Yes, I wrote a novel. And that's scary.
Not that writing the novel was scary. Quite the opposite, in fact. An injury to my neck and spinal cord required surgery this past spring. And while the surgery was successful, the recovery is expected to last well into next year. The recovery includes regaining the use of my dominant hand, which means that woodcut printmaking and cartooning are on hold. As I struggled with that, I remembered that at one time my eyes were set firmly on the goal of being a writer. So I finally sat down to work on ideas that I've let live in my brain for decades. I soon discovered that I really enjoy the process, and it has allowed me new avenues in the craft. Twenty-five years ago, when I was just starting to get some publishing credits under my belt, I became disillusioned with not just the publishing business, but with what I was writing -- dark, plodding literary tales of the human condition, often with no resolution, point or purpose other than to, I don't know, maybe make the reader feel something. Even if that something was mostly bad.
But then, during my convalescence I started to watch a lot of old TV. Columbo, The Rockford Files, Quincy are my favorites, but then I'd mix in a little Murder, She Wrote, Diagnosis Murder and Matlock. Through it all, I consumed the entire Bosch series to wash it down like whiskey chasing birthday cake. And it was glorious. And when I was done, I realized that a lot of the ideas I'd had over the years were essentially in the same vein: eccentric folks in normal situations, normal folks in odd situations, and the like, and I always like to surprise the reader with a little twist (ahh, there's my Rod Serling right there!), and I realized that it was time to get my fingers tapping to see if I could actually pull it off.
So, no, the writing of the book was not scary. Not the pace i'd set for myself, or the deadlines I'd made, and not even the half-dozen rewrites (and hey, guess what -- I've included plenty of misspellings and errant punctuation just so you know it's handmade!) were scary.
The submission process has changed a lot since 2002 -- everything is electronic, which is great, and it's generally understood that if you don't hear back in two weeks, you've been rejected (back in the old days, you'd mail off your precious query and a few chapters, with a SASE, and then check the mailbox daily hoping for a thin white envelope in return (my wife will tell you that to this day, I check the mail right away, sometimes twice a day, because I was conditioned to do that for over 12 years). This time around, I shopped the novel to agents, hoping to have someone else do the legwork while I worked on a followup. The agent-seeking process is bloodier than the editor-seeking process, mainly because the market is saturated, but also because the field is shrinking due to mergers, and also low pay (agents average a yearly salary of $29,000/year). So, before an agent will consider you, you will need a website and a following, and will need to prove that you've been selling books in the thousands.
So, I decided to go right to the publishers, and it was about then that I realized that this project didn't have legs. And while it was hard to admit that, what made it easier was knowing that I really like this book. I love the story, and the characters, and I am very proud of the work that I did.
But what to do? I used to work for Borders Books, where I was the store's local interest curator and buyer for a few years. Most local interest books in the late 1990s were poorly written, generally unedited blocks of junk, bound in the cheapest way. An author would come to me with pleading eyes, insisting that their book would be a hit if we'd just stick in near the cash register. Then there would be the lonely book signings with the authors, smiles painted on their faces, their eyes full of disappointment. And in those days, if you self-published a book, that meant you spent, usually, at least a couple of grand. And the more optimistic you were, the more money you spent -- and the more boxes of unsold books you had in your garage.
Amazon -- and developing technology -- blew the flopsweat model out of the water by creating "on demand publishing" (if my recollection serves, I believe ODP was pre-Amazon, but Amazon stole whatever ball was on the field and ran it to the end zone...over and over and over. And so, Amazon now does it the best.
And by best, I mean it's absolutely free. Publishing this book cost me nothing but time. I made it a Kindle Unlimited book, so if one is a KU subscriber, it's free to buy. If not a subscriber, it's only $4.99, and because that's just an electronic file, whatever money Amazon gets is just free cash. And if someone wants a trade paperback, it's $12.99, and it costs Amazon's publishing robot less than $4 to produce, so they get a chunk of change on top of paying the printing price, for every book they make, because every book they make is a book they sold. Genius. I hate it, but it's genius.
Okay, so back to what scares me. It's a vulnerable thing, putting something out for public review. Even though I have nothing but pride tied up in it, even though it was a project I did for fun, it's still hard to stand up and say "Look what I did." Maybe it shouldn't be difficult, but it is.
So here it is, anyway.
"The Coldest Case" (originally called "Rise of the Cleveburn Biddies," but I really wanted it to have the exact same name as two dozen other mysteries, one by James Patterson in order to really make it hard to find) was inspired by the real-life murder of my great uncle, Sidney Payne, in Asbury Alley off the Chippewa Strip in 1966. The real story is not a mystery -- the killers were found after a nationwide manhunt, there was a lot of local press about the murder and trial, and the killers spent their lives behind bars, with one of them escaping for a time, and one of them figuring loosely in the trial of a Watergate conspirator. A member of a local motorcycle gang also figured in the trial. I know, I know, you're saying "Well, damn, I'd read THAT book." No, you wouldn't. It was overall just a sad story.
In 1988, I stopped down at the apartment in the Elmwood Village that my grandmother, Ev, shared with her sister Babe, who was Sid's widow. Babe lived alone in the apartment for 12 years before my grandmother, widowed for about 5 years, sold her cottage in Angola and moved to the city. I got to witness their sibling spats, their mutual admiration, their teamwork, and their pride in their home. I also got to observe the cast of characters that lived on their street -- it is a tiny stub of a street, with about a dozen houses, most of them duplexes. Som characters drifted in and out, others were old-timers who had lived in the neighborhood from the time Niagara Falls was just a dribble. As I enjoyed a plate of homemade chow mein, I mentioned that I was changing my major from pre-law (yeah, I know) to journalism (also not a smart move, but more sensible). Babe's eyes lit up and said "Oh, you're gonna be an author!" I'd never even given that idea a thought (so blame her for my delusion of the last 35 years!), but I started thinking about it a lot. And haven't stopped since.
Babe got up and went to a cabinet and returned with a small envelope stuffed with newspaper clippings about Sid's murder and the trial. "Maybe you'll write about this," she said.
I hope she'd be happy with what I came up with. Babe became the brash, emotional Toots; Ev was now fretful but deceptively resilient Vi; Troubled Sid was now tragically heroic Sam. Babe worked at the much-remembered Merlin's as a cook, much like Toots keeps the kitchen in order at The Camelot. Beyond that, though, the characters and situations are all drawn from bits and pieces of people, places and things. A novel is a mosaic of shard of experience.
So, I hope you'll give my little effort a try. I am at work on a Christmas-themed follow-up with the same cast of characters, along with a few more, and even more outrageous antics from....
The Cleveburn Biddies!
