Rodney Ross's Blog, page 2
May 20, 2012
On Travel
I've since returned from Palm Springs, CA where I combined business with pleasure. Both involved copious amounts of vodka. Pressing the flesh of LGBT bookstore owners and managers is daunting when the bottom-line of the conversation is, essentially, "Please please please carry 'The Cool Part Of His Pillow'. That is, you see, the point. And in an evolving world where brick-and-mortar bookstores are vanishing faster than my skin's elasticity, it's become even more urgent to pacify management that isn't ALL about e-Books. Some people still like to dog-ear and crack a spine. I was prepared to offer forgettable sex to secure bookshelf space but, instead, I met some wonderful gentlemen who assured that, yes, they would carry the book upon release; one even went to his computer to place the order in my presence, a generosity that then compelled me to buy two hardbacks from his store. I wanted them, anyway, but it seemed the right moment to literally put my money where my yap is and fiscally support the shop. I was gladdened to be invited back to Palm Springs PRIDE in early November for a signing and reading. If I find the right wig, I may even join the parade and do a show at TOUCANS.
The return trip back to Key West FL, where I reside full-time, was fraught. Isn't travel always, now? Between a 6:20 AM departure that compelled me to rise at 4:30 AM (I cursed my travel agent, pretending it wasn't me)...to the zipper on my luggage that decided to disengage...to the fact that there was NOT ONE coffee shop open in the American Airlines gate area at that ungodly hour, when people crave caffeine...the actual journey provided much amusement, disdain, exasperation and discomfort.
On Flight #1, from PSP to Dallas/Fort Worth, I sat next to a man wider than a stove with hands like baeball mitts. I think he is the largest man I have ever personally seen, outside of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! ad that displayed a man so massive he was buried in a piano case. Without asking, he raised the armrest to allow his fatness to cascade onto my hip, lowered his head and wheezed the entire flight. He either had the worst case of rosacea known to medical science, or he was suffering the first stage of a stroke. I prayed it was the former, because his collapse would have crushed me.
On Flight #2, from DFW to Miami, I watched a very frightened, very pale little girl, flying alone, told by a lipless gate attendant to "stand back here, we don't have time for you right now." A gentle older woman with a pixie cut saw this and intervened, asking the child's name, and offering to escort her to her seat. This was fine with Lipless, freed from her responsbility. Aboard, a man of Middle-Eastern descent ate an entire boxed lunch from POPEYE's next to me. All I could smell was chicken fat for two hours and I became obsessed by his shiny chin that he never sought to dab at. As we all left the plane, I watched the child tearily reunited with what I assumed is her Dad, and felt miserable that this child was the collateral damage of a divorce. She introduced the kindly woman to her Pop, who spontaneously hugged her. I hope Lipless suffered a grievous leg cramp at the same exact time.
And then on Flight #3, from Miami to Key West -- so abbreviated there isn't a beverage service -- I endured two cackling women aptly described as hussies
debate about where, upon their Key West
arrival, they'd have their first Jack and Ginger. "I sure can taste that Jack and Ginger," Brunette Hussy observed. Blonde Hussy added, "I want a strong Jack and Ginger." They tossed this sobriquet around so much, like Sonny and Cher or Abbott and Costello, that I began to fantasize that Jack and Ginger were actually people.
And then, home, to find that my trade paperback version of 'The Cool Part Of His Pillow' had arrived, had been brought in by my catsitter. (The e-Book had debuted earlier that week, on May 14th.) It lay unappreciated, unremarked upon, among 'Entertainment Weekly' and catalogs and more, rude AARP invitations. After I tore, nearly chewed my way into, the Dreamspinner Press box, terrified that something had escaped all of our vigilant eyes -- the editors, the proofreaders, the artist -- and that my name was spelled RODNEY ROSE on the spine, I sighed and savored this, my reward at the end of a 10-hour travel day.The Cool Part of His PillowRodney Ross
Rodney RossThe Cool Part of His Pillow
The return trip back to Key West FL, where I reside full-time, was fraught. Isn't travel always, now? Between a 6:20 AM departure that compelled me to rise at 4:30 AM (I cursed my travel agent, pretending it wasn't me)...to the zipper on my luggage that decided to disengage...to the fact that there was NOT ONE coffee shop open in the American Airlines gate area at that ungodly hour, when people crave caffeine...the actual journey provided much amusement, disdain, exasperation and discomfort.
On Flight #1, from PSP to Dallas/Fort Worth, I sat next to a man wider than a stove with hands like baeball mitts. I think he is the largest man I have ever personally seen, outside of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! ad that displayed a man so massive he was buried in a piano case. Without asking, he raised the armrest to allow his fatness to cascade onto my hip, lowered his head and wheezed the entire flight. He either had the worst case of rosacea known to medical science, or he was suffering the first stage of a stroke. I prayed it was the former, because his collapse would have crushed me.
On Flight #2, from DFW to Miami, I watched a very frightened, very pale little girl, flying alone, told by a lipless gate attendant to "stand back here, we don't have time for you right now." A gentle older woman with a pixie cut saw this and intervened, asking the child's name, and offering to escort her to her seat. This was fine with Lipless, freed from her responsbility. Aboard, a man of Middle-Eastern descent ate an entire boxed lunch from POPEYE's next to me. All I could smell was chicken fat for two hours and I became obsessed by his shiny chin that he never sought to dab at. As we all left the plane, I watched the child tearily reunited with what I assumed is her Dad, and felt miserable that this child was the collateral damage of a divorce. She introduced the kindly woman to her Pop, who spontaneously hugged her. I hope Lipless suffered a grievous leg cramp at the same exact time.
And then on Flight #3, from Miami to Key West -- so abbreviated there isn't a beverage service -- I endured two cackling women aptly described as hussies
debate about where, upon their Key West
arrival, they'd have their first Jack and Ginger. "I sure can taste that Jack and Ginger," Brunette Hussy observed. Blonde Hussy added, "I want a strong Jack and Ginger." They tossed this sobriquet around so much, like Sonny and Cher or Abbott and Costello, that I began to fantasize that Jack and Ginger were actually people.
And then, home, to find that my trade paperback version of 'The Cool Part Of His Pillow' had arrived, had been brought in by my catsitter. (The e-Book had debuted earlier that week, on May 14th.) It lay unappreciated, unremarked upon, among 'Entertainment Weekly' and catalogs and more, rude AARP invitations. After I tore, nearly chewed my way into, the Dreamspinner Press box, terrified that something had escaped all of our vigilant eyes -- the editors, the proofreaders, the artist -- and that my name was spelled RODNEY ROSE on the spine, I sighed and savored this, my reward at the end of a 10-hour travel day.The Cool Part of His PillowRodney Ross
Rodney RossThe Cool Part of His Pillow
May 16, 2012
Trying To Make 'The Cool Pillow' Hot
As a newly-published author, the arena of self-promotion is new to me...and daunting. I labored for twenty-plus years in Advertising and Marketing, but the product was never me. It's also where, ironically, I did very little writing, my time spent mostly calming manic producers and diva directors. But that is another sordid story for another seedy day.
But Dreamspinner Press' publication of 'The Cool Part Of His Pillow' (TCPohP) fulfills a lifelong dream, and so I shall shamelessly flog, blog, gab, blab and don a sandwich board if need be to get my novel into appreciative hands.
I was a creative and brooding child, always writing: little playlets that I would act all of the characters for into a tape recorder; grade school newsletter; then, the high school newspaper. It was within that 4-year chronology that I encountered the worst and best of public education. I had a hateful Journalism teacher who was more denture click and hip pop than willing to provide sound writing advice. She often criticized me for being "wordy". Too verbose, she death rattled, shaking a palsied claw at me, as I scribbled notes about what appeared to be her male pattern baldness.
In that same high school, I was also fortunate enough to be mentored by an English teacher who plucked me from the soul-sucking classroom of conformity and placed me in independent study. I kept a journal, which I submitted once weekly, and was assigned literature -- everything from Joyce Carol Oates to Tennessee Williams to Judy Blume! -- to write essays on and critiques of. What a forward-thinking man that teacher was, in his jeans-and-no-tie-and-feathered-hair way, and I am still grateful he and his wife are part of my life.
Yet, when I became the Creative Director at the Midwestern ad agency cited above, I needed outside sustenance. Boy, did I need it! In my off-hours, I wrote screenplays, and later a play. (I won some awards and even got optioned but, alas, none of those ever bore the fruit of actual production.) The challenge then, and now, is always sitting down and writing, while also being depressingly aware that the final polish is so, so distant. Writing is so damned isolated, and isolating.
I'd like to wax poetic and say that 'TCPohP' drifted gently into my twilight and, after a few copious note-taking sessions, assembled itself during the night with the help of speed-typing elves...but building believable, dimensional characters is hard work. I have to incorporate humor. I'm not talking rimshot jokes nor Neil Simon-ish set-ups…when I began writing 'TCPohP', I intuited this could be either casseroles and snotrags and a lot of breast-beating, or I could mine from this horrendous tragedy a lot of macabre observation, and then spin off into the scatological, the blasphemous, the politically-incorrect.
If there's any counsel I'd offer an aspiring author, it's this: be a voracious reader...digest the words of others and inhabit worlds you may never otherwise visit. For me, it was 'The World According To Garp' by John Irving that opened my eyes to possibilities in literature that didn’t exist to me prior. I can only aspire to his enduring literary prowess. Oh: and always have a damn a notepad and pen (or a mini-cassette recorder) handy. Feel free to soar. Jump-cut to Paris, France...impale a beloved character on a picket fence...make cancer go into remission...I relish that ability because, let's face it, real-life does not offer this liberty. On a more workmanlike level, you have to STAY AT IT. Practice may not make perfect, but it develops muscle.
Of course I am working on a new novel in the midst of this shilling for 'TCPohP'. It’s about bad luck, and good -- the paths chosen when fortune smiles on us, the desperate measures taken when it doesn’t. But, for now, I'm trying to savor the fresh publication, the warmth and friendship and support I’m getting in waves. I mean, fuck! I am a published wordsmith!
But Dreamspinner Press' publication of 'The Cool Part Of His Pillow' (TCPohP) fulfills a lifelong dream, and so I shall shamelessly flog, blog, gab, blab and don a sandwich board if need be to get my novel into appreciative hands.
I was a creative and brooding child, always writing: little playlets that I would act all of the characters for into a tape recorder; grade school newsletter; then, the high school newspaper. It was within that 4-year chronology that I encountered the worst and best of public education. I had a hateful Journalism teacher who was more denture click and hip pop than willing to provide sound writing advice. She often criticized me for being "wordy". Too verbose, she death rattled, shaking a palsied claw at me, as I scribbled notes about what appeared to be her male pattern baldness.
In that same high school, I was also fortunate enough to be mentored by an English teacher who plucked me from the soul-sucking classroom of conformity and placed me in independent study. I kept a journal, which I submitted once weekly, and was assigned literature -- everything from Joyce Carol Oates to Tennessee Williams to Judy Blume! -- to write essays on and critiques of. What a forward-thinking man that teacher was, in his jeans-and-no-tie-and-feathered-hair way, and I am still grateful he and his wife are part of my life.
Yet, when I became the Creative Director at the Midwestern ad agency cited above, I needed outside sustenance. Boy, did I need it! In my off-hours, I wrote screenplays, and later a play. (I won some awards and even got optioned but, alas, none of those ever bore the fruit of actual production.) The challenge then, and now, is always sitting down and writing, while also being depressingly aware that the final polish is so, so distant. Writing is so damned isolated, and isolating.
I'd like to wax poetic and say that 'TCPohP' drifted gently into my twilight and, after a few copious note-taking sessions, assembled itself during the night with the help of speed-typing elves...but building believable, dimensional characters is hard work. I have to incorporate humor. I'm not talking rimshot jokes nor Neil Simon-ish set-ups…when I began writing 'TCPohP', I intuited this could be either casseroles and snotrags and a lot of breast-beating, or I could mine from this horrendous tragedy a lot of macabre observation, and then spin off into the scatological, the blasphemous, the politically-incorrect.
If there's any counsel I'd offer an aspiring author, it's this: be a voracious reader...digest the words of others and inhabit worlds you may never otherwise visit. For me, it was 'The World According To Garp' by John Irving that opened my eyes to possibilities in literature that didn’t exist to me prior. I can only aspire to his enduring literary prowess. Oh: and always have a damn a notepad and pen (or a mini-cassette recorder) handy. Feel free to soar. Jump-cut to Paris, France...impale a beloved character on a picket fence...make cancer go into remission...I relish that ability because, let's face it, real-life does not offer this liberty. On a more workmanlike level, you have to STAY AT IT. Practice may not make perfect, but it develops muscle.
Of course I am working on a new novel in the midst of this shilling for 'TCPohP'. It’s about bad luck, and good -- the paths chosen when fortune smiles on us, the desperate measures taken when it doesn’t. But, for now, I'm trying to savor the fresh publication, the warmth and friendship and support I’m getting in waves. I mean, fuck! I am a published wordsmith!
