Thomas Mullen's Blog, page 3
June 7, 2011
Writing Anniversary #6
Early June and it's already a million degrees here in the ATL. Hot, yes, but I'm not going to complain: I was up in my old stomping grounds of Boston a couple of weeks ago, seeing my first game at Fenway Park in ELEVEN YEARS (I used to go a dozen times a summer), and it was 50 degrees and heavily misting. So, given that choice, bring the heat.
I think of early summer as my writer's anniversary. It was this time six years ago that my awesome agent, Susan Golomb, sold my first novel to Random House. A crazy week, actually, because that sale happened within 24 hours of DreamWorks buying the movie rights. True, the movie never happened (or, it hasn't happened yet), but it was still a damn good week. (It's not every day you're told that an agent has pitched your book to Steven Spielberg over brunch, especially when you're a guy with an Indiana Jones poster in his office.)
Six years has been a good run. I've finished three novels -- the third of which, The Revisionists, comes out in September -- as well as a few hundred pages of what should be my fourth. Sundry other projects have come and gone, some of them stalled, some of them abandoned and burned, some of them merely on hold, and some of them moving at the speed of light. Oh, and I've helped raise two little boys, too -- a not insignificant fact. And stayed sane! And brushed and flossed, and relocated to Atlanta, and watched the Red Sox win another World Series. A lot's happened since June of 2005. Here's hoping for more good things in the years ahead.
I've been knee-deep in research for my new book for a while now, but I'm finally emerging from that, reading books for pleasure again as opposed to for work . (Currently reading A Visit from the Goon Squad, a book that has reassuringly little to do with my own current project.) So I plan to spend more time on this blog and other online pursuits, and will also be adding some essays to the mulhollandbooks.com site. So, sorry to be a bad blogger lately, but stay tuned...
Go To Post
I think of early summer as my writer's anniversary. It was this time six years ago that my awesome agent, Susan Golomb, sold my first novel to Random House. A crazy week, actually, because that sale happened within 24 hours of DreamWorks buying the movie rights. True, the movie never happened (or, it hasn't happened yet), but it was still a damn good week. (It's not every day you're told that an agent has pitched your book to Steven Spielberg over brunch, especially when you're a guy with an Indiana Jones poster in his office.)
Six years has been a good run. I've finished three novels -- the third of which, The Revisionists, comes out in September -- as well as a few hundred pages of what should be my fourth. Sundry other projects have come and gone, some of them stalled, some of them abandoned and burned, some of them merely on hold, and some of them moving at the speed of light. Oh, and I've helped raise two little boys, too -- a not insignificant fact. And stayed sane! And brushed and flossed, and relocated to Atlanta, and watched the Red Sox win another World Series. A lot's happened since June of 2005. Here's hoping for more good things in the years ahead.
I've been knee-deep in research for my new book for a while now, but I'm finally emerging from that, reading books for pleasure again as opposed to for work . (Currently reading A Visit from the Goon Squad, a book that has reassuringly little to do with my own current project.) So I plan to spend more time on this blog and other online pursuits, and will also be adding some essays to the mulhollandbooks.com site. So, sorry to be a bad blogger lately, but stay tuned...
Go To Post
Writing Anniversay #6
Early June and it's already a million degrees here in the ATL. Hot, yes, but I'm not going to complain: I was up in my old stomping grounds of Boston a couple of weeks ago, seeing my first game at Fenway Park in ELEVEN YEARS (I used to go a dozen times a summer), and it was 50 degrees and heavily misting. So, given that choice, bring the heat.
I think of early summer as my writer's anniversary. It was this time six years ago that my awesome agent, Susan Golomb, sold my first novel to Random House. A crazy week, actually, because that sale happened within 24 hours of DreamWorks buying the movie rights. True, the movie never happened (or, it hasn't happened yet), but it was still a damn good week. (It's not every day you're told that an agent has pitched your book to Steven Spielberg over brunch, especially when you're a guy with an Indiana Jones poster in his office.)
Six years has been a good run. I've finished three novels -- the third of which, The Revisionists, comes out in September -- as well as a few hundred pages of what should be my fourth. Sundry other projects have come and gone, some of them stalled, some of them abandoned and burned, some of them merely on hold, and some of them moving at the speed of light. Oh, and I've helped raise two little boys, too -- a not insignificant fact. And stayed sane! And brushed and flossed, and relocated to Atlanta, and watched the Red Sox win another World Series. A lot's happened since June of 2005. Here's hoping for more good things in the years ahead.
I've been knee-deep in research for my new book for a while now, but I'm finally emerging from that, reading books for pleasure again as opposed to for work . (Currently reading A Visit from the Goon Squad, a book that has reassuringly little to do with my own current project.) So I plan to spend more time on this blog and other online pursuits, and will also be adding some essays to the mulhollandbooks.com site. So, sorry to be a bad blogger lately, but stay tuned...
Go To Post
I think of early summer as my writer's anniversary. It was this time six years ago that my awesome agent, Susan Golomb, sold my first novel to Random House. A crazy week, actually, because that sale happened within 24 hours of DreamWorks buying the movie rights. True, the movie never happened (or, it hasn't happened yet), but it was still a damn good week. (It's not every day you're told that an agent has pitched your book to Steven Spielberg over brunch, especially when you're a guy with an Indiana Jones poster in his office.)
Six years has been a good run. I've finished three novels -- the third of which, The Revisionists, comes out in September -- as well as a few hundred pages of what should be my fourth. Sundry other projects have come and gone, some of them stalled, some of them abandoned and burned, some of them merely on hold, and some of them moving at the speed of light. Oh, and I've helped raise two little boys, too -- a not insignificant fact. And stayed sane! And brushed and flossed, and relocated to Atlanta, and watched the Red Sox win another World Series. A lot's happened since June of 2005. Here's hoping for more good things in the years ahead.
I've been knee-deep in research for my new book for a while now, but I'm finally emerging from that, reading books for pleasure again as opposed to for work . (Currently reading A Visit from the Goon Squad, a book that has reassuringly little to do with my own current project.) So I plan to spend more time on this blog and other online pursuits, and will also be adding some essays to the mulhollandbooks.com site. So, sorry to be a bad blogger lately, but stay tuned...
Go To Post
May 26, 2011
Read The First Chapter of My New Book, and Maybe Win a Free Copy!
I woke up this morning to discover that my new publisher, Little Brown's Mulholland Books, has posted the first chapter of my forthcoming novel, The Revisionists on its Web site!. The first 20 people to post a comment will get a free galley mailed to them!
(For those not hip to industry speak, "galley" is the paperbackish advance copy that publishers produce a few months before the book comes out, to send to book reviewers and tastemasters and whatnot. So, it's your chance to become a tastemaster!)
The book will be published in hardcover (and e-book and all that craziness) in September, but here's your chance to read the first chapter online -- and maybe receive the whole shebang in the mail!
This week all of the New York publishing industry is at Book Expo America, the annual and insanely overcrowded book powow. (I went once and was scarred for life. Almost run over by a crowd of people rushing to get Bill Bryson's autograph.) It's when all the publishers start making noise for their fall books, so it's great to hear the noise for The Revisionists! Things are much quieter here in hot, sleepy Atlanta. Going to go pour my next cup of iced coffee and get to work on Book #4!
Go To Post
(For those not hip to industry speak, "galley" is the paperbackish advance copy that publishers produce a few months before the book comes out, to send to book reviewers and tastemasters and whatnot. So, it's your chance to become a tastemaster!)
The book will be published in hardcover (and e-book and all that craziness) in September, but here's your chance to read the first chapter online -- and maybe receive the whole shebang in the mail!
This week all of the New York publishing industry is at Book Expo America, the annual and insanely overcrowded book powow. (I went once and was scarred for life. Almost run over by a crowd of people rushing to get Bill Bryson's autograph.) It's when all the publishers start making noise for their fall books, so it's great to hear the noise for The Revisionists! Things are much quieter here in hot, sleepy Atlanta. Going to go pour my next cup of iced coffee and get to work on Book #4!
Go To Post
February 23, 2011
Writers Without Borders
The news that Borders is bankrupt and may soon completely vanish wasn't surprising--they've been slowly dying for a while now--but it's still depressing. A lot of bookstores will close, a lot of booksellers will be out of job, and a lot of publishers are wondering how exactly to promote their books.
I do empathize with the indie argument, that chain bookstores are soulless corporate behemoths that drive mom-and-pop's out of business, and as a result of that I haven't shopped much at a Borders in many years.
But I do have two good memories of the place. A few years ago, in the run-up to the publication of my first novel, Random House sent me along with their marketing director to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to have dinner with some people from Borders' corporate headquarters. You'll be surprised and relieved to hear that they did not have cloven hoofs or tails. They were all great people, book people, who talked excitedly about the new E.L. Doctorow novel and debated the merits of different new writers. Maybe they too would have liked to work for an indie store, but Borders was where they wound up, and they had cool jobs, selling books and promoting reading to the wider world. Folks like them may soon be unemployed, and there will be acres of empty bookshelves in stores soon.
After college, my first job was at a terrible consulting firm in downtown Boston. Hated every minute of it. The best thing about it was its location; it was directly across the street from the biggest Borders I'd ever seen (and honestly, even now, after seeing Borders in dozens of states, I still think that was the biggest. Or maybe it only seemed that way, since I was 21, and mega-bookstores were still a newish thing in the mid-1990s). I so loathed my job that I always made sure I took my full 60-minute break, sometimes walking through the Common, sometimes shopping at Filene's Basement, or heading to Chinatown for lunch, or just wandering the streets. I spent many an hour inside that Borders. Sometimes I would find on the shelves a copy of the same book I was in the middle of, and take it to a comfy chair and pick up where I'd left off. (This strategy helped me read Infinite Jest in a mere four weeks!) And I bought some of my favorite books there, including Corelli's Mandolin, which, now that I think of it, I should totally reread, and soon. My then-girlfriend (now wife) and I wandered the stacks a few times, after walking through the city or seeing a movie or having lunch.
And on a few particularly bleak days (there are a lot of such days in Boston in the winter), I remember going to the Children's Section, which had cool outer-space themed carpeting and stars painted on the ceiling, and sat down to read a few Dr. Seuss books, just to escape, just to set the imagination racing once more.
So, yeah, it was a chain, and my 22-year-old self didn't yet realize that I was spending my dollars at a corporation that was quashing indie competitors. But it also did a lot of good, and soon it'll be gone.
INSIDE PUBLISHING SIDENOTE: The top 2 ways in which publishers publicize their books (at least in my experience) is by trying to get them reviewed in the major newspapers and magazines, and paying to get them on the front tables of the big chain bookstores. But we now live in a world in which people don't much read the newspapers (which have been cutting down on their book sections anyway--here in Atlanta, the AJC gives books one page a week!). And we're also in a world where bookstores are disappearing, so the number of front-of-store tables to put your books on is shrinking. This is the $54 million question: How do you publicize and promote books in a world without newspapers or bookstores?
I know, I know. Blogs, social media, Net advertising, etc etc. Hopefully they truly are the answer. We shall see...
Go To Post
I do empathize with the indie argument, that chain bookstores are soulless corporate behemoths that drive mom-and-pop's out of business, and as a result of that I haven't shopped much at a Borders in many years.
But I do have two good memories of the place. A few years ago, in the run-up to the publication of my first novel, Random House sent me along with their marketing director to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to have dinner with some people from Borders' corporate headquarters. You'll be surprised and relieved to hear that they did not have cloven hoofs or tails. They were all great people, book people, who talked excitedly about the new E.L. Doctorow novel and debated the merits of different new writers. Maybe they too would have liked to work for an indie store, but Borders was where they wound up, and they had cool jobs, selling books and promoting reading to the wider world. Folks like them may soon be unemployed, and there will be acres of empty bookshelves in stores soon.
After college, my first job was at a terrible consulting firm in downtown Boston. Hated every minute of it. The best thing about it was its location; it was directly across the street from the biggest Borders I'd ever seen (and honestly, even now, after seeing Borders in dozens of states, I still think that was the biggest. Or maybe it only seemed that way, since I was 21, and mega-bookstores were still a newish thing in the mid-1990s). I so loathed my job that I always made sure I took my full 60-minute break, sometimes walking through the Common, sometimes shopping at Filene's Basement, or heading to Chinatown for lunch, or just wandering the streets. I spent many an hour inside that Borders. Sometimes I would find on the shelves a copy of the same book I was in the middle of, and take it to a comfy chair and pick up where I'd left off. (This strategy helped me read Infinite Jest in a mere four weeks!) And I bought some of my favorite books there, including Corelli's Mandolin, which, now that I think of it, I should totally reread, and soon. My then-girlfriend (now wife) and I wandered the stacks a few times, after walking through the city or seeing a movie or having lunch.
And on a few particularly bleak days (there are a lot of such days in Boston in the winter), I remember going to the Children's Section, which had cool outer-space themed carpeting and stars painted on the ceiling, and sat down to read a few Dr. Seuss books, just to escape, just to set the imagination racing once more.
So, yeah, it was a chain, and my 22-year-old self didn't yet realize that I was spending my dollars at a corporation that was quashing indie competitors. But it also did a lot of good, and soon it'll be gone.
INSIDE PUBLISHING SIDENOTE: The top 2 ways in which publishers publicize their books (at least in my experience) is by trying to get them reviewed in the major newspapers and magazines, and paying to get them on the front tables of the big chain bookstores. But we now live in a world in which people don't much read the newspapers (which have been cutting down on their book sections anyway--here in Atlanta, the AJC gives books one page a week!). And we're also in a world where bookstores are disappearing, so the number of front-of-store tables to put your books on is shrinking. This is the $54 million question: How do you publicize and promote books in a world without newspapers or bookstores?
I know, I know. Blogs, social media, Net advertising, etc etc. Hopefully they truly are the answer. We shall see...
Go To Post
February 8, 2011
Romanticizing Outlaws, Publishing Paperbacks
In celebration of today's paperback publication of The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, I have a new essay on the home page of the amazing Mulholland Books. The essay tackles the question of whether writing about criminals romanticizes them, looking at some recent novels and classic movies as examples.
(Mulholland Books is the new imprint of Little, Brown, that will be reinventing genres and breathing new life into tales of suspense -- and they'll also be publishing my third novel, a dystopian future/post-9/11 spy story, called The Revisionists, in September.)
HELPFUL INTERNET SHOPPING NOTE: not that I promote one bookseller over another, but if you're trying to buy the paperback on Amazon and having trouble finding it, but instead keep seeing a used copy of the British paperback edition, that's due to a weird glitch that the Amazonians swear to me will be fixed in 2-4 business days. In the meantime, to see the Amazon page where you can actually buy the real, new, U.S. paperback, which features words like "labor" instead of "labour" and which uses " and " as quotation marks instead of ' and ', and which has a cooler cover, click here.
Or visit your favorite neighborhood bookstore, which, at last check, does still exist.
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(Mulholland Books is the new imprint of Little, Brown, that will be reinventing genres and breathing new life into tales of suspense -- and they'll also be publishing my third novel, a dystopian future/post-9/11 spy story, called The Revisionists, in September.)
HELPFUL INTERNET SHOPPING NOTE: not that I promote one bookseller over another, but if you're trying to buy the paperback on Amazon and having trouble finding it, but instead keep seeing a used copy of the British paperback edition, that's due to a weird glitch that the Amazonians swear to me will be fixed in 2-4 business days. In the meantime, to see the Amazon page where you can actually buy the real, new, U.S. paperback, which features words like "labor" instead of "labour" and which uses " and " as quotation marks instead of ' and ', and which has a cooler cover, click here.
Or visit your favorite neighborhood bookstore, which, at last check, does still exist.
Go To Post
February 7, 2011
Firefly Brothers now on sale in paperback
Tomorrow, Tuesday, February 8, is the paperback release for The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers! The paperback bears an amazing resemblance to the hardcover, with the same design and very, very many of the same words. Yet it's smaller, cheaper, and fits in luggage a little bit easier.
No word yet on when illuminated manuscript, graphic novel, video game, or projected-image versions will be available.
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No word yet on when illuminated manuscript, graphic novel, video game, or projected-image versions will be available.
Go To Post
January 31, 2011
Barometric Pressure and the Creative Mind
It was a spectacular weekend here in the Peach State, sunny and mid-60s on Saturday and Sunday. My wife and I took the kids to Piedmont Park, the Botanical Gardens, and two playgrounds. Not bad for late January. Less than three years after moving from Washington, DC, I am officially digging the southern weather.
And today (Monday) it's raining, and the weatherman says to expect more rain for tomorrow. Sigh.
The weird thing is, I've noticed that I write better on beautiful days. Which is kind of counterintuitive. One would think that, because I work from home and have a good amount of freedom in how I plan my day, those 70-degree days would be too tempting for me to get any work done. "Hmm, maybe I should go for a bike ride, or sit outside and read, or wander around town or something." But instead I pretty much stay at my desk, type a way, and get more done on those days than on the bleak ones.
In fact, last fall, which was unbelievably beautiful and sunny and dry and decorated with perfect foliage for weeks, I promised myself I would take a day off and climb Stone Mountain as a reward for finishing a draft of my new book. Yet I somehow never got around to it, always putting it off so I could work on that short story, or read that book as research for my next project, or unearth that old manuscript and see if there was anything to salvage, etc. And then suddenly it was winter.
After three books, I've also noticed that I tend to write the most in the spring and summer and early fall, which is exactly when the outdoors beckons the strongest. Winter, there's nothing else to do but work, usually finds me casting about for a new idea, or struggling with whatever project I'm in the middle of.
I don't think I have seasonal-affect disorder or anything--I am a fairly level-headed guy regardless of the weather. But I do think there's some deepdown neurochemcial thing going on, the sun and the warmth triggering a level of energy that isn't always there on mornings like --- well, like this one. I know this is the direct opposite of the vision of those British or New England/NY writers back in the day, huddled over their candle-lit desk in drab environs, with only their notebook to sustain them through dark days and darker nights. Or the modern-day Seattle coffeeshop junkies with their laptops on yet another drizzly day.
Maybe this is one of the reasons I left New England for warmer climes ten years ago: I get more done here. Curious as to whether other work-at-home and self-employed people feel this way too or am I just weird...
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And today (Monday) it's raining, and the weatherman says to expect more rain for tomorrow. Sigh.
The weird thing is, I've noticed that I write better on beautiful days. Which is kind of counterintuitive. One would think that, because I work from home and have a good amount of freedom in how I plan my day, those 70-degree days would be too tempting for me to get any work done. "Hmm, maybe I should go for a bike ride, or sit outside and read, or wander around town or something." But instead I pretty much stay at my desk, type a way, and get more done on those days than on the bleak ones.
In fact, last fall, which was unbelievably beautiful and sunny and dry and decorated with perfect foliage for weeks, I promised myself I would take a day off and climb Stone Mountain as a reward for finishing a draft of my new book. Yet I somehow never got around to it, always putting it off so I could work on that short story, or read that book as research for my next project, or unearth that old manuscript and see if there was anything to salvage, etc. And then suddenly it was winter.
After three books, I've also noticed that I tend to write the most in the spring and summer and early fall, which is exactly when the outdoors beckons the strongest. Winter, there's nothing else to do but work, usually finds me casting about for a new idea, or struggling with whatever project I'm in the middle of.
I don't think I have seasonal-affect disorder or anything--I am a fairly level-headed guy regardless of the weather. But I do think there's some deepdown neurochemcial thing going on, the sun and the warmth triggering a level of energy that isn't always there on mornings like --- well, like this one. I know this is the direct opposite of the vision of those British or New England/NY writers back in the day, huddled over their candle-lit desk in drab environs, with only their notebook to sustain them through dark days and darker nights. Or the modern-day Seattle coffeeshop junkies with their laptops on yet another drizzly day.
Maybe this is one of the reasons I left New England for warmer climes ten years ago: I get more done here. Curious as to whether other work-at-home and self-employed people feel this way too or am I just weird...
Go To Post
January 24, 2011
My First Prison Book Club
Last month I flew to snowy Billings, MT, to visit Montana State University at Billings, which had wonderfully chosen The Last Town on Earth for their inaugural First-Year Experience program. It's always a pleasure when a school reads my book, so I was looking forward to the class visits and hearing what sorts of comments and issues the students wanted to bring up. And I love to travel and was curious about Billings (the largest city in Montana! Population 500,000) -- I've been to Missoula and Glacier National Park but had never seen the eastern side of the state.
But what I was most looking forward to -- and was also kind of freaked out about -- was my appointment with a prison book club.
The backstory: one of the classes at MSUB that would be reading the book had also partnered up with a reading group at Passages, a "residential facility" for women offenders, as their Web site terms it. Billings is the home of the Washington State prison, and just down the road from the prison, in a former Howard Johnson's hotel, some female inmates live at Passages, from which they are often being transitioned back into the community or into different programs, like substance abuse or mental health.
One of the professors at MSUB led a discussion group of women at Passages, who read the book and talked about its themes of community and ethics, applying it to their own life experiences. The professor thought it had gone very well, that it helped the women draw parallels to their own lives and see how individual actions can affect a larger society, and vice versa.
(They did have an incident in which some snazzy markers -- used for an art project in which they drew scenes from or "responses to" the book -- were stolen, which upped the distrust quotient a bit and also recalled the episodes in the book when the community garden and town store are ransacked. But even that event helped them bring to the fore issues of trust and community and ethics -- and ultimately it turned out that the markers had been swiped by someone not in the book club.)
A few months before I flew to Billings, the professor asked if I would visit the group. Which was the first time I'd ever been invited to a women's correctional facility.
All kidding aside, I do have some very personal experience visiting people in prisons. I thought about that a lot during the days leading up to the visit. I know quite well that there are a thousand different combinations of misfortune and poor judgement that can lead someone to a place like Passages. I also remember that when someone I loved was in jail, I bought him a lot of books by mail (this was way back before Amazon), so I know how important books can be to people with so much time to kill.
(I've sent a lot of my books to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan via Operation Warrior Library (see my earlier posts on that), but this would be the first time my books would be read, to my knowledge, in jail.)
So, on Dec. 2 I was given a tour of the building, all the while tracked by a small film crew that was making a documentary for an MSUB communications class. On the walls were fliers reminding inmates that if they had a work assignment (like shoveling snow from the walkway) they had to sign out by a certain time, and informational leaflets about how to avoid abusive relationships. I met a couple of "graduates" of the program who had come by again just to meet me, which was flattering -- you'd think it would take a lot to make a former inmate willing to drop by and visit their old "home."
Then I was taken to "the secure second floor," where my guides and I sat on the floor of a small, furnitureless, former hotel room. The book club was already assembled: ten women in prison scrubs. On the walls around us were the artwork they'd made. Through the lone window we could see the gray and icy roads, and the two tall buildings that constitute the Billings skyline, and beyond them the snowcapped rimrock that surrounds the city like the walls of a crater. We went around and introduced ourselves.
The professor mostly led the discussion, asking the women what they thought of the book and how it echoed or perhaps added new meaning to things in their own lives. People would make reference to "what I did" or "mistakes I've made" or "the people I've hurt." The women ranged in age from early twenties to maybe mid-fifties. Everyone was so friendly and happy to be there -- if you closed your eyes and just listened, it wouldn't have sounded any different from the other clubs I've attended or telephoned into. But then you'd open your eyes and see the stark, furniture-less room, and the people sitting on the floor, and the prison scrubs.
Women at the facility aren't allowed to have any possessions, including basic cosmetics, and many are only allowed brief, weekly phone calls with family (including, in many cases, their kids). I couldn't help wondering how the book's exploration of family tensions felt, if those elements of the book hit home or did they maybe seem hopelessly minor to people who were living with real-life dislocation.
This also gave new meaning to the phrase "captive audience." The book clubbers said they were thrilled to read the book, but one can't help wondering whether that has less to do with the book's merits and more to do with the sheer monotony of prison life -- they probably would have been happy to read anything, to have any distraction from what they were already enduring. For that reason alone, I'm glad they were able to read the book and I hope that it helped them, whether as simply as by making the hours pass more quickly, or something more profound and meaningful.
There were things I was afraid to ask, of course. It's always slightly awkward to lead a talk about your own book -- you don't want to look like you're fishing for compliments or stifling anyone's criticism. But at this talk more than any other I wondered about who I was speaking with, what their own stories were, whether the stresses and misadventures of my characters paled before what they themselves have lived through. But I left most of these questions unasked, not wanting to seem a voyeur or make anyone uncomfortable.
Only later did I remember that an undercurrent in the novel is how all the fear and paranoia about the flu, and the treatment of the quarantined citizens, seems to turn the town itself into a large prison, where everyone is either a guard or the guarded. The word "prison" is used quite frequently. This didn't come up in my talk with the group, but I can't help but wonder if they were thinking about it.
People circulate in and out of the facility, as sentences end or people are processed to a different facility. They made reference to a few people who had been in the group but no longer were, and even now, seven weeks later, I wonder which of them are still there and which have moved on to hopefully better places. And whether reading fiction seems like some luxury for the leisured or will it become something to turn to when they're in need of guidance or escape. And how charged even the word "escape" is to someone in prison scrubs.
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But what I was most looking forward to -- and was also kind of freaked out about -- was my appointment with a prison book club.
The backstory: one of the classes at MSUB that would be reading the book had also partnered up with a reading group at Passages, a "residential facility" for women offenders, as their Web site terms it. Billings is the home of the Washington State prison, and just down the road from the prison, in a former Howard Johnson's hotel, some female inmates live at Passages, from which they are often being transitioned back into the community or into different programs, like substance abuse or mental health.
One of the professors at MSUB led a discussion group of women at Passages, who read the book and talked about its themes of community and ethics, applying it to their own life experiences. The professor thought it had gone very well, that it helped the women draw parallels to their own lives and see how individual actions can affect a larger society, and vice versa.
(They did have an incident in which some snazzy markers -- used for an art project in which they drew scenes from or "responses to" the book -- were stolen, which upped the distrust quotient a bit and also recalled the episodes in the book when the community garden and town store are ransacked. But even that event helped them bring to the fore issues of trust and community and ethics -- and ultimately it turned out that the markers had been swiped by someone not in the book club.)
A few months before I flew to Billings, the professor asked if I would visit the group. Which was the first time I'd ever been invited to a women's correctional facility.
All kidding aside, I do have some very personal experience visiting people in prisons. I thought about that a lot during the days leading up to the visit. I know quite well that there are a thousand different combinations of misfortune and poor judgement that can lead someone to a place like Passages. I also remember that when someone I loved was in jail, I bought him a lot of books by mail (this was way back before Amazon), so I know how important books can be to people with so much time to kill.
(I've sent a lot of my books to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan via Operation Warrior Library (see my earlier posts on that), but this would be the first time my books would be read, to my knowledge, in jail.)
So, on Dec. 2 I was given a tour of the building, all the while tracked by a small film crew that was making a documentary for an MSUB communications class. On the walls were fliers reminding inmates that if they had a work assignment (like shoveling snow from the walkway) they had to sign out by a certain time, and informational leaflets about how to avoid abusive relationships. I met a couple of "graduates" of the program who had come by again just to meet me, which was flattering -- you'd think it would take a lot to make a former inmate willing to drop by and visit their old "home."
Then I was taken to "the secure second floor," where my guides and I sat on the floor of a small, furnitureless, former hotel room. The book club was already assembled: ten women in prison scrubs. On the walls around us were the artwork they'd made. Through the lone window we could see the gray and icy roads, and the two tall buildings that constitute the Billings skyline, and beyond them the snowcapped rimrock that surrounds the city like the walls of a crater. We went around and introduced ourselves.
The professor mostly led the discussion, asking the women what they thought of the book and how it echoed or perhaps added new meaning to things in their own lives. People would make reference to "what I did" or "mistakes I've made" or "the people I've hurt." The women ranged in age from early twenties to maybe mid-fifties. Everyone was so friendly and happy to be there -- if you closed your eyes and just listened, it wouldn't have sounded any different from the other clubs I've attended or telephoned into. But then you'd open your eyes and see the stark, furniture-less room, and the people sitting on the floor, and the prison scrubs.
Women at the facility aren't allowed to have any possessions, including basic cosmetics, and many are only allowed brief, weekly phone calls with family (including, in many cases, their kids). I couldn't help wondering how the book's exploration of family tensions felt, if those elements of the book hit home or did they maybe seem hopelessly minor to people who were living with real-life dislocation.
This also gave new meaning to the phrase "captive audience." The book clubbers said they were thrilled to read the book, but one can't help wondering whether that has less to do with the book's merits and more to do with the sheer monotony of prison life -- they probably would have been happy to read anything, to have any distraction from what they were already enduring. For that reason alone, I'm glad they were able to read the book and I hope that it helped them, whether as simply as by making the hours pass more quickly, or something more profound and meaningful.
There were things I was afraid to ask, of course. It's always slightly awkward to lead a talk about your own book -- you don't want to look like you're fishing for compliments or stifling anyone's criticism. But at this talk more than any other I wondered about who I was speaking with, what their own stories were, whether the stresses and misadventures of my characters paled before what they themselves have lived through. But I left most of these questions unasked, not wanting to seem a voyeur or make anyone uncomfortable.
Only later did I remember that an undercurrent in the novel is how all the fear and paranoia about the flu, and the treatment of the quarantined citizens, seems to turn the town itself into a large prison, where everyone is either a guard or the guarded. The word "prison" is used quite frequently. This didn't come up in my talk with the group, but I can't help but wonder if they were thinking about it.
People circulate in and out of the facility, as sentences end or people are processed to a different facility. They made reference to a few people who had been in the group but no longer were, and even now, seven weeks later, I wonder which of them are still there and which have moved on to hopefully better places. And whether reading fiction seems like some luxury for the leisured or will it become something to turn to when they're in need of guidance or escape. And how charged even the word "escape" is to someone in prison scrubs.
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January 20, 2011
One Book In, One Book Out
The big news is that last Friday I sent the final (I think) draft of my third novel, The Revisionists, to my editor. I would have celebrated in writerly style, whatever that means (going on a bender? sitting down and reading all those books that had piled up during the many weeks in which I was absorbed in finishing? climbing Mount Kilaminjaro and other pursuits Hemingwayan?), but mainly I was just thrilled that a) I was done, and b) we Atlanta residents had finally reached the end of Ice Storm 2011. It was a crazy, crazy week in which all civilization shut down because we'd received four whole inches of snow the previous weekend. Which turned to slush when it rained on Monday, which was never plowed, which froze into solid ice Monday evening, and which remained solid ice on pretty much every roadway, including major highways, until Friday, due to freezing temperatures. So those of us with little kids (whose schools, of course, were closed all week!) were going a little batty by Day 3, let alone Day 5, of our captivity.
Wait, where was I going with this?
Oh yeah, books. I sent out Book 3 on Friday, and then, the very next day, the mailman (who was delivering mail again after vanishing for a few days -- aren't they supposed to work through wind and rain and sleet etc etc?) delivered to my door some hot-off-the-press paperback copies of The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers. For those of you who prefer paperbacks to hardcovers, your day is fast coming: Firefly Bros will be available in paperback on Feb. 8! The paperback edition looks strikingly like the hardcover, only lighter and cheaper, and adorned with lots of wonderfully fawning quotes from critics who dug it. (Is it terrible of me to admit that I like the paperback copies of my books better than the hardcovers, pretty much solely for this reason?).
Also the paperback has some end-of-the-book bonus features like an interview with me, some discussion questions for book clubs, and an author Q&A.
Mainly, I thought it was pretty cool how the book came in literally the day after the other one went out. And thus the circle of publishing life turns...
For those of you curious for some tidbits of information about The Revisionists, here's some marketing copy I cribbed from the good people at Mulholland Books, the new imprint from Little, Brown, which will be publishing it in September:
Leo, a disgraced former spy, and Tasha, a lawyer grieving for a brother killed in Iraq in mysterious circumstances, don't realize the impact their actions will have on the world, but the man known as Zed does. He's been sent back from a future utopia with a single mission: to ensure that a cataclysmic event, which will lead to never-ending peace in his own time, takes place. But there may be things Zed's superiors haven't told him...
Recalling dystopian classics like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, The Revisionists is a page-turning, mind-bending read.
Sounds just like The Last Town on Earth, right? True, my third novel will be a departure in terms of the time and setting: a contemporary novel following two historicals, set in modern-day Washington, DC, where I lived for seven years. And, yes, it has a time traveler. Which I admit can sound odd. But a number of people have commented on how ,Firefly Brothers had a science fictional element (I hadn't thought of it that way; it felt more magical realist while I was doing, but, ultimately, what's the difference? One term is implied to be more literary, the other more genre, but really they're both bending rules of reality and expanding our imaginative powers to tell a new kind of story). So this book continues the genre-bending, mixing a bit of dystopian fiction with a bit of espionage fiction with a lot of whatever you want to call my usual kind of fiction.
Look for it in eight months!
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Wait, where was I going with this?
Oh yeah, books. I sent out Book 3 on Friday, and then, the very next day, the mailman (who was delivering mail again after vanishing for a few days -- aren't they supposed to work through wind and rain and sleet etc etc?) delivered to my door some hot-off-the-press paperback copies of The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers. For those of you who prefer paperbacks to hardcovers, your day is fast coming: Firefly Bros will be available in paperback on Feb. 8! The paperback edition looks strikingly like the hardcover, only lighter and cheaper, and adorned with lots of wonderfully fawning quotes from critics who dug it. (Is it terrible of me to admit that I like the paperback copies of my books better than the hardcovers, pretty much solely for this reason?).
Also the paperback has some end-of-the-book bonus features like an interview with me, some discussion questions for book clubs, and an author Q&A.
Mainly, I thought it was pretty cool how the book came in literally the day after the other one went out. And thus the circle of publishing life turns...
For those of you curious for some tidbits of information about The Revisionists, here's some marketing copy I cribbed from the good people at Mulholland Books, the new imprint from Little, Brown, which will be publishing it in September:
Leo, a disgraced former spy, and Tasha, a lawyer grieving for a brother killed in Iraq in mysterious circumstances, don't realize the impact their actions will have on the world, but the man known as Zed does. He's been sent back from a future utopia with a single mission: to ensure that a cataclysmic event, which will lead to never-ending peace in his own time, takes place. But there may be things Zed's superiors haven't told him...
Recalling dystopian classics like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, The Revisionists is a page-turning, mind-bending read.
Sounds just like The Last Town on Earth, right? True, my third novel will be a departure in terms of the time and setting: a contemporary novel following two historicals, set in modern-day Washington, DC, where I lived for seven years. And, yes, it has a time traveler. Which I admit can sound odd. But a number of people have commented on how ,Firefly Brothers had a science fictional element (I hadn't thought of it that way; it felt more magical realist while I was doing, but, ultimately, what's the difference? One term is implied to be more literary, the other more genre, but really they're both bending rules of reality and expanding our imaginative powers to tell a new kind of story). So this book continues the genre-bending, mixing a bit of dystopian fiction with a bit of espionage fiction with a lot of whatever you want to call my usual kind of fiction.
Look for it in eight months!
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December 6, 2010
Home Cooking
Atlanta Magazine's new Best of 2010 issue names The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers as the best novel of 2010!* Great news. It's nice to be appreciated by one's hometown media, and it's especially gratifying because I've been a bit of a vagabond, living in four different cities in the past decade, so it's been unclear exactly where my hometown is. I'm a native of Rhode Island, and I wrote The Last Town on Earth, which is set in Washington State, while I was living in the other side of the country in Washington, DC. And now Firefly Brothers, which is set in the Midwest, was published while I'm living in Atlanta. So book-review editors can be forgiven for not really knowing if I should be considered a local author or not. But my wife and I plan on staying here in Atlanta -- we're tired of moving, and we have two little boys who like it here as much as we do. So I'm doubly glad to get props from the local magazine, and it was great to get a smashing review earlier in the year from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Now I just need to find a way onto CNN, or maybe Turner Movie Classics...
Seriously, we have a great literary community here in ATL. The Decatur Book Festival is a wonderful literary event, bringing authors from all over the country; the Georgia Center for the Book puts on interesting events all year, and I've met more local authors in my barely two years here than I did during 6 years in DC. So, thanks to all my fellow ATL scribes for making this a great place to live and write.
And how bout them Falcons!
*In fairness, Atlanta Magazine picked two novels, mine and Joseph Skibell's A Curable Romantic. The magazine's super-awesome books editor, Teresa Weaver, named Skibell's rather long book the best novel that weighs more than 2 pounds, and mine the best that weighs less. Which means that he and I should have a heavyweight/welterweight face-off some time, or maybe (and this would make so much more sense, writer-wise) his next book should be a novella and mine should be an epic multigenerational saga, and we can square off from opposite poles once again.
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Seriously, we have a great literary community here in ATL. The Decatur Book Festival is a wonderful literary event, bringing authors from all over the country; the Georgia Center for the Book puts on interesting events all year, and I've met more local authors in my barely two years here than I did during 6 years in DC. So, thanks to all my fellow ATL scribes for making this a great place to live and write.
And how bout them Falcons!
*In fairness, Atlanta Magazine picked two novels, mine and Joseph Skibell's A Curable Romantic. The magazine's super-awesome books editor, Teresa Weaver, named Skibell's rather long book the best novel that weighs more than 2 pounds, and mine the best that weighs less. Which means that he and I should have a heavyweight/welterweight face-off some time, or maybe (and this would make so much more sense, writer-wise) his next book should be a novella and mine should be an epic multigenerational saga, and we can square off from opposite poles once again.
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