Excess Baggage

Navigating the literary world without a compass. . . . by p.j.patterson

[p-j-patterson]

In praise of book clubs

This is me shamelessly hawking Rescue Man, because, well, I DO have to sell books. But actually this post is about the wonderfullness of book clubs. (Yes, I’m aware, as spellcheck keeps telling me, that wonderfullness is not a real word, but it IS a real concept). Book clubs do what writers love best, which is connect them to the people they most care about–readers. Readers make writer’s words and ideas come alive. Without readers, the emotions of a book just float aimlessly in the cosmos–they’re a basketball flying through the air with no hoop, a radio signal with no receiver, a puck flying from a hocky player’s stick with no goal net to reach. I’ve been extremely lucky to have been invited to a number of book clubs now, and each time I’m touched by the power of books to reach into our psyches, to pluck at the strings of our experiences and make them sing. I’m grateful for all the readers who’ve shared their stories with me—their losses, their joys, their sorrows, their lives. It’s the closing of the circle.

[p-j-patterson]

Mono no aware (fleeting beauty)

Nearly every afternoon when my daughter was little, we used to walk along a creek behind our house, sorting through the day’s events as we searched out the ducks and frogs and critters along the way. Sometimes, if we were lucky, we’d see a majestic Blue Heron or Snowy Egret perched ever so briefly on the bank, taking a break as it made its way along the shiny ribbon of creek that served as it’s highway up from the marshlands of the south bay. When it saw us, it would spread its great wings, push off on its long, black legs and soar up into the sky, in a gesture so graceful it was like a ballet. It was hard to say what we loved more—catching a glimpse of those regal birds poised on the bank, or watching them rise up and fly away, disappearing into the sky.

The path along the creek stretched from east to west, and sometimes, if the timing was just right, we would be treated to a magnificent sunset of orange and gold and pink and violet. To avoid the sun in our eyes, we walked from west to east, and so the sunset would be behind us, and we would keep turning our heads back to see it as it morphed from its brilliant colors and faded into dusk. Once, when it was particularly beautiful, my daughter had the idea that if we walked backwards, we could keep it in our view longer. And so we did, holding it with our gazes as long as we could, as if we could will it to stay.

Of course, it didn’t.  Mono no aware.  

[p-j-patterson]

With apologies to the cat...

This is the look of a cat who has just realized that Rescue Man contains absolutely no mention of a cat anywhere in its 279 pages. There is a dog named Max, but that is hardly a comfort. The author apologizes for this glaring omission, and promises to rectify it in the sequel.

[p-j-patterson]

Sex, novels and a Noguchi table

Behold Rescue Man on a genuine Noguchi coffee table, sent by a reader with impeccable taste (in both tables and reading matter). For those of you who have read the book, you’ll recognize the irony in this image, since a Noguchi coffee table makes an appearance in the glass penthouse of Miranda Holloway, a love interest of Rescue Man’s protagonist, Will Thompkins. In truth, the Noguchi coffee table is witness to a rather racy scene between Miranda Holloway and Will, who is frankly way out of his league dealing with both Miranda AND the Noguchi. But if you want to get the full story, you’ll have to read the book…

[p-j-patterson]

#RescueMan in Israel!

How far can a paperback travel? Well, to Haifa, Israel if you happen to have a brilliant jet-setting Israeli friend. It’s also a convenient marketing tool, since  that same friend happens to be a talented designer who can manage to make a croissant and cafe mocha look as though it just stepped out of a Parisian cookbook. Also, let’s face it, cafes are #RescueMan’s native habitat.

[p-j-patterson]

Marketing a book in the Trumpocalypse

In retrospect, November seemed like a fine month to publish a novel. After all, the holidays are around the corner, and what’s not to like about a novel filled with family, love, loyalty and redemption. Who knew that lurking in the shadows was an election so acrimonious, so poisonous and soul-killing that people could hardly imagine gathering for Thanksgiving dinner without breaking into a fist-fight.

The publishing world is awash with such stories. My brother finished his brilliant Russian spy novel just as the Soviet Union was dissolving into a bankrupt puddle of countries no more capable of exporting spies than in paying their own armies or designing a laptop that didn’t look like a 1950s television set. Ann Coulter (a name so evil I actually have trouble typing it without expecting goblins to fly out of the floorboards and swallow me) published a book about the glories of Donald Trump’s take-no-prisoners immigration manifesto the same week he…well, changed his mind.

What is an author to do? There are four stages of grief. First, denial (until the sales figures start spiraling down). Next, a great deal of hand-wringing and negotiating (maybe if I keep hitting refresh on the Amazon sales page), followed by crying and finally copious amounts of drinking. I’ve heard there is a fifth stage, acceptance, but it appears to have eluded me.

[p-j-patterson]

Now comes the hard part...

How I love the smell of ink in the afternoon! At last it’s arrived. 25 copies of the book I have toiled over lovingly for years, delivered to my door unceremoniously by my local UPS delivery man. And even though he complains that the box is overweight, and the dogs are coming perilously close to biting his calves as I sign for it, I feel in my bones that this is one of those life-altering moments of self-fulfillment that I will never forget. I am heading to the fridge to drink a tall beer to celebrate when it hits me: Now I actually have to sell it.  

[p-j-patterson]

[p-j-patterson]

Woooop! We have lift-off. Now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple ibooks.

[p-j-patterson]

Rescue Man (and its author) in their native habitat...

[p-j-patterson]

So close...

[p-j-patterson]

It turns out you DO judge a book by its cover

Advice from experts about book covers: They should be exciting, they should be edgy, they should make an immediate emotional connection with the reader, they should reflect the book’s contents. They should be gorgeous, uncluttered, ethereal, dramatic, soaring, life-transforming, maybe even solve global warming and the energy crisis. In short, they should make a reader want to buy a copy of your book, and one for all of their friends, in the first nanosecond they see it.

Oh, and by the way, they are 6 by 9 inches.

[p-j-patterson]

About the author...

After chucking a career as an adjunct professor teaching writing and literature to mostly distracted college students, I found myself doing an unlikely stint in a foreign policy think-tank working on arms control treaties (a fact my brother—who used to watch me catapult water balloons into unsuspecting neighbors yards—said scared him). Eventually I landed in Berkeley as a managing editor for the University of California, where I was fortunate enough to hang out with some enormously talented writers, along with a lot of other people who were the smartest kids in their class, and who grew up to be even smarter.

I’m known in the Berkeley café and bar scene, mostly for my propensity for drinking large quantities of Trumer Pilsner, and for my considerable talent in making a lunch hour stretch to two. Rescue Man is my first novel.

[p-j-patterson]

So you have kids?” He almost choked on his coffee. “I do. Although, I don’t usually talk about them on a first date.” “It’s okay, the Tyrannosaurus poking me in the back on the couch was my first clue. “Ah. Sorry about that. I thought I got them all.” He smiled. “They’re my siblings. Long story.” “You’re an interesting man.” “If by that you mean I have baggage, you’re right. Quite a lot, actually.” “I’m okay with baggage. I don’t do well with kids.” “That’s ironic, I don’t do well without them.

Will Thompkins, Rescue Man

[p-j-patterson]

...He suddenly felt like he was a thousand miles from Berkeley, in some kind of alternate reality where beautiful people sat sipping martinis at sunset and went to art shows and jogged along the waterfront and had casual sex with other martini-drinking beautiful people. A world where there were no Malibu Barbie beach houses and plastic dinosaurs to bang into in the night, no debates about how all the bath water wound up on the bathroom floor or who let the dog chew up the couch cushions.

Will Thompkins, Rescue Man

[p-j-patterson]

This is the way the world ends—not with a bang but a whimper.

So your dream of having an agent who will magically make your novel a best-seller, or even help it become a quiet, but well-reviewed little indie book has taken a beating. It’s kind of like getting your jacket caught in the car door without realizing it, and you drive a long way down a dirt road with it flapping in the wind, and when you do finally liberate it, it’s been turned into a mangled, greasy, unrecognizable knot of fabric with tire-tracks all over it. You go to to the local bar to drown your sorrows and your writer friends, feeling your pain, tell you to keep the faith. Maybe it’s just the beer, but you don’t notice that your friends are looking away, grimacing at their own memories of the long and dirty journey they have traveled on that very same road—with their jackets caught in the car door.

[p-j-patterson]

Platform, platform, my kingdom for a platform...

You’re pitching your novel, and it’s not War and Peace, but by all accounts it’s pretty good. You’ve made it through the query labyrinth, and even managed to convince a few potential agents: “Love the protagonist!”...”Interesting story line!”...”Some fine writing on the page!”

And then it gets real. “First novel? Have you thought about changing the main character to a woman--there’s a big market for chick-lit.” “How robust is your marketing platform?” “How many followers do you have on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook?” “How long have you been blogging?”

Uh...no, actually, the entire premise of the book requires that the main character be male, and all I have is a Facebook page that I use to post pictures of my dog and vacation photos meant to make my friends jealous at what a fabulous life I’m living.  I spend the rest of my spare time ...well, writing. And THAT is when you hear the loud thud. The thud that signals the wheels of the literary publishing machine have come to a grinding halt.