release the issues when I felt they were ready, hence Randomly. I still thought that title had a good flow to it, so I resurrected it here, as the nature of blogs is more conversational that writerly, more in the moment then on a schedule.

and above all you should know that Josh loves to receive mail, so please feel free to comment or converse with me on any of the topics I present in this blog, or upon my stories, or fraternal tales on the difficulties in getting your first story or novel published, or on writing or reading or film or art or music or anything.

Unless you want to brag about a better Galaga score, in which case you are dead to me.

A Note to My Future Agent

I just wanted to write this in advance as a thank you for being the first to judge my book in the aggregate. Though I have gotten some encouraging feedback from agents who read the first few chapters among the slew of boilerplate and silence, most notably Judy Heiblum at Brick House, who represents the wonderful writer M. Allen Cunningham, who wrote, “The work is imaginative and your writing shows both power and fluidity,” and gave a perfectly respectable, constructive rejection with, “For my taste, there was a bit of a sense of the language getting in the way of the writing, if you know what I mean. Also, I am perhaps a bit too traditional to get really excited about the format you propose for the book,” I congratulate you on seeing the potential in our partnership, especially beyond the terrible copy of my query (I’m assuming it was terrible to be so off-handedly rejected when it pimped something unique, and exceptionally constructed – this is where I’m supposed to be humble and discount how excellent I believe the work to be so I don’t seem conceited, so all I will say is that I wrote a novel I would love to read: innovative, but with a soul; characters that breath, laugh and cry and leave you in similar attitudes; with descriptions outrageous while simultaneously piercing – but then you’ve read the book, so you know how great it is, and I can be an openly proud Papa with you).

Just out of curiosity, would you mind going through my query and enlightening me to the pratfalls I fell into composing it? Thanks:

A victim of rape at fourteen, the songs Lucy Faas initially writes as therapy bring her more fame than she was prepared for at seventeen, so after her second album receives critical but lackluster financial success she enters a self-imposed suburban hermitage.

[So, in this revision of the query I strove to put character first, introducing my heroine Lucy as “the hook,” establishing in this single sentence that she carried the ultimate personal usually private pain of rape heavily upon her back in a too full frontal view to the public; that though talented, and still quite young, she already had significant issues with the byproduct of her expression: celebrity – enough to drop out of her career for a considerable span of time; issues that would make her impressions an interesting mix of insider and outsider.]

Emerging seven years later with aspirations to revive her abandoned music career, she joins the crazy assemblage of actors, musicians, directors, significant others and an heiress at architect Alexander Murphy’s celebrity haven – hidden and secure in the Montecito hills above Santa Barbara – there to preempt or hide from scandal, or simply dwell in a paparazzi-free zone. Amid her efforts at composing her comeback, Lucy decides to investigate the enigmatic Mr. Murphy’s origins, discovering aptitudes and interests enticingly adverse to musicianship as she learns more than any prior guest, and cultivating love for more than just the character of The American Riviera. But then she stumbles upon the secret that may bring this celebrity Eden to an ignominious end.

[So, here I laid out the unique plot of the book, my heroine’s conflicted journey through it, hinting at the interesting characters she will interact with, presenting setting as an equally rich character, and establishing intrigue behind the titular character driving Lucy through the book, portending an exciting climax.]

Incorporating Lucy’s songwriting, mock nonfiction articles, and sections of pure play-style dialogue into the narrative, and with a cast of celebrities alternately real, inspired, and imagined, Alexander Murphy’s Home for Wayward Celebrities is a literary novel, not so erudite that it will not appeal to a mainstream celebrity-hungry readership, completed at 92,000 words.

[Here I outlaid the singular narrative structure of the book, setting the genre as literary just in case the theme of celebrity left doubts to the seriousness of the novel – but also grounding the novel from the ether of literary works for a general readership, providing an ancillary marketing idea, while conducting the business of a attention-barbed title and reasonable word count. Trivia: I considered qualifying “mock nonfiction articles” with “mock architectural-themed articles,” but decided against it for the reasons of brevity that all the books and websites I researched on query-writing beat me over the head with.]

Studying creative writing at Westmont College in Montecito, graduating with a degree in Art, my seduction by Santa Barbara County – where encountering celebrities in their sweatpants at the supermarket was a common, humanizing, occurrence – mirrors the character of Lucy Faas. I currently reside in the San Francisco Bay Area with my wife and two children, have had several short stories published in various literary journals, including The First Line, who graciously nominated my Summer 2005 issue story for a Pushcart Prize, and am hard at work on my next novel, which will integrate my experiences as a substitute teacher.

[Here I gave a bit of biography that concurrently qualified me to express the setting and themes of the novel in a fresh voice; then another bit on my current situation, modestly showing that others have found my work not only publishable, but among the best they had published that year. Then I finished the paragraph with an assurance that I am a working writer, burgeoning with ideas, which interred in your stable, will be a productive, long range asset.]

I am querying you because...[-]. I look forward to sending you the manuscript for review. Feel welcome to contact me anytime from the contact information below. Thank you for your consideration.

[and, of course, here is where I proved to you that I had researched and handpicked you as a potential agent, offering my reasons in a hopefully flattering way. And then wrapping everything up sedately, belying my overwhelming desire to see my novel published because to admit my frustration with the inherently drawn out process of book publication may make me seem desperate.]

So what do you think? Too How to Get Your Novel Published formulaic? As I said, this is just for curiosity sake, so don’t put yourself too out with your commentary. (Blog readers listening in, I welcome your comments as well).

I should let you go; I respect how valuable your time is. I just really wanted you to know how much I appreciate your faith. I’ll have my next novel in soon as I can (how you worried that that was simply a ploy in my query!). Looking forward to all the marketing and touring, and, of course, a long and fruitful partnership.