Truly Random

1. The Saint and the boys are back in school. Daughter is back in daycare. Everything seems to be going smoothly, though nobody is sleeping as much as we were a few days ago.

2. I saw the video for Radio Nowhere. I'm now all stressed out that I might not get concert tickets.

3. My manuscript will be winging its way to New York, via the ether, within days, probably within hours.

4. Go over and visit the Great and Gifted Jamie Ford. While you're there, congratulate him on his nifty, well-earned, six-figure publishing deal.

Adam

More Feedback

I meant to mention this earlier, but the Great and Gifted Jamie Ford, who read an earlier portion of my novel before it was finished, has read the whole thing.

Jamie is as great an editor as he is gifted a writer.

His comments mirrored my agent's in many ways. Which surprised me not a bit, since his comments on the first selection also mirrored my agent's in many ways. What surprised me is that he was as enthusiastic at the end as he had been at the beginning.

Jamie is always insightful. That's also no surprise to those of us in the blogosphere who know him and correspond with him. And I may have mentioned that his short story, "I Am Chinese", is the best short story I've read in many, many years. Nobody will be shocked when Jamie sells his novel (based on that short story), right? I didn't think so.

For me, the bottom line: Now that two readers I really trust have weighed in, I know I'm on the right track. And for those of you who want a really great read, go to Jamie's website and track down his short story. It's fabulous.

Adam

While I'm Editing...

Go over and congratulate the Great and Gifted Jamie Ford. He had an agent offer him representation yesterday. I suspect other agents will call him as well.

Having experienced this myself, I know just how wild a feeling it is. Those are frozen in time moments.

As in:

Jane Dystel called me at 8:42 on a Friday evening in January of 2004, after I'd had a few e-mail exchanges and a conversation with her partner, Miriam Goderich. The Saint was a little over a week away from giving birth to Daughter. I'd just gotten off the phone with my mother. Sarcastically, I'd told Mom, "I have to hang up now. My exclusive with my dream agency ends in a little over three hours. Somebody might call."

Not fifteen seconds later, Jane phoned. After "We love your book and we want to represent you," nothing else in the conversation mattered.

Jane told me to take the weekend to decide. I accepted on the spot. I'd already done all my research. As a writer, it was the second best decision I ever made. The best? Marrying the Saint. But you knew that already.

Back to Jamie for a second: He's also a hell of an editor. He read an early draft of my current manuscript and his editorial comments were nearly identical to Miriam's. So go visit his blog and let him know that he might be surprised, but we aren't. He earned it.

Adam

Since We're Talking About Location

I've been thinking about this for a while. I like to be a hands-on researcher, and I've always approached research (at least for my writing projects) as an exciting adventure, not a necessary chore.

But as the about-to-be-fired project managers on The Apprentice always say, I had help with this task.

As you are all oh so aware, I'm working on a novel set in, among other places, a small town in central New York, and in Washington, and in Albany. I've been to Washington enough times that I can remember the landmarks I need for the plot, and if I have trouble, I can always ask Best Man and Godfather (aka the Evil Republican Lobbyist who is evil because he is a lobbyist, not because he is a Republican-- in his party choice he is merely misguided). Anyway, when I need to get anywhere in Washington, BMAG can tell me where to go and how to get there, if I don't know already.

The central New York location... that's a little delicate, but then again, not so much. Delicate because I know the environment (and in my first novel, I based the fictional location on Cooperstown). My current project features another made-up town. It's not based on any real place. I don't have to nail the details because I created the place out of whole cloth.

On to Albany. A real place. Central to the plot of the novel. With real buildings I've lovingly described from my own memories, internet narratives and pictures, books, and Google maps.

What's missing? Right. Recent impressions. My own hands-on research. Last time I walked through downtown Albany, I hadn't begun outlining my current project. I had no idea Albany would even feature in the narrative, let alone play a central role in the plot. I was on my way to and from a Springsteen concert, with the Saint and two friends. I wasn't trying to map out the Capitol, the Cathedral, the Governor's Mansion, the Kenmore Hotel, the Hudson River, the Empire State Plaza. (My late grandfather, a construction foreman on that project, called it the South Mall until the day he died. In this context: "I built the South Mall." Well, he and a few thousand other people, but if you listened to him, he did it himself.)

So I've been thinking for months that I need to go to Albany simply to research my novel. In those months, I've driven through Albany four times on round trips from Boston to Cooperstown.

But I haven't

• Seen the Capitol from the inside since 1982; from close-up (i.e, not from the highway) since 1986
• Seen the (former) Kenmore Hotel in a way that I remembered (though on my 2005 trip, I stood directly across the street without realizing I was looking at the Kenmore Hotel)
• Seen the Cathedral since my 1986 confirmation
• Seen the Governor's Mansion, next door to the Cathedral, since 1982 (no, I didn't realize at my confirmation that the complex next door was where Mario Cuomo lived at the time)
• Seen the Empire State Plaza since that same 1982 sixth grade trip where I toured the Capitol and saw the Governor's Mansion
  
• Seen the Hudson from the water's edge, ever.

I must learn enough about each of those places that I can't ask my brother, who lives in Albany, to tour them for me. Instead, I've asked him to tour them with me. He'll see my invitation when he checks his e-mail.

The Great and Gifted Jamie Ford (unknowingly) set my plan in motion when he left Big Sky country to go "home" to Seattle, for research on his budding bestseller. He knew exactly what places he needed to see, but last time he'd seen them, he hadn't been thinking, "I need to know about these places for my book."

Ditto with me. Last time I was in Albany, I was thinking, "I never realized the Pepsi Arena is so close to the Capitol." I never even knew that the Kenmore Hotel is not only closer to the arena than the Capitol is, but it's also on the same street, more or less, across from the bar where the Saint, our friends and I partied the night away post-Bruce concert. The Governor's Mansion, the Hudson, the Empire State Plaza and the Cathedral are all within easy walking distance.

And I need to see all of them. I mentioned this to my Mother on Friday night (she happened to be in Albany wating for a flight to Jamaica).

She volunteered to watch the kids for a weekend if the Saint and I need to go to Albany (when the Saint drives, it's 2 and a half hours from Boston, but one and a half hours from Cooperstown, and as I've mentioned, every round trip requires us to go through Albany).

I moved quickly. Not as quickly as the our van does with the Saint's foot on the gas, but quickly enough for my purposes.

Mom doesn't know this yet, but I'm taking her up on her offer. The Saint and I are going to Albany for Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. I already booked the trip. My brother, who has an advanced degree in urban planning, will be accompanying us (as I've mentioned, he doesn't know this yet, either).

Since the Saint has a birthday right after the weekend, this also (bonus!) doubles as a getaway for her. We usually do the birthday escapes around my birthday because I change ages (unfortunately, never in reverse) during the summer. Yes, I'm sure the Saint would choose a place a little more romantic than Albany if the choice were up to her (but Albany is a pretty cool place even if it's not exactly romantic).

Alas, the choice was not the Saint's. I'll be enlisting friends to recommend great, romantic restaurants for a cold midwinter weekend. We'll have the other activities covered.

Adam

A Hopeless Romantic

The Great and Gifted Jamie Ford is blogging about romance and its implications.

Here's what I can say about romance: Any guy fortunate enough to be in a great marriage is a romantic. Happily, I say this from experience.

I really can't get into the week The Saint and I just limped through, but when it comes to The Saint, the best words to describe how I feel about her come not from a writer, but from a baseball player.

The late, lamented Lou Gehrig said, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

With The Saint, the day is irrelevant. It's yesterday. It's today. It's tomorrow. It's the day after that. It's every day, forever: I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

If that makes me a romantic, I don't care. I'll learn to like the title.

Adam

May I Have the Envelope, Please?

What do the Great and Gifted Jamie Ford and my agent have in common?

If you guessed: "They both love what they've seen of my manuscript," then you win a prize to be named later. And as a bonus, my agent has seen more than Jamie has. I suspect my agent's detailed comments will be very similar to Jamie's.

My agent's partner (also known as "my other agent") is reading the pages now. Just to make sure.

Pumped? Come join me in the stratosphere and I'll tell you. I celebrated with an extra fifteen minutes on the bike this morning (and a double espresso, and a capuccino).

In the meantime, go check out Jamie's blog post about writing vs. the idea of being a writer. Dead on.

I need to get back to my manuscript before Jamie passes me. Not that I'm racing Jamie-- I'm just not writing very quickly.

In other news, it's a glorious day, and we're going to a cookout. Johnny Cash is playing on iTunes, and Bruce is up next.

Have a great weekend.

Adam

Initial Feedback

The great and gifted Jamie Ford read my first chapter. I say "the great and gifted" because I've read Jamie's writing, and his short story, I am Chinese, is spell-binding. I posted a link to it somewhere here, but if you go to Jamie's blog, you can read his story. Do yourselves a favor and head over there.

So, yeah, Jamie liked it. And if you know Jamie, you know that this is high praise indeed.

I owe a nod to M.G. Tarquini, too, because we had a couple of conversations about where I should put the chapter that Jamie read... Minds out of the gutter, people. You know where I put the chapter. I put it right where Mindy told me to put it. But if you know Mindy, you also knew my answer before you read it here.

That is all. The weekend is here. Can I hear an Amen, please?

Adam

Tonight's Must-Read

Mark Pettus has a terrific new online literary journal called The Picolata Review. Go check it out.

Pay particular attention to Jamie Ford's stunning short story, entitled I am Chinese. I can't link to it directly, but click on The Picolata Review site and scroll down. Mark's done a wonderful job, and Jamie's piece is brilliant.

On my own novel, last night I finally cracked the 35,000 word barrier. And the 36,000 word barrier. And the 37,000 word barrier. If I'd gone for another hour, I swear I'd have hit 40,000. I was in a trance. I had to pry my fingers from the keyboard at 2:30 this morning and force myself to go to bed. I haven't had a writing session like that in a while. Damned book was writing itself.

I'm between a quarter of the way and a third of the way done with my first draft. I need to take this first dozen chapters and edit them for my agent. But I need to treat this chunk of manuscript like a completed first draft: Cut, form, rewrite, polish, repeat. Once those pages go to New York, I'll start the next chapter.

No, I've never written this way, but my agent is also a terrific editor, so I'd like to know what she thinks before I finish the story. It'll be easier to fix my mistakes now, 37,000 words in, than it will when I've got 110,000 on the hard drive.

But enough about my progress. Go check out Mark's terrific new journal, and be sure to read Jamie's story. You'll be glad you did.

Then get back to work. I hope you find the autopilot.

Adam

Great Guns!

Joe Konrath has a spectacular post about handguns here. I admit, most of my firearm experience is with shotguns and rifles.

Anyway, Joe's post is great on several levels. He shows a real depth of knowledge, but most importantly: He did his homework. Research is key to credible fiction. Joe did his.

I think Barry Eisler would be able to add a few things to Joe's discussion.

Hunters (even occasional hunters like Jamie Ford and former hunters like me) will have still different points of view. A lot of people rounded out the post in the comments section.

Whatever, it was fun, and impressive seeing all those writers who are also gun owners... and gun haters who learned about guns.

Got comments? Fire away!

Adam

Branding Excercises, or "Truth in Eating"

So, I'm still high over Jim Atwell's column in the Cooperstown Crier.

I do PR in my day job, which means I read at least ten newspapers every day. Yet making time for my hometown weekly is a luxury in which I gladly partake.

For me, my hometown paper is a powerful brand. Not as powerful as Diet Coke or Knob Creek, but I know what I'm going to get every time I open or click on the paper.

Thinking about branding made me start examining which brands work and which brands don't. Since food is never far from my thoughts, I started looking at the stuff I'd eat based on its brand, or what its name conveyed.

For example: Give me pate de fois gras, and I'll eat it until the tin is empty, but ask me to eat a paste of fatty goose liver, and it's no thanks. Sometimes, the French do get it right.

Another one I haven't tried yet, but wouldn't mind tasting: Sweetbreads. But if you offered me sauteed calves' glands, I'd probably puke. That's good branding, changing the name to something that sounds delicious, and what's more delicious than... sweet... bread? Come to think of it, a few things, but you get the idea.

Other examples:

Calamari. Love it. Not wild about eating squid, but if you offer me calamari, it's great.

Anchovies: Tiny, bony, salty fish that sometimes crunch when you eat them. But if you call them by their name, instead of by their definition, you can trick your mind long enough for your taste buds to enjoy them.

Hot dogs: Okay, I think everybody loves or has loved them, but they started out as dachsunds and frankfurters. Not bad names, really. Then in the same anti-German fervor that brought us Salisbury Steak instead of hamburgers (a "patriotic" World War I nativism), people started calling them hot dogs. Okay, I don't want to eat a dog, whether it's a dog or a dachsund, but you'll never get me to eat wieners... and if you were to tell me that hot dogs were really pig intestines stuffed with ground scraps of beef and pork, well... I think I'd engage my sweetbread reaction.

Is that good branding? I have no idea, but it's better than the truth.

How about some truly awful brands?

Top of the list: Scrapple. Yes, that famous Pennsylvania Dutch breakfast something. As one friend recently explained to me, "If hot dogs are the scraps from decent cuts of beef and pork, scrapple is scraps from hot dogs." Just not a pretty picture. And the name does nothing to help it. What would you rather eat: Scrapple or sweetbreads? Exactly. Bad food branding v. good food branding.

Spam. Or as one person said when I asked about scrapple: "Scrapple is kind of like Spam. Or maybe Spam is kind of like scrapple." My paternal grandmother loved Spam. My maternal grandmother hates Spam. Notice the verb tenses? Enough said.

Liverwurst. The only "bad brand" on this list that I love. Liverwurst is one of my true guilty pleasures. But I have to stop reminding myself that the "best" thing in liverwurst is ground pork livers. And yes, it really does taste better if you make it with venison liver instead.

What are "good brands" for you? What "bad things" do they make you overlook? Or are they just good things enhancing other good things... like smoked rainbow trout?

What are "bad brands"? When does a bad name obscure a good item, or when does it convey the simple truth about a horrible item?

I like food definitions the most because you get the best potential to gross yourselves out, but if others come to mind, throw a few out there.

I was a spin doctor in my previous life, so I love these word games.

A glass of Knob Creek says the woman from Philly lodges the first comment about scrapple. I'm not sure whether she'll defend it or agree with me, but I'm guessing she'll be first.

Addendum: Jamie Ford, who works in advertising when he's not writing, has a terrific comment in the comments section for this post. Check it out.

Adam

Location, Location, Location

Jamie Ford has a terrific post on his blog today. He talks about living in a "small town" of "50,000 people" in Montana.

OK. I'd think that any collection of 50,000 people in Montana would make that collection a buzzing metropolis, but I digress. Jamie makes an excellent point. Small towns mean small town life and small town values. Those are great things. Small town life means, as Jamie says, your kids can walk to school. There are other great things, too: You know all your neighbors and a whole bunch of other people, as well. The pace is more relaxed. There's more free time. It doesn't take an hour to get to work. There's no smog.

I know all this because I grew up in Cooperstown, population, just over 2,000. That's a small town. Actually, I lived three miles away, in Fly Creek, population under 600. Fly Creek is where I learned to hunt, and in Cooperstown, it's pretty easy to develop a passion for baseball, especially working at the Hall of Fame.

Jamie's post really hit home for me for another reason: I live in the suburbs of Boston (the suburb where I live has a population of 50,000 and is considered a city by itself, but it's so close to Boston that it's basically an extension of the Hub).

Here's the kicker: My writing is all about small towns.

Well, let me explain a little.

My first novel happens in a small town that looks suspiciously like Cooperstown. The setting is a fictional place, but let's just say that the fictional place looks a whole lot like the place where I grew up.

There are plenty of mentions of other (real) locales where I've lived and worked. But most of the story occurs in a fictional small town in a fictional county.

My second novel starts in a setting where I've never been and never hope to be: state prison. But it moves, rapidly, back to a small town... it's another fictional place, another fictional county, right next to the fictional county in my first novel.

Why?

Partly because I know Cooperstown and the surrounding area, so I've already done the research for this fictional county next door to the fictional county in my first novel. Mostly because I like writing about small towns.

The majority of us live in cities or suburbs now, and fewer and fewer of us get to experience life in rural areas. I didn't know it at the time, but rural living was a great joy to me. I couldn't wait to get out of Cooperstown when I was in high school, but now I can't wait to return. I visit as frequently as I can. And my writing reflects that. There are places in Cooperstown where I haven't set foot in fifteen years, but I write about them as if I were there yesterday. There are places in Boston that I visit daily that don't even register to me. If I want to write about them, I have to visit with a notebook and jot down details.

I'm also noticing a huge difference politically between rural and urban areas. No, that's not a news flash. I mean, specifically, guns.

I spent ten years as a Democratic political consultant. One of the great debates, especially during Presidential elections, is gun control. Republicans have successfully framed the issue this way: Democrats want to take guns away from law-abiding citizens. We Democrats have failed in our message, mostly because we're spending too much time responding to the Republicans. The funny thing is that a large majority of Americans favors gun control, but those who vote based on gun control are gun owners. Gun owners who vote based on gun control tend to support Republicans because the Republican party is in bed with the National Rifle Association. That's not a news flash either.

We're all missing the point. This is not a Democrat-Republican issue. This is a rural-urban issue.

The reason most people in this country favor gun control is that most people in this country live in cities or suburbs. If you're in a city or a suburb and you see a gun, you tend to have a slightly different reaction than you do when you see a gun in a small town, or way out in the country.

In a city or a suburb, a gun in the hand of anybody but a police officer means crime. (And on further reflection, it means the same thing even if the gun is in a cop's hand.) It means crime even to responsible gun owners who keep their guns for protection or target practice. If you see a gun, and you're not on a target range, you think: crime. You're justifiably terrified.

When I'm in Cooperstown and I see a gun, I think: venison, preferably marinated in red wine and crushed garlic, grilled (over charcoal, not gas) to a perfect medium rare. I think of my grandfather; I think of my favorite uncle. I think of my cousins. I think of spectacular times growing up, what we call quality time today. I think of the hours I've spent target shooting and the (fewer) hours I've spent hunting and the long walks in the woods that I don't take any more, because I don't like the woods and I don't live near any forests. But growing up, allergic to everything outside, hating the woods, I still loved hiking through them with my uncle, my cousins, my grandfather, looking for birds and game.

I'm a liberal, over-educated 35-year-old male. I'm a recovering lawyer, a former Democratic consultant. I write fiction. I have a Saint and three kids. I vote exclusively Democratic.

And I'm a marksman. Or at least, I used to be. I won shooting contests as a Boy Scout and could hit just about anything I aimed at when I was growing up. I own two firearms. They're both in Fly Creek, because Massachusetts has restrictive gun laws, and I'd have to register them here.

How can that dichotomy-- a liberal who hunts and shoots-- exist?

It's easy: Our attitude on guns is not based on party. It's based on where we live. City dwellers are scared of guns, with good reason. People who live in the country see guns and they're happy, also with good reason.

It really does come down to the simple matter of location.

Adam