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Wednesday, May 31, 2017

MONSTERS AND MEMORY by Eleanor Lerman

I’ve been a great admirer of Eleanor Lerman as a writer, poet, blogger and brave soul who has overcome serious illness without complaint, and who can turn adversity into lyrical memoir, such as this current blog. There is incredible honesty in her work and it’s been a privilege to have published her and count her as a good friend. I think you will be equally impressed by this piece.  —Martin Shepard
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Monsters and Memory
by Eleanor Lerman

In 1970, when I was eighteen, I answered a want ad in the Village Voice that said, “Person needed to sweep up in harpsichord workshop.” I figured I could do that job; after all, I had grand ideas about being a writer and scorned the alternate path of going to college or getting a “real” job which, at that time, would have meant putting on a demure dress and typing letters in an insurance office. (Well, that’s how I pictured a girl’s life in those years and what my typing course in high school had prepared me for.) So, I took the A train from my parents’ house in Far Rockaway to the Village, got off at Sheridan Square, walked down to 161 Charles Street near the Hudson River and—not that I knew it then—found the place that would change my life forever.             

That day, Michael Zuckermann hired me to work at Zuckermann Harpsichords and also gave me the keys to a tiny apartment upstairs so I became not only his employee but also his neighbor and eventually, his friend. Yes, I swept the floors but I also made harpsichord kit parts. I drilled pin boards, spun wire into coils, affixed tongues into the plastic jacks that help pluck the harpsichords’ strings. By the time I was nineteen I was managing the place so Michael could be free to pursue his real passion: making movies that starred his girlfriend, Rosalie, running naked down Charles Street at night as a tape-recorded recitation of “She Sells Sea Shells” played in the background. The reason for this eludes me now, but I’m sure it all made sense at the time.

Michael once told me that he hired me because I had a soulful look, which meant I had achieved exactly the look I was going for: long hair, kohl-rimmed eyes, rags and glitter. Sort of half Cher, half Egyptian tomb painting. What better qualifications could anyone have for working in a harpsichord kit factory at that time, in those years, in that place?

So, Charles Street and Charles Lane behind it, along with the harpsichord workshop and all the people I met through that place—including a movie producer who lived in a carriage house on the Lane along with art historian wife—shaped who I was and who I am. I didn’t realize it then, of course, but I know it now. I was an angry, resentful, unsophisticated and uneducated kid with a dead mother and a fractured family so I didn’t know how to really relate to any of the people I met, but I did know how to watch them from somewhere deep inside myself. The people whose circle parted just a little to let me in—movie stars, Great American Writers, once-famous musicians suddenly and famously down-and-out, comedians on the rise, but mostly the writers, all men, all extraordinarily talented—filled me with jealousy (I wanted to be them), with rage (I hated the idea that I believed I couldn’t be them, though they were all extremely kind and encouraging to me), and even, once in a while, inspiration (what the hell, if some of these acting-out-all-the-time and raging-drunk types could write books, then why not me, too?). Anyway. When I was 36, I moved away from the Village and all things Zuckermann. There were a lot of reasons, including the fact that I thought I was failing as a writer (I had published two books of poetry but couldn’t find anyone to buy a novel I’d written) and so it was time to give up and try to live a normal life. That didn’t work out because I am not a normal person—at least, not the demure dress and typing kind of person who I thought I was sentencing myself to become by leaving the Village, moving to Queens, and getting a more conventional job. So, years got lost, bad decisions got made, etc., etc. Lots of time passed. Lots.

But actually, all that is prelude to what I really want to write about here, so let’s start by my saying that now, as it turns out, I am not quite the failure I thought I was. I am still not where I want to be as a writer but, at the age of 65, I have finally learned a few things about how to do my job better, be more discerning about the angels and oddities walking through the front door. And one of the things I’ve learned about my job is that different people who do the same thing do it differently. Some people who write stories start with developing their characters, some start by working out the plot, some just begin with a particular sentence and follow where it leads them. For me, stories start with a place. In my last novel, The Stargazer’s Embassy, Greenwich Village was an important setting for a good part of what happens. In a book I’ve just begun working on, the story began to reveal itself to me when I was riding on the Long Island Railroad and through the window, glimpsed a winding, lonely looking street that seemed to lead off to nowhere. I was on the train because, after a sudden and near-fatal illness, I was in the process of recovery, which involved traveling to a physical therapy facility some distance from the small Long Island beach town where I live. So, day after day, on the train, that deserted street with a fence on the corner and an empty lot lined by tall cattails, began to exercise a kind of pull on me. It was autumn; the sky was gray and mackerel-striped. The wind pushed around the clouds above the street and blew sand across the weedy lot. In my mind, that glimpse of scenery became a place called Satellite Street and it became mine.

So, back home, sitting on my purple couch, in my imagination I began to walk down Satellite Street and what I found there was a woman with short-term memory problems and her friend, falling into dementia, who can only remember experiences from long ago. There are a lot of things I intend for these women to do, but one important task is to make a brief visit to the Village because I want them to help me say good-bye one last and final time.

Maybe it’s because as we—as I—get older, the longing for people and places in the past grows stronger, as if by going back to those years we could cast off all the bad choices, the disasters, the illnesses and grief that came to visit afterwards. But for me, I know that I have to find another way to live and to write that is not constantly referencing the past. My life was pretty scary for a while but it’s much better now, and I have to find a way to work from that better place.

In my new story, a woman named Mara develops a mild obsession with the movie Godzilla—the old one, from 1956, with Raymond Burr. Mara thinks, at first, that her obsession stems from an affinity she feels with Godzilla’s atomic rage: she’s been very sick (who can she represent here, hmmm?), she’s lost her job, is living on Satellite Street in a middle-of-nowhere area surrounded by marshy inlets and highways to better places. She’s also very angry about the turn her life has taken and so she’d like to stomp out a few cities herself, smash up some skyscrapers and blast away an army of puny soldiers with her radioactive breath. But what she’s going to find out is something quite different: that while it takes a monster’s strength to survive this life, it also may require a monster’s heart—full of wandering atoms and stardust and ancient memories about human creation—to stomp on into the future. Wounded, maybe, but still breathing fire.

So, on I go. On we go. I recently received an email from someone I’ve never met, telling me that he’s a friend of Wallace Zuckermann, the original owner of Zuckermann Harpsichords and the older brother of my boss/friend Michael Zuckermann. Michael passed away many years ago but Wallace, who I didn’t know well, and whose real name, apparently, is Wolfgang, is an elderly fellow now, living in Paris in near poverty. (I know, that sounds like a novel all by itself.) The person who wrote to me is trying to get some folks together to find a way to chronicle Wolfgang/Wallace’s life (he was born in Germany, became an American soldier, created the harpsichord kit business and wrote a volume of bizarre, erotic fairytales which he once sent me and I am now trying to find among my books) and I told him I would help, if I can. Such an odd time to receive a communique from my Zuckermann-addled past but maybe it’s just the right time, as well.  Maybe it will help me say good-bye in my story, knowing that the girl with the kohl-rimmed eyes still gets to live a little longer, roam around her old haunts for a while longer and then go to sleep. Like Godzilla, she can drowse under the sea until roused again to stalk a new world. Angry. Happy enough. Certainly strong enough. Finally free.


Eleanor Lerman is the author of Radiomen (The Permanent Press, 2015) and The Stargazer’s Embassy, which will be published by Mayapple Press in July.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

MAKING IT HAPPEN by Kathleen Novak

Kathleen Novak has written two novels for The Permanent  Press The first, Do Not Find Me (February 2016) received wonderful reviews and excellent sales. Her second, Rare Birds will be published near the end of June.

Living in Minnesota, we’ve asked her to describe how she approaches marketing and this is well worth reading. Every author we publish has written an interesting book, but success depends on having a solid marketing plan, and Kathleen’s approach is a very successful one. What follows is her blog, MAKING IT HAPPEN.

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A bag of tricks is it?
            And a game smoothies play?
If you’re good with a deck of cards or rolling the bones – that helps?
If you can tell jokes and be a chum
and make an impression – that helps?
            from Honey and Salt by Carl Sandberg

I quote one of my favorite poems to begin the discussion on promoting our books. It does often seem like a game smoothies play. And I’ll say that after a year of doing readings and book clubs that telling a joke and being a chum do help. Everyone wants to laugh, even at a literary reading. Maybe especially at a literary reading!

I believe that those of us who publish a book in today’s environment need to face the reality of promoting our own work. To make something happen we have to augment what the publisher does and take action on our own behalf. That’s where “the bag of tricks” comes in. I’ve gathered ideas and advice, observed other authors and added my own discipline to the mix. I make a plan, give myself deadlines and keep adding to the plan as events evolve.  The following list is not the be-all. But it helped me on my debut novel, Do Not Find Me, and I am now doing all this again for my second novel, Rare Birds.

Here’s what I suggest:

    1.   Schedule a book launch party and invite everyone you know or think you know. Have something to eat and drink and sell your books.
         2.   Use TPP’s preview copies where they will help you the most. Send them out with a personalized letter to local publications, media outlets, large and important bookstores, even library systems in your area.
         3.   Put up an engaging website. I recommend photos or graphics, excerpts, links, etc.
         4.   Volunteer to do book clubs.
         5.   Ask friends, family and other colleagues to host readings – salons, as one of my friends calls them – either in their homes or at their neighborhood library.
         6.   Use social media to announce events and keep people interested. (I had the idea to pull in music clips and quotes too, but chickened out on the first novel. Maybe I’ll be more bold this time around.)
         7.    Go to an inexpensive printer and make business cards with your book’s cover on one side and your contact info/web address on the other. I hand these out generously.
         8.    Let regional book store owners know you’re interested in doing readings.

Much of this does not come easily for me. I love to write. I want to be in my corner with papers strewn about, not asking book store owners to maybe, if you don’t mind, please carry my book. I bombed on at least half of my outreach. But then I scored on the other half. Some stores carried the book, newspapers reviewed the book; based on the reviews, I got contacted by organizations and did events. I was a state book award finalist. I feel like my efforts worked.


Luck is also an element, of course. That’s where “rolling the bones” comes in. But by doing all the above, we can certainly deal ourselves into the game. What helps make something happen? To quote Sandberg, they all help.

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Information about Kathleen and her two books can be found on her website, https://www.kathleennovak.com/, and her books can be ordered on Amazon or on our website, thepermanentpress.com. We encourage you to leave your comments on this page, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter! Happy reading (and writing)!

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

WRITING RULE ONE: NOBODY KNOWS FOR SURE by Chris Knopf

I hate so-called rules of writing, even though I gobble them up like hot hors d’oeuvres off a silver platter. Hemingway’s, Vonnegut’s, Elmore Leonard’s, Stephen King’s, E.B. White’s, Anne Lamott’s – I’ve read them all. If I had to recommend one, Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird is a joy. I never found myself quibbling with her advice, which is not only compelling in substance, but loaded with charm and wise humor. I feel Strunk and White’s Elements of Style is also essential, though I just can’t abide the prohibition against starting a sentence with “however." Nevertheless, they provide wise counsel, delivered both in form and content.  


Everyone raves about Stephen King’s On Writing, but it’s really just a memoir masquerading as an instruction manual. I can offer an abridged version: Be Born With Hypergraphia by Stephen King.  

Marty Shepard and I share a deep regard for Elmore Leonard, but his rule against starting a book with weather is ridiculous. I set one of my novels in the beach town of Southampton during the winter. How long should I wait to tell the reader that it’s snowing outside Jackie Swaitkowski’s window? I also think the word “suddenly” is very useful if used sparingly. As with “all hell breaks loose." After Leonard condemned this expression, you hardly ever read it. So go ahead, if called for. The competition has been suppressed.

Vonnegut heaped derision on the semicolon, saying “they are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.” On the other hand, Dr. Lewis Thomas, a brilliant essayist sadly overlooked these days, wrote “with a semicolon you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; to read on; it will get clearer.”

Most of what Hemingway reportedly wrote about writing was written by someone else. So much so that a book just came out titled, Hemingway Didn’t Say That. I still think his imitators are worth paying attention to, since the misattributions are useful (check out my prior Cockeyed Pessimist blog post.)

I’ve listened to hours of writing instruction over decades, leading me to believe most of it is a double-edged sword. It can help you avoid doing dumb things, but if you slavishly adhere to the prescriptions, you’re likely to choke off your creativity, your own special take on the pursuit. However, being a frequent imitator myself, I naturally made up my own ten rules of writing. Though I prefer to call them guidelines. Mostly to be ignored, since at the end of the day, the only rule is there are no rules.  

1. Never write drunk. Like a conversation in a bar, it all seems so brilliant at the time. You’ll regret it in the morning  
2. Write when you feel like hell. You’d be amazed at what you can create with a fuzzy head. You can always throw it out the next day (see above).
3. Ignore advice. It’s worthless.  
4. Listen to good advice. It’s priceless.  
5. Know the difference.
6. Get a comfortable chair. You’ll be spending a lot of time in it.  
7. Be filled with uncertainty, free-floating anxiety and existential fear. If you don’t know what this means, ask a successful writer.
8. Kill your beloveds. Cut when you have to, no matter how painful. Better you than some whip-smart editor half your age.  
9. Write for yourself.  If you care what other people think, you’ll write what nobody cares about.
10. Read. You’re not the first person to do this. You can learn from the ones who figured it out, even if they had no idea what they were doing at the time.  

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This is the third bi-monthly blog Chris has been posting, sharing his thoughts about the art of writing with other writers—be they published or unpublished—that might be helpful. He’s had a successful career as a wordsmith, starting with a career in advertising and moving on to write a string of highly successful mysteries. His 15th, Tango Down, comes out in November. Chris has won innumerable awards and has had dozens of rights sales around the world, including audio sales to Blackstone Audiobooks. Do pass this on to others you know, post comments on the Cockeyed Pessimist website, and feel free to share your thoughts with Chris via View my Blog The Cockeyed Pessimist, or email Chris directly ChrisK@mintz-hoke.com or Martin Shepard at shepard@thepermanentpress.com