The Pleasure Model Repairman Quotes

“I’d rather be lucky than good.’ [Baseball player] Lefty Gomez said that, and I live and breathe that fortune-dwelling, fuzzy-dice-dangling creed. I was fantastically lucky to be taken in by Montag Press and its extraordinary managing editor, Charlie Franco. But I’m also a bit of a research freak and I'm convinced that homework helped me set up a situation where luck could flash and ignite. I spent an inordinate amount of time researching small and independent imprints. Here I reveal the flip side of thinking that any hours spent researching literary agents is wasted (in my unwashed opinion) while time spent reading and learning about quality independent publishers is essential. It’s the best and only way to identify the little houses in that vibrant village that might be just right for your own book. (Interview with Ruuf Wangersen on sevencircumstances.com)”
― Ruuf Wangersen, The Pleasure Model Repairman

“Only a fool writes for anything but money,’ Samuel Johnson wrote in the 18th century. If that's true, and it probably is, I've been a fool more times than I care to count. I will say that I've been a much happier fool when I'm writing what I love to write. Here's the rough-and-tumble fact of it: The overwhelming odds are that when you're writing your first book (and even your second) you will be writing it for free, you will not receive a contract or advance from a major publisher, and you will not get an agent. I say this with utmost affection and empathy. I also say, let the statistical truth of all that, free us to write what we love, what we want to write, exactly what we would write for free. And once you're dancing down that path, write hard, write the thing the best you can write it, and who knows? Maybe the phone ringing on your bedside table is that literary agent and they're calling with good news. Best of all they're calling because they love your work as much as you do. And if that call doesn't come through, not right away, where does that leave you? With no regrets. All respect to Dr. Johnson, [but] the far, far better quote (for my ‘money’) is: ‘Never for money, always for love...’ Talking Heads. They didn't just write it. They sang it.” (Ruuf Wangersen interview, July 2018, sevencircumstances.com)”
― Ruuf Wangersen, The Pleasure Model Repairman

“The narrative rigor of writing screenplays to a precise length, with story beats at all the right places has, I believe, made me a better novel writer. I feel very comfortable with the rhythms of the modern Hollywood movie, a sequence of storytelling expectations so many of us have internalized to the point that they can be deemed presumed knowledge in one's reader. It makes world building so much easier than it must have been for, say, Ray Bradbury, or even P K Dick. I feel quite comfortable straying from the narrative melody in my work, now, confident I can find my way home again, or can make my hat my home, story-wise, and that's something I tie in large measure to my screenwriting experience.”
― Ruuf Wangersen, The Pleasure Model Repairman

“How far in the future TPMR [The Pleasure Model Repairman] is set is a trickier issue. The question goes right to the center of the maze, where the walls are painted with the glyphs of the thematic archetypes that matter to me most. Perception of time, the interplay of memory and identity, nostalgia as societal glue, and the pulpy residue of the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same. Of course, there is a straightforward answer that skirts all this voodoo babble, and it’s that this world must be very far into the future, indeed, given the sophistication of artificial beings and the sprawling family of development worlds called Earth.”
― Ruuf Wangersen, The Pleasure Model Repairman