ATTENTION: Owing to some kind of error in the huge, unresponsive bureaucracy of Kindle Direct Publishing, part of Amazon, many of my outstanding small-press publisher’s books are no longer listed on Amazon.com. This includes my Amazon Best-seller immigrant saga The Price of Passage and also the heartwarming coming-of-age story, Izzy Strikes Gold!
FORTUNATELY, we do not rely on Amazon to get our books in people’s hands. You can purchase either or both of these books direct from the publisher by clicking these links: Izzy and Passage.
Thank you for your unwavering support of fine literature from small, independent presses.
I left off other pursuits at age 70 to work seriously on becoming Your New Favorite Writer. By writing and publishing two great books (The Price of Passage and Izzy Strikes Gold!), a few short stories, and about 325 blog posts—weekly ruminations on the past, the present, and topics of literary and historical interest—I have established a late-life career as a minor, yet real, literary lion.
But a few weeks ago, at age 80, this literary lion discovered a serious condition—a lumbar stenosis—that required surgery if I wanted to spend the rest of my days upright and ambulatory. It’s a tough operation, involving a long dorsal incision, six hours on the table, and the placement of rods and screws inside my spine.
I solemnly vow, Gentle Reader: This is the last time I will lumber you with tales of Your New Favorite Writer’s surgical woes. As rumors, spread by me, of post-operative grief have turned out to be exaggerated, we will return next week to interesting stuff.
Suffice it to say: An octogenarian takes several months to recover from this kind of event. I am working on it.
Br’er Fox throws Br’er Rabbit in the briar patch. Walt Disney Productions. Fair Use.
NOW, HERE IS THE COMPENSATORY BLESSING that has been revealed: In the past weeks—just before the Big Health Scare, continuing through it, and afterwards as well—a more ambitious literary agenda has come into focus. It includes a way through the thicket of the current work-in-progress, a WWII-era historical novel; the impetus for a narrative nonfiction work on a “history-of-religion” topic; a Vietnam-era military memoir; a speculative fiction comic novella partly inspired by the Big Health Scare; several new short stories; and a more sustainable approach to marketing and selling these gorgeous hunks of intellectual property.
All this may keep me busy until I’m 100. We’ll see how it goes.
Gentle Reader, from this end of the telescope I suddenly see every bit of life—every difficulty, every failure, all the boredom and frustration experienced at tasks I didn’t want to be doing—or more precisely, tasks the preparatory value of which I did not grasp—every problem encountered and surmounted or endured: I now see all of that as simply a fair price paid for the marvelous vista gleaming just ahead.
Excuse me, but I’ve got to get to work. See you next week.
Dear Reader: My second novel—a coming-of-age story set in the 1950s, called Izzy Strikes Gold!—will be released on Wednesday, July 24. Publishing a book requires many preparations on the part of publisher and author, who ideally work together hand in hand. Fortunately, I have an excellent publisher, Kira Henschel of Three Towers Press.
Be that as it may, the demands of publishing and selling a book do not exempt an author from Step 2 of my widely-heralded “Six Simple Steps to Literary Lionhood,” namely: WRITE.
The simplest, most accurate definition of a writer is “one who writes.”
Publicizing is not writing, even though it involves some sales-oriented writing. Selling is not writing, even though trhe product you are selling is what you have written.
Two or three months ago I was purring along like a literary machine, cranking out pages and chapters of first draft on my work-in-progress, a World War II novel. But as Izzy’s publication date drew near, the detailed plans for getting this already-written book into print and onto buyers’ bookshelves began to suck up all my time and attention.
It was a relief to take time out last week for coffee with my friend Mary Behan—the wonderful author of Abbey Girls,A Measured Thread, and Finding Isobel. (Rush right out and buy them, or put them on hold at your favorite lending library. You’ll be glad you did!)
Mary reminded me that we are, first of all, writers. She mentioned a writers’ book called What About the Baby—Some Thoughts on Fiction, by Alice McDermott, a National Book Award Winner. So I rushed right out and got it. So far I’m about two-thirds of the way through.
Alice McDermott says thoughtful, even profound, things about the art of writing fiction. Her main message is that you have to get deeply and passionately into writing down those words of which your story is made. You may do other wonderful things—research, editing, or just thinking—but writing is what gets you where you want to go. It brings to life the wonder and delight of a story well told—a story you didn’t even know you had in you.
That’s really why we write, after all. For that thrill.
I was so inspired I picked up my laptop keyboard and rapped out a new chapter of my WWII novel, which I have duly sent to the members of my two writing critique groups, who will give me feedback this week.
It’s good to be back in the saddle again, pardner.
By the way—if you cannot attend the fabulous Launch Party for the book Izzy Strikes Gold!, may I cordially invite you to follow along on the livestream via Crowdcast, at this link. If you find you can attend, there may still be a ticket or two left.
“Reflections” is the name of this blog. It is also the name of Your New Favorite Writer’s “author newsletter.”
In fact, the two are one. If you got here by surfing the Web and you found this site, you are reading my blog. If it arrived in your inbox, because you signed up, then you are reading my newsletter. It is the same content, only delivered by email, so you don’t have to search the Internet to find it.
If you have not yet done so, please sign up for the newsletter version, using the “Share My Journey” box at right. You’ll be glad you did.
The tagline of “Reflections”—whether you call it a blog or a newsletter—is “Seeking fresh meanings in our common past.” That’s all I write about.
In the pages of the blog/newsletter, this search for the links between present and past ranges over a vast field of ruminations. But every post has something to do with present and past. I like to think of “Reflections” as “Miscellany with a purpose.”
That purpose, simply put, is to offer us all, on a weekly basis, a fresh dash of historical perspective, from any source.
This being a newsletter and all, I really ought to share some news. Mostly what I share is random thoughts and woolgatherings. I do hope you enjoy them, but it’s necessary from time to time to toot my own horn—self-promotion being a solemn duty of the Literary Lion. That’s what I mean by “sharing news.”
You may recall that in August 2022 I published—or rather, DX Varos Publishing, Inc., published—my first novel, a compelling work of historical fiction calledPrice of Passage: A Tale of Immigration and Liberation. Since then I’ve been living the life of a published author.
It’s a life filled with glory in lieu of monetary rewards. I call it “living the dream.”
A kink appeared in the dream last July when Dan Willis, the guiding genius behind DX Varos Publishing, died unexpectedly. Without Dan’s sacrificial levels of one-man input, the corporation is failing to thrive. I have been forced to reclaim my rights in Price of Passage, meaning DX Varos will no longer publish it. There is hope, however, that a new edition will be published.
And What of Izzy?
You may also recall that I wrote a middle-grades novel, Izzy Strikes Gold!, about a twelve-year-old boy in 1957. It won the hearts of my grandson’s fifth-grade classmates and teachers when I read it aloud to them over several weeks last year. I am proud to announce, if I have not already done so, that HenschelHAUS Publishing, Inc., of Milwaukee, will publishIzzy Strikes Gold!later this year. When the publication date is set and pre-orders can be taken, I’ll announce that here.
It happens that HenschelHAUS is also interested in republishing Price of Passage, with a new cover and new subtitle. I think it’s okay to mention that here, although a contract has not yet been inked.
Work in Progress
“So, New Favorite Author, what have you done for us lately?”
I’m working hammer and tongs on a new adult historical novel about two brothers who are at odds with each other when World War II separates them. It’s the most ambitious project I’ve tackled yet, and it’s going slowly. But I’m deeply wrapped up in it. When it is finished, it will have been worth the wait.
The reason the writing goes slowly is that my brain works slowly. That’s all there is to it.
The advice of many authors is, “When writing your first draft, just write flat out. Get it down on paper as fast as you can. Don’t stop to fix anything, you can do that later.”
That’s all right for them, but I’m me.
Having written a couple of good novels, I know my process and how it works. Writing a first draft, I often follow my instincts down a blind alley. I paint myself into corners. I set up situations I cannot plot my way out of. As soon as I get a glimmer that I’m doing that, I need—absolutely need, Dear Reader—to go back to where I went wrong and find a new angle of attack. This is an essential part of the process.
Usually what saves me is research. I learn something completely unexpected while researching to verify particulars of the plot. For example, does such-and-such work in 1937?
U.S.S. Colorado, 1932.
I found out that when one of my two heroes in the new book, a Naval ROTC cadet, took a summer training cruise on the battleship Colorado, he would have unexpectedly been called to take part in the wide-ranging search for the lost aviator Amelia Earhart.
Amelia Earhart in 1937. Public Domain.
Amelia is still lost; but it excites me to find real facts of that kind that my story can tie into. It inspires me to invent new plot points. Nuggets of historical reality give me little pegs on which to hang a compelling story.
But working everything out, and narrating it in the right direction and at the right pace, takes a lot of time and effort.
So stay tuned, Gentle Reader. My entire career as a Literary Lion is a work in progress. You can’t know how glad I am to have you along for the ride.
To be filed under “Further Adventures of a Literary Lion”:
Your New Favorite Writer is pleased to announce that his middle grade novel,
IZZY STRIKES GOLD!,
will be published in 2024 by independent publisher HenschelHAUS, Milwaukee.
TA-DA!! Huzzah!! Thank you very much.
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AND HOW DID THIS GREAT BLESSING COME TO PASS?
Here’s a recap:
When I retired from my retirement job in 2016 to devote myself to writing, I did not know exactly what I would write about. But I figured whatever touched the emotional core of my being would be a good place to start.
That sent me back to my childhood. Specifically, to my grade-school years in Streator, Illinois, a prairie town of fewer than twenty thousand souls. The era was the 1950s.
Yes, Gentle Reader, those 1950s. The famous Fifties. The Fabulous Fifties. Which were not always completely fabulous, in case you didn’t know.
But here’s the thing: Life, by itself, does not make good art. If I wrote a simple recollection, you would find nothing remarkable or interesting about it. Indeed, when I look back on my actual childhood, no meaning or theme can be divined.
Yet it draws forth a strong emotion, a yearning to revisit those moments and find something . . . momentous. That’s why I write fiction. Perhaps I can touch the core truth of life by wrapping it in pretense.
So I made up a juvenile character, Izzy Mahler, a young boy in a small town in the 1950s, beset by bullying schoolmates, mystifying grownups, and a drive to reconcile conflicting events. Izzy’s experiences are my own, but rearranged in the hope they will add up to something.
I wrote a short story, “Nickel and Dime,” that links a six-year-old Izzy with two separate memories—being shaken down by bullies, and buying a candy novelty on credit. The tale had humor and nostalgia, and The Saturday Evening Post featured it on their website May 27, 2016.
And I hit the trifecta with a slightly deeper story, “The Lion’s Den,” about Izzy, still age seven, and his family tree. This piece won honorable mention in The Great American Fiction Contest and was published in its annual contest anthology.
There was more yet to say about Izzy. I thought there might be a coming-of-age novel buried somewhere in Izzy’s experience. I wanted to write it but didn’t quite know how.
After most of the writing was done on Price of Passage, and while engaged in a two-year struggle to get it published, I doubled back and started to work on Izzy’s coming of age.
This book would be a bit stiffer in content than the innocent childhood tales picked up by The Saturday Evening Post. It would focus on an older Izzy, in the momentous year when he was twelve.
Alluring and enigmatic Irma Ruger plays a part in the story, and bullies from earlier Izzy stories also appear, as well as a couple of new bullies. This time around, Izzy is mired in a family drama with serious dimensions. But there is also humor and a huge dose of authentic Fifties nostalgia.
You will enjoy the read, and so will your grandchildren.
When I thought the book was finished, I did the same thing I had done when I thought Price of Passage was finished. I took it to Christine DeSmet.
Christine DeSmet
In the most respectful and encouraging way, she took it apart—chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, line by line—and helped me see what was working and what was not. We found enough needed improvements to make the book five hundred percent better than it had been.
Nobody can do this like Christine. She has a gift and a calling.
The next step was to expose it to the target audience. Though written for ALL readers, Izzy Stirkes Gold! will be classified as a middle grade novel, merely so the booksellers know what shelf to put it on! It’s unlikely the book will appear on many bookstore shelves. Most of its sales will be online or direct from author to reader at book fairs and craft shows. But the need to categorize persists.
In the publishing world, if your protagonist is twelve years old, you have written a middle grade novel. It’s that simple. Many such books provide enjoyment and edification to full-grown adults, but no matter; they are still middle grade books.
I wanted to see how Izzy would do with its nominal target audience, so I contacted my grandson’s fifth-grade teacher, Matt Fiedler, and asked if I could introduce Izzy Strikes Gold! to his students. To my delight, he invited me to visit two or three afternoons a week and read the whole book aloud to his class, a half-hour at a time.
That experience alone was worth the whole effort. I found out what eager learners those kids are, and how they identified with a boy much like them but living in The World of Sixty-Five Years Ago. We had a fabulous time, and they affirmed for me that Izzy Strikes Gold! brings the reader some of the same longings and frustrations I knew as a boy.
By then I had begun a wide-ranging search for an agent or publisher to help me make the manuscript into a book.
A few weeks ago, I began conversations with Kira Henschel, a very experienced publisher with a catalog of books by wonderful authors.
As a result, I am now to be one of the wonderful authors in her catalog. This blessed event will occur about halfway through 2024.
Don’t worry, Dear Reader; I’ll keep you informed.
When the book comes out, do yourself and your grandkids a big favor: Buy it!
If you aspire to Literary Lionhood at all, you are already a person for whom reading is an unalloyed pleasure. Maybe even a chief cornerstone of your life.
But when you are a serious writer, reading is a job requirement.
As anyone who has ever had a job can tell you, there is some distance between an unalloyed pleasure and a job requirement.
Kinds of Reading
Let us consider the kinds of things you might read.
Books for meals.
First of all, there is Unalloyed Pleasure Reading—any book or books you are so eager to read that you pick them up whenever you have a spare moment. You take such a book with you to the doctor’s office to make good use of your waiting time. You read it on the bus. Those are the books I’m talking about. For me, anything by John Grisham, John Steinbeck, or Jack Finney.
Second, there are Exemplar Books. These are either so well-written or so ill-written that reading them will help you become a better writer. You can emulate their prose, or avoid it, as you evolve your own unique and compelling voice. Such a book may or may not give unalloyed pleasure. Even if it’ s a chore to read, you grit your teeth and get through it. For me, the phrase “good writing to emulate” brings to mind William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy, John Hersey’s A Bell for Adano, and Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti mysteries, among others. I won’t mention a specific example of writing to avoid. Suffice it to say, they are legion. You will discover them on your own.
Third are the books about how to write books. At least a million are in print, with hundreds more published every day. They are all above average. More than two-thirds of all writers who have written any book at all have also written a book about how to write a book.* (*Proceedings, Institute for Fabricated Statistics, Vol. X, pp. y-z.) In fact, many writers who have never written a book have nevertheless written a book about how to write a book. This could get out of hand. Take my advice: choose one or two of those listed below, and let it go at that.
Poetics, by Aristotle (No last name. You know: That Aristotle.)
Writing the Breakout Novel, by Donald Maass
Story, by Robert McKee
Books to the left of my laptop.
Fourth are books about how to sell books. There are works about how to find an agent, how to get your book published, and how to sell lots of copies once it is published. It seems every writer who has written a book about how to write a book has also written one or more books about how to sell your book once you have written it; and every writer who has written a book about how to sell anything at all has also written one or more books about how to sell, specifically, books. As to recommendations: Even I, Dear Reader—your reliable Guru of Literary Lionhood, famous for rushing in where angels fear to tread—even I tremble to recommend any one of these volumes. If you are thinking of consulting any part of this 21st-century cornucopia of unsolicited-yet-pricey advice, consider this free bit of wisdom from the late Sir William of Goldman:
“Nobody knows anything.”
He was talking about the movie business, but it applies equally to all forms of publishing. This may strike you as dismal news, but consider it in this light: You know as much as anybody, so plunge in. Just do something. Or don’t do something; just stand there. It might work as well as anything.
Books to the right.
Fifth are the Obligated Reads. These are books by friends or acquaintances which you have agreed—perhaps unwisely—to read and review. Some are beta reads, works in progress whose authors want useful feedback from you, so they can make their work better. Others are published books whose authors want your endorsement, in the form of a published review or a blurb for the book cover. When the author is a particular friend and the book is something you just can’t hack, then you are stuck with what our cousins across the Pond call a sticky wicket. If the book happens to be the second or subsequent installment of a series, you have an easy out. “Author Johnny Johnson has done it again!” Otherwise, you’re sunk.
Sixth are books you need to read, or at least skim, as research for something you are writing. For us historical novelists, this kind of reading is broad and wide-ranging. But almost any writer* will need to do some research.
*Well, not writers who are actually Artificial Intelligence programs. AI bots can just make something up that reads as if it is based on research, but it’s actually just pieced together with likely-sounding phrases stolen from thousands of real, and mostly starving, writers. But then, you’re not an AI bot. Are you? I feel like I should insert a Captcha box here.
Coping With the Deluge
All these reading demands can actually get in the way of one’s writing.
Books awaiting attention.
Upon becoming a Literary Lion, I increased my already liberal use of the South Central Wisconsin Library System. There’s something called LINKCAT, which is a wonderful thing. I can go online, find any book that exists anywhere within 51 included libraries, place it “on hold,” and it will be delivered to me at my local library, usually within a few days.
Because of the numerous reading interests noted above, books—those being read, those to be read, or those already read—reside in stacks all over my house.
I repeat, it’s getting out of hand. Last week, I realized these demands were forcing me to avoid reading what I most wanted to read, because I had to read something less pleasurable and, in the grand scheme of things, less important.
So I’ve drawn a line in the sand. From now on, I will only acquire books I actually look forward to reading, in the sense that I have a credible expectation of joy; or, those needed for specific bits of research. That’s it—only Unalloyed Pleasure or Necessary Research. Away with all other pesky categories! I hope that holds up.
A Final Word
I tell you as a bona fide Literary Lion: Get yourself a copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.
As Dorothy Parker once said: “If you have friends who aspire to be writers, give them The Elements of Style. Then shoot them while they’re still happy.”
I never aspired to be Longfellow. Or Ralph Waldo Emerson. Or Marilynne Robinson.
I just wanted to write something.
And to have it read by somebody.
Who would be moved by it.
To achieve these aims, I found it necessary to become a Literary Lion first.
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After years of storm and struggle, I retired in 2009 and found the perfect part-time job to entertain me in retirement.
I was the husband of a good and loving wife, the father of an outstanding daughter, and the grandfather of two sparkling cherubim.
Our house was paid for and had a large backyard with plenty of shade in which one could lollygag to one’s heart’s content.
And my heart, Dear Reader, was content.
At age 70, I was a success.
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Only: I had not yet written the Great American Novel.
Back in 1953, I wrote a story—a private-eye saga on two sheets of lined paper in my Big Chief pencil tablet.
I wrote it at my third-grade desk, when I was supposed to be doing something else. But I had already finished doing that other thing, whatever it was, and some of my classmates were still toiling away.
In those days, most teachers did not go out of their way to encourage creativity. But dear old Mrs. Winders, as she walked the aisle looking over her pupils’ shoulders, chose to look elsewhere as she walked by me. So I finished my detective story.
Robert Frost, ca. 1910. Public Domain.
It had a beginning, a middle, and an end, just as Aristotle recommends. There may even have been a reversal of fortune or two. It was pretty good but, alas, has been lost to posterity.
I always meant to follow it up with more stories—and books, lots of books. But stray fortunes led me down a different path. You know how it is. (If you don’t, check with Robert Frost.)
So here I was, at threescore and ten, not yet the author of a major work of fiction.
You know how, when you get an itch, you need to scratch it?
At the end of 2015 I retired from my retirement job with a respectable church magazine to become a full-time fabulist. Editing The Congregationalist was the best job I ever had. I enjoyed it well and could have kept doing it for a long time. But sometimes you have to choose one thing or another.
Satchel Paige advised, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” I reckon he was right. Look what happened to Lot’s wife.
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I wanted to write fiction. I did not know what fiction to write, but I figured it would come to me.
And so it did.
I wrote a few stories about a 1950s boy named Izzy Mahler. I submitted them to the Saturday Evening Post and they published two of them on their website. They honorably mentioned another in their Great American Fiction Contest and published it in the 2018 contest anthology.
Chalk it up to beginner’s luck.
As I groped for a topic or theme for a novel, my wife brought forth genealogy on Anders Gunstensen, my great-great-grandfather, who emigrated from Norway in 1853. Based on her research about Anders and his wife, Johanne-Marie Elizabeth Nybro, a fictitious story flashed into my mind—one that could be wedged into the wide spaces between the few known facts.
So in 2017 I started to write a historical novel in which the main characters, Anders and Maria, move from Norway to America and become involved in a black slave’s escape from slavery.
I had attended the University of Wisconsin-Extension’s 2016 “Write By the Lake” conference. There, the great Laurie Scheer had led me to believe that I could actually write such a book and that somebody might read that book.
So on I wrote.
Meanwhile, I joined a local writers’ group, Tuesdays With Story, a twice-monthly gathering for mutual critique, moderated by the great Jerry Peterson. I submitted raw chapters of my novel for comments by fellow writers. My mind stubbornly resisted many well-meant suggestions from these colleagues. Eventually—when my original approach left me stuck with nowhere to go—I came to understand what my Tuesday night friends were telling me about narrative structure. Aided by these generous critics, I trudged up the Fiction Writers’ Learning Curve, which turns out to be a lot steeper once you are climbing it than it looked from the bottom.
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I attended the 2018 UW-Extension Writers’ Institute and suddenly realized the writers gathered there had become my tribe. Though they wrote different kinds of stories and took much different approaches, they shared my affliction. Many of them were presenting more advanced symptoms.
I was the new kid on the block, yet welcomed freely into their midst.
They warned me it is hard to get a book published and hard to sell copies of it once published. You need a “platform.” Now, if you happen to write nonfiction and are already a known expert in your field—perhaps you make lots of speeches and presentations around the country—then you already have a platform.
If you’re a mere fabulist—a writer of fiction—then you need to build a platform from scratch. It takes connections, relationships, and social media. Don’t wait till your book is published to get started.
One of the best things to pre-sell my writing was to write a blog, they claimed. That sounded like a great deal of work. I would have to rent space on the Internet and post new writings regularly. What could I think of to write a blog about? And, thus occupied, when would I find time to do my real writing?
It preyed on my conscious thoughts. My Tuesday night mentor Jerry Peterson said, “Well, you might try writing a blog just for its own sake. Don’t think of blog posts as just a way to promote your writing. They might actually be your writing—or at least, part of it.”
I launched a blog in April 2019. I called it “Reflections” and defined its focus as “seeking fresh meanings in our common past.”
You see, I had figured out by then that all my writing is about plumbing the depths of the past. My genre preference of historical fiction might have been a clue.
I soon found that, keeping that focus in mind, I do find topics to blog about, week after week. It can take a whole day or more out of my writing week to do the blog. But I enjoy it, and people read it.
Thus far I’ve blogged for more than four years, for a total of perhaps a quarter of a million words.
Jerry was right. Blogging is writing. It stands on its own.
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This post—a particularly long one—is titled, “Confessions of a Literary Lion.”
Pause a moment to reflect, Fair Reader.
I set out, in January 2016, to become a writer of fiction. In pursuit of that dream, I found I had to do several things:
I had to write fiction. Not sporadically, but with regularity and dedication.
I had to attend conferences and classes to learn how to write fiction.
I had to join a writing group and learn how to use astute critiques to improve my work.
I had to spend quite a bit of time reading other people’s work and crafting astute comments to help them improve their work.
I had to plunge into social media to build a platform.
I had to write a blog—yes, to boost my visibility (platform), but also simply to spread my writings abroad. To reach people who might never read my historical fiction.
Oh, and besides all that: To learn the art of fiction, to learn the trade of marketing, and to better grasp that past which I am so eager to share with those who inhabit the present—I had to read a great many books. Books of well-written fiction. Books of poorly written fiction (learning what not to do!). Books on how to write. Books on how to get published. Books on how to sell books. Books of history and biography, surveying the terrain of the past. Books that zero in on specific past events and settings that relate to the story I’m writing. And by the way, books read for the sheer joy of reading, which I have always done.
I have become one of the leading customers of the glorious South Central Wisconsin Library System. I’ve become a patron in good standing of Amazon and local independent bookstores.
All the pursuits mentioned above, in the aggregate, are so sedentary that I find I need a determined effort to get regular exercise. Yet I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.
However, one must face the fact: I’ve become a Literary Lion.
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This fait accompli of Lionhood became clear to me in mid-2020, with the Great American Novel still unpublished. I posted a blog series titled “Six Simple Steps to Literary Lionhood.”
I considered it a public service to writers. If you know you must become a Literary Lion even before you have any tangible sign of literary success, it puts things in perspective.
The main thing it puts in perspective is that, if you’re serious about writing, you give it your all.
You will soon be neck-deep in drafts, revisions, critiques, reviews, conferences, events, relationships, and books. You may as well buy an ascot, a smoking jacket, and a briar pipe, because you’ve become Mister Writer (soon to be Mister Author)—or Miz, as the case may be.
At any rate, you may stop asking people, “How do I know if I’m really a writer?”
Just suck it up and get on with it.
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When this Buddha-like moment of Enlightenment came to me, it was on the whole a good thing, because it prepared me to dig in and take the next major challenges in stride.
You see, while undergoing a Gregor Samsa-like metamorphosis into something both fascinating and repellent (note the high-class literary allusion there, Gentle Reader?), I had been diligently pecking away at the Great American Novel.
I finished the first draft—“finished” in the sense of typing “The End” at the bottom—in late summer of 2019. After a period of extensive and exhaustive revision, I felt it was ready, under the title Freedom’s Purchase. So early in 2020 I began querying agents and publishers to see if they would read it and publish it.
Here’s how the publishing business works: You don’t just send somebody the whole manuscript of a book. That’s asking them to commit hours or days of their time to reading something they never heard of before. All agents and publishers receive hundreds or thousands of queries a year.
So the procedure is to send a brief query letter giving just a brief description of the book’s contents and your own qualifications as a writer. Some agents and publishers want a one-page plot synopsis in additon. Some want an author’s biography or resumé. Some want to see the first ten pages, or the first three chapters, of the text. You send them exactly what they ask for, and then you hope they will ask to see the whole manuscript.
Mostly, they don’t. On those rare occasions when they do, it’s cause for rejoicing.
But be prepared to receive a rejection.
Among the rejections I received for Freedom’s Purchase were two that included a sentence or two of explanation why they passed on the opportunity to publish my book. One said the story “just didn’t feel big enough” to succeed in today’s very competitive book market.
The other said, “I’m afraid I’m going to take a pass on this one. The plot as described in the query had not begun to develop in the first 50 pages, and I frankly lost interest in the story at that point. You might want to consider rearranging some of your chapters, assuming the escaped slave story did eventually materialize, and have it interspersed with the character/scene development that was all at the beginning.”
When you have been in labor for years to give birth to an 80,000-word manuscript based on a furtive gleam in your mind’s eye, it can be hard—I mean, disappointing—to read such words.
However, they can be very much worth reading, because it can be just what you need to know.
A light bulb went on in my head.
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All I had to do to make the story publishable was take it apart completely, throw out most of the best passages, reinvent the entire structure of the plot, make a minor character into a major character, ignore previously-received advice about the need for a unitary protagonist, invent oodles of new plot developments, and rewrite the whole thing from the ground up.
That’s all that was needed. And, Gracious Reader, you must understand—on account of the two informative rejections, I could see how to do it, except for all the details I would have to make up as I went along.
It would be the work of a year or more. It was disheartening. I felt defeated.
But I was now a Literary Lion. The Lionhood membership card came to my rescue. Becausethis latest twist in the saga of my novel begged to be blogged. I wrote,
My two helpful rejectors had made me realize something: I had gotten so good at query letters and plot summaries that when professionals read my book, the manuscript did not fulfill the promise of the synopsis. . . .
I would love to believe that I wrote a terrific novel that these dolts simply aren’t discerning enough to appreciate. But I would be a fool to stand on my greatness and fail to hear what these astute individuals are telling me.
What was I to do? Upon reading my blog post, the great Christine DeSmet, book coach par excellence, sent me an email. I did not save her exact words, but they were to this effect: “You can do this, Larry. Don’t give up.”
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Being a Literary Lion, I confess, has its burdens; but there are great benefits as well. One of them is the opportunity to receive precious encouragement just when you need it.
I did not give up. I spent the year that it took to completely remake Freedom’s Purchase. Christine not only encouraged me, she helped me with many valuable insights about story, plot, and narrative methods. When I was done, I had a book that was at least 500 percent better than before, and a new title: The Maelstrom.
The first people I queried were the two publishers who had given me the informative rejections. I explained that although I sent them something before, the Maelstrom was a whole new book, and wouldn’t they like to read it?
One of them declined. The other, Daniel Willis of DX Varos Publishing, a traditional small press publisher in Denver, Colorado, said: “Send it.”
Dano read it, he bought it, he published it August 23, 2022. A year ago tomorrow. With a new title: Price of Passage.
We had a wonderful launch party for the book at Mystery to Me bookstore in Madison. Lots of hoopla among my friends and confidants.
The next day, I was once again just a struggling writer. Yes, a published author, with a book to sell. But the state of publishing today is that the author must do almost all the selling. While working on other literary output. And balance it all.
I already had another book—a middle-grade historical novel about my old short-story hero Izzy Mahler. Children’s books are not in Dano’s wheelhouse, so he declined the opportunity to look at it. I’m still trying to find an agent or editor who is interested.
Meanwhile, I’m working on another book. A World War II novel. That’s all I’ll say, because it’s not very far along.
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So here are some things that have been added to my Literary Lion duties:
Book fairs. On certain weekends, I pack up a box or two of Price of Passage copies and go someplace to pitch my sales canopy and hawk my book, one copy at a time, to interested readers. I sold seventeen copies last weekend to people in Middleton. New Glarus, Waunakee, and Verona are coming up.
Bookstore visits. Sometimes I just pop into a local independent bookstore and pitch Price of Passage to the owner or manager. They don’t always agree to stock it, but sometimes they do, and I’ve sold some copies that way.
Speeches. I’ve appeared at the Sun Prairie Public Library and a Norwegian-themed women’s book club called Gudrid Circle. I’m scheduled to speak September 30 in Stevens Point at the Central Wisconsin Book Festival. These speeches are also opportunities to sell books.
I’m still a member of a writers’ mutual-critique group—two of them, actually, one meeting monthly and the other biweekly. By default, I have become the convener/moderator for both of them. I guess because I’m a Literary Lion.
Recently, I added Substack.com as a venue where my blog appears, in addition to my own site at LarryFSommers.com. It’s an experiment. I don’t know if I’ll gain readers or not, but at least people who read my posts on Substack will have an easy way to sponsor my writing with a cash donation. We’ll see what happens.
I’m considering finally reading The Iliad and The Odyssey. In translation, of course. I need to understand heroes better.
There’s always something new and different in the life of a Literary Lion.
I’m pretty sure this is not how Shakespeare did it. Or Walt Whitman. Or Agatha Christie.
At age seventy, I abandoned myself to the literary craving and became a full-time writer.
That was in January 2016.
During an apprenticeship marked by small successes, the possibility of “doing a blog” was often brought to my attention.
The notion was preposterous. It would suck up all my time, leaving me none for serious writing. Besides, how could I ever think up enough new content?
Every fiber of me railed against it, but in April 2019 I started this blog. In the process, I conferred on myself the title: “Your New Favorite Writer.” Well, if I didn’t do it, who would?
That was over four years ago. I have posted about a thousand words almost every week since then. It does take a lot of time, about a day a week. But on the other days I have still gotten some serious writing done.
Besides, I have made an interesting discovery: The blog itself is serious writing.
“Be that as it may, O New Favorite Writer—how do you balance such unequal tasks as posting a blog and writing the Great American Novel?”
The answer, Dear Reader, is that it’s all of a piece. (And thank you for asking.)
It’s All One Thing
Sherman
When I say “all of a piece,” I mean the writing life cannot be forced into small, separate pigeonholes—or narrow silos, if you prefer a farm metaphor. It is not that you must move your book forward at the expense of your blog. It is not that you must spend all your time writing, to the exclusion of reading what others have written. It is not that you must devote yourself only to the art of narrative and pay no attention to sales, trade, and the soil of commerce.
No, Gentle Reader. You must do it all at once.
General Sherman said, “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.” Your New Favorite Writer says: “Writing is a mess, and you cannot parse it.”
About the time I started this blog, it dawned on me that to be a serious writer you must become a Literary Lion, and you dare not put that off until your first Nobel Prize. If you are to have any chance at all, you have to jump into the Literary Lion business right away.
1. Cut the line. Skip straight to literary lionhood.
2. Write.
3. Get feedback.
4. Associate.
5. Submit.
6. (Develop Your) Platform.
When I wrote six pieces, one a week for six weeks, about these six steps, I continually warned readers that “simple” does not mean “easy.” Each step is simple. But you have to do them all together, continuously. If they were easy, everybody would be Stephen King.
Some time later, I was compelled to revisit my six simple steps several times to enlarge or clarify, based on my new experiences. But in the main, the six steps have held up well.
Proof of the Pudding
It seems to be a law of language that common sayings and nostrums get simplified over time. One example has to do with proof and pudding. People today commonly say, “The proof is in the pudding.” That’s an interesting saying, but in isolation, rather mystifying. Why should proof be in pudding? Why conceal evidence in pudding?
Listen, Fair Reader: Your New Favorite Writer is old enough to remember when the saying was used in its original form: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Ah! Clarity. If you want to know how good the pudding is, eat it. The eating will tell you what you want to know.
I offer my journey as proof of the pudding of achieving Literary Lionhood in Six Simple Steps.
I have been on the loose in the literary world for slightly longer than seven years. During that time, besides establishing and tending this blog (“One of the best writer’s blogs on the planet,” according to Laurie Scheer), I have:
Had a dog story published by Fetch! magazine.
Had three short stories published by The Saturday Evening Post.
Had my debut historical novel, Price of Passage, published by DX Varos Publishing, under a traditional, royalty-and-advance author’s contract.
Completed a middle grade novel, Izzy Strikes Gold!, currently seeking representation and publication.
Begun a World War II historical.
But that’s not all. Besides these obvious milestones, I have been busy associating. I have attended six or seven writing conferences. I am a member of the Wisconsin Writers Association, the Chicago Writers Association, and the Authors Guild. I am de facto leader of two small but important writers’ mutual critique groups in my home town.
Selling books at Literatus in Watertown.
The moment you sign a book contract you become a salesman. So I am learning about that. I visit bookstores and ask them to stock my book. I do author events from time to time—signing and selling fests, where the books are purchased one by one after actual conversations with readers. I am scheduled as the featured speaker at a couple of events in the near future. And, with the help of publicist Valerie Biel I am learning how to sell books through Facebook advertising.
I have become a fixture at my local public library, regularly reserving and carrying home more books than I have time to read. Stacks of books—all kinds of books—litter every horizontal surface of my home. I read as much of this conveyor-belt feast as I can manage.
And a lot of great books are being published by folks who have become personal friends of mine—Nick Chiarkas, author of the excellent, heart-filled New York gang novels Weepers and Nunzio’s Way; Gregory Lee Renz, whose debut firehouse novel Beneath the Flames delighted critics and book buyers alike; Christine DeSmet, author of the Fudge Shop Mysteries series; Kristin A. Oakley, author of Carpe Diem Illinois, God on Mayhem Street, and the forthcoming The Devil Particle—and many others.
Me, Me, Me
This is all about me. Does it sound like boasting?
So be it. But my purpose, Gracious Reader, is to show how all these activities lean in on one another. A writer’s life comprises all of them, and more. If it’s just one thing—or two, or three—it will not sustain itself. It will not endure.
And what is success? Like beauty, it’s in the eye of the beholder. If literary success is measured in dollars, I am, to date, a miserable failure. But if personal satisfaction may be considered, the past seven years have made me a wealthy man.
The proof of my pudding is in living the dream. You can quote me on that.
Most of all: the dedication and constancy with which the thing is done.
Seven years ago, I set out to become a serious writer.
I had retired once and then retired again. By January 2016, I was free to do what I had always wanted to do: Write.
Hardly knowing what I was about, I had set my course to become a Literary Lion.
(Gentle Reader, you may have heard me sing this song before, but it’s worth a reprise in a different key, if only to get newcomers up to speed.)
How to Build on Small Victories?
In 2016, Fetch! magazine published (and paid for) a whimsical essay I wrote about our old Siberian husky. In the same year, and again in 2017 and 2018, the Saturday Evening Post web-published three of my short stories about Izzy Mahler, a boy growing up in the 1950s. Light reading, yes—but chosen for publication over hundreds of competing submissions.
I began to think of a big historical novel based on my great-great-grandparents who emigrated from Norway in the 1850s. By early 2017 I was ready to start writing chapters.
It takes perseverance to write a novel. How could I sustain my purpose through this lonely quest?
Some writers may thrive as solitary artists, scratching out stories by midnight oil in a Gothic mansion, or under a gray mansard in some bohemian arrondissement of Paris. But I am not one of them. I can’t work in a vacuum. I need the stimulation of other minds and the encouragement of those farther along the path.
Parisian mansards by Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894). Public Domain.
The University of Wisconsin Continuing Studies Writing Program, now defunct, was then in fullest flower. I attended its writers’ conferences in 2016, 2018, and 2019. At such events you can learn craft.
You learn about marketing. You befriend others who, whatever their topic or genre, share a great obsession with you. They are writers. You have found your tribe.
I also joined two smaller groups, mutual critique groups. With regular meetings in a more intimate setting, members of such a group read and critique one another’s material. You learn how your work strikes readers. You learn what works and what doesn’t. And again, you form friendships.
To Blog or Not to Blog: That is the Question
In our critique sessions, we sometimes discussed marketing. Most writers love writing—or, at least, feel compelled to write. We tend to approach marketing, however, with loathing and trepidation.
Yet, marketing is unavoidable. You want people to read your work. That means it must find publication. And, once published, it must find its audience.
Bennett Cerf. Public Domain
No fairy godmother—no genie with the gentle smile of Bennett Cerf plus angel wings and a magic wand—is going to swoop down, pluck your manuscript from obscurity, and add it to the Modern Library. You, the writer, having gone to the trouble of filling the pond with water, must also round up the horses, bring them to the pond’s margin, and cause them to drink.
We have little clue how to do this. But the notion that gnaws at our hearts is that social media equals marketing. To a geezer like me, that concept represented a dreadful imposition. Once I set foot on the slippery path of social media, how many hours of writing time would be devoured by constant, compulsive tweets, posts, and links?
Of all web-based avenues, blogging seemed the wisest, if only because it was a longer form. What could I say, worth saying, in 140 characters? Or even 280? It seemed I would need to invest a day or two each week to write a blog post that anybody would want to read.
But how would I come up with topics? And even if I found things to blog about, why do it at all? How would this help me sell my REAL writing—my great American novel?
In our Tuesdays With Story writing group, Jerry Peterson, a great mentor, said something I did not expect. “If you think you’d like to blog, you could give it a try,” he said. “And consider that blog posts are one part of your writing—not just a gimmick to sell your other writing.”
One thing it did immediately was to impose a clarity that had been lacking before.
My friend Dan Blank is an apostle of clarity. He uses a simple exercise with index cards, which he calls “Clarity Cards.” He urges creators to assess their goals and purposes at frequent intervals to gain clarity on their main channels of endeavor. It is, as billed, a clarifying thing to do.
Just to design the front end of a WordPress blog site, I needed to clarify my thoughts about what I am trying to do as a writer. I knew it was all tangled up with the past, since I always want to write historical fiction.
I had a sense that history is not just dead events, inexorably receding on the conveyor belt of time. History, though consigned to the past, also lives in the present. We live in the midst of history. We never get clear of our history.
T.S. Eliot wrote a brilliant definition of what I want to do:
T.S. Eliot. Photo by Lady Ottoline Morrell. Public Domain.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. —from “Little Gidding”
I want to take readers into the past with me so that we may return having learned something that helps us be ourselves in the present.
So I came up with the title “Reflections” for my blog—because it’s a reflective endeavor—and the slug line “seeking fresh meanings in our common past.”
We all have individual histories, but there is also a collective past—a background we all own together. The more fully we know this, the more human we will be.
Dedication and Constancy
Since beginning this blog in 2019, I have published my debut historical novel, Price of Passage. Diane Donovan, senior reviewer for Midwest Book Review, called it “just the ticket for an absorbing tale of evolution and enlightenment.”
I have completed a middle grade historical novel, Izzy Strikes Gold!, and have begun querying agents on its behalf. When I read it aloud recently to the members of my grandson’s fifth-grade class, they were engaged and asked lots of questions.
I am now writing early chapters of a Word War II historical novel (for adults), as yet untitled, about two brothers with an intense rivalry. My writing coach, Christine DeSmet, Distinguished Faculty Associate, UW-Madison Continuing Studies, thinks my plot outline has enough substance to support a good book.
And oh, by the way, I have added 193 posts to the blog, for a total of about 200,000 words. You are reading post number 194. My fear of not having enough material proved groundless. It turns out the more you write, the more you can write.
Laurie Scheer, former director, UW-Madison Writers’ Institute 2010-2021 and co-founder, New Nature Writers, has called it “one of the best writer’s blogs on the planet.” And Christine DeSmet agrees, saying, “Sign up, people! It’s an amazing blog.”
So Jerry Peterson was right. This little endeavor, far from being a sales gimmick, has turned out to be a worthy endeavor of its own. For this reason I have begun to publicize Laurie’s and Christine’s kind comments about this blog. That publicity has gained the blog some readers.
But know, Kind Reader, that you are still among a select few. In a good week, my blog is read by a hundred readers, many of them repeat customers. EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE WORLD does not know what they’re missing.
About the “Reflections” Blog
If you’re new to this blog, you may wish to sample a few previous posts. You can navigate there using the “Search . . .” box at upper right, or via the ARCHIVES, organized by month, farther down the right-hand menu.
Some can only be called general commentary on our times. These are not exactly political, but they may raise political topics or questions, as in “No. We’re Not.”
A few are overtly religious, such as “A Meditation.”
Some few posts expose the haps and occasional mishaps of my old friend Milo Bung, a third cousin of Slats Grobnik and direct descendant of Æthelred the Unready.
Numerous others, no doubt, elude easy classification.
If, starting today, you went through the archive month by month and read one post a day, you would be up to date in less than a year. Now, that would be dedication!
I hope you enjoy these posts. If you do, spread the word. And buy Price of Passage. Thank you kindly.
Blessings,
Larry F. Sommers
Your New Favorite Writer
Author of Price of Passage: A Tale of Immigration and Liberation
Price of Passage
Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois
Screen grab from video taken when my ship came in.
Today—August 23, 2022—is the official publication date of my historical novel, Price of Passage: A Tale of Immigration and Liberation, from DX Varos Publishing.
I say “official” because many friends who pre-ordered the book have already received their copies, several days before the official date. I know this is so. They send me emails or Facebook comments, rejoicing that their book has arrived. Some even attach a photo of the book cover—as if to offer proof!
This, in turn, makes me rejoice. They are doing this because they are my friends.
Friends, Not Subjects
They don’t see me as a Big Deal Author, seated on some Olympian cloud bank, cultivating grandeur while a personal assistant screens all messages.
My friends don’t see me as a remote, magisterial figure, because I’m not. They understand how fallible I am, and they love me anyway.
My friends are real friends. I know them and they know me.
It thrills me that they invest themselves in my literary success just because it’s something I have set out to do. It’s important to me, so naturally it’s important to them. They become willing co-conspirators in this challenge of entertaining readers with an enlarged historical perspective.
God bless them all. Everybody should have such friends.
Blessings,
Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer
Price of Passage
Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois
The startling tenth step, Gentle Reader, involves what our old friend Kafka might call “Metamorphosis.” Or even, as our old friend Ovid would have it, “Metamorphoses.”
Latin poet Ovid. Public Domain.
The difference between the two—one letter—decided the question on a recent Jeopardy! answer.
But I digress.
What I mean is: Signing a book contract—the very definition of success in the literary game—changes you instantly into A New Thing Altogether.
Butterfly and caterpillar. Public Domain.
Let’s Review
As a HUGE FAN of this blog, you must surely have noticed that Your New Favorite Writer did set forth for the benefit of all, in public, beginning 4 August 2020, Six Simple Steps to Literary Lionhood. Those steps were, in order:
Step One—Cut the line. Go ahead and become a literary lion from the start, before you have a speck of achievement to point to.
Step Two—Write. Actually put something down on paper. To be a writer, one must write.
Step Three—Get feedback. Show your work to somebody and consider using their response to help you improve that work.
Step Four—Associate. To soften the Loneliness of the Long-Distance Writer, you must find your tribe.
Step Five—Submit. You must offer your work to the only judges who really count: Publishers.
Step Six—Build your platform. Gather about you, on social media and elsewhere, an army of friends who will help you sell your book.
In outlining these six steps, I cautioned repeatedly that although they are simple, they are not easy. Each step requires courage, cunning, and purity of purpose. If they were easy, everyone would be J. K. Rowling, or maybe Barbara Cartland.
Having set forth the Six Simple Steps, I smiled with satisfaction, knowing I had done a good work—even though I, myself, had as yet no published book to my name.
As to that . . .
. . . the beast remained elusive. Having applied the Six Simple Steps to my own case, I began to come close to publication. I could smell it. I could amost taste it.
I was offered a contract on my debut historical novel, but had to turn it down! Can you believe that? It was gut-wrenching. But this turned out to be a necessary first step to getting a good, fair contract with a publisher I could work with.
It was my good fortune that a couple of publishers who did not want to publish my novel took the time to write very helpful notes of rejection. Ever note, Dear Reader: A helpful rejection is better than a harmful acceptance.
I added a Seventh Step to the Six Simple Steps. Step Seven was the same as Step Two: Write. Or to put it more precisely, Rewrite. The two explanatory rejections told me that the book wasn’t good enough yet. This was a hard pill to swallow, but as Donald Maass observed, “At some point attention must be paid to the writing.”
Steps Eight and Nine were just like Step Seven, only more so. Write, write, write. I plunged in and spent a year rewriting the book, from tooth to tail with the help of stellar book coach Christine De Smet.
This rewrite was radical. It gave me, at last, a book worth publishing. One of my two rejectors agreed to look at it again, and bought it.
The Next Step
This brings us back to where we started, and my discovery of Step Ten in the Six Simple Steps to Literary Lionhood. You may as well prepare for it now, as it involves metamorphosis.
The instant you sign a book publication contract, you change from a writer into a salesman. All your waking thoughts are questions you never asked yourself before. How can I maximize pre-publication sales? Where are book clubs that would like to read my book? How can I get a celebrity to interview me? Do I need to buy a weather-proof canopy for outdoor book fairs? How does that Square thing work? Should I wear an ascot to signings, or just my regular bib overalls?
I kid you not.
It’s no good saying, “It won’t happen to me. I’ll remain an artist, above the fray.” No. You will not find that possible.
It’s no good cursing the book industry for forcing you into this commercial role. The publisher did not do it to you. The bookstores did not do it to you. You volunteered by hard, persistent literary work. You did it to yourself.
To begin with, you wrote the damn thing. You poured yourself into it, day by day, for years. You wrote, you rewrote, you cut the line, you got feedback, you found your tribe, you hammered away at your platform. And you kept writing.
By the time you had a book good enough to attract somebody’s notice, you were so deeply involved that you could not bear to think that nobody, or only a few loyal friends, would read it.
You can’t help wanting more. If you don’t get at least a respectable level of sales, you’ll be disappointed. So you plunge into the prospecting, the interviewing, the personal appearances, the social media, and hope for a light at the end of the tunnel.
A good friend of mine—a wonderful author with a powerful book—got so absorbed in the commercial end of things that he didn’t write a word of new material for two years. He’s writing again now, but he says it’s like pulling teeth to get started again.
I count myself lucky. I’m still writing a bit of new material, in the odd moments.
But don’t think I’m not absorbed in my new occupation of selling books. I just can’t help myself.
By the way, there’s still time for you to pre-order Price of Passage at a 30 percent discount. Just go to https://www.dxvaros.com/price-of-passage-preorders. But don’t delay. After 22 August, the price is full retail ($19.95 paperback; $4.99 e-book).
Blessings,
Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer
Price of Passage
Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois
