Roy Miller's Blog, page 293
January 23, 2017
Cuban Odyssey
When we told friends we were planning a trip to Havana, the reaction—across the board— was very interested: “I’d love to go there!” one friend said. “Ooh! Let me know what it’s like!” another said.
The reaction to Havana was like nothing we’d seen. Over and over we heard, “You have to get there before Americans ruin it.” This, of course, frequently uttered by Americans.
The two of us write as Alex Flynn and are coauthors of two middle grade books: The Misshapes: The Coming Storm and The Misshapes: Annihilation Day (both from Polis). We’ve had the privilege of reading at bookstores and schools, meeting readers of all ages, and talking about our fictional ensemble of teenage superheroes. But recently we read in a place we’d never imagined: Havana. Our reading at Cuba Libro, an English-language bookstore in the Vedado neighborhood, was one of the best and most surprising opportunities that has come with the books’ release. We had an opportunity to catch a glimpse of an intriguing culture. Conner Gory, founder of Cuba Libro, says that even after 14 years, she still finds Cuba beguiling.
We stayed in Vedado, which has changed significantly since Graham Greene described it in the 1950s as “little cream and white houses owned by rich men.” The mansions are still there—but they’re now home to average Cuban citizens. It’s a neighborhood with a band around one bend, a movie around another, and a photo exhibit next door.
We read at Cuba Libro on a Saturday at 6 p.m., Cuban time—which means give or take an hour. The bookstore functions as a community center, where people relax with an espresso or discuss philosophy in hammocks. It draws a crowd of university students, expats, and tourists. The audience, which was mostly English speaking, was engaged and had questions about our book and the process of worldbuilding. We talked about our books’ subtext and the role capitalism plays in perverting mythologies, or how identity, the locus of all coming-of-age stories, is branded for an age of celebrity. After the reading, we gave away our books, since U.S. prices are too high for Cubans, who, on average, make $25 per month, and we donated some English-language books as well. It was a thrill to donate Infinite Jest and Ulysses.
We traded recommendations, turning a comics fan on to Love and Rockets and The Tick, and receiving a list of new Cuban writers from a college student—a list that started with Cuba’s national hero, José Martí. (The airport is named after him, and white marble busts of him are almost as common as billboards featuring Che Guevara.) It’s easy to take access to books, information, and ideas for granted in America. The Cubans we met had to work for that access—with the black market, work-arounds, pirating, and file sharing—and it gave us new respect for the power of literature.
On our last day, we attended the Feria Internacional del Libro de La Habana (Havana International Book Fair), held in La Cabaña, one of the largest forts in the Americas. Inside the fort were hundreds of publishers from around the world, but mostly the Americas, selling book-related items in warrens that once held munitions and prisoners. The fair attracts 300,000 people. We picked up a few Cuban novels and books of poetry. To see a book festival with Junot Díaz translations in one corner and love letters to Fidel Castro in the other was overwhelming, a vivid picture of Cuba’s curiosity.
Two weeks in Havana is hardly enough time but talking to booksellers and buying books in Spanish by Cuban authors whose work is obscure in America, such as Jóse Lezama Lima and Ana Lidia Vega Serova, was a way to learn something new, and an opportunity to read about a vibrant culture we’ve been cut off from for too many years. Seeing how art worked, on its own terms, in a society structured so differently than our own, gave us an appreciation for its power. In Cuba, we were able to delve deeply into our book, to talk about its ideals. That experience was an honor, and something we won’t forget.
Elisabeth Donnelly and Stuart Sherman are coauthors of the Misshapes series (Polis).
A version of this article appeared in the 03/14/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Cuban Odyssey
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January 22, 2017
Why Three Generations of My Family Are Marching in Washington
“When you were twelve, you told me that you wanted to get arrested like the Berrigan brothers.” My mother tells me this while we are sitting in my kitchen in Brooklyn, talking about the upcoming Women’s March on Washington. My mother hasn’t been to a protest march in a long time. She is 83, my younger daughter is 19, and we are planning on going together, three generations strong. My daughter doesn’t know about the Berrigan brothers; Jesuit priests whose acts of civil disobedience during the Vietnam War transfixed me as a child. My mother is a poet, and I grew up surrounded by writers and artists in 1960s and 70s New York, and it was important in my intensely literary household that Daniel Berrigan was a poet as well as an activist and a priest. It seems to me now as if I was brought up inside a black-and-white film made by Robert Frank.
My mother took me to the anti-Nixon inauguration march in January of 1973. I wanted to get arrested like the Berrigan brothers, and I almost pulled it off.
On January 20th, 1973, the Senate Watergate Committee had not yet been formed, Nixon had just been re-elected by a landslide in which only 55 percent of the populace cast a vote, and he followed up his victory with the notorious “Christmas Bombings” of North Vietnam. B-52’s dropped 15,000 tons of bombs in 12 days, a force totaling more than each of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were going to Washington to show the rest of the world that he was not our president.
I have one vivid memory of that cold day in Washington, a moment of such unexpected violence that I will never be completely sure whether it really happened to me, or whether I was so close to it that I only think it did. I asked my mother what she remembered from the anti-Nixon inauguration march on Washington and she said, “I remember trying to keep you safe. There were snipers on the buildings. It was scary.” I don’t remember the snipers, I remember being cold all day long.
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We had gone to the march with some of her writer friends. There was a woman I will call Eva, a dark haired beauty, intense and angry, like most of the adults we had ridden down with on a bus from Manhattan. She was younger than my mother, who was then in her late thirties, and I attached myself to Eva at the demonstration. At one point Eva decided to duck under the police barricades that separated the demonstrators from official guests for the inauguration, and I wanted to go with her. She took me by the hand, my dirty blond hair falling over my face and our scruffy looks marking us as intruders.
Once we were under the barricades, everything changed. The Nixon supporters looked rich to me. The men were wearing suits and overcoats, the women were bundled in fur coats wearing mascara, rouge and lipstick. They also wore heels and stockings. None of the women I knew wore stockings. I was probably wearing converse high tops covered with song lyrics I had scribbled in magic marker and a blue jean jacket. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do now that we had gotten in there, but Eva seemed determined to upset the equilibrium and I was down for that. A man who looked like security came barreling toward us, but just then one of the men in overcoats stood up and held out his hand to shake Eva’s, seeming to protect her from the security officer. She put her hand out, surprised by this show of solidarity, and the man slashed her palm open with a razor blade. I remember her gasp, and the quick line of blood as she pulled her hand back. The next thing I remember is running behind her, back under the police barricades where my mother and her friends were waiting. Had my mother even noticed that I had disappeared? It was chaotic and everything happened very quickly, she may not have known that I was gone. My mother exploded at Eva when she saw her hand, angry that she had taken me into danger. I yelled back at my mother, not understanding why she would blame Eva, who had just been attacked, and as far as I was concerned I was a full-fledged citizen of the revolution, making all my own decisions.
I asked my mother if she remembered any of this, and she wasn’t sure, at 83 her memory is not as reliable as it was. But she nodded when I told her about it and did not seem surprised. Was I actually on the other side of the barricades with Eva when it happened, or was I with the group when she came back? Is this why the first thing my mother said when I asked her about Nixon’s inauguration was that she was trying to keep me safe? Is it the shock and fear of what happened to Eva or the actual moment of slashing that I remember? There is no fact checking possible for this one event, cocooned inside that cascade of violent events which defined the political landscape of my childhood. I know that when I was growing up, I felt anything but safe.
My own daughters are acutely aware of the rising violence against our fellow citizens, the incarceration rates that bear out the concept of the “New Jim Crow,” and the worldwide xenophobia and acts of terrorism against ordinary people in the time leading up to Trump’s inauguration. When we went to a family movie at a suburban multiplex this past Thanksgiving weekend, there was an announcement at the end of the previews on how to respond to an event that required emergency exits, and it didn’t seem like they were talking about a fire. I had never heard anything like that before.
The Berrigan brothers have passed away, and Manhattan looks even more gold-plated since the election. In Washington tomorrow, I’m sure they won’t let us get anywhere near the invited guests. Like my mother, I am afraid for my daughters and the future of American democracy. But if I did not in fact reach out my hand across the barricades last time, I am ready to do it this time. I don’t feel safe in this country but I will not believe in the razor. I must believe in the clasp of hands.
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A Charleston Bookseller Remembers Pat Conroy
Pat Conroy, the most famous Southern author of the last 50 years, died on March 4.
Where to begin? Pat was a liberal outsider from a military background, a non-outdoorsman who wrote haunting and beautiful prose about the Lowcountry landscape, a writer beloved equally by men and women, an athlete, a gourmand.
As the owner of a bookstore in downtown Charleston, S.C., I feel extremely lucky to have had four book releases with Pat in six years. He may have been a charming raconteur who wrote in longhand on legal pads, but he was also a go-getter. Pat was a military brat and a point guard at the Citadel, and his industrious spirit carried over into his career, where he touched just about every aspect of the publishing world.
Pat started out self-published. After graduating, he put out a collection of anecdotes about Lt. Col. Thomas Courvoisie, the Citadel’s well-known commandant of discipline. He drove around the South, selling copies of The Boo out of his trunk. “I was humiliated,” he said. “I must have been a ridiculous, loathsome figure. I couldn’t understand why they would not just take the book and sell it.”
I have to admit, if the next Pat Conroy walked in my door today, I don’t know if I would take his first book. We used to sell self-published books on consignment, but they became too challenging to track. (Pat once signed our first edition of The Boo—it later sold for $2,000.) When offered a $1,500 advance for his second book, The Water Is Wide, a memoir about teaching on Daufuskie Island that was eventually published in 1972, his first reaction was to turn it down, saying, “My last book cost me way less than that.”
Pat was a book-signing beast—not, however, a book-signing machine. He was almost too personal for his own good, moving the line slowly, and talking to everyone. When South of Broad came out in fall 2009, Pat was recovering from a stay in the ICU. For our event, on a cold rainy day in December, he arrived two hours early and signed stock, often interrupted by “close friends” who just had to say hello. At 1 p.m., Pat went out to an unheated wedding tent in the parking lot, where the official signing was to take place. He signed for seven hours. Some fans left crying, overcome, including those who waited till the bitter end. Pat then came back inside, signed more stock, and hit the two-lane road for Beaufort on a rainy night.
“That’s the second time this year I thought I was going to die,” Pat later said. We learned our lesson for future signings; we cordoned him off and guarded the door.
Pat was also a blurb dynamo. His legacy of helping other authors extends past his life: our store has two events this spring with books he touted. I know of one successful Southern author who solicited a blurb by offering sexual favors (in jest, we hope). He blurbed her anyway; their relationship remained platonic.
Pat was nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay for The Prince of Tides. Five movies were based on his books; Jon Voight and Nick Nolte were among the five actors who portrayed him. His backlist is still in print in hardback. The reprints are published by the Old New York Book Shop Press, a joint venture between him and Cliff Graubart, his old bookseller friend from Atlanta.
Pat’s writing was not for everyone. He’s been called wordy, and worse. His work was lyrical, but also at times dark, nontraditional, grotesque, and I don’t think people who don’t live in the South will ever really understand his full, complex appeal, or just how big he is here. He has a singular presence in the South. Southerners want The Water Is Wide—the original cover with the written transcript of Pat in the classroom—on the shelf next to their grandmother’s Gone with the Wind and their mother’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
At our last event with Pat, he gave a talk at a nearby venue, and afterward I led him through a back way to the bookstore. We turned a corner and came upon a groom’s party, standing on the sidewalk putting their tuxes on. They recognized him, he posed for pictures, and then I pulled him along as he wished the groom “great love.” Of several regrets I have about Pat, one is that I was always moving him along.
Pat was a giant, a deeply generous person in so many ways, and we will miss his great love.
Jonathan Sanchez is the owner of Blue Bicycle Books in Charleston, S.C., and the executive director of Yallfest, Charleston’s young adult book festival.
A version of this article appeared in the 03/21/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Remembering Pat Conroy
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Librarians Ponder the Future Under Trump
In his opening keynote at the 2017 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Atlanta, just hours after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, W. Kamau Bell made a plea to librarians: don’t let Trump’s vision of America become the new normal.
“Everything that's happening right now in America, you're on the front lines of that,” Bell, a popular comic, podcaster and television host, told a packed auditorium. “Now, more than ever you have the power to expand the idea of what America is. It is starting to contract, and we need to reopen by putting books in the hands of kids.”
Bell’s opening talk struck a chord with his audience, both funny and serious, and at times unflinching in its appraisal of America’s new president—at one point concluding that Trump is, without question, a racist. “I see people trying to make Trump normal, and a lot of smart people with all their faculties will actually say, ‘is he a racist? Is Donald Trump a racist?’” The answer—which some in the audience shouted out—is yes, Bell said.
“The reason he is president is because he built his career the last few years by being the number one voice for the birther movement,” he explained. “He decided he would go out there and lead the charge to question the legitimacy of the birth of Barack Obama.”
Bell clearly had many fans in attendance, and in a Q&A period librarians asked about his many roles, including his docu-series United Shades of America and his podcasts Politically Re-Active and Denzel Washington Is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period. And following his talk, he signed and gave away free copies of his forthcoming memoir and manifesto, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6’4”, African-American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Black, Proud, and Asthmatic Blerd, Mama’s Boy, B-Student, and Stand-Up Comedian (Dutton), which will be published in May.
Bell told librarians that it was now especially important for people make themselves visible in their communities.
“We have to see each other, we have to be here for each other, we have to honor each other. And the people in this room, librarians have to be actively expanding everyone's idea of what this country is supposed to be. As I said, you are on the front lines. You put books in people's hands, and you have to make sure that the books you put in people's hands are a wide array of ideas, and a wide array of authors, of diversity, of color, of sexuality, of gender orientation.”
Uncertainty
Indeed, as librarians gather in Atlanta, they do so under a cloud of uncertainty. On January 19,The Hill reported that Trump intends to "entirely" eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
As of Saturday (January 21), ALA officials had no official comment on any potential cuts, but sources told PW that funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which provides millions in grant support to libraries annually, was also under threat. In addition, under a new Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos (who is not yet confirmed) the future of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), an education bill that includes critical support for school libraries, and is set to be implemented for fall of 2017, is also up in the air. Trump is also reportedly set to tap Ajit Pai as his pick to lead the FCC. Pai is said to oppose net neutrality rules, which the library community supports.
At last June's ALA annual conference in Orlando, ALA celebrated the 50th anniversary of the NEH, with NEH chairman William D. Adams on hand to speak to the importance of the humanities within a healthy democracy.
“There is no democracy without the act of memory,” Adams told librarians adding that the “humanities and democracy are deeply and permanently intertwined in the history of the life of this country.” Adams further noted libraries were a major recipient of NEH support, with the nearly 3,400 library grants awarded over the last 50 years totaling $515 million, plus another 80 grants to the ALA, beginning in 1971, most recently funding the ALA’s Great Stories Club program, which provides access to books to at-risk and underserved youth.
Last year, The Great Stories Club put free copies of Congressman and Civil Rights leader John Lewis’s March in the hands of many young readers nationwide.
The 2017 ALA Midwinter Meeting runs through Tuesday, January 24. Among the major highlights to come, the coveted Youth Media Awards, which include the Newbery, Caldecott, Printz, and Coretta Scott King awards, will be announced on Monday morning.
And on Sunday, January 22, the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction, will be announced.
The 2016 nominees in fiction include Michael Chabon for Moonglow (Harper), Zadie Smith for Swing Time (Penguin Press), and Colson Whitehead for The Underground Railroad (Doubleday), which recently took home the National Book Award. For nonfiction, the finalists include Patricia Bell-Scott for The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (Knopf), Matthew Desmond for Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown), and Patrick Phillips for Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America (Norton).
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Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 380 | WritersDigest.com
For today’s prompt, write a nothing better poem. Now, there are at least a couple ways to take this, but probably more. First, the poem could be about a moment that’s so amazing that nothing could ever be better–kind of like a high moment poem. But taking the same prompt, someone could spin it the complete other way as a “nothing will ever be better again” poem.
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Revision doesn’t have to be a chore–something that should be done after the excitement of composing the first draft. Rather, it’s an extension of the creation process!
In the 48-minute tutorial video Re-creating Poetry: How to Revise Poems, poets will be inspired with several ways to re-create their poems with the help of seven revision filters that they can turn to again and again.
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Here’s my attempt at a Nothing Better poem:
“fried taters”
when i was small i had trouble
following what older folks said
sometimes thinking they meant one thing
when they meant something else instead
both potatoes and tomatoes
transformed to “taters” and “maters”
with some things “whatchamacallits”
grannie would remember later
but cloudy communication
never stopped me from having fun
whether catching fireflies at night
or running barefoot in the sun
there was nothing better to me
and there were no moments greater
than lounging with the older folks
and eating grandma’s fried taters.
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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53). He loves his grandma and her fried taters.
Follow him on Twitter @RobertLeeBrewer.
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About Robert Lee Brewer
Senior Content Editor, Writer's Digest Community.
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The Show House | Literary Hub
The following is from Dan Lopez’s novel, The Show House. Lopez's work has appeared in The Millions, Storychord, Time Out New York, and Lambda Literary, among others. The Show House is his first novel. He lives in Los Angeles.
Orlando feels like an extension of Apopka. Or maybe it’s the other way around. A mall looms in the distance, and before that a multiplex cradled by a handful of shops. But mostly the streets are wide and residential. If a difference exists between the neighboring cities at all it’s in the way faux-Spanish architecture dresses up the vernacular of simple mid-century bungalows in Orlando to a greater degree than it does in Apopka. Thaddeus is having a hard time navigating it. It’s been years since he’s been in the suburbs beyond downtown.
“Lot of new construction,” he says.
“Uh-huh,” Cheryl says. “You’re going to want to make a left at the light. It’s the one with the waterfall.”
He maneuvers into a turning lane, dutifully engages his directional signal and waits. Traffic roils from the horizon like salmon on run. In Apopka traffic’s not so bad, or maybe it is and he’s simply accustomed to it. (The streets by their house, at least, are familiar.) An oasis pools in the middle distance. A final car swims through a long yellow light then Thaddeus proceeds, on Cheryl’s direction, passing smoothly through a portal of blue tile and lacquered calligraphy spelling out the name Palm Falls West. At the end of a long drive flanked by hedges and iron lattices, stands a security kiosk. Unassuming white concrete that could just as easily be calcified runoff from the eponymous waterfall.
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“Gated community,” he whistles. “You didn’t tell me they lived in a gated community.”
“Yes I did.” She removes her sunglasses and places them in her purse. “All the new ones are gated.”
“I would’ve remembered something like that.”
“What do you want from me? I told you.”
The white gate opens before they reach the kiosk, but he stops the car and lowers his window anyway. “Good morning!”
A guard leans out of the kiosk. “You can go right on through, sir,” he says. His uniform appears freshly bleached, the epaulets newly stitched. Even bent over, the polyester holds its crease. He waves at Cheryl. “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Bloom.”
Cheryl returns the gesture. “Hello, Byron.” Her smile is bright, boarding on flirtatious, and Thaddeus wonders if he should be worried. He’ll have to look into that later, but right now there’s work to be done.
“We’re visiting my son Stevie and his partner for the week,” Thaddeus says. “Do you need me to sign anything?”
“No need, sir.” Byron smiles. “Mrs. Bloom is on the list. You can go right in.”
“I’ll sign whatever you need.”
“He said it’s fine,” Cheryl snipes, maintaining a pained smile.
“Just so everything’s on the up and up. I know how gated communities can be.”
“Thaddeus, let’s go.”
He relents, raising his hands in surrender. “Hey, man, okay. She’s the boss. I just do what she tells me to.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep up the good work, huh?”
“Yes, sir. Have a nice visit.”
Thaddeus reaches for his wallet but Cheryl stays his hand, and gives the guard a quick wave. “Thank you, Byron. Thaddeus, drive.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
The immediate interior of the complex houses a cabana and a modest pool. From there the layout quickly segues into a series of winding lanes and sidewalks. Some end in culs-de-sac; others skirt roundabouts and branch off into labyrinthine blocks with plenty of meandering green space. The homes are all two-story, off-white units with trim in peach, sea foam, or light gray. A few look freshly painted, others recently pressure-washed. A traffic sign reminds motorists to be vigilant of children at play. The overall impression is of something clean and new. “Some place,” he says.
Just being here seems to have elevated Cheryl’s mood. As soon as they turn the corner—or rather slalom along a lazy curve—she spots the house and taps him on the arm, pointing it out. He’s happy for the contact even if it’s fleeting. “Here we are! Just pull into the driveway.”
Uniform rows of violet and white perennials adorn the bottom of the house. Pagoda lights trim the front walkway, and stacked river rocks create a neutral border between the saturated green of the grass and the robust brown of the wood chips piled high throughout the flowerbeds. A juvenile oak sprouts from the center of the lawn.
“Some yard. Must be making the gardener rich.”
“Oh, the homeowner’s association probably takes care of it.” She utters out of the car.
“Homeowners, huh?”
He shifts the car into park and steps out with a wince. These days driving always puts a crick in his knee and sleeping outside last night didn’t do him any favors. He bends the knee until the pain recedes then hobbles around the driveway.
She extracts a handful of letters from the mailbox. “Peter’s still at work, but Steven said to just let ourselves in.” She hands him the mail to hold while she goes around the side of the house. Lazily, he flips through the stack. A few bills and a catalogue from a furniture store he doesn’t recognize, that’s pretty much it.
“Stevie’s not here?”
“He’s at the real estate office all day then doing his volunteering. I told you all this already.”
“Oh.”
“He’ll be home later—” then speaking to herself— “There’s a key hidden over here somewhere.”
After getting the bags from the trunk, he wanders over the lawn. It’s softer than what they have in Apopka, which is stubby, coarse and often yellow in the winter. This grass, by contrast, is almost blue.
“Some lawn,” he mumbles.
Cheryl returns, holding up a key and smiling. “Found it!” She kisses him on the cheek. “Come on. Quit staring at the lawn and grab the suitcases. I have to disarm the alarm and I never remember the code. Oh, I’m so excited!”
“Oh—” the kiss still warm on his cheek—“I’ll come alright!”
Palm trees line the deck of Stevie’s house, barks painted white against insects. Cheryl is upstairs while he paces aimlessly, dusk can be the loneliest time of day. She’d grabbed him as soon as he dropped their bags in the guest room, needing him for the first time in months. “Do you want anything special?” he’d asked, unsure how to proceed after such a long absence. She deigned to answer, leaving little for him to go on but a cryptic shrug. He didn’t press her further; instead, he improvised, and they had a magnificent time.
And now he finds himself drunk on it still, stumbling around Stevie’s backyard, letting the décor wash over him and already missing the warmth of her skin, the scent of heat in her hair. Her smooth back has maintained it’s perfect line through the years—a sculpture that never tires of posing. She even kissed him before dropping her head dreamily onto a fresh white pillowcase that still retained a vague latticework of creases from the linen closet. “They’ll be home soon,” she said. “And I still need to get dressed.” She suggested he get some air, her voice tinged by that familiar indifference. But she must have noticed it sneaking back in, because she kissed him again and softly added that she was feeling tired and might take a nap.
“Whatever you want,” he’d said, afraid of ruining the moment, and he repeats it now to himself as he circles the pool, which is better than theirs in every way: the still surface reflects the window to the guest room where Cheryl keeps her own counsel, the adjoining hot tub mocks him with its effortless warmth. There’s a gas barbeque, too. He twists the knobs and tests the starter before shutting off the valve and opening the hood. Drops of charred fat speckle the burners, but the grill sparkles silver, clean—of course. “Whatever you want.”
The labored whine of the garage door opening calls him inside.
It can only mean one thing. In a moment, his idle curiosity about how his son’s family lives evaporates. There’s no need to wonder, he thinks as he scrambles across the deck and into the house, because he’s about to find out.
Inside, he pauses at the landing long enough to call up to Cheryl. “They’re home,” he shouts, but he doesn’t stop to wait for her. Rushing on he stumbles over a leather ottoman. Catching himself, he calls again: “Cheryl, Gertie and Stevie are here!” As he says it, he can’t believe it. His voice shakes with anticipation, and, maybe, even fear. Stevie is about to walk through the door. After three years, he’s about to walk through that door, and all will be forgiven.
He zips past the dining room and through the laundry room. One and a half inches of beveled, stained oak is all that separates him from absolution. Tonight will go well. Tomorrow will be a breeze. Smiling, arms outstretched, he prepares to embrace his son, the past forgotten, and to greet his granddaughter. He’s seconds away now; he can hear a key scratching at the deadbolt from the other side, a muffled curse accompanying it. Impatiently, he turns the lock himself before throwing open the door.
But instead of Stevie with Gertie in his arms, he finds Peter weighed down with groceries. Disappointment at not finding his son momentarily blinds him to Gertie’s presence, but there she is, too. Little Gertie. Hurdy-Gertie. The girl he only recognizes from photographs. Her legs splay across Peter’s midsection. Her straight black hair hangs down like streamers from his arm. She bears little resemblance to the girl in the photos, however. She’s so much bigger for one thing, and asleep it’s hard to find the same animated features. The fact of her race remains absolutely clear, however. There’s no mistaking that she’s adopted, yet the closer Thaddeus looks the more he senses something vaguely familiar in her face, maybe somewhere around the hairline, and for a moment he entertains the notion that Stevie, Peter and Cheryl have colluded in a lie about her adoption in hopes of keeping him away for these past three years, but it seems too outlandish even for Stevie so he dismisses the thought and just like that it’s gone entirely, as if he’d never even thought it.
They must’ve exchanged greetings because Thaddeus feels words form in his mouth. From the end of a long velvet tunnel all Thaddeus hears is a deafening din until Peter asks a question that pulls him back into synch with the world around him. “Can you hold her?” Bogged down with grocery sacks and with Gertie, he can hardly move. Thaddeus manages a nod and holds out his hands. To think that last night he was just some old man beside a pool and now, less than twenty-four hours later, he’s not only meeting his granddaughter but being given the opportunity to hold her. His eyes mist.
Peter slips her into his outstretched arms. “Say hi to your grandpa, Baby.” And that’s as much ceremony as he puts into the exchange. Gertie continues to sleep uninterrupted.
“It’s okay. Don’t wake her,” Thaddeus whispers. “She’s probably had a big day.”
“Careful. She’s heavier than she looks.”
“She’s not heavy. She’s my brother.”
Peter shoots him an odd look, which Thaddeus hardly notices.
“Just an old Hollies tune.”
How many nights beside the pool have been spent imaging this first meeting, rehearsing scores of scenarios? He had so many reservations, so many fears. What if he wasn’t cut out to be a grandpa? What if he dropped her? Would he even be able to love an adopted granddaughter? And now she slumbers in his arms, bigger than he could even imagine, a real person, but still tiny and vulnerable in every way. He could’ve saved himself the worry, he thinks. He’s a natural.
“It’s good to see you, Thaddeus.” Peter leads the way to the kitchen. “It’s been too long.”
“Three years.”
He stacks canned goods on the granite counter and slips a slab of something wrapped in pink butcher paper into the open refrigerator. For a while they don’t say anything else.
“Anyway, water under the bridge,” Thaddeus says, at last. “You look different.”
Peter folds the empty grocery sacks into a drawer. He looks down at himself and grins. “I can’t tell if that’s a compliment.”
In three years Peter’s look has changed completely. The wild dark dreads he wore in the past have been replaced by his natural shade of russet blond, trimmed close to the scalp and revealing a rather severe widow’s peak. In place of the grimy yellow glasses, which were always far too big for his small face, he’s substituted a stylish pair of wire frames. The clothes mark the biggest change. Peter used to wear lots of things with safety pins and ironed on badges, a style far too youthful for him even five years ago when he and Stevie first started seeing each other. Now his patterned, understated button-up neatly tucks into a pair of pressed tan slacks. No more black boots, either. Those he replaced with soft leather boat shoes.
“A compliment,” Thaddeus says. “You look good.”
Peter smiles. “I guess I grew up, huh? Who would’ve thought?” Gertie squirms. Whimpering, she pushes against Thaddeus’ shoulder. “Uh-oh, what’s the matter, Beautiful, don’t you like your grandpa?”
“No, she loves her grandpa.” But Peter scoops her out of his arms all the same. Cooing, he kisses her on the head and she calms down. “She’s probably just having a bad dream. She gets them sometimes. Steven thinks she’s reliving something from the orphanage, but I think it’s just something she ate. It’s okay, Gertie, Daddy’s here. Shh.”
“Will you look at that….”
A new serenity washes over him seeing Peter with Gertie. He’s here now, in this house, with his family. A moment ago he held his granddaughter and later he’ll get to hold her again, and then maybe in a week Peter, Stevie and Gertie will be at his house and they’ll all enjoy the pool together. Maybe they’ll even visit Disney World together, as a family. Cheryl will be kinder to him now. They can finally put the past behind them. For the first time in three years Thaddeus can envision a happy future.
Then Gertie screams so loudly she startles him.
She transforms into a dynamo of sleeping rage. Her fists pound into Peter’s shoulder and her feet slam into his hip. She wails. Thaddeus scrambles toward her. “What’s wrong!”
“It’s just a dream.” Calmly, Peter rocks her. “It’ll pass. We just have to stay calm.”
The staircase rattles in the adjacent room as Cheryl comes rushing down. “Wait!” she shouts. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m coming!”
Her cries further agitate Gertie, who redoubles her tantrum, but Peter is able to wake her and as soon as he does she stops screaming. Hey eyes immediately rest on Thaddeus and at first she seems startled by this stranger and her mood threatens to spill over into anger again, but Peter kisses her cheek and tells her it’s okay. “Say hi to your grandpa, Sweetie.” Thaddeus playfully sticks out his tongue and makes a trumpet of his thumb pressed to the tip of his nose. Though she remains suspicious, she lets slip a hesitant grin that soon blossoms into a gregarious smile.
“Ha!” His granddaughter just smiled at him for the first time!
Cheryl charges into the kitchen, a stricken look on her face, but she stops short when she sees them all huddled by the breakfast bar. “Peter?” She grabs her chest and exhales. “What a relief. When I heard screaming I thought it was Steven—” she crosses Thaddeus with a withering gaze. “I thought something happened.”
“We’re fine,” Thaddeus says.
“Just a bad dream is all,” Peter adds. Gertie sucks her thumb, her gaze shifting back and forth between Thaddeus and Cheryl, a stranger and a friend. She’s done crying, for the moment at least, and Thaddeus decides it’s a good sign.
“What a relief,” Cheryl says. Turning to Gertie, she pouts and slips into baby talk. “Your grandma just got worked up over nothing.”
Gertie squirms, wanting out of her father’s arms. He sets her on the floor then takes a seat at the breakfast bar. “It’s okay. We’re used to drama around here.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Thaddeus reiterates. “We’re all fine.” Then to Cheryl, he says, “Stevie isn’t here yet.”
“Wait,” Peter says. “What do you mean Steven isn’t here?”
From . Used with permission of Unnamed Press. Copyright © 2017 by Dan Lopez.
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How the Book Coverage Sausage Gets Made
They say you don’t want to know how sausage is made. Book coverage is like sausage in that way: better not to know exactly how the gatekeepers of mainstream media choose which books to crown as must-reads each season—just swallow it down with a cold beer and call it a night.
But if you’re a debut novelist who’s covered books for a glossy media outlet, you already know. You understand how subjective it can be. You’ve seen with your own eyes how many galleys pile up in the office each month and how many, in spite of their merit, just don’t make the final cut, sometimes due to nothing more than a lack of page space. So what then?
Honestly, I’m still trying to get my mind around it. But one piece of advice I’d like to offer my fellow writers is not to let it get you down. The fact that there are still mainstream print media outlets willing to devote precious pages to book coverage at all is a triumph we should all be celebrating. And some major brands (Cosmo, for one) have even been doubling down on their devotion to books. So let’s all remember to give thanks.
Secondly, try to remember that though we’re writers—and writers are supposed to be artists, and books are supposed to be art, and, sure, we can pontificate about craft all evening long—what a magazine editor has to do is convince readers (who most likely read at best around five books a year) that your book is the one to pick up and spend money on and read in its entirety, even if it means putting the phone down to do so.
I once came across an interview with the author Amy Hempel in which she was asked to relate one piece of advice that she gives to her creative writing students. She replied with a question they should keep in mind: “ ‘Why are you telling me this?’ Someone out there will be asking, and you better have a very compelling answer. Is this essential? Is this something only you can say—or only you can say it this way? Is this going to make anyone’s life better, or make anyone’s day better? And I don’t mean the writer’s day.”
I’ve kept a printout of this quotation taped to my bedroom wall for years, and I think any writer looking to compose a novel that will attract the attention of book reviewers and editors would be wise to do the same.
I also try to remind myself that even though the list of books that garner the most buzz each season can feel arbitrary or even disheartening, I do believe the cream rises to the top. The best books are the ones people (real people!) hand off to their friends, their siblings, their parents and say, “You’ve got to read this.” Word of mouth will trump media attention every time. (Unless you’re a celebrity, in which case you’re guaranteed people will buy your book only to say they hated it, but you still win.)
And finally, one last important thing I’ve learned is that covers do matter. People do judge books by their covers, and the magazine editors deciding whether to include your book on their pages are working in a visual medium. So if you’re less than thrilled by the cover your publisher proposes, don’t be afraid to ask for an alternate version. Odds are that they want you to be happy with the final product, anyway.
Oh yeah, and one more thing: enjoy it all. Forget the press.
Camille Perri’s debut novel, The Assistants, will be published by Putnam in May. Perri was books-editor-at-large for Cosmpolitan and has previously been the assistant editor and books consultant at Esquire, a ghostwriter of young adult novels, and a fiction reader for the Paris Review.
A version of this article appeared in the 03/28/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: So You’ve Published Your First Book
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GIVEAWAY: Win the Christian Writer’s Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style or the Associated Press Stylebook are must-have resources for many writers and editors. But if you write or reference religious texts and/or subjects, Chicago and AP will only get you so far.
What’s the difference between “abiblical” and “unbiblical?” Should “gospel” be capitalized? What about “canon?” And what does “Teavangelical” even mean? The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style aims to answer all of these questions and more.
Fill out the form below to enter to win a copy of this handbook. Readers have until 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, January 19th to win.
This giveaway is now closed. We thank you for your interest.
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January 21, 2017
This Week’s Bestsellers: January 23, 2017
Split Decision
In the second week of 2017, the book-buying public’s attention was divided among a variety of titles: a 2013 Swedish feel-good novel about a lovable neighborhood curmudgeon, a collection of verse by a popular Instagram poet, a faith-based exploration of overcoming rejection, and two books by TV personalities aimed at the health and weight conscious.
Movers & Shakers
The Hidden Life of Trees returns to our hardcover nonfiction list at #12, after a nine-week hiatus. Positive holiday media coverage had prompted Greystone Books to print an additional 20K copies for the U.S. market in January.
Other titles got that big boosts last week include Postcards from the Edge and Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher; Simon & Schuster went back to print on several of Fisher’s titles to meet the demand after her death on December 27. The 1998 trade paper edition of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s novel of a near-future theocratic U.S. that subjugates women, is seeing strong sales in advance of the TV series debuting on Hulu in April. And Claudia Rankine’s much-lauded 2014 collection of prose and verse, Citizen, is seeing renewed interest; our starred prepub review called it a “trenchant new work about racism in the 21st century.”
Movie Watch
The tie-in to the Martin Scorsese–directed Silence, based on the 1969 book by Shusaku Endo, debuts at #19 on our trade paperback list; Scorsese, who had been developing the film project for more than 25 years, contributes the foreword. The movie, which follows Jesuit missionaries in 17th-century Japan, opened in limited release December 23 and expanded to additional theaters January 13. When Endo died in 1996, the New York Times quoted John Updike calling the novel “somber, delicate and startlingly empathetic.”
New & Notable
Three Days in January
Bret Baier
#3 Hardcover Nonfiction, #7 overall
The Fox News chief political anchor examines the final days of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency, leading up to John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.
Windwitch (Witchlands #2)
Susan Dennard
#14 Children’s Frontlist Fiction
Our starred review praised the first book in this series, 2016’s Truthwitch, for its “rich descriptions, insightful characterizations, and breathtaking action sequences.”
Top 10 Overall
Rank
Title
Author
Imprint
Units
1
The Lose Your Belly Diet
Travis Stork
Ghost Mountain
23,763
2
Hidden Figures (movie tie-in)
Margot Lee Shetterly
Morrow
23,384
3
A Dog’s Purpose (movie tie-in)
W. Bruce Cameron
Forge
21,554
4
A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman
Washington Square
21,360
5
Food, Health, and Happiness
Oprah Winfrey
Flatiron
21,136
6
Milk and Honey
Rupi Kaur
Andrews McMeel
20,114
7
Three Days in January
Bret Baier
Morrow
18,937
8
Hillbilly Elegy
J.D. Vance
Harper
18,500
9
Double Down (Wimpy Kid #11)
Jeff Kinney
Amulet
18,222
10
The Mistress
Danielle Steel
Delacorte
17,640
All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.
A version of this article appeared in the 01/23/2017 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: PW Bestsellers
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Weekly Round-Up: Characters and Collections
Every week our editors publish somewhere between 10 and 15 blog posts—but it can be hard to keep up amidst the busyness of everyday life. To make sure you never miss another post, we’ve created a new weekly round-up series. Each Saturday, find the previous week’s posts all in one place.
Crafting Your Character
The reign of the Raymond Chandler-esque, male heroic detective is over; your detective can break Chandler’s guidelines in any number of ways. If you want to write crime fiction with a female protagonist, this is what you need to know.
When creating characters with life experiences that differ vastly from your own, you do your research. When your character is a psychopath, Peter James’s top five tips for getting into the mind of a psychopath will help you learn the best ways to research the disorder.
One of the most difficult characters to define? Our own. Read When Can You Call Yourself a “Real” Writer?—especially if you’ve every fallen prey to imposter syndrome.
Agents and Opportunities
Meet the Agent: Helen Adams of Zimmerman Literary is seeking nonfiction on the topics of wellness, relationships, popular culture, women’s issues, and music, as well as memoirs and reading group fiction.
You may have heard the term “literary scout” recently as an option for getting your manuscript to the publishers. Learn all about what literary scouts do, how they differ from agents, and what they could mean for you here.
Poetic Asides
For this week’s Wednesday Poetry Prompt, write a “nothing better” poem. Then challenge yourself by trying out our first poetic form of 2017: the ottava rima.
This week’s Poetry Spotlight shines on the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. Learn all about the poetry-related activities that this non-profit organizes.
If you’ve written a lot of poems, you may be wondering how other poets go about organizing them into collections. Read Collecting Poems into a Book: 5 Poets Share Their Method for some insight.
You might also like:
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