Category Archives: Personal Experience

WORD OF MOUTH

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Last week I wrote about a few emotional issues that reared their ugly head as I grew closer to opening the new website and putting up my Matt Jacob Mystery Novels for sale.

This week I’m taking on some practical concerns I have yet to answer.  That is, how to cut through the overwhelming content and indescribable noise that lives and breathes on the web.  I don’t expect to make a fortune with my books, but I do want to be read.  (DO YOU HEAR ME, MR. GOLDBERG?!?!?)  I believe my novels have something real to say about people, relationships, and life.  And while writing a novel is an amazing experience of discovering one’s self, I have no taste for shouting into an abyss.  There’s also a driving desire to be heard.

I had someone helping me with this area, but no longer.  Probably why my concerns have jacked.  So I do have some publicity plans, press releases, and will hope for an “author’s blog tour.”  In my heart of hearts, though, I believe in word of mouth.  People read because friends and relatives tell them about books they like.

An interesting example of this was a book called Women Running With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés.  First published in 1992, at the time I wrote for legacy houses, the book went nowhere for years.  But then something happened.  Book reps from publishing houses (these were the days when a lot of reps visited bookstores unlike today) began to pass the book around among each other, house notwithstanding.  (Another phenomena I discovered back then was that reps from different houses often partied together and hung out with each other.  Since I was pretty tight with my own rep, Barb, Sue and I were often invited to these parties.)

They threw me a curve.

These were the most literate people I met in the traditional publishing world and used to give each other books and discuss them all the time. Well, WRWW caught fire with the publishing reps who talked it up to their bookstores, who eventually began talking about it to their customers, who began talking about it to their friends.  After years of languishing, the book became a bestseller and is still selling.

As the moment of this writing, a decade later, it is #2,503 on Amazon with 191 reviews, 8,013 ratings and 676 reviews on Goodreads.  This word-of-mouth wave was begun by house reps.  Today there are just skeletons of local reps and few independent bookstores.  But these waves still happen in stores and online, whether they are tsunamis (A Million Shades of Gray) or smaller swells.

Solving this publishing issue ain’t gonna happen by honing my craft.  Might not go away by using my imagination–but I gotta try.  The question is, uh, try what?  As a friend of mine Bruce Turkel, http://www.TurkelTalks.com, once said about slicing through this noise (and I paraphrase) “Nobody knows nothing.”  And Bruce is a man who has spent his entire adult life in advertising and market branding.

Since I started this project and word got out, I’ve received dozens of emails from companies telling me they really know how to market on the Internet.  Frankly, I believe Bruce.  If Facebook’s stock gets smacked around because they have trouble attracting advertisers despite millions upon millions of users, then it seems absolutely true that “Nobody knows nothing.”  Or that successful paradigms for advertising and/or selling become outdated as fast as last year’s cell phones.  Maybe this is a good thing.  Maybe.

But if that’s going to happen, I’m gonna need your help.  There’s around a thousand of you who have been following my posts.  I don’t receive too many comments so I’m a bit hard-pressed to understand why you follow me, but perhaps that’s not important.  I only hope you’ve found many posts to be interesting.  And that those of you who will read my books and glom onto what I’m trying to do with detective fiction find the attempts successful and an enjoyable read.

In a week or two (boy, was I off with my timing) my new site will actually be up and running and will include all the links to buy my digital copies.  I’m asking you to not only buy a copy, but to tell as many people as possible–by talking it up, writing reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your own blogs if you have them.  And ask your folks to tell as many people as they feel comfortable with.  I always liked the old Almond Growers Association’s ad campaign: One can a week, that’s all we ask.

Word of mouth is like the Great March; it begins with a single step.  Which I no doubt will remind you again, and probably again (sorry) down the line.  But I’d like to thank in advance each of you who decide to take that step with me.

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.” ~ Leo Tolstoy

“JUST A KISS AWAY”*

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(*From “Let It Bleed“)

I began these Monday posts in January of last year.  Since I’d left the legal world and wanted to return to writing, I thought it would be a reasonable way to shake off the dust and try to recapture my voice after endless edits of legal briefs, focus group reports, and case analyses.

I also wanted to see if my take on “stuff” could and would generate any interest from folks other than friends and family without a ton of publicity or spam.  It seemed like a smart thing to do as I also worked on my ultimate goal: turn my original Matt Jacob mystery novels into reasonably priced e-books (more about this coming soon), create a site to sell the MJs as both downloadable PDFs and all the different e-book formats, and, of course, work on new ones.

Well, the books have been converted and the new website is just a kiss away.  There are still a few tweaks left–and don’t hold me to it–but I believe it will be up and running in the next few weeks.

Lately one of my jobs has been to copy and transfer all my past posts over to the new site.  Of course, I end up reading them–déjà vu all over again.  Sort of fun to see the evolution of style and subject, and on the whole I was okay with the writing.  I was pleased that about a thousand people have jumped onto the bus for the ride.  But then a disquieting unease set in and a couple of uncomfortable concerns began to emerge.

Yeah, the Monday’s were a “pass” on my pass/fail life continuum, but they were also an ocean away from what it takes to create a good, honest novel.  Could I still do it?  This question gut-punched me and I began to doubt the entire endeavor.  Began to do my old recluse thing, feel sorry for myself about everything rotten that’s happened this year (of course neglecting all the positives), feeling the pull of my bed and the oblivion of sleep.

Why not try to attack the concern rather than wallow in it?  Unfortunately, that isn’t my strongest gene.  But it is Sue’s.  Who, along with her ongoing concern, sympathy, cheer-leading, and annoyance at my increasingly depressed behavior, sensibly said: “Okay you’re scared.  On one hand, who can blame you?  On the other, so fucking what?  Just start.  You’ve been talking about pushing the fourth book forward some years (a possible idea) to bridge it to the new ones.  Glue yourself to your chair and begin with that.  It might actually give you some idea of the reality of your fears–one way or another.”

I immediately rejected the idea finding one excuse after another.  Until finally, “excused” out, I realized the obvious.  Sue, as she has been so many times during our 30+ year relationship, was absolutely right.

Next morning I plunked my ass down and stared at a blank screen and found myself turning around looking at the old Kay-Pro stowed under my music table.  The machine I used to write STILL AMONG THE LIVING.  My way of avoiding that white void.  Some people count paper clips, I stare at my stuff.

But sometimes that staring actually generates ideas.  I’ve often said that “consciousness is the last stop of information-not the first.”  Apparently the notion of pushing TIES THAT BLIND forward in time had been percolating beneath the angst that had engulfed me.  Instead of stomach sink, I began to imagine my writing groove where I followed the images in my head and used my two fingers to write down the movie I was watching.

I swiveled my chair back toward the computer and began to fill the screen.  The images, and words didn’t come easy that first day.  But I’d set an amount of time to write and wasn’t gonna move until that time was up–all the while keeping Hemingway’s rules in mind.  That is, never finish writing at the end of a sentence, paragraph, or chapter.  The “unfinished” then makes it easier to pick up where you leave off.  I also kept in mind a New Yorker cartoon I had pinned on the wall of someone hunched over a typewriter with the thought bubble saying “Not finished yet, not finished yet, not….”

But it wasn’t until the third or fourth day that my years of novel writing actually kicked in.  Whenever I write I always start at the beginning of the book and edit my way to the place where I left off.  And this time I really enjoyed the process.

So yes, I’ve begun reworking TIES with entirely new opening chapters in order to determine whether I want to push the book’s “time” forward or not.  This writing hasn’t really resolved my anxiety, but it’s reduced it to a level that’s surprisingly comfortable.  Actually, back to what I remember feeling each time I sat down to write a new book.

My head is back into fiction.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is
the belief that ones work is terribly important.
– Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

A HARRY K. POST

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As I approach a milestone birthday, I occasionally think about aging lawyers, especially those who have spent their careers representing poor criminal defendants.  Many of these lawyers cannot retire–some for financial reasons and some based on a compulsion to keep helping the poor.  Early in my career, I wrote about an elderly lawyer in an email to my mother.  Twenty years later, I realize that I was mean to old Abe Gray (not his real name), and what was then to me a comical situation is now an example of the resilience of experience and, yes, age.  Here is my email:

Abe Gray is a fixture in court.  A bit like the screw that holds down the tap on your faucet – he’s there but you don’t notice him until something goes wrong.  Monday, he got noticed.

Abe looks to be in his eighties and all of the old court officers say he’s been around forever.  He always wears a wrinkled suit with an old man’s obligatory dandruff.  Abe’s client was a stocky young black man charged with trespass and disorderly conduct who had to be told to remove his hat.  This admonition caused a guffaw from the young man; his guffaw only worsened the scolding from the judge who went on about decorum-this and respect-that before sending him back to his seat like a kid in the corner to wait a long time before she would have his case called again.

When the court recessed, Abe tried to explain his client’s behavior.  I may have attracted his attention because we’d made eye contact, a difficult thing given Abe’s permanent downward head bend.  About his client he said, “It was just a nervous laugh – he does that you know.”  I certainly didn’t, and was pretty sure that neither did Abe.  As our conversation continued, Abe insisted that I probably would not like being a lawyer for the poor very soon.  “But it beats sittin’ in ya office doin’ nuthin’ don’t it?” which he followed with a friendly punch in the arm, a hearty laugh, and a consequent bout of coughing that only years of smoking can cause.

When court reconvened, Abe and I ended up sitting next to each other.   A stern looking young lawyer whom I had seen run into the ladies’ room the day before to puke loudly into the sink (her stern expression was meant to mask an intense anxiety) sat on his other side. We were near the seats reserved for police officers.  Abe decided he wanted to do what court officers most often have to rebuke lawyers for – chat. And not just chat.  Abe wanted to talk about the police.

So there I am, trying to be decorous and show respect for the court, listening to Abe go on in the sort of loud voice the hard of hearing often think is a whisper, “the cops testiLIE, not testiFY” and how “THEY apparently can wear hats in the courtroom – look at that one over there – she’s got a baseball cap on just like my client’s!”  He actually pointed.  I was mortified. Some of the police were frowning in our direction.  I smiled meekly.  The stern looking puker turned a whiter shade of pale.  Mind you, women are allowed to wear hats in court; men are not, even policemen.

I crossed my leeward leg away from Abe, leaned forward, elbow on knee, chin in hand, and pretended I was fascinated by the proceedings.  He quieted.

About five minutes later, Abe’s client’s name was called.  The client approached the bar, hat in hand, eyes down.  Abe didn’t stand to address the court.  When an uncomfortable silence followed, the clerk announced the name of the defendant’s lawyer (it’s not unusual for a lawyer to be in the hallway or another courtroom – the clerk will say the lawyer’s name as a way of prompting help from the court officers in locating a lawyer).  Abe did not respond; the clerk scanned the courtroom and landed his gaze on us.  He repeated Abe’s name more loudly this time.  I couldn’t figure out why Abe still hadn’t stood. Maybe he was helping stern-face with something?  So I turned around.

Abe’s head was tilted uncharacteristically upwards.  His eyes were shut. His mouth wide open.  His arms were crossed over his chest.  Sleeping?  Dead?  God, I hoped not.  I poked his left elbow with my index finger and whispered, “Attorney Gray?”  No response.  I pressed all four fingers into his left arm twice and, a little louder said, “Attorney Gray.”  No response.  Now I was worried.  I returned his earlier punch three times to no effect other than tilting his torso towards stern-face and disrupting his dandruff.

By this time, everyone was staring at us: The judge, the clerk, the probation officers, the court officers, the police, Abe’s client, stern-face (who was leaning as far away from Abe as she could without pushing herself intimately onto the man next to her, an appalled expression on her face).  I’m not certain what inspired me, but I grabbed the middle finger of Abe’s closest hand and tugged three times as hard as I could without popping his arthritic joints and said again, “ATTORNEY GRAY!”

He snuffled awake, looked around a bit dazed, asked me, “Wha- what?”  “Your case” I said, inclining my head towards his hatless client.  He leapt to his feet with amazing agility, strode confidently to the microphone and said, “Attorney Gray for the defendant, your honor.  He then reviewed the entire case in the light most favorable to his client finishing his effective synopsis with “therefore I move to dismiss.”

Since I wrote this piece, Abe has passed away and, with his passing, I reflected on the experience.  When I was younger, I was concerned about Abe’s client and thought nothing of poking fun at what I perceived to be Abe’s decrepitude. Today, I admire that Abe demonstrated an uncanny ability to go from dreaming to eloquent advocacy, even though it took some prompting.  He fought for the poor his entire working life which deserves my respect.  I hope that by continuing to find humor in the experience I have not dishonored his memory.

ANOTHER TAKE ON THE COUNTRY

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I’m reconsidering the country and I’m not talking about the U.S., Israel, or even what should be the Palestinian State.  I’m talking outside Boston’s Beltway–aka, my idea of wilderness.

A bit of background.  Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, I spent the early years of my life in Carteret (Exit 12, N.J. Turnpike).  Now Carteret was no sprawling metropolis.  It was the kind of small town loaded with bars, churches, and factories.  One where kids ran after the mosquito spray truck ’cause the smell was intoxicating.  But it was also a town when, not smogged from its factories’ exhale, you could see the New York skyline.  For me, country meant the empty lots scattered through town where I chased grasshoppers and lightning bugs, and the park where I played Little League.

I now live in New England, where rural is a spit away and many people I know have always spent some serious time in the hinterland.

When I first moved to Boston from Chicago, people used to pull me along to their cabins, farms, and tiny structures they optimistically called “country houses.”

Sorry, but I’m in the Fran Lebowitz camp.  As she said, “I am not the type who wants to go back to the land; I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel.”

My idea of civilization has always included running water and, most importantly, bathrooms.  We didn’t claw our way to the top of the food chain to shit in the woods.  Which was what my early years of going to the
country often entailed.  Sure, there were outhouses, but I was toilet trained decades ago.  Who wants to use a wooden porta-potty for days at a time–let alone ever?

Especially someone like me who prefers my own bathroom to all others.

In those days, if I really felt I had to go (both to the country and the bathroom) I devised ways to cope.  One way, really.  Kaopectate.  Yep.  I slugged that gunk like an alcoholic sucks down a bottle of whiskey thinking
it might be his last.  And it worked.  I could go nearly a week without excreting anything other than urine, and that usually from the porch if it were night.  The dark and quiet scared the hell out of me.  Who knew
(besides The Shadow) what awaited in the pitch black miles away from any streetlights.  I didn’t want to know.

Truth be told, days weren’t much better.  People wanted to hike and the problem with that was simple.  Unless I’m chasing a ball, the only thing worse than running is walking.  And walking uphill worse than that.
And god forbid I was dragged out into the boonies during winter.  That meant cross-country skiing or snowshoeing.  There are things more painful than traipsing to nowhere.

But age and upward mobility (mine and virtually everyone I know) does have its rewards.  Going out to visit friends in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine no longer means suffering a case of constipation.  Everyone has bathrooms, most have lakes, and nobody minds if I don’t swim in them or
shlep around them.  Sitting on the porch and reading has become acceptable.

In other words, I can actually pretend that I’m home.  There may not be a lot of wonderful things to say about aging (dinner conversations among us old Jews often have to do with everyone reciting their own litany of ailments) but these days going to the country with friends or relatives is most definitely one of them.

In fact, I just returned from my cousin’s half home in Monterey, Massachusetts, deep in the Western part of the state.  I say half home since he and his wife live there about half the week all year round.  An area of my state that houses summer homes for Bostonians and New Yorkers.

Rife with cultural activities (Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony, Jacob’s Pillow, a world famous modern dance company, Shakespeare and Company…) we aren’t exactly talking rural.  This is my
kind of country.  Satelite TV.  Birdwatching, but from a deck.  Plopping down in a comfortable seat in a tented pavilion, enjoying Dr. John and Wynton Marsalis.  My kind of “great outdoors.”  Especially when it includes great friends.  It’s doesn’t get any better if I’m gonna leave my beloved concrete.

I’m just a spoiled city rat, unwilling to spend my time in a retrobred context.  I wasn’t a Boy Scout, Cubbie, and the only knot I ever learned to tie was for my shoes.  I want to enjoy my country time without slurping bottles of Kaopectate.   And these days I do.

Q: Why is New Jersey called “The Garden State”?
A: Because “Oil and Petrochemical Refinery State” wouldn’t fit on a
license plate.

BITTERSWEET BALLGAMES

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This past Monday and Thursday my son Jake and I went to watch Jah Energy play and win its semi-final series.  The team played all around solid softball with few mistakes and a stout defense.  Jah’s pitching was superb.  Batters kept the bases busy during the first game and played long ball the second.  It made both of us happy to see the team we had played for earn the chance to win the championship.

But for me the operant words in that last sentence were “had played.”  Past tense–with little future action other than a symbolic inning next year before I officially retire.

This season was the first in twenty-five years that I hadn’t played, coached, or managed.  The first season when, until last week, I hadn’t attended a game or practice.  I told myself I didn’t go to the games because my shoulder surgery kept me from driving.  Eventually I realized I stayed away because it was too weird and painful to feel there was no real place for me on the field.

Once Jah came in first and started the play-offs, however, I couldn’t resist.  You can bet I’ll cheer them on during the championship series–wholehearted enthusiasm mixed with a really difficult goodbye.

I knew how I was going to feel when I first got to the field and saw all of the team’s new faces.  I immediately remembered the early years when Ruben, Jah’s founder, rebuilt the team damn near from scratch each spring because of the turnover.   We actually recruited folks we met in the park and hoped they knew the game.   Every season worrying about having enough players or too many players, enough women or not enough women.   Going through a ton of team iterations throughout those twenty-five years and enjoying every one of them.

Sitting there, remembering all those years of playing in the cold, dank days of Boston’s April. Coming out early on Sundays before practice to work with people who wanted to improve–myself included.  Staring directly into the sun  during the summer, hoping my glove was in the right position to catch the ball I couldn’t see.  Dealing with the push/pull tension of competitiveness versus just having fun.  Also recalling coming home after play-off games and writing them up and sending the stories to my teammates.   Now that was a pleasure–especially if we won.

Faces from the past kept popping into my mind and Jake and I would talk about them.  How Q. would always manage to piss the other team off with his trash talk.  Hell, some of us would bet on which inning it would be before someone blew up.  How Jonathan used to club the ball farther than anyone we had ever seen, though Rone, who still plays for Jah, is the best athlete the league ever had.

I remember Tom who played shortstop and loved to heave the ball over my head.  (My first base mantra was if you were gonna miss, miss low.  Those I could pick.  But over my head?  Not with about three inches of air under my feet when I was at my best.)

I sat there watching John who created the league and has worked as an umpire every single year from the league’s inception.  Remembering the managers I played for and the lifelong friends I’ve made.

Face after face after face from the league that I’ll carry around with me for the rest of my life.

And of course thinking about being on the field with my older son Matt–then in later years with Jake, my nephew Lee, and niece Julia.  That was probably more satisfying than the set of championships Jah won during my tenure.

So this is gonna be it.  I can’t play anymore (except for that token appearance next season), our manager Sara is a much better manager than I was, and I don’t think coaching third would do it for me.

Truth is, it’s time.  Not merely because of my shoulder either.  I held on too long.  I knew it when I no longer wanted the ball hit to me.  Knew it when I couldn’t cover enough ground to make a routine play.  Knew it when I tried to switch positions and become a left-handed catcher but couldn’t buy a base hit.  But knowing it’s time to go and going ain’t the same.  It took the shoulder blowout to drive it home.

So there we were sitting in our chairs chatting about the past, the great plays we’d seen over the years, and all the people.  It would be nice if a future someone watching a Jah play-off game in a lawn chair had my face pop into mind.