Category Archives: Personal Experience

Where The Hell You Been?

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One of the questions people who comment here keep asking me is what I’ve been doing since I stopped writing about eighteen years ago.

To be honest, the first year after I pulled my fourth Matt Jacob manuscript from Random House was mostly spent on the couch, depressed, watching television (depressed enough to watch daytime tv as well).  I knew I didn’t want to return to my former work as a therapist, but had no inkling of what direction to take.  Not a real happy dance through the park.

Henry Miller once wrote (and I’m paraphrasing) that when you’re down to your last dime, you walk to the mailbox and, bingo, there’s a check.  (Were that to be true for most people.)

Well, I got lucky.  My friend Ron Simon, (and my blood brother) the lawyer who wrangled me ouf the the Random House contract, was the present in the mailbox.  He called and asked if I’d like to help with a trial he was doing for a man who died from liver failure due to workplace toxins at a uranium enrichment plant.  Even though I had no idea how I might be useful, I jumped on the offer and a plane and hightailed it to Piketon, Ohio, where the plant and trial were located.

It quickly became clear I had a fair amount to offer.  I helped write and rehearse the opening, taught  lay witnesses how to speak to jurors, even prepped some of our experts about the pitfalls of using “fancyspeak.”  But most importantly, I was allowed to sit in on jury selection, which was my first step toward becoming a competent profiler and jury consultant.

Although we lost the trial, we won the war.  Ron was able to work out a deal with the defendants that provided the widow with a substantial amount of money. (I have no idea how he pulled that off).  I still keep his widow’s thank-you letter tacked to my office wall.

Apparently I provided enough help for Ron to ask me to join his team as a “litigation consultant.”  I’m not sure whether the term even existed before, but it did now and I had enjoyed all the work and time in Piketon.

Thus began a great adventure that had me commuting from Boston to D.C. where Ron had his office.  At the same time I put in enormous time studying profiling and jury selection, areas i was most interested in and for which i could my lean on my background as a therapist.  I was excited by this new turn in life.

For my first few years as a “litigation consultant,” we worked on a number of local D.C. cases.  We won a wrongful death suit against the city–the deceased, an FBI agent shot by a man who wasn’t “wanded,” searched, or asked to walk through the metal detectors that were situated at the government building doorways where the female agent worked.  We also forced the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to repair a large number of poor people’s houses they had severely damaged while constructing three new subway stations in a low income neighborhood.  This situation had as much to do with community organizing (another part of my background from when I lived in Chicago) as it did with legal pressure and negotiations.

But the most poignant circumstance during those early years came when one of Ron’s closest friends’ son died in the passenger seat of a recklessly speeding car driven by his girlfriend who survived.  Initially the parents were intent on a wrongful death lawsuit, but Ron understood they were really looking for emotional closure rather than money.  We asked if they’d be willing to sit down with the other family and try to talk things out.  Eventually they agreed, but the presiding judge initially refused to let me handle the mediation since I had no standing with the court. Ron fought (furiously, as he usually does) pointing out my background as a therapist and someone who had mediated a fair number of divorces.  Finally the judge relented since, by then, both families wanted me to facilitate.

Which turned out to be a very long, sad, painful eight hours.  Hours where the anguish of losing a child, guilt about responsibility, rage, rationality, all had a turn at the podium.  I’m grateful to be able to say that when the day was finished, closure had begun to finally take place, and the lawsuit was dropped.  It was gratifying to watch family members holding hands on their way back to their cars.  To top it off, the judge apologized to me for his original stubbornness and said he wished he knew about me a few months earlier when his niece had died in a similar situation.  His family members were still going at it, long past the point mediation could even be suggested.

Somewhere around that time I realized I could put all my prior professional skills to work.  I’d had extensive training leading different type groups so I studied and began running focus groups for particular cases.  I also recognized that jurors anticipated participating in trials that were like what they saw on television.  Clear, everybody testifying in sequential order, the judge acting as a kindly father figure to whom they could turn for answers–most of which does not happen at a real civil trial.  But more importantly, jurors expected stories—and the classic story arc they have seen in movies and on television.

Well, I was a pretty good storyteller and began working not only with Ron’s firm, but other lawyers whose ethics I respected.  I began to teach how to structure cases in ways that not only told a story, but told it in a manner that allowed for normal trial disruptions and recesses.  Hell, I even had lawyers read books on how to write screenplays.

Frankly, it was a gas to fuse my previous careers and use them to further that which I believed in.  But even as I enjoyed the work, the good we were sometimes able to do, the relationships with both lawyers and clients, the unusual experiences (I spent six weeks investigating the Oklahoma City bombing one summer), I still missed the arts.  Which was why I began to learn to play the saxophone.  And now, at this juncture of my life, it’s close to time to move on again.

And this time the change is coming without the couch and the depression that came with it.

In today’s world I have the opportunity to control my books from the ground up and I intend to try.  I won’t completely leave my law work behind—I’ll always love running focus groups and helping prep people who are fighting the good fight–but my focus is turning toward writing.

But this time I’ll take my professional past along with me.  You can bet your ass that the coined concept, “litigation consultation” appears as a new expression, and that my work with Ron will somehow be woven into my new novels.

Genre As A Dirty Word

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When I first began reading fiction as a kid I never knew the word.  I was just happy to read The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift and others of the same ilk.  (I read the second generation Swift books because the first were flat out racist and made me uncomfortable.)  In fact, I enjoyed these series so much I read and reread them and still have many ceremoniously sitting on the top of my mystery bookshelf.

Mystery bookshelf?  Why do I have one of those?  Or a science fiction bookshelf?  The same question is also relevant to my classics, modern, and non-fiction shelves.  Why aren’t they simply in alphabetical order by author?

For decades I read without even thinking of categories-let alone the word.  I was omnivorous.  I’d gobble The Foundation Series, chomp down on popular bestsellers like Hawaii or Exodus—I’d finish Hawaii and move on to Christopher Isherwood, Hemmingway, and Ursula K. Le Guin.  Later I’d go from Bukowski to Harry Crews to Bernard Malamud to The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (which I still imagine a great book and movie, though I haven’t revisited either in decades) to one of my all-time favorites Neuromancer.  In this sci-fi bullet train, William Gibson (known as the “Godfather of Cyberpunk”) chose not to explicate the world he creates but demands that you to buckle up and go for his ride trusting that you’ll get it.

Within all these mixes were sprinkled classics (a few), jags of nonfiction where I read everything I could find about one subject or another.  And, of course, tons of detective fiction by famous authors like Hammett, Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and the not so famous like Bart Spicer, Max Byrd, Brad Solomon, and Stephen Greenleaf.  (In one of these posts, I’ll dig more deeply into detective fiction authors and their influences on my books.  Though it might take a while since, at the moment, I haven’t much of a clue.)

Until I began my own writing career I never really gave the word much thought.  Though, by that time I was in my 40’s, and finally realized that genre was somehow less than literature, despite a definition that is not particularly pejorative.  “A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.”

Benign enough.  But definitions don’t always marry reality.  Is a symphony inferior to a quartet?  Most wouldn’t think so.  Is rock music inferior to classical?  Hmmm, now the critics start yammering.  And if you translate this to literary equivalents, you’d have the same arguments.  Or at least quietly smug, smirky looks.  Genre books are always considered a lower rung on the writing ladder.

So I began to wonder why I was choosing detective fiction which, though elastic, really fits the word’s definition.  Was I afraid to stare at a blank computer screen without any structure to serve as a safety net?  Did I consider myself less a writer than those who strive to write “literary” novels?

For a while there, the questions kicked up a real block.  But then I reread Red Harvest and realized that if I could tell a story halfway as well as Hammitt, I would be lucky.  I picked up The Long Goodbye and decided that if I could pen sentences as descriptive as Chandler, I didn’t give a shit what my books were called.

And then I took it further.  If I were going to be labeled a genre writer, I was going to do everything possible to stretch the boundaries.  Sure, I’d use a generalized detective fiction structure where plot was important, but the heart of what I was writing about had to do with relationships, characters and their interactions.  Themes.  Those were important to me and would be at the heart of every book I’d write.

It also didn’t escape my attention that relationships, characters and their interactions are the meat and potatoes of every novel.  Which brought me to the point where I am now.  A novel that contains these ingredients, that explores them intimately, that is written well, that reveals something to its reader, and makes the reader feel–that’s a good book.  And if the author does enough of it beautifully, it’s a great book.  No matter its classification.

But it’s a funny world we live in.  People feel a need to categorize damn near everything.  During my last literary go-round, I repeatedly heard I wrote “airplane books” or “beach reads,” that is, books to toss once you finished ’em.  It usually wasn’t meant to be mean; ironically it often came on the heels of people telling me how much they enjoyed one of them.  But truthfully, despite my stalwart belief mentioned above, it used to bother me, made me angry or sad.

I can’t say whether I succeeded with my goals in my previous Matt Jacob books, or whether I’ll succeed when I write him out of retirement.  And while Matt and I are much older now, with eyes that look upon the world with a different perspective, both of us still think our hearts are in the same place about the interpersonal issues I care about.  And we both agree those issues will always be the guts of my books.

But while writing the Matt Jacob books, I learned something I had never before realized.  No matter the genre, whether it’s a bad book, or one that wasn’t even published, I have huge respect for anyone who takes the time and effort to write a complete beginning, middle, and end.

It really is that hard.

“A bad book is as much a labour to write as a good one, it comes as
sincerely from the author’s soul.” Aldous Huxley

Who Won The Game?

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I’ve been a sports junkie for most of my life.  In fact, the only period I can’t remember being glued to the sports pages and tube was during my years in Madison, when the 60s provided their own other world.  But even then I kept my eye on Bob Gibson, the great St. Louis pitcher.

Sports have been a significant topic between me and many of my friends.  Is Big Papi washed up?  Compare Charles Barkley’s lifetime stats to Larry Bird’s, then tell me who was the better player.  What do we think about millionaires playing for teams owned by billionaires?  The list stretches endlessly (at least according to my life-mate Sue).  It’s that guy thing—the substitute or perhaps testosterone version of intimacy.

But today’s post isn’t about professional sports or my obsession with it.

The subject’s up because this year I’m co-managing a community co-ed softball team, Jah Energy (named after the Jamaican god).  I’ve played for Jah nearly twenty-five years, much of which I was a pretty good first baseman (“if you’re gonna throw wild, throw it low. I’m too damn short and fat to leap high, but I can pick ’em out of the dirt”).

Now though, I’m too old to play much anymore (probably close to, if not the oldest person, in the league) so the shift to co-manager makes sense.  Still, it’s super cool to hit the field every once in a while as catcher, watch my son playing first or outfield, my nephew covering third, and the diamond stocked with representations of Jah’s different generations–including some first year newbies.  One of the benefits of catching is you see it all.

But managing a community co-ed softball team is more of a challenge than I ever had as a player.  There’s finding enough women who want to join, for example, and deciding the minimum number of games people must attend to be on the playoff roster.  Collecting dues.  But for me, the most difficult issue is finding a balance between my desire to win and trying to have everyone play—no matter their skill level.  A seriously schizo experience.

When I held down first base, the answer seemed simpler.  Everybody plays.  But truth be told, I was a starter and mostly played  full games.  It was the other positions where people were shuttled in and out.  Kinda made my largess an easy do.

Come a decade or two, (and I was no spring chicken when I first joined Jah) our manager at the time began subbing me out.  I knew my skills were eroding and that the woman who replaced me was the better athlete.  Not only in the field, but at bat.  (A banjo hitter, I never hit a home run during the course of my twenty-five years.)  So for me it was still “everyone plays” in part, because I now was one of those “everyones.”  But another part of the conflict went internal; should the shadow of my former self play at all, or just let others take my spot?  And how much of the “let others” take my “spot” was really for the good of the team, or was I simply embarrassed by my declining ability?

Well, for the past few seasons, whatever the reason, I mostly chose the latter, satisfied to coach third base and enter a game in the late innings every once in a while as a defensive replacement at first or catcher.  This arrangement continued to shield me from the winning/playing time conflict.

Ain’t shielded no more.  Now most of you know I’ve had a pretty turbulent spring, so, much of the weight has fallen on Sara, my co-manager.  She also has difficulty balancing playing time and winning.  We talk about X, we talk about Y, but eventually we end up with a back-and-forth about playing a terrific outfielder the whole game or replacing him halfway through when each fly ball then becomes an adventure?

One might think it’s an easy call. Stay the course, play everyone, and that be it.  But losing regularly, even in a community league, grinds the grit from your spirit.  Not just mine, but the whole team’s–even those who spend a lot of bench time.  Slowly my take on “everybody plays” began to change.  I too was tired of losing and grew closer and closer to playing our best players as much as possible.

Only as manager, I’m forced to see and accept both sides of the issue.  Despite my desire to win another championship (we’ve won two), a season that runs April through August requires a significant time commitment.  From where I now sit, it’s just not fair or okay to keep people with less skill off the field game after game.  To say nothing of the legitimate complaints that would hit the fan if we actually worked it that way.

So Sara and I middle it, which probably pleases no one.  We work hard to find times when substitutions might not affect the outcome—a situation that doesn’t occur during too many games.  We also try to play our best players much of the time, but wewill take ’em out if the need to get someone else into the game is greater.  Much to the chagrin of those who come out and those who really want to win.

And this is just the regular season.  What’s gonna happen during playoffs?

To be honest, this managing gig is a gut buster and man, I miss the days when playing time decisions weren’t mine to make.  But time doesn’t reverse itself (except in Superman comics) and since this team means so much to me that I plan to have my ashes spread over our home field, I expect to be struggling with this shit for years to come.

Dreams Don’t Quit, People Do

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My cousin Hank didn’t know he was my role model when we were growing up.  Truthfully, I don’t think he paid much attention to me.  We were more than a decade apart in age and I hung with his much younger brother Jeff.  In fact, when I recently mentioned that he had his boyhood friends punch me in the stomach to show how well I could “take it,” Hank denied it ever happened.  Of course, he wasn’t the one who took the hits; why should he remember?

Hank was older and cool, but most importantly he was a saxophonist.  I was still a kid when his band moved to Las Vegas and grabbed the town by the throat.  We heard great reviews of his playing, with lots of accolades to Barbara, his wife and the band’s singer.

Then word came back that the group would appear with Jerry on the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon.  In those days, that was “can’t miss TV” replete with every famous headliner including the Rat Pack.  Plus, this was gonna be the first time I’d get a chance to hear him play and Barbara sing.  I couldn’t wait.  Although scheduled for ’round midnight, they didn’t get on air until the early hours of the morning.  No matter–despite threats from my mother who wanted me to go to bed–no way I was gonna miss his set.

I loved what I heard.  He had the fastest fingers I’d ever seen and the horn just wailed, counterpointed by Barb’s husky crooning.

That night was the beginning of my dream to become a musician.  When the band moved back to New York, I was attending a Yeshiva high school in Brooklyn.  Hank’s willingness to sneak Jeff, me, and Frank (their middle brother, who along with Jeff and Hank is one of my best friends) into a dive off Broadway called The Wagon Wheel just reinforced my fantasy.

But like most people’s dreams, mine slunk into a corner when confronted by daily life.  I’d quit college to go into Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and discovered I was a talented organizer and counselor and enjoyed the work.  Like most people, I continued to do what I did well.  The fact that I never had a music lesson or any experience with musical instruments didn’t help all that much either.

Fast forward through decades:  Twenty years of working in social services, raising children, and ten years of successfully writing detective fiction (another dream of mine).

Still, throughout those years, the thought of playing music never disappeared.  In fact, at one point I asked Hank to pick out a sax for me to buy.  Instead, he kindly sent me one of his, told me he never played it so I could keep it.  I can only imagine him shaking his head and wondering what the fuck I wanted it for.

What the fuck, indeed.  The sax sat in the closet for another decade while I delved into my next serial career as right-hand man to my blood brother Ron, a lawyer in D.C.

I took pleasure in facilitating focus groups, running mediations, preparing experts to testify, even editing briefs.  I was especially proud that Ron’s practice was totally committed to fighting for the little guy against powers that be.

Still, something was missing.  I needed the arts.  Since I’d burned my writing bridges, it was time to pull out the other dream and Hank’s alto.  I was sure to succeed–hell, I’d written a New York Notable novel without ever writing much more than a short story.

I found a teacher, Bob Brenner, and dug in.  And while I could actually get a sound out of the sax fairly quickly, I slowly, unhappily, discovered over the next couple of years that muscle memory wasn’t a strong suit (memory in general, actually), and learning to read music, finger an instrument, understand ‘time” and enough theory to become competent in this new language, was a brand new bag.  And not one in which I was particularly proficient.

Frankly, I was shocked.  I’d been certain that with time and effort I was sure to succeed.  Beginning at 50 years old was an excuse for a while, but some dreams ride with talent and some don’t.  Images of playing weekend gigs at Holiday Inns weren’t going to become a reality.

Part of me thought about quitting.  Just giving up.  If I couldn’t snag my goals, why bother?  But Bob knew better.  He’d surely known my fantasies were just that–fantasies.  But he also recognized and understood that the pleasure of playing music didn’t hinge on unattainable dreams.  There was more to get from making music than gigs or muscle memory or nimble fingers.  So he urged me to join a learning ensemble populated by much more experienced musicians than I.

At first I took to calling the ensemble, my Tuesday Night Humiliation Session.  But I discovered that playing with people much better than me was a growing experience.  Letting go of my pride made room for more music to enter–and I even got better.

During my writing years people continually asked what kind of book to write in order to sell to a publisher.  I always replied with a question of my own; do you want to write or do you want to sell?  Either is fine, but they ain’t neccessarily the same.

At that time it was an honest but facile response.  My musical life has taught me how true that answer really was and then some.  It’s taken close to a lifetime but I’ve finally learned that it isn’t always the “goal” that need carry the day, but the activity in and of itself.

I don’t know if what I’m about to say makes sense in today’s world, but I’m retro.  I don’t think life means all that much if you don’t go after what you want.  No matter how unlikely, unusual, or just plain difficult.  No, I’m never going to play at a Holiday Inn, but I do love playing.  Sometimes dreams don’t turn out as expected, but that doesn’t always mean worse.  Sometimes it just means different.

“Inside every old person is a younger person wondering what the fuck happened.”

Writing From The Heart

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I received a ton of feedback on line and off about “A Marriage Passed.”  Each one was encouraging and lovely, and I very much appreciate the time and effort people took to comment-thank you.

One thing that struck me was that many called the piece “writing from the heart” and urged me to continue to do so. I think what that meant was the degree of emotional honesty came through as clearly as the content.  And that was true.  Yet, my posts have generally been “from the heart.”  Okay, not the television one where I was having some fun.  Or the “Harbingers of Spring,” in which I rued Boston’s weather (well, maybe).  But my post about “Israeli Regime Change,” or “The Obama Conundrum,” and even the Dylan/Ochs conversation were reflections of deeply held beliefs-though written in differing styles and forms.

And while I appreciated last week’s comments and feedback, truth is, I started this site as a road back to a kind of writing, which is of my heart.

It began with the intent of shaking the rust off due to an eighteen year hiatus.  I chose nonfiction posts because it was something I’d never done.  I hoped the newness would both jack me out of silence and broaden my skills.  So far it’s done both and, while I enjoy the freedom to pick different topics, love the response to my pieces, enjoy the arguments they occasionally provoke, I still miss the hell out of writing fiction.

I miss the freedom to play inside my imagination.  I miss the people I create.  I miss hearing the different voices inside my head and the unique personalities that eventually emerge.

I guess writing novels is my safe way of experimenting with multiple personality disorder.

I’m also hungry for the interpersonal interactions and relationships in which my people engage.  I don’t miss plotting but that comes with the package and there’s simply no way to avoid it–especially since I intend a return to detective fiction.

(Excuse me while I momentarily extemporize.  It was no accident that I took up the saxophone when I walked away from writing. I liken detective fiction to jazz for a number of reasons.  For one, jazz is an indigenous American art form and I believe the same about hard-boiled.  Just as jazz upends traditional songs, it’s rewarding to create variations on the hard-boiled historical structure which, while maintaining the form, also changes it.  Most of all it’s a gift to follow in the footsteps of novelists like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Bart Spicer and Ross Thomas.  (Someday I’ll share a more complete list of the “greats” in this space.)

I walked away from publishing after several censorship battles with a major house–and thought I was done forever.  But this new age of communications has given me another shot.  Right now I’m converting three out-of-print Matt Jacob books (along with the fourth I took with me when I walked) into eBooks, which I will control.  That was my thinking when I started the whole project, but in the course of creating this space I’ve decided to bring Matt Jacob out of retirement.  I’ll begin a new novel once the earlier ones are up and running.  Frankly, the idea of playing with that eighteen-year gap tickles me.  And while I don’t imagine my older voice will be the same, (hell I haven’t stayed the same for the past eighteen and certainly my voice hasn’t), I’ll try to write books that reflect the realness of life and relationships, much as I tried to do before.

So what does this have to do with writing from the heart?  I suppose the connection is that I have to follow my heart in order to write from it.

At the same time I have no intention to give up these posts.  I’ve discovered the pleasure of stretching my abilities and have thoroughly enjoyed the reactions to the different columns.  And most importantly, there are cultural, social, political, artistic and personal issues that intrigue me and I intend to explore.

Although most of my posts won’t be about loved ones, they will be honest and often “written from the heart.”

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. -Mahatma Gandhi