How Sweet It Is…
The way I’m feeling right now, reminds me of a line from the Jackie Gleason show in the 1960′s on CBS. With a big grin he used to exclaim, “Oh, how SWEET IT IS!”
Today the electronic version of my debut novel From Rum To Roots went on sale on Amazon. Last night, our second Goodreads book giveaway concluded and we gave away two books out of a field of 250 entries. This evening, I was informed by John Orr, that the book review on his site Triviana has been generating a lot of hits.
We are overjoyed here at Marway Publishing. When Leanne and I decided in February to publish this novel ourselves we had no idea how much work we were taking on. However after walking down this very long road, we are amazed by the interest that has been shown towards the book.
From Rum To Roots was not written with profit in mind. Writing it was an intense personal experience, I sought to expel deep seated demons that had plagued me for most of my life. The idea crossed my mind four years before I started to write the book. I had to bear witness to my parents passing away in order to prepare myself to tell this tale. Mortality remained a fixture of my imagination until my father died. It was a seminal moment. Where would I go from here?
For twenty years I had defined myself as a photographer, a man of few words, and broad vistas. I had always loved the written word, so long as it was “written” by someone else. I hated to sit down to write. I felt like this due to the extreme demands that were made upon me when I was just a child and my parents would force me to write over and over again, making me learn the basics of grammar, spelling, and essay writing. I hated it.
Yet, I loved to read. Books were my constant companion, history, novels, just about anything I could get my hands on.
Despite working for newspapers for two decades, I worked for union shops, we were not allowed to write and reporters were not allowed to photograph.
After my parents passed away, I went to work in Washington DC where I was sent to Iraq many times. After some time I could not go on. I retired and moved back to California. Nothing was the same. I was different. Photography no longer held my attention as it once did. Something deeper and far more complex wanted to surface. It was hard to believe. I felt called to write.
This calling had actually revealed itself to me earlier when I was living in Arlington Virginia. I decided at that time to take some advice I had read from Stephen King. “The most important writing is reading,” King had said in an interview with some magazine. I took what he said to heart and decided I had to prepare myself to write by reading strategically.
You’re probably wondering what I meant by strategic. It’s really hard to say, but what I proceeded to do was to check out every book written by Graham Greene and read it. From Brighton Rock To The End of The Affair and finishing with A Burnt out Case. From there I turned my attention to the great trilogy USA by John Dos Passos. I started to read the Paris Review interviews. I must say that the Interviews are better than ANY CREATIVE WRITING COURSE YOU CAN TAKE. Save your money and check out the magazines online. You can read every interview that the Paris Review has ever done. God bless Lorin Stein.
Only after a year of intense daily reading did I decide to begin sketching what became From Rum To Roots. The sketching phase lasted a year until one day on May 7, 2007 I sat down and wrote a simple character sketch involving a young 18 year old girl named Daisy in a train station. It eventually became part of chapter two in From Rum To Roots.
It’s actually been a sweet six years.
