You might recall Jones from one of our two interviews with him.

After the news broke, I asked Jones for a little more detail about his new partnership with Dzanc.

“Very cool to be hitched with Dzanc for Flushboy and Not for Nothing,” Jones says. “I mean, they push quality writing, they produce slick books, and they believe in fiction. And, aside from all that, are excellent people, have a great catalogue. Couldn’t be happier to be doing these two with them.”

In regards to the two new books, Jones points out that “Flushboy is maybe going to be the first drive-through urinal novel, yeah? Probably I should patent that process, all the bank tubes, the hygiene measures, the inevitable accumulation of shame you’d have to get — or, that this kid working that drive-through in Flushboy accumulates, anyway. But it’s more than that, I hope. A love story, because my wife told me I hadn’t done one of those yet. Not good enough, anyway. Flushboy‘s all about love, about being sixteen, seventeen. All happens over the course of one shift, too; hopefully Stewart O’Nan doesn’t feel robbed or anything. Which — not to say I didn’t write this a while back.”

The other novel leaves the bathroom behind and lands in a town with a hard luck detective. “Talking robbed, when Robert Coover’s Noir hit, I thought it very possible my heart might just break, come crumbling down my sleeve. Because that second-person approach to the detective, that way of rendering his voice, it’s what Not for Nothing is. This exiled homicide cop Nicholas Bruiseman, returning to his home town of Stanton, Texas, the last place he ever wanted to go again, the only place he has left. But already, not even looking for work, not even licensed to work, he’s tangled up in a love triangle that’s spitting bodies out, and he’s finding that, to solve this case, to figure out who’s who, he’s going to have to crack into a past he thought gone forever. But, in places like Stanton — I grew up there — the past, it’s all around you, everywhere you go. It’s terrible and wonderful, liberating and cloying, maybe the best place to finally figure out who you are. All of which is to say, yeah, 2013, 2014. If Emmerich was wrong and we somehow make it through 2012, then save some space on your shelf, maybe in your heart, if I can be that cheesy this far in advance.”

The Southeast Review has a fantastic interview with Daniell Woodrell. Damn, now I’m going to have to dash home and devour Give Us a Kiss again.

[via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind]

Mickey Rapkin, senior editor at GQ a veteran of the a cappella circuit at Cornell, knew. Besides his own life experiences, Rapkin noticed several a cappella references sprinkled throughout recent popular culture. Popular television shows such as The Office and 30 Rock joked about the phenomenon.

Celebrities such as actors James Van Der Beek, Mira Sorvino, Anne Hathaway sang in collegiate a cappella outfits while Debra Messing and Jessica Biel were rejected in their tryouts. Masi Oka, star of NBC’s Heroes performed in Bear Necessities, a group at Brown University and arranged a killer version of the song “Flashdance” which he belted out while wearing a purple leotard and tutu.

Rapkin noticed all these pop culture connections –including an infamous bit of trivia including the most wanted man in the world and a cappella– and decided to investigate the strange subculture of singing without instruments.

His 2008 book, Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory, chronicles three university groups as they compete during the 2006-2007 school year. He tagged along with the Beelzebubs from Tufts, Divisi from the University of Oregon, and the University of Hullabahoos and discovered that the world of competitive collegiate a cappella is shockingly cuthroat, ambitious, engaging, and hilarious. And believe it or not, these dudes get laid a lot. At some universities, members of the a cappella groups are the equivalent of local rock stars.

In preparation for the April 7, 2009 release of the paperback version of Pitch Perfect, Rapkin spoke with me about selling the book, furiously taking notes, tense shifts, and his favorite solo.

Slushpile: You were in an a cappella group at Cornell called Cayuga’s Waiters. But you don’t include any of your own experiences in Pitch Perfect. Why not?

Rapkin: I mention a bit of my own experience in the new appendix that accompanies the paperback. But you’re right, I kept myself out of the book. I just felt this wasn’t my story. I didn’t want to be a self-conscious narrator, commenting on what I saw. I thought it would be more immediate, and more fun for the reader, if I wrote it as I saw it. I wanted the reader to feel like they were in the room for rehearsals, and arguments, and elections, and on stage for concerts, and in the van on roadtrips—just like they were a member of the group themselves and a a real insider.

Slushpile: What was your favorite song to sing?

Rapkin: As a group, “Love the One You’re With.” It was easy to sing, and a crowd-pleaser. Selfishly, my favorite was “Southern Cross,” the Crosby, Stills and Nash tune. That was my big solo with the Waiters. I savored every minute of it.

Slushpile: Given that you’re a senior editor at GQ and your nonfiction has appeared in a number of publications, did you write any articles about competitive collegiate a cappella prior to embarking upon the book project?

Rapkin: I hadn’t. But not for lack of trying!

Slushpile: New nonfiction writers are always curious about which books were sold to publishers based on a proposal and which ones were written completely and then pitched. How did the sale of Pitch Perfect unfold?

Rapkin: I took the standard route: I wrote a proposal (including a sample chapter), and crossed my fingers. I did a bunch of interviews to prepare the proposal, and traveled down to Charlottesville, Virginia to meet the Hullabahoos. That reporting trip turned into my sample chapter, 25-pages that introduced potential editors to the insanely awesome world of the UVA Hullabahoos. I think the proposal process is incredibly beneficial. It forces you to think about what you want to say, and figure out if there’s really a story to tell. And then, if you’re lucky enough to sell the book, there’s that holy shit moment: Now I have to actually write this thing. But because you’ve done the proposal, you already have a roadmap prepared, showing you how to get the book done.

Slushpile: Editors have told me that sometimes an idea can have too much a niche, they’re too “magazine-y” to support full-length books. I could imagine where the idea of following a cappella groups might have encountered similar concerns. How did you convince editors that this concept could carry a 271 page book?

Rapkin: To be honest, it shouldn’t have been 271 pages! If I could do it again, I would have cut the book down to 200. But you’re right. I definitely heard that complaint—it’s too niche. But I believed in the project. And there was a precedent here. Books like Word Freak and The Orchid Thief had been bestsellers, and were about Scrabble and orchids, respectively. If there could be a bestseller about Scrabble, why not one about a cappella groups?

It helped to include the numbers of a cappella participants. In my case: 100 years of a cappella groups, 200,000 living alumni, 1,800 collegiate groups in the United States, 1,800 high school groups, etc. The numbers helped justify the project, and helped prove there was an audience for the book.

Slushpile: How did you go about contacting the three a cappella groups involved in the book and how did you get such great access to their stories?

Rapkin: Initially, I hoped to follow three groups through the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella. But I couldn’t find three groups who were definitely competing, that had the stories I wanted to tell. And when I looked closer, I realized that covering the competition exclusively was too limiting. Groups like the Hullabahoos never compete, and I wanted to include their special brand of frat humor. Back to your question: I called the head of the ICCAs, and asked her for a good story. She told me about Divisi, and how they’d lost in the finals two years before, and would be coming back to right that wrong! It was too good to pass up.

I e-mailed Divisi, introduced myself, explained what I hoped to do, and asked if they wanted to participate. I stressed how personal it would be, how often I would be with them, etc. Same thing with the other two groups. In terms of access, the more time I spent with the groups, the easier it became. They got comfortable with me, could see my intentions were true, and opened up. It was rough in the beginning, though.

I flew all the way to Oregon to meet Divisi, and they basically ignored me. They had an event planned with their brother group, On the Rocks. And they wouldn’t let me come—even for an hour. I was frustrated. But in the weeks that followed, I called and e-mailed often, and when I met them again a few months later, they started to open up.

Slushpile: Did the singers ever get tired of interviews and your observation? How did you manage those relationships?

Rapkin: If they did, they never said so. I would e-mail them and ask for interview time, and we’d set that up. There were group members who ignored me, and so I ignored them. It was obvious who was interested in being involved. I think they came to enjoy my presence. To have someone trail them is kind of a rock star thing to have.

Slushpile: In other interviews, you’ve said you made about 20 trips to see the groups perform. So in the book, when a concert is being described, that’s your own perception, right? Are there instances where you describe an event that you did not attend based on information the singers provided you?

Rapkin: For the most part, I was in the room for whatever I described. I was in Los Angeles with the Hullabahoos when they missed their planned-gig singing the national anthem for the Lakers. I was with the Beelzebubs for two nights of recording. I was with Divisi for both rounds of the competition. I was at the on-campus concerts I describe, for the most part. The ones I missed, I often saw on video later. Obviously I wasn’t there for the history (Divisi’s defeat at the ICCA finals, etc.)

In the cases where I couldn’t be at an event, I interviewed as many people as I could (group members, judges, etc.) to recreate those scenes, asking general questions (who spoke, what happened) to specifics (who sat where, what were you wearing).

Slushpile: When you were traveling with the groups, were you constantly taking notes, constantly recording, or just hanging out and then gathering your recollections later? How do you ensure you get the information correctly, without being too obvious about documenting everything?

Rapkin: I always had a small, Moleskin notebook in my hand. And I would scribble furiously, and type those notes up that same night, while it was all fresh in my mind. The Divisi ladies used to make fun of me and my notebook. I used a tape recorder on the phone for follow-up calls. The notebook was problematic at times. Because I would write more when the kids said something funny, dirty, controversial, etc. They could tell what material I found interesting. And a few would clam up. But I think they largely forgot about me. I tried to blend in and just become another piece of furniture. Also: This is the generation who posts every thought of theirs on Facebook. They’re used to chronicling their lives.

Slushpile: Writing about music is always challenging. Hence the famous Elvis Costello quote comparing it to “dancing about architecture.” What specifically did you do on the page to help the reader understand what a performance sounds like?

Rapkin: This was my biggest concern: Could the reader hear the music while they were reading? Would the music pop off the page? I included the syllables where I could, the dim dim bops these kids sang. And, just in case, I included 10 music tracks on my website, so you really could hear it!

Slushpile: There are a lot of tense shifts in Pitch Perfect. For example, in one chapter, the Beelzebubs from Tufts listen to a rough mix of a new album. Their listening session, and subsequent debate, is told in past tense, with plenty of “he said” and “argued” and “played.”

In the next paragraph, it shifts to present and the record’s producer “doesn’t find this conversation surprising” and “he isn’t” and “he says.”

On the next page, it shifts to future tense with, “it would be Matt Michelson who needed to miss a show.” Then, the next paragraph is back to past tense with “Way back in October, the Bubs hosted” and “never learned” and “there was drinking.”

As an another example, early in the book, when Divisi from the University of Oregon perform at the ICCAs, it’s written in present tense. “The crowd is on their feet” and “the ladies of Divisi are competing” and “plays out.” But then later in the book, when Divisi competed in the quarterfinals to the following year’s ICCA’s, it’s written in past tense with “Divisi took to the stage” and “the choreography was intricate and precise” and “she sang” and “the solo was so overpowering.”

These shifts work in the book – and the presentation of this question makes it look disjointed, which it isn’t at all – but I’m curious about your decision to employ this ambitious writing style. Were you concerned that editors or readers would object to it?

Rapkin: Ambitious, ha! I wish I could say it was a conscious decision. I tend to write in the present tense, because it feels more immediate. I really tried not to think about it. I just started writing. Looking back, I should have planned so much more. I have full chapters on my computer that never made it into the book, full characters I tossed out. None of the shits were intentional or thought out. I would go back to look myself, but I hate reading my own writing. When it’s done, and I can’t make changes anymore, I try not to read it again.

Slushpile: What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors?

Rapkin: I am not a naturally gifted writer. And my strength is not in witty prose, word choice, or inventive language. I think I’m a better reporter than writer. So unfortunately my advice will be practical: Do the work. Make the extra phone call. Never turn down a phone interview. Wake up early. Set a schedule for yourself, and stick to it. The book doesn’t write itself.

Slushpile: What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without publishing tip you would offer to aspiring authors struggling to break into print?

Rapkin: If you are obsessed with a topic, and you think there’s truly a book there, don’t let an agent tell you it’s too niche. Put together the proposal. Throw yourself into the project. And find an agent who believes in you. Also: Start a blog. Apparently you can now sell a book proposal based on a blog in minutes.

For more information on Mickey Rapkin and the upcoming April 7 paperback release of Pitch Perfect, check out his website.

The book received acclaim from a number of critics. Most notably, the legendary Jim Harrison blurbed that, “American Buffalo is a boldly original and ultimately refreshing book. It is also fearsome and occasionally frightening, and one wonders if the author is quite mad. There are insights into nature and American history here that will be totally unfamiliar to the reader.”

Rinella is a correspondent for Outside magazine and his work has also appeared in the New Yorker, Men’s Journal, the New York Times, and other publications. He splits time between his home in New York City and Alaska.

In this interview, Rinella talked about hunting buffalo, strange buffalo facts, pitching story ideas to magazines, and his favorite game recipes.

Slushpile: When you learned that you had won a lottery to hunt wild buffalo in Alaska, what was your very first thought?

Rinella: My initial feeling was one of elation. The state only gives out between zero and twenty-four permits a year for the Copper River buffalo herd, and there are usually over a thousand applicants. So I was excited in the same way that you’d be excited if you won the lotto and picked up a bunch of money. Trailing that initial euphoria, however, was a mild sense of dread. Knowing you have a once in a lifetime opportunity at your fingertips is troubling like that, because, well…if you screw it up you’ll never get a chance to try again. Or at least the odds of trying again are highly improbable. And the area where you’re allowed to hunt is some super rough country. There are no roads, so it’s accessible by river only. And it’s colder than hell in the fall and winter, when you’re allowed to go. And there are a lot of grizzlies in that area. The problems and challenges just piled up like snow in my mind.

Slushpile: At what point in the lottery application process, or planning your expedition, did you start thinking, “This would make a great book”?

Rinella: That’s a complicated question. I’d been searching for a narrative that would serve a book about buffalo ever since 1999, when I found a buffalo skull that dated to the mid-seventeenth century in southwest Montana. When I drew the permit, I was certainly aware that this might just be the story I was looking for, but it was impossible to determine how it would play out. That is, whether the hunt would be interesting and illuminating, and whether it could serve as a frame on which I could build a book-length narrative. Shortly after the hunt I wrote a 3,500 word article for Outside magazine about my adventure. I was motivated to do this because the hunt was expensive and I wanted to pass along some of that money for reimbursement. Then, as soon as I finished the article, I began doing more serious primary research with my eye toward a book. I then sold the book idea to my publisher before the article even appeared. (The magazine held it for close to a year.) In hindsight, I should have never written that article. For all practical purposes, it made my book ineligible for a first-serial sale to a magazine. Editors felt that it had already been done, even though the article wasn’t even remotely similar to the book. That’s a little cautionary tale about letting quick gains get in the way of long-term gains.

Slushpile: After stumbling across a partial buffalo skull in the late nineties, you became interested in the history of the animal and its place in our cultural identity. In the book, you describe playing a parlor game about weird buffalo facts. What’s the most attention-grabbing detail about the buffalo?

Rinella: Where do I begin? All these strange little facts and oddities wash over me when I think about it. For instance, a buffalo calf has almost 3,000 hair fibers per square centimeter of skin. Humans have about 175, on average. Researchers haven’t been able to find the maximum level of cold that a buffalo can handle. At minus 40, a buffalo is still relaxing. They don’t even start to shiver at that point. The metabolic rate of your average dairy cow, however, goes up at positive 14. And buffalo can run about 35 miles per hour. Some horses can hit faster speeds, but a buffalo can outrun a horse by hours and hours. If need be, they can run for a whole day. In Yellowstone National Park, buffalo kill and maim way more humans than bears. If you try to avoid a buffalo attack by running away, you’re almost certain to end up with a puncture wound in the cheek of your ass. But they are not invincible. In the eighteenth century, an explorer in Canada counted 7,360 dead buffalo that drifted past him on the Qu’Appelle River. They drowned while trying to cross a swollen river. So, in short, I learned a few hundred things like that. Or more like a few thousand.

Slushpile: There are two “types” of chapters in American Buffalo. The chapters that involve your hunt in Alaska are told in the present tense. The chapters that delve more into the history of the buffalo and your own efforts to research the animal are told in the past tense. Why did you choose this strategy?

Rinella: I might not have a great answer for that. The hunting chapters just felt very immediate to me and seemed to have a vitality that was best served by present tense. The other chapters are often laden quite heavily in history, biology, and anthropology, and those did not seem well served by present tense. It would seem a little weird to write history in present tense, you know? Also, I wanted to set those hunting chapters apart in an added way, to avoid confusion. I figured that the reader would see that tense shift to the present and think to himself, “okay, we’re up in Alaska, and we’re hunting.”

Slushpile: During your time in the Alaskan wilderness, were you writing? Did you take notes on your surrounding and experiences? How much recording did you do at the time and how much did you simply rely on your memory during the writing process?

Rinella: I take a lot of notes in the field. I like those plastic bound water-proof notebooks with the waterproof paper. They’re called “Rite in the Rain.” The only problem is you’ve got to use a pencil, and the coating on the paper makes the pencil graphite hard to erase. I was turned on to those by field biologists and archaeologists.

Slushpile: Given that you’re an established writer, I’m assuming American Buffalo was sold based on a proposal or did you write the entire book and then sell it?

Rinella: I’ve sold three books now. My first, The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine, was sold by my agent at auction based on a proposal including an introduction, a sample chapter, and a basic outline. My second book, the buffalo book, was preempted by my current publisher based on a three-page treatment. My new book, which I haven’t written yet, was sold based on a verbal discussion with my publisher.

Slushpile: Many new nonfiction writers struggle with the proposal regarding an event that has not yet taken place. Publishers want to know all the specific details, but there’s always a chance something may not work out as planned. How did you handle the fact that you might not get a buffalo on your hunt, and in fact, there was a chance you might not even see one of the animals.

Rinella: While I wasn’t under a book contract while I was hunting for buffalo, I was under contract to write a story for Outside magazine. As the days went on, and I came to doubt that I would be successful in the hunt, I started to seriously question the wisdom of agreeing to the story. I’d lay in my sleeping bag at night figuring out angles for a story in which nothing happened. At the same time, though, the contract pushed me to stay out there and keep hunting. It helped get me out of my tent in the cold, cold morning. I’m a very motivated hunter anyway, because I hunt for all of my own meat, but that little extra push was certainly a factor.

To address your question more theoretically, I’d say this is generally a serious issue for non-fiction writers. It’s hard to sell an editor on a bunch of great adventures that you haven’t had yet. I’ve been through this conundrum many times in magazine work, with varying results. One time I tried to convince my editor to let me do a long story about fishing for squid with Asian immigrants in downtown Seattle. She wouldn’t give me the assignment because there was no guarantee about what would happen. She kept asking, “what if you don’t catch anything?” So I went anyway and paid my own way. I had some great experiences and the story worked out well. Outside published it, and it even ended up in the anthology Best American Travel Writing. But the magazine never did pay my expenses, so they got a screaming deal on that one.

Slushpile: During your hunt, you’re constantly on guard for bears in the Alaskan wilderness. After you’ve killed a buffalo and you’re butchering it to use all the meat, you had to be covered in blood. How scary was the presence of the bears during this time?

Rinella: I’ve been in similar situations quite a few times in Montana and Alaska, and it certainly gets your attention. I really love being around grizzlies, but I’m very aware of my fear of them. It’s not altogether a rational fear – after all, only a couple people get killed by bears every year in North America – but it’s more vivid and frightful than death by such things as hypothermia. I do have this fantasy where I get mauled by a bear but it doesn’t kill me or seriously maim me. I just want a big set of scratch marks across my chest or back. That way I could go to parties and lift my shirt and say, “check this shit out!” That’d be pretty fun. I’d also write an essay about how I got mauled by a bear. I bet I could sell that in a hurry.

Slushpile: American Buffalo details a lot about how the animal can be used for food. And in The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine you procured all the ingredients necessary to make a 45-course banquet. What’s your favorite dish prepared using game?

Rinella: There are so many things I like, and they’re so different, it’s hard to pick a favorite. I make a lot of sausages and cured meats, and I cook a lot of strange stuff such as squirrel hasenpfeffer and marrow bones. I also eat a lot of burgers and steaks and normal stuff like that. But if I had to pick one type of wild game preparation for the rest of my life, it would be this: take a 7” or 8” section of loin (moose, buffalo, deer, elk, antelope, caribou, bear, you name it) and season it with coarse salt and crushed black pepper. Put on more pepper than you’d think you’d need. Then brown it on all sides in a combination of olive oil and butter over a burner set on high heat; get the surfaces nice and crispy. Then pop the loin, pan and all, into an oven at about 375 degrees. Cook it until the inside of the loin is 150-degrees. It’s simple, and it really showcases the meat. I could eat that every day.

Slushpile: What challenges did you have in writing about hunting, nature, and the buffalo in a way that would appeal to a wider audience consisting of more “general” readers?

Rinella: I tried to be aware of a larger audience, one that extends beyond hunters and nature buffs. If you look at the second chapter of American Buffalo, you’ll see that I try to make a big case that this topic is something that touches all of us as Americans. I get into rock music, popular history, quirky social facts, Indian massacres, you name it. At the same time, I didn’t want to go so far astray that I lost that core audience of hunters and nature buffs who might not be too patient with literary or poetic-minded ramblings. That is, I didn’t want to lose my core in the name of a few fringe readers. So while I tried to find a sort of balance, that balance is certainly tipped toward the outdoors. There’s another thing I thought about, too. Mark Twain wrote so much great material about the Mississippi River. He made it something that everyone could care about, even people who’ve never even seen it. He did this by giving us that river in all of its confused, violent, gracious beauty. I’m not trying to compare myself to Twain, but I wanted to do a similar thing with the buffalo. I wanted to make everyone love the animal.

Slushpile: What part of American Buffalo was the most challenging to write? How did you overcome that challenge?

Rinella: The most challenging part of American Buffalo was finding a balance between the history and the action of the story. I intended them to be equal, with maybe a touch more history. That didn’t work, because it started to get bogged down and boring. I resolved it by cutting out tons of historical material. I chopped out 100 pages. And I ended with a narrative that’s heavy toward adventure, which I think is good.

Slushpile: The book has a really cool design, with a photo of a buffalo and an American flag. Did you have any input on the design process? What were your experiences with book design and formatting of the book?

Rinella: I had very little to do with the cover. My experience has been that publishers trust the writer to do the writing, but they have little faith in the writer’s design skills. Luckily, though, my publisher kept me in the loop and sent me several versions of the cover to comment on. If I had really hated something, I’m sure they would have listened. But I loved the cover.

The inside of the book was a completely different story, because I personally selected the photos that are included throughout the body of the book. My publisher vetoed a few, but otherwise gave me full reign to choose the number and content of photos. And she allowed me to help design the map in the beginning of the book. Well, I didn’t actually “design” the map, but I decided what should be included on it. Then an artist took over and crafted the actual image from my notes and sketches.

Slushpile: What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors?

Rinella: I think an aspiring writer has to decide, early on, whether or not writing is the most important thing in his or her life. If not, you should be glad. It’s easier to just forget about writing and do something different. Something with better odds of success. But if writing is the most important thing, you’ve got to remind yourself of that fact every day. Don’t let anything else interrupt your plan. If you give an ounce of room in your mind to the notion of quitting, quitting will quickly become the one viable option. Of course, there’s more to it than just inspirational thinking.

I think that too many aspiring authors, particularly non-fiction student-level writers, select prospective book topics that don’t really hold up. Their ideas are often too thin. Just because you spent a month hitchhiking doesn’t mean the world needs a book about it. Try to find something that goes beyond yourself, something that will catch the attention of people who don’t care about you or even know about you.

Slushpile: What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without publishing tip you would offer to aspiring authors struggling to break into print?

Rinella: That’s easy. Study the magazines and journals that you want to get into. Try to understand their aesthetic, and their requirements of content and length. It’s insulting to an editor to read submissions that are five-times longer than anything they can run, or that are too similar in content to a recently published piece. If you give an editor a sense that your material is tailor made for them (or at least informed by their needs) you’ll be a lot closer to breaking in. And, for god’s sake, keep trying.

For more information about Steven Rinella’s work, please be sure to check out his
website.

As a child, the writer was a socially awkward, self-described “nerd.” Attending an all-boys school, growing up surrounded by male siblings, and possessing only dudes as pals, Barrowcliffe felt completely ignorant of anything involving girls and distanced from the lives the cool kids lived. He scurried around the streets in Coventry, England, hoping to avoid the tough kids who picked on him. Barrowcliffe provides, in hilarious and humiliating detail, just how uncool he was as a child.

But some of the charm of The Elfish Gene lies in the fact that, to a certain degree, everyone feels awkward and nerdy as an adolescent. Presumably there are a few rare egomaniacal individuals who never felt weird from time to time during junior high and high school.

For most people, however, there’s a clumsiness as we progress through adolescence. And we often seek comfort in some form of obsession during this challenging time. For Barrowcliffe, it was Dungeons and Dragons. I certainly did my time in a D&D cell, but my obsession ultimately transferred over to guitars and books. Hell, I recently read an interview with guitar virtuoso Steve Vai where he said he was so neurotic as a teenager that he practiced scales while sitting on the toilet. We all had something to retreat to.

Which makes it easy to relate to Barrowcliffe’s tale in The Elfish Gene. A few short-sighted readers have criticised his depiction of gamers, but they’re claiming a level of confidence and maturity they almost certainly did not possess as a young teenager. Ultimately, the book reveals a hilarious life and the challenges in growing up and interacting with people. Dungeons and Dragons was just the escape Barrowcliffe chose. But the pressures and humiliations were common for most of us.

In the following interview, Barrowcliffe spoke to me about the characteristics of a writer, about hurting people’s feelings, and about writing as an impediment to your life.

Slushpile: Prior to writing The Elfish Gene, you authored three novels. What prompted you to write a nonfiction account of your Dungeons & Dragons years?

Barrowcliffe: I was asked to. A publisher was looking for writers to do a D&D memoir and my agent put me up for the job because she knew I’d been obsessed by the game. The editor was very pleased with my proposal but the management didn’t think the book was for them. You don’t just have to get stuff past editors nowadays – sales, marketing and senior management all get involved. In the end, we went with a different publisher to the one who expressed the initial interest. I have to thank the original editor for the idea, it wouldn’t have occurred to me otherwise that anyone was interested in a book like this. As soon as it was suggested, though, I desperately wanted to write it. Despite what the occasional reviewer has said, I love the game and it’s a tremendous honour to be its first chronicler in this way.

Slushpile: After writing fiction, what did you find most challenging about doing nonfiction? How did you overcome this challenge?

Barrowcliffe: Having to wonder about hurting people’s feelings. That was a really good push for the writing, though, and made me try to see myself through other people’s eyes. I think that’s why the book has a self-deprecating tone. For most of my childhood it wasn’t me who was doing the deprecating! Also, the story requires a narrative, which real lives tend not to have, not in the sense you’d get in a novel. Things just stop for no reason, characters don’t necessarily change and grow. Seeing the narrative in your own life can be very hard but it’s incredibly worthwhile. I don’t think I’d ever acknowledged just how hurt I was by losing the D&Der Billy as a friend until I wrote the book.

Having said that, I loved writing the book and found it flowed easily. When I finished it, I was pleased just to have written it, no matter what it’s success and I think I got the book I would have wanted when I set out. That’s not always the case in writing. I’m very proud of it, so that makes three out of my five books I feel like that about. It’s my favourite, along with Lucky Dog.

Slushpile: A lot of kids have vague and general fantasies. Let’s say they’re pretending to be a superhero, they might picture a red cape, the ability to fly, and that’s the extent of their daydream. But the gamers I knew could vividly describe the stitching on their imaginary boots, the grain of leather on their scabbard, and the folded metal of their sword. Was your experience like this as well? And did gaming influence/challenge/grow your imagination at all?

Barrowcliffe: Yes. I did wear a cape and was annoyed that my girlfriend made it for me in nylon rather than Shadowcat fur. Gaming shrank my imagination, if anything. To tie yourself to just one milieu – heroic fantasy – is very limiting. It’s inventive to come up with fantastic beasts and epic plots but more so to imagine stories of everyday life. Small things are more difficult to picture than big ones. Observation is important for a writer and, for my entire adolescence, I observed nothing but the inside of my own head.

Slushpile: As a follow-up in that same vein, how do your years playing Dungeons & Dragons influence your writing style today?

Barrowcliffe: To be honest, only as a “what not to do.” I loved very flowery language when I was a child and couldn’t bear any element of humour in fantasy stories. Many fantasy novelists are not particularly good stylists. There are exceptions of course – Ursula Le Guinn, CS Lewis and even, in a weird way, Tolkien. I took much more from reading PG Wodehouse and Joseph Conrad than I ever did Michael Moorcock and Andre Norton, as much as I enjoyed – and still enjoy – their books.

D&D, however, did get me into the habit of writing, which is more important than style. You can have the best style in the world but it won’t do you much good unless you sit down at your desk.

Slushpile: You write that memories of good times and bad times tend to fade over the years. But embarrassing moments remain vividly etched into your brain. “You tend to remember the lines pretty well once you’ve woken screaming them at midnight a few times.” What’s your most embarrassing moment in terms of your writing career?

Barrowcliffe: Getting very drunk at literary functions where big chain book buyers are present. I don’t drink at all now and haven’t for three years, three months, twenty two days, nine hours, six minutes and five seconds. I was chatting to one buyer for an enormous chain and he said, “You have a very caustic sense of humour in your writing but you couldn’t insult me.” I bet him I could. When his wife appeared I called her a “‘rotten fucking cow,” as I recall, straight out of the blue – not witty, funny or nice but I was plastered. I won my bet. The next morning I awoke frying in my own embarrassment. That sort of incident is why I decided to stop drinking.

Slushpile: Dungeons & Dragons characters accumulate points in several key traits. Their characteristics are Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. If you were putting together a role playing game featuring writers, what traits would the author characters posses?

Barrowcliffe:
–Self importance
–Ability to wear a linen suit with Panama hat
–Unpleasantness to girlfriend masquerading as artistic depth
–General unpleasantness masquerading as artistic depth
–Insecurity
–Jealousy
–Book shop fear factor (saving throw against looking to see if a book of yours you know isn’t on the shelf is on the shelf)
–Resistance to flattery

Slushpile: How would you score yourself in those characteristics?

Barrowcliffe: Out of 18 (3D6) 16, 4, 7, 15, 14, 18, 18 (00), 5

Slushpile: In the original incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons, there were three character classes: fighter, cleric, magic user. What contemporary authors would you place into these three classes?

Barrowcliffe: To be honest, I hardly read contemporary authors. I’m much more a Jane Austen and Conan Doyle sort of man than I am say, er,,,,can’t think of any names. Brett Easton Ellis can be a fighter, because that would be funny. Irvine Welsh is a Magic User (incomprehensible mumblings to occasional startling effect) and Jonathan Frantzen can be a cleric because, like church, he bores the arse off me. If I read one more American novel which begins with a description of mountains or weather I think I’ll go running into the blue hills of Massachusetts where the clouds tumble to the plain like shopping off a fucking cart and drown myself in the muddy waters of the Neponset while the nagging wind pulls like memory at my nuts. Sorry, but I want a novel, not a weather forecast.

You can see the writer at the keyboard: “Hmmm, how to begin? Not really got an idea for a character yet, let’s just doodle about the weather and the scenery for a few pages and call it a hymn to the grandeur of the American landscape.”

Who would be a thief? Best leave that one out, for the sake of the lawyers. I’m more of a Runequest character myself, a wide base of low skills.

Slushpile: In The Elfish Gene, you mention your childhood love of J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, and Ursula K. Le Guin. What other writers impressed you?

Barrowcliffe: As I said, I never gave up PG Wodehouse, even at the height of my fantasy mania. The man is a genius and makes me weep with laughter. I love how gentle his world is. It may surprise those who have read my novels to learn that I try to emulate him in everything I write. My second novel, for instance, was intended to be a Wodehousian romp, with larger-than-life characters and a farce of a plot. My third book Lucky Dog was a real attempt to do something as gentle and removed from real life as Wodehouse’s Edwardian fantasy world. I have been accused of – or even complimented for – being “savage” or “nasty” in some of my writing, so God knows what they would say if I actually tried to be.

I liked an English writer called Spike Milligan too – a comedian who did war reminiscences. I’d recommend “Adolf Hitler: His Part in My Downfall.” The bit where the first shots of the war are fired and he runs up and down shouting ‘stop it you fools, someone will get hurt!’ is particularly memorable. It’s also the record of his mental collapse and is moving in places. I read Oscar Wilde very early too – my mum’s influence, along with Wodehouse. Dorian Grey really chilled me, as did Dracula (didn’t like the end). Enid Blyton’s Binkle and Flip (two bad bunnies) made me laugh when I was very young.

I loved HP Lovecraft. Nothing about his writing style is good – apart from the fact that it works. His prose is florid, with sentences running into pages, his dialogue is non existent or useless, his descriptions overblown – and yet it comes together to create this creeping miasma of horror. It’s like Hendrix playing the detuned guitar – all right for him but don’t try it yourself.

Slushpile: In addition to the fantasy books you admired, what nonfiction and memoirs influenced you? Were there any books you used as a sort of role model for The Elfish Gene?

Barrowcliffe: Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch showed me you could write about an ordinary life. Edmund White, believe it or not, taught me that honesty is the best policy. Alan Bennett’s style and attention to detail inspired me too.

I don’t really model my writing on anyone, though. This isn’t out of high principle, or a desire to be original, it’s because I’m lazy and can’t be bothered to do the background reading. Less flippantly, I like writing, not research, so I normally just start bashing away and see what comes out. I have contemplated removing that double entendre but thought, in the end, that I’d leave it in. Oh, there I go again.

Slushpile: On your blog, you mention that the urge to indulge in role playing games is back upon you. What are your latest activities? Gotten into any good campaigns? Developed any cool characters?

Barrowcliffe: I’m developing a game that – like my latest novel – is set in the Viking age. Looking for artists if anyone’s interested. I have an innovative combat system. If I was still single I might use that as a chat up line. “Hello, you look nice. I have an innovative combat system, would you like to see it?”

I’ve just got a three book deal to write some fantasy novels. The characters in that are cool, I hope, but will have to remain under wraps for a time.

Slushpile: How is your experience with role playing games different now, in comparison to your years spent playing as an adolescent?

Barrowcliffe: Well I don’t really play them, although I’m scheduled to. I haven’t the time, that’s the main thing. As an adolescent I had vast wastes of the stuff, in fact time is virtually all I had. Now I very often don’t get time to eat. I collect games. Now I have the money to buy them, that’s a big difference from when I was young.

Slushpile: How long did it take you to write The Elfish Gene?

Barrowcliffe: I can’t really remember. About two months for the first draft, a bit longer on rewrites, I think. It was easy to write, I recall that.

Slushpile: What was the hardest part of the book to write?

Barrowcliffe: About the people I still, despite myself, hate. I wrote a huge section about a character called Chigger, who beat me up over a D&D dispute when I was 12. He was 17. We met up by chance when I was 23 – by which time I was 6’1” and 220lbs – and his comment was, “Fuck me, you’ve grown.”

I didn’t like him at all and the section I wrote was too venomous. I just binned it in the end. No one’s interested in that, not even him I suspect.

Slushpile: Once the book was released, what did you do to market it? There’s a cool website with a character creator, but did you reach out to any gaming groups? Did you attend any gaming conventions?

Barrowcliffe: No gaming conventions. Lots of radio and press interviews. I don’t think web groups welcome spam but I have an interview on NPR and another one with WBAA public radio. I also did an interview with Yog Sothoth radio and some online chats with people. Maybe I’ll do more when the paperback comes out.

Slushpile: What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors?

Barrowcliffe: Drop the adverbs in dialogue attribution, he said forcefully and wryly.

Actually, a better one is this: If you find it difficult to write, if you tidy the garden, drink coffee, research and walk the dog rather than begin then there are two explanations. The first is that you’re writing the wrong thing. The second is that you’re not a writer. This is no big deal. Writers have an enormous effect on people’s lives but if I had to live without them or plumbers, I know which one I’d choose. There’s no book can bring you the joy of a functioning lavatory. You should only write if it’s an impediment to your life not to.

One third, single-best tip. Be honest. That means really looking at who you are, where you come from, what really affects you in your life. I started off trying to be a cross between Martin Amis and Kafka and I produced some real dross. When I realized I was a fat working class smart ass who could do a reasonable trade in one liners then my writing transformed. If you don’t have very deep or meaningful thoughts, what’s the point in trying to write like you do? When I wrote my first book, I was a man obsessed with getting a girlfriend, so I wrote about a man obsessed with getting a girlfriend. Build up to writing about Medici nuns. Write what you know, was what I was trying to say. And write. Just write, every day and for as long as you can.

Slushpile: What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without publishing tip you would offer to aspiring authors struggling to break into print?

Barrowcliffe: I haven’t really got one because I was very lucky when I first started. Write something, I suppose. I was picked up by an agent after she read a magazine article I’d written. This sounds arrogant but it echoes something the pop impresario Tony Wilson once said to someone who asked him how to make it in the music industry. “If you’re good enough, it’s inevitable. It will happen, no question.” You stick at it, you send your stuff to agents, if you’re lucky enough to get comments on your work then you take them very seriously and you’re prepared to rewrite. If you have the talent plus the application then you will get published. If you’re really good it won’t take long. To continue the music business analogy, The Smiths were signed on their fourth gig. My band has been going 25 years and has yet to trouble the record industry contract lawyers. What does this tell me?

The bad news is that getting a contract is just the first step. Unfortunately it’s not a winning line you cross and everything you ever do after is snapped up. Public taste is fickle and more elements than your writing are at play – cover design, marketing, sales force, whether the PR people are on the ball, if – as happened to me in the UK – you have a bit of bad luck.

We didn’t see that Tolkien’s Children of Hurin was published in the same week as The Elfish Gene. Tolkien ate my reviews – no books editor wants that much fantasy in the section. Luckily that didn’t happen in the US and we got good coverage. I say we because it really is a team effort. Writing alone will not put you in the bestseller list.
If you do get rejected, don’t take it too hard. Everyone gets rejected, everyone, sooner or later – if not by the agents then the publishers, if not by them then the critics or the buying public.

That said, try to get honest responses to your work because, if you’re actually rubbish at it, then it’s an awful waste of time to keep going. If someone tells you you’re no good, thank them. They’re doing you a favour. They might be wrong of course, but if you have three years of rejection letters, give up or change tack. It can be the hardest thing in the world to judge your own writing.

I’ve digressed, haven’t I?

For more information about The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons, and Growing Up Strange by Mark Barrowcliffe, check out the book’s website which includes a blog by the author.

Photo by Claire Lachlan

Now, Bondurant is back with a dramatically different tale. Based on the author’s grandfather, The Wettest County in the World introduces a world of moonshine, mountain stills, violence, and family ties in rural Virginia. The movie rights have already been sold and the positive reviews are rolling in with praise for Bondurant’s engaging method of interweaving a side-story about Sherwood Anderson into the harsh and brutal world of bootleggers.

Bondurant was kind enough to talk to me about basing fiction on family tales, the difference in book deal experiences, and brass knuckles.

Slushpile: Creative writing teachers often complain that their students are too committed to how things “really happened” and that they need to go further with their imagination. In our 2005 interview, you said “Accept the basic fact that your own story is uninteresting to other people.” Given that, how did you have the confidence that your grandfather’s tale was suitable for a viable novel?

Bondurant: It really just seemed apparent to me from the beginning. Also, I tried it out on a lot of people, usually in later hours after many cocktails, and it was always quite a hit (note: I do not recommend this method, in fact it is best to keep these stories to yourself – I was just unsure). I think also after my first novel and the various stories I’ve published I’ve gotten more confident in my “built-in bullshit detector”, as Hemingway called it. I’m getting better at discerning what makes a good story.

Slushpile: Did you ever question that decision and think, “This is just a family story that should be shared over holiday meals. Why am I writing a novel about it?”

Bondurant: No, and it was never shared over holiday meals. Nobody ever talked about it. That was part of the draw. Nobody still talks about it. It is a kind of strange, dark period in our family history.

Slushpile: In the Acknowledgments, you mention a couple of books you used for reference materials on moonshine as well as historical materials related to the trial of your grandfather and his gang. And your first book, The Third Translation, required extensive research.

Some authors can bog themselves down while researching. They spend all their time scrounging for some esoteric detail instead of writing. How do you balance the need to research for historical accuracy but also continuing to make progress with actually writing the book?

Bondurant: I don’t really balance it at all; I get completely bogged down and sidetracked in my research all the time. But I think that is one of the things that drives me to write in that it satisfies my natural dilettante urge. I love research, particularly scattered, confused, and unorganized research. I get to read about all the things that interest me. Right now on my desk I have books about the islands of Ireland, nautical charts, seasonal temperatures in the North Atlantic, articles on goat farming, books and articles on long distance open water swimming, Spinoza’s Ethics, the Journals of John Cheever, scholarly articles on The Tempest, pictures of rocks, lists of types of seaweed, plus pages and pages of my own journals and notes, often scratched out on tiny scraps of paper I carry in my pockets. I sit down and sift through it and find something interesting. Some days I add things to the pile. My progress in the actual writing comes in fits and starts, and sometimes it seems to me a miracle that I get anything done at all. One day I sit down and realize I’ve got 300 pages written and it comes as a kind of shock.

Slushpile: Your first novel was sold in February, 2004 to Hyperion. The Wettest County in the World sold in April 2007 to Scribner. How were these two experiences of submitting a novel different?

Bondurant: They were both similar in that my excellent agent (Alex Glass of Trident Media) was quite confident and put together a solid proposal package, including plenty of revision and editing attention to the manuscript itself. We came up with a list of possible publishers and submitted it when I felt it was ready. I was terrified both times, and not nearly as confident as he was. Hyperion came in with a “pre-empt” offer on the first book, while Scribner and Viking went to an auction for the second, so that was different, but that existed in the world of phone calls and meetings between my agent in NYC and editors, so I was just kind of waiting around for a call to tell me what was happening. So much of this stuff (the buying/selling/contracts/etc.) goes on in a parallel universe that I am barely privy to, and I prefer it that way. I really just want to write the things.

My reaction to the offer was different in that for the first book I was ecstatic that it actually happened, that someone would want to publish my work, that I had a real shot at being a writer. The second book had different pressures and a different reaction, mostly intense relief. The sophomore effort is worse in many ways – so they say, and I agree – and I think every writer probably fears that they may have just gotten lucky with that first one. The second one is a kind of ratification.

Slushpile: This novel is dramatically different than your first book. Did you encounter any resistance from prospective editors about your new direction?

Bondurant: None. My new editor, Alexis Gargagliano at Scribner, had never read my first book. Probably a good thing, for this reason.

Slushpile: The Wettest County in the World begins with a pretty explicit scene. While it’s not that shocking to many of us who grew up on farms way out in the boonies, it may be a lot for more urban (or squeamish readers) to take. Why start the novel in this manner?

Bondurant: I wanted to quickly impress upon the reader the kind of world they were going to inhabit for the rest of the novel. I also wanted to set up Jack and his brothers as, at least in part, creatures of a specific place and culture. One of the big questions for me when I started this novel was a matter of motivations and compulsions. I had to come up with reasons why these guys would do the things they did in adulthood. It isn’t just childhood experiences of course, but that had something to do with it, as it always does.

Slushpile: Whatever happened to your grandfather’s brass knuckles that fascinated you as a child? Where are they now?

Bondurant: My uncle Bobby Joe has them. He managed to snag them after my grandfather died. I’m a little bitter about that. I’ll have them eventually, somehow.

Slushpile: How has your family felt about the novel and your depiction of the Bondurant brothers?

Bondurant: I would describe it as guarded skepticism, which, if you have read the book, you will recognize as a strong Bondurant family trait. The jury is still out. Most are excited for me of course, but I doubt many will tell me what they really feel. I’m doing a reading down in Franklin County in a week, which will be attended by not my relatives but relatives of other characters in the book. That should be interesting. I would be surprised if there wasn’t some negative feelings. In fact I would feel like I failed if there weren’t some sore spots, somewhere.

Slushpile: I’m assuming you kind of knew how this book would end, based on at least some level of historical fact. Did having that kind of general outline help in the writing of the book? How was that different from writing a book that is complete fiction and maybe you have no clue where the work will take you?

Bondurant: It did help in some ways, in that a broad outline was there for me in the form of the historical record. But then working within that framework was frustrating, as I couldn’t just do whatever I wanted; I struggled constantly, particularly in terms of time and logistics, to make it conform to actuality. I was also under the pressure to do the true story justice. I was afraid of screwing up this amazing story which was essentially handed to me by my family.

My first novel, The Third Translation, despite having loads of research, was wholly fabricated in terms of character and plot which was much more liberating in most ways; having no clue what will happen next is exhilarating and sometimes relaxing. But it also felt like I was wandering in space, with no direction sometimes, and I often felt like a fool for concocting such hair-brained scenes and ideas.

Slushpile: In our last interview, you mentioned that you were working on this novel. So this time around, have you already started a new project?

Bondurant: Yes, and this one is also heavily researched and quasi-true, but nothing like The Wettest County in the World. I doubt I’ll ever do a novel like that again, one that has such a definite connection to historical record (and my family). Not to mention writing from the perspective of young men in 1930 is a built difficult. My new project is present day, in Ireland, dealing with open-ocean swimming, goat herding, physics, and a bunch of other stuff. It’s more of the postmodern-light style that I worked with in The Third Translation. I’m well into it, but still not absolutely certain it will work. I think I will know soon though.

Slushpile: Here are a couple of repeat questions, but all Slushpile.net interviews end this way. And maybe your thoughts on these topics have changed since our last chat.

What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors?

Bondurant: Read everything you can. Realize that your own life experiences and thoughts are not as interesting to other people as you may think. Make shit up.

Slushpile: What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without publishing tip you would offer to aspiring authors struggling to break into print.

Bondurant: Forget about quantity, Focus on quality – write one excellent short story and get it published in the best place. Then do it again, and again. Agents, publishing, everything else will work itself out.

Wallace’s work has appeared in GQ, Food & Wine, and he was the executive editor for Philadelphia Magazine. But it was during his tenure as wine writer for the magazine that he discovered the controversial tale about a 1787 bottle of Chateau Lafite Bordeaux owned by Thomas Jefferson that fetched $156,000 at auction. Intrigued by the rumors and mysteries surrounding the bottle, Wallace investigated not just that one specific transaction, but the entire ostentatious world of wine collecting in the mid-eighties.

What he uncovered and wrote about was a cast of eccentric characters who regularly consumed wine worth tens of thousands of dollars. And, some of them may have been tempted to cheat a bit in order to secure their place in the wine world. The Billionaire’s Vinegar instructs the novice drinker without boring the experts and has the compelling story of the best page-turners.

People often ask me for recommendations on what to read and, quite frankly, it can be difficult to answer them. I have so many books going on at any one time that everything can start to blur together. But The Billionaire’s Vinegar really stood out and I’ve wholeheartedly told friends about it several times. And they haven’t been disappointed.

Wallace spoke to me about getting into magazine work, pitching editors and agents, keeping track of research, and maintaining a high shooting ratio when doing research.

Slushpile:  Published profiles of you say that you knew you wanted to be a writer by the eighth grade. What made you come to that realization?

Wallace:  I guess just, writing-composition assignments were my favorite kind, and extracurricularly, the opportunities I sought out mostly involved writing for school publications.

Slushpile:  What were your favorite books back then? What were some early literary role models?

Wallace:  Earliest, John Fitzgerald’s The Great Brain series. In high school, I was a huge Robert Ludlum fan. I must have read 15 of his books. Then I went through a Joan Didion phase; i was awed by her control of tone and her perfect sentences.

Slushpile:  You worked your way up from being a fact checker at Philadelphia Magazine and became the executive editor. Based on those experiences, what do you think freelance writers need to keep in mind as they strive to build a career?

Wallace:  It’s really hard to generalize, because I have seen people successfully take so many different paths. I never wanted to be a freelancer. I wanted to be on staff. The life of the piecework hustler always looked incredibly daunting to me. So my decisions were all based on a desire to get on staff somewhere. In the case of Philadelphia Magazine, that meant taking a big backward step to get in the door. I had been working as a humanely compensated reporter for a mergers-and-acquisitions newsletter published by Steve Brill’s American Lawyer Media. When I left to go to Philly Mag, I became a fact-checker, and I took a 55% paycut. But it was worth it to me, because it put me in a place where I would have the opportunity to write (and learn to write) the kinds of articles which had drawn me to the field in the first place.

Slushpile:  Your stint as the wine writer for the magazine started because you had a personal interest in the drink. What other personal interests would you have liked to explore, if you had the opportunity?

Wallace:  Well, to name three, I’d say: philosophy, the world of magazines, and the history of Washington, DC.

Slushpile:  You learned about the controversy surrounding bottles of wine allegedly ordered by Thomas Jefferson via a British wine critic’s memoir, correct?

Wallace:  Yes, I read about them in Tasting Pleasure: Confessions of a Wine Lover, the American edition of Jancis Robinson’s professional memoir.

Slushpile:  How much did that book detail the controversy? Was it a passing mention or did it play a large role? Many writers might not pursue the story since it had been previously published in this memoir. What made you pursue it further?

Wallace:  She spent a few pages on it. It was a passing experience in a memoir about her whole career. It seemed like the tip of an iceberg best written about by someone else. By which I mean: Her account was written by a participant, told a sliver of the story, didn’t answer the mystery, and appeared in a book that no one other than a pretty serious wine buff would ever read. I felt like there was very much a story there to be told by an outsider, to be assembled as one sweeping story, to be investigated and resolved, to be written by and for a general-interest reader, and to serve as a vehicle to tell a larger story about wine.

Slushpile:  Were there any books that you used as a role model, or an example, when you sat down to write The Billionaire’s Vinegar?

Wallace:  Very much so. I was a big fan of narrative non-fiction books such as Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman, Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit, Fred Waitzkin’s Searching for Bobby Fischer, etc., all of which give entree to an esoteric world through a compelling true story.

Slushpile:  You are clearly knowledgeable about wine. And it’s vital for a writer to be an expert and almost obsessive about a topic if they’re going to write a book like this. But how can an aspiring author evaluate their interests for widespread appeal? If I’m obsessed by business cards, how can I objectively determine if my fascination with the item can support a book that would be published by a mainstream company?

Wallace:  Well, I suppose one way is to look and see if the topic has a track record. In the case of wine, there were lots of indicators: the success of the movie Sideways, upward-trending statistics for wine-drinking in America, the success of the magazine Wine Spectator, the fact that most bookstores have a specifically defined Wine & Spirits section. There is also, of course, a tradition of narrative non-fiction. The topic is less important than the quality of the story you want to tell. I haven’t yet seen a bookstore that has a whole section devoted to books about business cards (which isn’t to say that a really great story about business cards couldn’t fly).

Slushpile:  Many aspiring nonfiction writers are interested by the whole process of getting an agent and ultimately getting the book published. How did you secure representation for the book? Did you query agents with the usual proposal and sample chapter? Or did your situation unfold in a different manner?

Wallace:  I was a writer at Philadelphia Magazine when I first thought about writing this book, and a friend of mine at the magazine, Larry Platt, who had already written a book called Keepin’ It Real: A Turbulent Season At The Crossroads With The NBA, put me in touch with his agent. I sent the agent a one-page summary, via e-mail, and the agent wrote back immediately and set me up with one of his junior agents to begin developing a proposal. That effort ultimately stalled, and when I later revived the project, I decided to go with a different agent; that second time around, another colleague from Philadelphia Magazine, Sasha Issenberg, author of The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy, hooked me up with his agent, Larry Weissman. I sent Larry a significantly more developed proposal, and he, too, was interested right away, and helped me complete the proposal.

Slushpile:  When pitching to editors and agents, how do you take into account their personal preferences? I mean, ideally, a wonderfully written and pitched book about any subject would capture a prospective agent’s attention. Your job is to communicate the material in such a compelling manner that readers can’t resist. But editors or agents are human beings with personal likes and dislikes so do you just have to hope for the best when the submission goes out? What if an editor who couldn’t stand the smell of wine got your proposal?

Wallace:  One of the reasons I ended up with the agent I did was because he had represented two friends with food-related books, so I knew he was amenable to food-ish books. As for editors, that’s where my agent comes in. It’s Larry’s job to know which editor drank too much Yellowtail at her sister’s wedding and threw up on the priest and went to rehab and now harbors an intense hatred of all wine-drinkers.

Slushpile:  Many first time authors are surprised by just how individual and specific agent and editor feedback and requests can be. This one wants you to focus on the love story while that one wants you to drop it from the book entirely. During your process of finding an agent and a publisher, did you encounter any of this? How did you decide which direction to take?

Wallace:  I had a pretty clear and articulated idea of what the book would be, and I didn’t encounter any major resistance to the direction I wanted to take. And then, to some extent, the book just went where the facts did; the story revealed itself and there really wasn’t more than one natural way to tell it.

Slushpile:  How much of the book was written when you signed the publishing contract?

Wallace:  None of the book was written in the sense of a finished chapter that ended up staying pretty much the same. When I signed the contract, it was on the basis of a 45-page proposal that summarized the story, contained an outline of chapters envisioned, and a sample chapter, but the sample chapter was kind of a hodge-podge that didn’t end up in the final book.

Slushpile:  How long did it take you to finish the book?

Wallace:  I signed the contract in the spring of 2005, continued working full-time at Philadelphia Magazine until the end of June, and then worked full-time on the book until December of 2006, when I turned in the manuscript. After that, there were a few months-long chunks of time when I continued to worked full-time on it.

Slushpile:  In the text, you provide quotes from past events and wine tastings that you did not attend. Instead, you interviewed participants of those events to get the details. How can an aspiring author be comfortable providing direct quotes based on recollections from other people?

Wallace:  A few of the quotes are recollections. A much greater number of them are drawn from contemporaneous reports, whether diary entries by people, or newspaper interviews, or even some videotape I got hold of. In the case of recollections, if several different people independently remember someone at an event they all witnessed saying exactly the same thing, I would trust it. After that, it’s a question of judgment. I would never quote an extended conversation based on recollection. I don’t think someone would remember it accurately, and it would feel fake to me, as a writer/reader. Also, if something were especially controversial, I would be more hesitant to trust someone’s memory. The other thing is, when I quote a recollection, I generally indicate that, so readers can evaluate the quote’s validity for themselves, knowing what it’s based on.

Slushpile:  It’s one thing for a reporter to go to a thirty minute press conference with a recorder or a pen and then write the story. It’s another to travel all over the world, interview dozens of people, and still keep up with all the quotes and material. While you were travelling, how did you manage your notes, recordings, and supporting material?

Wallace:  A lot of the time I used the old notebook-and-pen; often I would transcribe the interviews onto my laptop; sometimes I recorded interviews using a handheld digital recorder, and I then uploaded the recording onto my computer, and backed them up using a flash memory stick. And when I got home I would file everything in a pretty elaborate filing system, to keep track of all the information. I also, at one point (after a scare when I thought I’d lost some crucial documents), photocopied everything and stored it in a different location.

Slushpile:  Most of the principals involved in the story agreed to participate and provide at least some cooperation. But would you have been able to proceed if central figures such as Christie’s wine auctioneer Michael Broadbent or collector Hardy Rodenstock had refused to give you interviews?

Wallace:  It would have been difficult, especially in the case of Michael Broadbent. Rodenstock’s cooperation ended up being limited to some fax exchanges with me, and while his answers to questions, or non-answers in a lot of instances, told me something about him, I’m not sure the book would have suffered significantly without those interviews because he kind of has been peddling the same talking points for years, and I have letters he’s written to other people where he says much the same things he said in his faxes to me.

Slushpile:  On a similar note, for aspiring authors who are creating nonfiction proposals, how do they handle the issue of access? What happens if I say I’m going to interview Michael Jordan for a book about basketball but then I can’t reach him?

Wallace:  It’s a tricky, chicken-or-egg problem. One thing I did was to conduct two important interviews–with Broadbent and Kip Forbes–before I shopped the proposal. So I already had obtained access to them. That gave me confidence that I would be able to gain access to other important sources.  Typically, the only people you’d need to be able to promise you’d interview would be key characters. If Michael Jordan was essential to your book, you’d need to be able to guarantee a publisher that you could get access to him; so, you’d need to have already approached Jordan and secured his cooperation.

Slushpile:  Affluent wine collector Bill Koch went so far as to hire former FBI agent Jim Elroy to investigate the controversy over the alleged Jefferson wine bottles. Thus began a line of inquiry and examination that included germanium detectors, radioactive isotopes, eighteenth-century engraving equipment, and enough intrigue to lead one of the principals to remark, “This is National Treasure” in an allusion to the caper film. What was the most interesting aspect of the chase to you as you learned all the details?

Wallace:  To me, the most interesting vein was not the mystery of the wine’s authenticity but the mystery of Hardy Rodenstock: Who was this guy? Why did nobody, even supposedly close friends, know anything about his background? Why was it impossible to verify even the simplest details of his biography? Was it possible that the origin of the bottles was not a cellar in Paris but his own imagination? It was thrilling to peel back at least a few of those layers.

Slushpile:  After exploring the world of high-dollar wine collecting, what vintage do you covet? If money were no object, what extraordinary wine purchase would you make?

Wallace:  One of the things I learned is that the idea of a most-coveted wine is illusory. No wine can live up to those kinds of expectations or hopes. And when these wines cost the multiple thousands of dollars that they now cost, it’s just not worth it to buy them. I drank some of those wines, with high expectations, and was disappointed; and I wasn’t even paying for them (I drank them at tastings and on other occasions where I was present as a journalist). I can only imagine how much more disappointed I would have been if I had been paying for them. So, if money were no object, I would spend it not on a single trophy purchase, but on creating a working cellar, well stocked with lots of good wines, but none so precious that I’d be afraid to open it.

Slushpile:  In The Billionaire’s Vinegar, you do a masterful job of doling out wine details so novices can follow along but connoisseurs won’t be bored. How did you strike such a delicate balance of educating readers without bogging down the narrative?

Wallace:  Striking that balance was central to what I hoped to accomplish, and it was at the forefront of my mind as I made the countless small writing and storytelling decisions that add up to a book. Since I was writing the book for people like me, who had wished such a book existed, I was a natural surrogate for the non-connoisseur reader.

Slushpile:  What are you going to work on next?

Wallace:  I’m focusing on magazine work at the moment–most recently a story for GQ about someone who survived a lengthy coma.

Slushpile:  What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors?

Wallace:  When it comes to non-fiction, I’m a big believer in the benefits of a high “shooting ratio”–really logging enough time in the reporting process to obtain enough material that when you sit down to write, you have choices.

Slushpile:  What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without publishing tip you would offer to aspiring authors struggling to break into print?

Wallace:  Look at people who are doing what you’d like to be doing. Study how they got there. Follow in their footsteps.

To learn more about Wallace, check out his website.

[Photo credit: David Fields]

Edison reached the lofty position atop the masthead at Wrestling’s Main Event by dispatching his boss with a punishing Heart punch in the ring. He later went on to write for index, Hustler and Penthouse, among others. He penned dozens of porn novels, often churning out one a week, and served as the publisher of High Times and the editor-in-chief of Screw.

Edison’s memoir, I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World was recently published by Faber and Faber, Inc. He spoke with us about architectural hairstyles, writing that mimics music, and breaking into the magazine biz.

Oh yeah, this ain’t for the faint of heart or for those with sensitive corporate filters on your web browsers.

Slushpile:  I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World recounts your years in punk bands and on magazine mastheads. But there’s no clear beginning and end to that time period, unlike many current memoirs that cover a specific year in a foreign country or whatever. What made you think that now is a good time to write this book

Edison:  Well, first of all, I Have Fun… isn’t a comprehensive history of punk rock or the sleazy side of the magazine industry, it’s my personal history riding those trains.  Of course therein also lies a pop-culture history of porn mags, and 60s and 70s counterculture, and my high-minded thoughts on pro-wrestling and Reagan-era greed and the space program, and a great big adult-sized dose of drug adventurism… so, why now? Because I found my voice. After twenty years writing about sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, and living it in a way that most people find just frankly unbelievable, I felt was writing at the top of my game, and it was time to take the message to the people.

Slushpile:  I’ve pitched books about publishing and editors frequently responded, “That’s too much of a niche market.” And I’ve pitched books about heavy metal and editors said, “Those bands don’t have a big enough fan base anymore.” Yet, your book deals intimately with the magazine world and punk music—hardly Hannah Montana and American Idol territory of huge audiences. Where you at all afraid of being considered too niche, and therefore not getting a publisher?

Edison:  If you have the right heavy-metal book, pitch me — among other things, I’m an acquiring editor for Backbeat books these days. People eat that shit up. I posit as evidence the global success of about half-a-dozen redundant Motley Crue books.

Slushpile:  Your early writing gigs were about punk, and professional wrestling, and then you got a job writing porn novels. But what led you to writing in the first place? As a child or young adult, did you have dreams of being a writer?

Edison:  At some point, becoming a relief pitcher for the New York Yankees was not going to be a career choice; ditto ice-hockey player or astronaut… what probably made me realize I could be a writer was reading Rock Scene magazine when I was a kid. It was something about Led Zeppelin, and the story began “Robert Plant stood backstage, his huge penis bulging in his pants.” Even at age thirteen it was laughable. Reading that I knew instantly I could do the job. And maybe I’d get to hang out with Aerosmith.

Slushpile:  Working on those porn novels trained you to churn out a novel in a week. Did this race to write teach you anything that you applied to your more “literary” pursuits?

Edison:  Yes: put your fucking head down and write. Stop bullshitting, stop doting on the cat, turn off the fucking TV, put the bong away, and write.

Slushpile:  What was your favorite title of one of those porn books?

Edison:  They were all pretty wonderful: Busting Susan’s Cherry, My Nellie Husband, Black Dicks for Debbie… every one a jewel!

Slushpile:  Besides your own bands, what musicians would you recommend as a soundtrack to this book?

Edison:  Probably the bands that run through the pages: Sonic Youth, the Ramones, Blues Explosion, Reagan Youth, the Dictators, Black Sabbath… and some avant jazz for the more absurd passages. Sun Ra, Coltrane, Charles Mingus with Eric Dolphy.

Slushpile:  Who are your favorite authors and why?

Edison:  Reading Raymond Chandler’s books are like listening to great rock’n’roll records. David Foster Wallace is just terribly smart and funny and has set the bar ridiculously high. I’m in awe of certain comic book writers — people are ga-ga for Robert Crumb’s artwork, but goddam, that mutherfucker just writes a ton.

Slushpile:  You’re a musician and a writer, so hopefully you can shed some light on a question I often ask… if an author is writing about a particular genre of music, should the writing mimic or express characteristics of the music? Should the writing try to have the rhythm, cadences, and overall feel of the music? Or should the author just do their own thing regardless of the genre he’s covering?

Edison:  If you can write about jazz and catch the rhythm and bop, like Mezz Mezzrow or some of the better beat writers, that’s playing the game at a major league level. But that’s a very unique circumstance. Are you gonna write like a moron when you do that heavy metal book? If I write a story about coal mining, I should write like a miner?? Maybe my story about Kandinsky should look like squiggles on the page? What I try to do is just capture the energy of rock’n’roll. There is definitely meter, and rhythm, and some pyrotechnics always makes the kids scream. Anyway, like Frank Zappa said, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

Slushpile:  There are quite a few amazingly descriptive (and funny) passages in I Have Fun Everywhere I Go.  For example, at one point, you write, “There are few things scarier than a thirty-nine-year-old single Jewish woman cruising a JDate mixer in four-hundred-dollar Manolo Blahniks that are slicing her feet into pastrami, except for maybe the forty-year-old male virgin sulking in the corner to a soundtrack of diluted hip-hop spun by a DJ wearing a tricolored Rasta yarmulke and in desperate need of a bath.” What’s your guidance for when a writer should really pour it on in a passage like this one as opposed to those other sections when the text should be more utilitarian? Every passage can’t be an over-the-top literary explosion so how do you strike an appropriate balance?

Edison:  It can’t be all machine guns blaring all the time, or it all starts to sound the same. You can’t throw fast balls for nine innings and expect to get people out, the batter is going to catch up with you. You have to work both sides of the plate, change speeds, throw some tricky breaking stuff. Then when you throw the fast ball it looks like a fucking comet coming at you.

Slushpile:  Another great description is that, “He was extraordinarily anal, which was actually a plus on a staff where no one was all that organized. Even his hair looked alphabetized. It was always perfect, as if it were designed by some great architectural firm and combed with a T square.” So if an architect designed this guy’s look, what type of person would you say was responsible for your appearance?

Edison:  An abstract expressionist with a taste for mid-century modernism and rockabilly. On a budget.

Slushpile:  Your depiction of the dysfunction, territoriality, and egos run amok at High Times makes me wonder how they ever manage to get a magazine in the stores. Is there any hope for them?

Edison:  Yeah… I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed.

Slushpile:  Based on your lengthy experience in magazines, what’s the best way for a freelancer to break into a publication?

Edison:  Suck some dick, kiss ass, blackmail the boss [laughs]… it’s a tough racket. Magazine pages are like Manhattan real estate, there is a very finite source, and people guard it jealously. It’s tough to get inside. It helps to know someone on the co-op board. But I tell you what, it’s great when you find an editor who is more interested in your good work than your pedigree.

Slushpile:  What do you wish more new writers knew about the magazine business?

Edison:  That it is filled with assholes, egomaniacs, mediocre talents, starfuckers, and poseurs. Working for a magazine is considered a sexy job. It’s too bad, but a lot of people think it’s like an exclusive country club and worry about who they let through the door. It can be something of an old boy’s network. And it’s a tough to be an individual in a business where there is so much pressure from publishers to sell ads, and to sell magazines and hit the rate base. Almost none of the bigger magazines have any claws left, they are afraid to take chances, and so they drive straight down the middle of the road. Mostly I don’t want to be involved in that.

Slushpile:  What are you working on now? What’s next for Mike Edison?

Edison:  I’d like to write the Shouts and Murmurs page for the New Yorker. I would do it for free as a public service. Someone has got to make it funny again.

Slushpile:  What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors?

Get some good walking shoes… no one ever talks about it, but there is a lot of pacing involved in writing a book.

Slushpile:  What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without publishing tip you would offer to aspiring authors struggling to break into print?

Edison:  Was it Mark Twain or Walt Whitman who said, “To be a writer, write?” That’s it. Put your head down and write. And then revise, revise, revise. Perseverance and industry bring sure reward. Don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t happen right away. Just keep at it. If that fails, I guess get ready to suck some cock. I mean, if you want it that badly… personally, I’d rather kick ass than kiss ass. I think that is a good way to be. I try to get by on my merits, I don’t want to owe anyone anything. But then, I have always started at the top and somehow worked my way down. I am probably not the best role model.

For more information, check out the Edison Rocket Train website.

[Photo by Dave Allocca]

He’s been featured on Fox’s The Morning Show, CNBC’s The Big Idea, in USA Today and other papers, and countless other media outlets. And he was a finalist on Oprah’s Big Give television show.

Johnson’s book, You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way –and Live the Life You Want– with the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship contains lots of great advice to entreprenuers, much of it applicable to authors striving to build a writing career. He spoke to me about his history, about overcoming a fear of rejection, evaluating an idea, the importance of contacts, and other topics.

Slushpile:  You launched your first business at the age of nine. As you progressed through your teens and got more and more involved in business, were there any books that inspired you?

Johnson:  Yes, most definitely. I actually began reading business biographies when I was probably only 10 years old. Success stories from such icons as Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Michael Dell, and Richard Branson. The fact that they all started at a very early age gave me the extra inspiration to get started when I was so young.

Slushpile:  Your passion is creating businesses. So why take time away from that to write a book? What was your goal in writing You Call the Shots?

Johnson:  Very good question and that’s very true. Every week, I receive hundreds of emails from entrepreneurs and from young people who either have a question, or who just appreciate me sharing my story. It’s flattering, yet it seemed natural to partner with a brilliant business editor, John David Mann, to help me co-author my book and make it available to the masses. While the book tells my story, it’s much more than that – it shares the lessons I learned along the way and enables the reader to take their own idea and get started with very little capital or experience.

Slushpile:  When you sat down to write the book, did you have any role models or other texts that you used as an example of how your book should function?

Johnson:  My number one priority was to make the book as beneficial as possible to the reader. Over the years, I’ve personally read enough business books to know what I like and what I dislike. I wanted to include as many lessons, or “secrets,” as possible and to explain those through my story.

Slushpile:  You mentioned that John David Mann received a co-author credit on You Call the Shots. What was it like co-writing with a partner?

Johnson:  John is a brilliant writer and fortunately for me, we also have a great friendship. You Call the Shots would have never happened without John’s experience and expertise.  It couldn’t have been a better experience and when I was building businesses, I would always try and surround myself with the best possible talent – and this book is no different.

Slushpile:  How did this book get published? What was your experience in finding an agent and then submitting to publishers? 

Johnson:  As many writers know, finding an agent is hard enough – yet alone getting in front of publishers. I was fortunate we were able to get the book in front of one of the top business agents who fell in love with the book. Once you have a top agent in your corner, it makes it a bit easier to get publishers interested. Luck might be the best answer as we were definitely fortunate in such a ridiculously competitive industry with so much talent.

Slushpile:  You write that one of the key aspects of being a successful entrepreneur is that “you have to put yourself out there and ask for what you want.” A lot of aspiring authors struggle with facing rejection and they have a hard time submitting their work to what might be a harsh reader. How does someone get over the fear of rejection, the fear of putting yourself out there?

Johnson:  Selling is a very important trait. Whether you’re selling yourself in a job interview or selling your book to an agent or publisher. When someone says “No,” that’s actually when you start selling. First, you have to be 100% passionate about whatever it is you’re selling and if you’re a writer, that’s most likely not your problem. Second, you have to separate your passion to then try and understand why your idea or proposal was rejected. Then, you have to overcome those obstacles.

I hate rejection and won’t say I handle it better than anyone else but we can’t let it slow us down. Chicken Soup was pitched to 30+ publishers who said “No,” before finally getting that yes. Whether you’re a writer, actor, entrepreneur, or CEO, chances are those who make it to the top – have overcome plenty of rejections. Use it as motivation.

Slushpile:  While you lead a full life of sports, friends, and socializing, you are known for your ability to focus intently on business. You devour business magazines and advise that if people “put the kind of energy into this that others put into keeping up with celebrity gossip, you’ll be way ahead.” What can aspiring authors learn by studying publishing trade journals and industry news? How does this benefit them, as opposed to keeping up with Paris Hilton’s latest escapades?

Johnson:  I’d turn that question around and ask yourself how keeping up with Paris Hilton’s latest escapades benefit you? If you take a second and write down everything we do in an average day, or week,  I think you’ll definitely see how it can be beneficial to read, and study, trade journals and industry-specific magazines. Before I published my book, I studied the publishing world and tried to learn everything I possibly could.

Slushpile:  You write that many successful businesses are based on improving an existing idea. “Never underestimate the potential of a good idea,” you write. “And never underestimate the better execution of a good idea that someone else is executing poorly.” How do you improve someone else’s idea, without seeming too similar? Even though another burger chain may introduce a sandwich that has three pieces of bread, two patties, and a sauce, don’t they need to impart their own vision, instead of just carbon copying the Big Mac?

Johnson:  Their own vision: yes. It’s rare that simply a carbon copy will succeed as you must differentiate yourself from the competition. What makes you better? Or maybe you’re cheaper? Faster? Easier to use? Any of these questions can separate you quickly from the competition. Study what works, and even more importantly study what doesn’t. I think entrepreneurs overlook the simple ideas. Apple didn’t invent the mp3 player, they just made it better and easier to use. When you look at new products or ideas, you’ll find the simple ones, and often simple variations, are sometimes the most lucrative.

Slushpile:  And how would you advise a person to objectively evaluate how to improve an idea? If I read a detective novel and think I could do a better job, what kind of questions do I need to ask myself in order to improve it?

Johnson:  What didn’t you like? Writing and writing copyrights are a bit different than a business concept or idea but the same principle applies. Being objective might be the biggest challenge and that’s one reason I always look to others for feedback.

Slushpile:  In You Call the Shots, you advise people to find great mentors. “People open doors,” you write. “That’s what connections are all about. Over the years, I have collected a powerful network of contacts. Some of them have opened major doors for me, and I’ve done the same for them.” Aspiring authors often bemoan their lack of big-time New York publishing contacts. How can someone overcome the fact that they might live in a small town in the Midwest and might not know anyone in publishing in order to build an effective network of contacts?

Johnson:  I think people are sometimes overwhelmed by the need for networking. Living in a small town in the Midwest can’t be your excuse. I was from a small city in Southwest Virginia. Perhaps look to a co-author, perhaps reach out to some of your favorite writers and ask for their feedback or advice. It sounds like a cliché’ and I guess it is, but there’s always a way.

Slushpile:  You have some very strong opinions on customer service. One of the things that you find most shocking is that “nine out of ten companies never contact their customers after they’ve made a purchase.” Now, authors selling books might be a bit of a different relationship than a car dealer selling SUVs. But what kind of advice would you offer to writers who want to build—and retain—their audience?

Johnson:  I think this is just as important for authors. Perhaps not “customer service” but developing a relationship with your reader can prove crucial. In You Call the Shots for instance, we give the readers a special website at the back of the book where they can get even more tips and online resources. There we invite the reader to join our newsletter and we give them the free tips promised. This same strategy can be adapted to just about any book, and can prove to be a valuable marketing tool. Also can be a valuable way to get direct feedback from your audience.

Slushpile:  Many writers struggle because they may love to write a type of book that isn’t popular.  They want to stay true to their art, but also build a career. In your case, all the ventures you’ve launched are a result of something you love and find interesting. Yet, you also objectively evaluate their viability as a business. How do you balance the love of a pursuit with the harsh realities of business investment?

Johnson:  That’s a tough question. The marketing ability, or potential, for an idea is something I research as one of the very first steps to getting started. So I’m not sure I’ve let myself develop a huge passion for something that doesn’t have broad market appeal. One strategy I use when creating businesses is to first find my niche and then ask myself – what can this audience use? So I actually look for the market, before I create a product or service. It’s reverse but it actually makes logical sense rather than trying to invent something no one wants.

Slushpile:  In the past, you were into soccer and scouts. How are you spending your free time these days?

Johnson:  Free time is very important – I love to travel, hang out with friends, concerts, sporting events – the same things an average 23-year old would like to do.

Slushpile:  What books are you reading?

Johnson:  Right now I’m working on my next book so I’m not reading very much other than plenty of research.

Slushpile:  What are your plans for future books?

Johnson:  When I wrote my first book, I didn’t necessarily anticipate on writing another. Now that I’ve received some great feedback from the first one, I’m passionate about writing more for my generation. There are very few books out there that are written by twenty-somethings and I think my books have a unique appeal and the unique ability to speak to my generation. Stay tuned for some exciting projects to come.

Slushpile:  You juggled a social life, high school, and creating several highly successful businesses. What advice do you have for writers who struggle to work on their novel while also meeting the demands of a day-job, family, etc?

Johnson:  My best work was done very late at night. I’m sure many writers would agree with this and I also never let my businesses run my life. I think that’s the best lesson is to not let your writing run, or ruin, your life. My businesses were a hobby and I never let them control my life.

Slushpile:  What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors?

Johnson:  We live in a world where the average book sells less than 5,000 copies. With that being said, the best tip is to use your talents to be incredible creative, but also keep in mind it needs somewhat of a broad appeal to succeed in the marketplace.

Slushpile:  What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without publishing tip you would offer to aspiring authors struggling to break into print?

Johnson:  To not take No for an answer and to put yourself out there and make it happen.

For more information about Cameron Johnson, be sure to check out his website.

Play air guitar, that is.

But some people take air guitar beyond just a simple, spontaneous expression of a song’s rock-ness. Some people actually train and travel the globe in order to compete in air guitar competitions. And Dan Crane is one of those people.

A “real” guitarist, Crane played in bands for years. But friends introduced him to competitive air guitar and he was hooked. Dissatisfied with an unfulfilling job, Crane crossed the country competing in a number of tournaments and journeyed to Scandinavia to rock it out on the international stage. He documented his experience in To Air is Human: One Man’s Quest to Become the World’s Greatest Air Guitarist, a rollicking read that follows him from a strip club in New York to the Carson Daly show to the legendary stage of the Roxy in Hollywood to the small college town of Oulu, Finland for the Air Guitar World Championships. A long the way, he encounters a hilarious assortment of characters named Krye Tuff, The Rockness Monster, C-Diddy, The Red Plectrum, and many others.

Crane was kind enough to put down his air axe long enough to exchange some emails about the genesis of his obsession with air guitar, the coolest names in the biz, and how he built a writing career.

Slushpile:  You entered your first air guitar competition somewhat just for fun, in order to “play what would likely be a crowded gig, get some free drinks, and be judged on my merits as a rockstar – all without having to carry any gear to or from the venue.” At what point did air guitar cease being something that was just fun and become more of a vocation or obsession for you?

Crane:  I think air guitar truly became an obsession after Carson Daly flew me to LA to compete in the West Coast finals following my appearance on his show. Once I came in second place for a second time, I thought, “Okay, I must be pretty good at this to keep getting second place…” and I also thought, “Fuck. This is a ridiculously stupid amount of fun.”

Slushpile:  You grew up playing in bands and have serious musical abilities. In addition to those pursuits, what drew you to writing?

Crane:  I had spent about eight or ten years as an educational software producer, and always knew it was the wrong career for me. I was pretty sure I could write, I just never thought about making a career out of it. My conversion was really thanks to an editor at Slate who I met at a dinner party at Malcolm Gladwell’s (who hosts excellent dinner parties, btw). Afterwards, she and I began an email correspondence. She thought I wrote funny emails and eventually suggested I pitch her some stories, which I did, and she liked, and Slate ran.

Slushpile:  As a follow-up to that question, how did you build a career as a writer? In To Air is Human, you describe your dissatisfaction with a job in the software industry. But once you left that gig, how did you get your freelancing work off the ground?

Crane:  After I had written my second or third piece for Slate—a tour diary of my band which at that time was called Les Sans Culottes, now we are Nous Non Plus—I got an email from an agent that liked my writing and asked if I had any book ideas. I didn’t really at the time, but sent her a few crappy ones anyway. Then, randomly, I met another writer who suggested I talk to her brother who was a book agent (Matt McGowan at Francis Goldin). We talked, and I pitched him a few book ideas that he didn’t like. Then he said, “Tell me more about this air guitar thing you’re involved in…” So the idea for a book about my experience as an air guitarist was really his. The title, of course, was all mine.

Slushpile:  In the author’s note you (or Bjorn, rather) writes “I didn’t do all this so that I could write a book about it.” At what point did you start thinking your air guitar odyssey would make a good book? 

Crane:  Like I said, it wasn’t really my idea to write a book about it—it was my agent’s. The point of that author’s note was that I didn’t want people to think that I simply participated in all these competitions as a stunt to have a book subject. I really did get obsessed. I really did fly around the world in pursuit of air greatness, and there were moments (difficult as this may be to believe) that I actually thought I achieved some kind of artistic transcendence in it all. The thought of a journalist trying doing it as a stunt was sort of an anathema—and I wanted to disprove any suggestion that this was my motivation.

Slushpile:  Did you have any books that you used as role models or inspiration for To Air is Human?

Crane:  Yeah, I read or at least perused some rock bios (Dave Navarro, Anthony Kiedis, Tommy Lee) but I thought those were overall pretty awful—did you know that Tommy Lee’s cock is a “character” in his book? Every time he “talks,” there’s a little spooge bubble for his thoughts. His dick has a mind of its own I guess…

The two books that inspired me most were Hell Bent for Leather by Seb Hunter, and Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City. And Klosterman was nice enough to give me a blurb too.

Slushpile:  On a more general level, what are some of your favorite books?

Crane:  One of my all time favorite books is Mating by Norman Rush. I love pretty much anything Matthew Klam writes, and I once wrote a song (Smoke) based on one of the short stories in A.M. Homes’ The Safety of Objects. I loved “Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure.” He’s hilarious. Currently reading Rock On by Dan Kennedy and enjoying it. I’m a big George Saunders fan too—we have the same editor, but he’s a fucking genius—I’m just a schmuck.

Slushpile:  What advice do you have for other aspiring writers who are currently employed in less-than-fulfilling jobs?

Crane:  My advice would be to find a subject matter that you can completely obsess over and will have no problem dedicating at least a year of your life to entirely. This can be fiction or non-fiction of course. And then, I guess I’d say just keep throwing your ideas out to whoever seems willing to catch them. Eventually something will stick.

Also, take frequent breaks, during which time, might I suggest you play a little air guitar?

Slushpile:  A key milestone in any air guitarist’s life is selecting the stage name, the “nom d’air” as you describe it. Bjorn Turoque is pretty damn cool but I think my favorite name in the book is The Rockness Monster. Which one of your competitors’ name do you like the best?

Crane:  I have to agree. The Rockness Monster is just plain awesome. I think he now actually officially goes by “The Rockness Fucking Monster.” He’s a great guy, and a helluva air guitarist—undefeated on his home turf of Los Angeles, and 2005 US champ (edging me out by .1 of a point).

My second favorite it Airsatz, but I think that flies over most people’s heads.

Slushpile:  What was the most challenging aspect of describing air guitar to readers? What did you struggle with in writing about an invisible art form?

Crane:  It’s the same struggle I have with writing about music, which I hate doing. That’s why I included that introductory note paraphrasing Elvis Costello’s famous remark about writing about music. It went, “If I may paraphrase Elvis Costello, writing about air guitar is like choreography about blueprints.”

Yes, describing something so visual, and yet something that’s ACTUALLY INVISIBLE, is not easy. But I’d like to think I nailed it.

Slushpile:  Did your experience playing air guitar in front of thousands of people benefit your writing? Maybe you had fewer inhibitions in your work? Maybe you weren’t as worried about criticism as another beginning author?

Crane:  I’m not sure I could quantify how much the public performances benefitted the private writing. I’ve always been a fairly open self-deprecator. I did think twice about including the story of paying $1,200 for a lap dance (and considering my mother now likes to bring it up every few months or so, I regret it a little. Also I’ll probably never be able to run for governor of New York. Although…) but I think that it’s important to be open and honest, especially if it serves a point. As far as criticism goes, I’ve never really feared criticism. If anyone actually bothers to read the book, that’s good enough for me. 

Slushpile:  What kind of guitar do you envision in your hands when you’re rocking some serious air?

Crane:  An invisible one.

Slushpile:  In the time period of the book, the air guitar competition experiences tremendous growth in America. How many competitions and competitors are there today?

Crane:  This year, they expect to do nearly 30 competitions in the US alone with two regional semi-finals. Competitive air guitar’s growth over the past five years has been exponential.

Slushpile:  How did you find an agent and a publisher for To Air is Human? Did you query widely with a traditional proposal? Did an agent approach you based on some of your newspaper writing? How did the whole deal unfold?

Crane:  See above re how I met the agent. Once we agreed on the subject, he guided me through putting a proposal together and we did a back-and-forth for a few months while I got him everything he thought he needed—from a chapter outline, preface and sample chapter to related press and a video reel (since I had already done TV appearances, etc). We then sent the proposal out to thirteen houses and I had my first offer two days later. I was completely shocked. In the end, there were offers from four publishers, and we happily settled on Riverhead.

Slushpile:  The book has a cool design with graphics and illustrations by Ben Gibson. How did you work with Gibson? Did the publisher hook you up with him? Or, did you work with him prior to submitting the book for consideration?

Crane:  Gibson is one of Riverhead’s in-house designers—I really liked his work with George Saunders’ Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil. He’s great. I do regret we didn’t prototype the cover a bit more though because it really rips easily – I think there were a lot of returns because the covers were half torn off by the time they reached the stores.

Ben and I worked closely together to nail down and fine-tune the illustrations, which he based on my text. Ben rocks!

Slushpile:  What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors?

Crane:  Iterate. Write as much as you can without self-editing and then go back and tighten until it’s as close to perfect as you can get it.

Slushpile:  What is your single-best, most-important, can’t –live-without publishing tip you would offer to aspiring authors struggling to break into print?

Crane:  Meet other people in the publishing industry and find a nice way to pitch them, or their friends, ideas. Then take them out for a drink/dinner to thank them. And be funny.

For more information on Dan Crane’s writing and his love of fine snack food, check out his website.

For more information on the Scandinavian air guitar wizard, check out Bjorn Turoque’s website.

But The Delivery Man is the real thing. Bleak but incredibly gripping, the novel examines the inertia and desparate lives of young twenty-somethings in Las Vegas. Chase, an aspiring painter who makes the deliveries referenced in the title, is torn between escaping Sin City with his ambitious MBA girlfriend or staying on the Strip with his prostitute childhood friend. Chase’s struggle involves physical violence, sexual degradation, and explorations of the grimy side of Las Vegas glamour. For people who read this novel, there’s a feeling they’ll get when they look to the west. And it ain’t pleasant.

The Delivery Man was selected as an “editors’ choice” by The New York Times and their review said “in McGinniss’s terse and memorable final sentence, Chase utters two words, and the cycle of violence powers up again, some teeth missing but with dread to burn, the snake fitting its mouth around its tail and biting hard.”

Having just returned from a string of booksigning to packed houses, McGinniss was kind enough to discuss the Bret question, the determination it takes to succeed as a writer, and just how screwed up kids really are today.

Slushpile:  This question  simply has to be asked – although I’m sure you’re tired of fielding it – but how  much is The Delivery Man influenced by the work of Bret Easton Ellis and  how much is it a conscious homage? Even the cover image points to the eighties with the large wayfarer type sunglasses. And of course, your novel begins with  the line “Find Yourself Here” while Less Than Zero prominently features  “Disappear Here.” Were you proudly showing your influences? Or consciously engaging in an allusion to Ellis’s work, almost signaling that yours is the Less Than Zero for a new generation?

McGinniss:  Great question. I love  Bret. I love his work, his independence, his toughness, his willingness to take  chances and write without apology about certain soulless segments of American  society. I read Less Than Zero for the first time when I was about 14. I read it right after reading Native Son by Richard Wright. Very different books. Suffice it to say I was blown away by  both, terrified and saddened by the vision each offered. I picked up both  multiple times through the years as well as Didion and John O’Hara and Richard  Yates. 

What appealed to me most  about all of those writers was the accessibility they offer, the spare, powerful  language they use to tell stories or satirize an era or an ethic. I remember clearly trying to write something too sentimental, too sappy. I found myself wanting to make Chase more conventionally sympathetic, Julia to be an even  brighter light in his dark world, to default to three-dimensional “traditional”  characters. But they didn’t fit, no matter how hard I tried, into the  two-dimensional world I was describing.

As far as a conscious homage – not  really. Bret did something brilliant at 19 or whatever, about the soullessness  of materialism and excess in the Reagan 80’s in LA.  I wrote about characters who didn’t have the luxury his had – the ability to fuck around and nearly kill yourself,  listless and nihilistic, always with a parental safety net of trust funds and  huge houses to catch you when you fall out of rehab. I don’t know that world. He observed it and even knew it to a degree from what little I know about his early years. I know middle-class life. I  know something about the African-American experience. I observed, studied as much as I could the Latino experience. My characters don’t have the safety  net to catch them when they fall. They can’t afford the risks they’re taking. Yet they take them just the same. Which is, I think, more representative of more people’s experiences. There are far more black, brown and working class white kids screwing around and wasting their lives than trust-fund babies.

I love the way the “Find Yourself Here” lines up with “Disappear Here.” That was dumb luck. Summerlin, the master-planned-community I spent too many hours studying, researching, visiting, has a slogan, “Find Yourself Here.” I had to use it. It was perfect. And I realized of course, idiot, that’s an answer to the Less Than Zero question, where do you end up if  you “Disappear here?” Well, twenty years later in Las Vegas staring at brochure for a cookie-cutter housing development in the suburbs, battered, bruised and broken.

The cover was an image the art director at Grove found combing the internet for images. She’s 18, lives in Wisconsin. Her 16-year-old sister took the picture in the backseat of their mother’s car. They were excited when the publisher approached them. They got some money and some books. We got a kick-ass cover

Slushpile:  The story of your father’s involvement with Ellis is well-documented. But how did Ellis become a champion of your work? 

McGinniss:  When I wrote something I thought was ready to be read by objective readers, I did a number of things. I  enrolled in a graduate fiction workshop led by author Richard McCann at American University (where I received my masters in public policy – don’t ask.) I  submitted a sample and he invited me in. It was incredible. Reading other work,  reading and listening to multiple critiques of mine. I needed it badly. It went by too fast. I revised some more, finished another draft, thought I was ready again.

I wrote to a bunch of writers asking if they would read some or all of my  “novel.” I wrote to people whose work moved me the most. I explained why I was approaching them in particular. I was pleasantly surprised to get reads from most. One read 25 pages. One read 100. Bret read it all. When a writer as brilliant as he is says yes, I’ll read  your manuscript, you overnight it. Which I did to all three. One said no, they  didn’t read unpublished work. So I got reads from most and they were all helpful. (Yes, I’m returning karmic favors, reading a young guy’s work from England who contacted me.)

Writers are solo-artists, needing to make their own breaks, taking advantage of any and every opportunity. And even that doesn’t guaranteee shit. This process has been utterly mindblowing. Every fucking step of it. I can’t believe books even get published, much less read.) And I owe Bret my  second child. After a few drafts – rewrites that were always driven by just the  right questions from Bret and the other readers (a trademark I learned of really thoughtful editors – asking the tough questions, large and small) – I knew I  nailed it. I finally had a story that worked. I had the posterboard and glue  sticks and multi-colored index cards charting each act, each characters  storyline, each movement so that nothing was out of synch. I sent him a draft that I knew was ready. It was the first time I was right. He offered then, for the first time in the three years I’d known him, to show my novel to his  agent. It was of course a nice moment, one I talked about with my wife all the time, but never with him. Will  it ever be good enough for him to put his name on the line?  

Slushpile:  You’ve said  in other interviews that “with a novel, one is free to exaggerate to make a point. In fact, if one doesn’t, it won’t make much of a novel.” Is there a way that new writers can figure out how much exaggeration is too much? Where is the  line between making a point and crossing over into absurdity? 

McGinniss:  Excellent  question. AM Homes has her suburbanite smoking crack and burning down their house for kicks. Absurd? Of course. But it works. Bret has kids gangraping 12 year old girls and sociapathic Wall Street traders committing the most heinous acts.  But it works. With Homes – it’s wickedly playful – they’re destroying themselves and the language and story surrounding the acts supports the absurdity. With the brutality in some of Bret’s work, the ethic of greed and materialism is so effectively rendered that the acts – savage  exaggerations – do their job. I think the line is wherever your story and the world you’re exploring tells you  it is.

And it depends on the comment you want to make about it. If I’m writing about the paralyzing lack of self-esteem inherent in kids coming of age in  contemporary Las Vegas and a society that crams the sexualization of teenage girls down their throats, then I’m going to make a lot of the girls prositutes. Shit – teenage girls are saying “This is what they want, for me to have  two-dimensional  aspirations, to be  a sex object at 13 and 14, to dress like a slut, then I’ll just sell my body and  make the money I need to get ahead, or at least live like the celebrity I’ll never be.” Or something like that. 

Slushpile:  You’ve mentioned  that you did a tremendous amount of research for The Delivery Man, even going so far as to videotape neighborhoods in Las Vegas. At what point did you feel like you understood the environment enough? How did you know when to stop the research and start the writing?

McGinniss:  This was one of those typical learn from your mistakes, naïve first-time novelist kind of things. When  I decided the story had to be about someone from Las Vegas, born and raised, the novel took off.  (Prior versions  involved the city but weren’t centered there. But those versions weren’t novels, they were something else entirely). But  of course, being an outsider, I hit a wall. I knew only so much about the place from reading countless books and Mike Davis articles (City of Quartz and Ecology  of Fear et al…though most of his work is about LA, he wrote some great stuff on  Vegas.)

But the characters needed better voices, they needed authentication that only interviews and conversations could provide. In order to write instinctively about life there from the perspective of Chase or Michele or Bailey, I had to  have so many hours of conversations, hours and hours spent reading and rereading transcipts from interviews, every Las Vegas Review-Journal story about the 311  Boyz (group of rogue overprivileged white boys who spent a summer videotaping  horrific beatings they administered to other kids in parking lots and on  playgrounds). I had to know reflexively where the kids in the story spent Friday nights, where they ended up at the end of a night of parties, where they spent weekends with the family, which waterslide and which radio station and which  neighborhood they avoided. The research never ends. There is always something else that can help give the story a more authentic feel.

I wrote a last scene – an early flashback with Carly and Bailey and Chase going to a shooting range with Bailey’s father instead of school – very late in  the process. I knew there had to be more with Carly and Bailey and Chase and there had to be some activity that would seem germaine to the place. A shooting range, obviously. Why? Because one girl who I interviewed would post these online diaries about her life. One entry was about a perfect day: her father let her skip summer school, took her and her little sister to a shooting range. Then to Hot Topic, bought some clothes. Then to Del Taco. Then home to watch some John Travolta movie. She was stoked. It was the best suburban Las Vegas day. And some of that made it into  the book at the last minute.

Slushpile:  The Delivery Man depicts youth culture gone wrong. There are tales of teenage  prostitution, animal abuse, rampant drug abuse, etc. Do you think that the so-called MySpace Generation is objectively over the line in terms of behavior?  Or, is it just the passage of time that makes every older generation seem leery of youth. In other words, is something “really” wrong with kids today or is it just the same thing that made our grandparents scowl at Elvis Presley shaking  his hips?

McGinniss:  There’s something wrong. Big time. Kids are exposed to SO MUCH MORE than ever before. When I was 12, to get porn we had to find a magazine fluttering down the highway in our backyard (it was called Twosome or something  typical like that and it was pretty gross) or we had to jiggle the cable box buttons so that the Playboy channel would come on all grainy and shaky.) My god, today, what teenager hasn’t seen the most explicit kinds of stuff on the  internet? Maybe the Amish. But that’s it. And it’s not even Internet porn. It’s friggin’ MTV with Super Sweet 16 that glorifies disgusting levels of spending  and greed. And it’s cable news that makes no distinction between celebrity worship and real issues. Back in the day – you’d have to watch Entertainment Tonight to get celebrity news. Today, turn on CNN or Fox News.

It’s a celebrity culture. It’s a porn culture. It’s a violence culture. It’s a visual age and everyone wants to be famous and every girl is a sex object. Open an American Apparel catalogue the next chance you get. Child porn. Period. Is it tougher for kids today – hell yes.  If you thought about being a hooker, making some money selling your body and you lived in the suburbs in the 80’s, you couldn’t do it. Today – you can get ten  responses in an hour from ten different men after posting your ad for free on  Craigslist. You can be in some man’s hotel room in an hour. You can be 18 or 17 or 15 and find yourself somewhere very scary. And it’s so, so easy. And I don’t blame the youth. They reflect us, society, what we value, or what corporate America values (which inherently is nothing, other than the bottom line) so it’s scary because we know what sells – and if that’s what’d dictating social and cultural norms, kids are really, really in a tough spot – left to filter out the trash, to make sense of it all. But there may be hope  around the corner. Look at the level of youth participation in certain political campaigns. Signs of hope.

Slushpile:  The kids in The Delivery Man all seem to suffer this inability to escape from their hometown of  Las Vegas. The main character, Chase, returns to Sin City from school in New York and constantly talks of leaving but never seems to accomplish that goal. Do you think this is indicative of hometowns in general? Or is there something  specific to Las Vegas that sucks people in?

McGinniss:  I feel much sypmathy for Chase and all of the characters in this story. They all suffer from the same thing:  a paralyzing lack of self-esteem. That’s one trait that seemed present across the board in all of my interviews and reading about the kids and twenty-somethings in Vegas. The inferiority complex. If you’re an artist in Vegas: you feel like shit because the art scene is nothing compared to LA or NYC. If you’re a teenager in Vegas: you feel like shit because your hometown is the butt of jokes anywhere you go,  produces nothing of value, is known for what? Sex? Gambling? Toxic waste? Nuclear testing? Brothels? The mafia? Theme casinos? The desolation of the  desert? Smog? Insane heat? Paris Hilton? So there is a unique sense of emptiness at the heart of the place that afflicts the people from there.

On the book tour, I did  an interview on KNPR. That night, some 30-somethings came out to my reading in Summerlin – the master-planned suburb of Vegas. They all said the same thing,  “You nailed it.” They had heard the interview in which we talked about the hold Vegas has on people from there. And the way it fails to prepare residents for life beyond – where you afford not to pursue education, don’t need even a  college degree to make $60k-$85k a year to deal cards, park cars, manage a restaurant, bartend.

The people who came out that night to Barnes & Noble told me they were still living in Vegas - after leaving for school - for reasons  they couldn’t place, aside from family still living and working there in the  casinos. They were the children of Colombian immigrants. Their parents worked for decades in the casinos. They had kids of their own. They were “always on the verge of leaving.” But they were still there. That’s true of a lot of places of course. But there is something like the old mill towns or Detroit or Pittsburgh – where everyone just knew what they’d do – work on the assembly line or at the  steel mill, make union wages, benefits, buy a house, raise a family, maybe if they’re lucky have a football star son. Similar story in Vegas. Just more glittery and dangerous, but equally depressing.  

Slushpile:  So how does it  feel to have your first novel reviewed in The New York Times?

McGinniss:  Relief.  A review doesn’t have to be fair,  intelligent or thoughtful. Ed Park’s was. And to be named an Editor’s Choice  (self-promotion, apologies) the next week felt pretty damn good too. And for a  book like mine – a bit edgy, non-traditional, one that doesn’t take the  conventional route – to get fair treatment by another young, very smart guy like Park is simply a thrill. Humbling. (Another of my favorite writers, Rich Lange, got great treatment in the Times too with his collection Dead Boys. [ed: see the Slushpile.net interview with Lange here.] So I’m okay with the Times – though they did endorse Hillary over Obama, so there’s room for  improvement).

Slushpile:  You’ve mentioned  years of writing that were “a painful slog filled with self-doubt, no money and  more stress than I can bear to think about.”What kept you going during those  difficult periods?

McGinniss:  My wife.  

Slushpile:  What is your most  common mistake in your writing? Is there something that you always have to  remind yourself to correct?

McGinniss:  Focus. How does THIS move  the story FORWARD? I wrote so much from mood, sense of place, tone. That’s  self-indulgent. The reader doesn’t have time for that. Get to the point. That’s my biggest mistake. That’s what took me so damn long with this rather slim book. Teaching myself to get to the point. Easier said than done. I may outline the  next one. See if that saves me a few years. 

Slushpile:  You wrote some  articles for Las Vegas Weekly during the time you researched the novel. But had  you published any other fiction before the book came out? 

McGinniss:  No.

Slushpile:  You mentioned that you initially wrote some highly autobiographical work that was barely readable.  What was the first lightbulb moment where you thought you understood, or at  least knew how to progress, with a good novel?

McGinniss:  I’m hard on myself. It  was readable – just wasn’t a novel. Lightbulb moment: there were many – but the clearest was when I thought I understood what made certain novels I loved work. I devoured Play It As It Lays – trying to break it down – identify plot-points in a plotless story. Progressions, anything that moved the story forward in an otherwise eliptical novel.  I did the same with Less Than Zero and Revolutionary Road. And finally when I broke out the posterboard and notecards and glue stick and the black Sharpie to hammer out and chart the storylines of each character. That was the ultimate  breakthrough – when the story finally came together.  

Slushpile:  What is your  single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors? 

McGinniss:  Don’t quit. Be true. Write what you love to read. Don’t  write for markets that you think are hot. Be bold. Don’t be safe. Push boundaries. Do it a lot– like  almost every day if you can. And write the novel, or anything, that you HAVE to write. Not one you want to write. You must NEED it. (I’m stealing my father’s  advice to me – when he pleaded with me not to become a writer, knowing how  brutal it can be.) 

Slushpile:  What is your  single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without publishing tip you would offer to aspiring authors struggling to break into print?

McGinniss:  Be bold. Take chances. Get into some kind of workshop.  Get readers you trust to be objective about your work and do them favors, buy them dinner, groceries, whatever in return for reading your work. It’s hard to be a reader. It’s harder to offer thoughtful edits. Show appreciation for the favor they’re doing you. Then, when you think you’ve got something, reach out to people who are on the inside. Whether agents, other published writers, whoever.

Try and try and try. If you NEED it – you’ll do it. But not everyone can afford  the retreats or conferences. I couldn’t. But if there’s an angle available –  utilize it. You’re all alone out there. No one else will do it. You must get help to get a career started. As Roland Merullo says, “No one writes a novel alone.” You have to make your circle grow. And you only make that happen by reaching out when you have something you KNOW is kick-ass. And even then you have to get lucky. 

For more information about Joe McGinniss Jr., check out his website.

So A.J. Jacobs likes to do things. Strange, challenging things. And then he writes about them.

Seems simple enough. But in this world of people slipping into easy gimmicks to masquerade as entertainment, the sincerity (and the extent) with which Jacobs immerses himself in the experience is refreshing. First, he read the encyclopedia from start to finish and documented the experience in The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. And in his most recent bestseller, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, he focused on living a modern life while observing more than 700 rules dictated in the Bible. Some of those rules were easy to obey, others not so much. The results, and the impressive beard he grows, are hilarious and thought-provoking.

Jacobs was kind enough to take time out of a busy book tour schedule to talk to me about writing nonfiction proposals, having high expectations for your readers, and the possibility of a project involving a year’s worth of foot massages.

Slushpile:  What was your earliest literary love?

Jacobs:  I was, and continue to be, a huge fan of Goodnight, Moon. It’s the most Zen children’s book ever written. The blank page that says “Goodnight nobody” — that is profoundly brilliant. I don’t know if it officially qualifies as a koan, but it’s pretty close. 
 
Slushpile:   As a young writer, what influenced you to go into journalism/non-fiction as opposed to fiction or creative writing?

Jacobs:  A big influence was Tom Wolfe. I remember being blown away by The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and the Kandy-Kolored, Tangerine-Flaked, etc. etc. etc. I thought to myself, why go into fiction when you can be just as creative when writing about reality? Then Tom Wolfe went into fiction. So I still don’t know what to make of that. 
 
Slushpile:  You’re known for “immersion journalism” or putting yourself into a strange situation for your stories. What influenced you to pursue this type of writing instead of more “objective” journalism?

Jacobs:  I do like both types of journalism, and hope I can keep practicing both. As for immersion journalism (thanks for using the fancy term), I love to write it as well as read it. I think there’s something compelling about first-hand experience. If you’re writing about Italy, you can look at maps, read census reports, and interview people who’ve been to Italy. Or you can go to Rome and taste the pesto pasta yourself. Both approaches have their value. 
 
Slushpile:  When you’re writing so much about yourself, how do you build the type of objectivity necessary to adequately critique your own work? I’m working on a narrative nonfiction account myself and I just keep feeling like it’s not interesting enough to talk so much about me. How do you judge that in your own work?

Jacobs:  I know what you mean. It’s a delicate balance. I could never write a pure memoir – my regular life hasn’t been extraordinary enough. I’m not an orphan, alcoholic, sex addict, owner of a deaf dog, etc. At least not yet. I suppose there’s still time.

That’s why I like to immerse myself in these extraordinary experiences and write about them. I want the topic (i.e. the encyclopedia or the Bible) to be as big a character as I am. Maybe bigger. That way it limits the navel-gazing.
 
Slushpile:  You’re an editor-at-large for Esquire. Sometimes mastheads and their titles can be confusing to aspiring writers. So as editor-at-large, do you actually decide on which article pitches to purchase for the magazine? Should freelancers query you? Or, are you more of a staff writer executing ideas for the magazine?

Jacobs:  It’s a mysterious title. I’m still trying to figure out what it means. Personally, I don’t greenlight any articles. I’m basically a staff writer who works from home. Hence the at large part. And I used to be an editor. Hence the editor part. 
 
Slushpile:  What’s the best way for freelancers to cut through all the other submissions in the slushpile and make an impression on an acquiring editor for a magazine?

Jacobs:  First, I’d recommend email over fax or letters. And the first three sentences are key. Either make them funny or shocking or dramatic – something to show that this article deserves attention. And also, flatter the editor (see below).

Slushpile:  I’m assuming you did a book proposal for both The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically. One of the things that’s challenging about a proposal for a nonfiction narrative book is to predict what you’ll cover over the course of the next year. I mean, how do you write the proposal, with an outline of all the chapters, when you don’t really know what’s going to happen in the tenth month of your time living biblically? How much “I’ll write about whatever happens” will prospective editors let a writer get away with?

Jacobs:  It’s true, I did a proposal for both. I’d suggest two things. First, put in as many details as you can about the world you’ll be entering. You want to make the publisher confident that it’ll be an interesting world. With The Know-It-All, I actually read part of the A section of the encyclopedia, and wrote up essays about Abbot and Costello, aardvarks, Aachen (German town), etc.

Second, you can try to spin the upredictability as a positive. You can say in your proposal, “Who knows what will happen?” Make it exciting. With the Bible, all sorts of things could have happened. I could have decided to become a monk, or an evangelical Christian, or ended up living at the Western Wall wrapping tefillin on tourists.

Slushpile:  When writing a proposal, do you hedge your bets against promising too much or do you promise the moon? The best example is interview subjects. In a book proposal, would you say “I’m going to interview the Pope for my book on living biblically” even though it’s a longshot? Or would you only include interview subjects that you were pretty certain you could reach?

Jacobs:  In the book proposal, I use the word “try” a lot. Or endeavor, or what have you. I will try to interview the Pope, the head rabbi of the Lubovitch movement. etc. Just include your wish list. And maybe if you have a connection to some of them, you can mention that.

Slushpile:  There are a few bookish type jokes in The Year of Living Biblically. Almost inside jokes to the literary community. For example, the “my lies aren’t of the… ‘I spent time in jail with my friend Leonard’ variety.” Who do you think are your readers? How much inside knowledge do you think a writer can assume his readers will possess?

Jacobs:  I think it’s better to overestimate the reader instead of underestimate. Plus, not everyone has to get every joke. I once interviewed a TV writer who talked about 10 percenters. Jokes that only 10 percent of the audience would get. And he thought it was important to have those, to keep the high end of the bell curve interested. 

Slushpile:  At one point, you proudly proclaim that you “out Bible-talked a Jehovah’s Witness.” What was your proudest accomplishment during your year of living biblically?

Jacobs:  Pride isn’t so biblical. But I suppose I was proud of the fact that, for the most part, I didn’t condescend to or pre-judge the religious people I wrote about. Even when I disagreed strongly with their point of view, as with the creationists.

I was also proud that when I visited the Amish in Lancaster county, I didn’t bring up Witness, the Randy Quaid movie about a one-armed bowler, or make a double entendre about Intercourse, Pennsylvania.

Slushpile:  In the book, you’re pretty open about having obsessive-compulsive disorder. How do you think having OCD might help you as a writer? How might it hurt?

Jacobs:  It helps in that I’m obsessive about my topics. I’m not sure I would have read the encyclopedia or lived all the Bible if I didn’t have a bit of OCD.

But it really hurts in another way: It makes me into a perfectionist. And that can be crippling. I’m always going back and tweaking this word or that. You have to be willing to let it go.  

Slushpile:  How do you personally know when you’re done with a book and you don’t have to refine anymore? Even though everything could be polished and tweaked into infinity… 

Jacobs:  That’s a good question. And I’m not sure I know the answer. I was tweaking right up till the day it went off to the printer. I guess it’s all a matter of figuring out where you want to spend your time. And I think there are better ways to spend time than obsessive tweaking. You could start working on the marketing of the book, say.

Slushpile:   You reveal a secret about the radical wing of the Christian right in your book. What other secrets about religious faiths and groups did you learn?

Jacobs:  That the Amish are quite funny. Though you have to really pay attention. You haven’t seen deadpan till you’ve seen an Amish guy tell a joke. 
 
Slushpile:  Not really a question, just an observation… but man, how did you like The Frying Pan at Chelsea Piers? I went to an engagement party there. We were all dressed up, spiffy and polished, and crawled below decks on that thing and tried to avoid getting tetanus. I said, “This is where you bring people to kill them.” It was like something out of a Rammstein video.

Jacobs:  Yeah, it was a weird place. Made even weirder by the event I was attending: A fashion show by an Orthodox designer. The crowd was a mix of Hasidic Jews and hot women in midriff-revealing shirts and navel rings.

Slushpile:  For writers who aspire to do the type of journalism that you do, what do you recommend they do in order to get better? Any particular journalists they should read? Any particular skills they should focus on?

Jacobs:  I’m a fan of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. Also, I love Rodney Rothman’s Early Bird, where he decided to retire to Florida at age 30 and lived in one of those condo complexes. As for tips – I’d say I have three.

First, you have to have a real passion and deep curiosity about the topic you’re writing about, otherwise it really is just a stunt.

And second, I’d say that you can’t take too many notes about what you see, hear, feel. My notes take up huge megabytes in my laptop.

And third, I’d try to write as much as you can while the experience is going on. It gives it more of an immediacy, so you can take the reader along with you on this journey.

Slushpile:  So you’ve spent a year reading the encyclopedia and a year living biblically. What’s your next challenge?

Jacobs:  My wife says I owe her big time. She keeps suggesting The Year of Giving Her Foot Massages. I don’t know if the publisher will go for that one. 
 
Slushpile:  What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors?

Jacobs:  I suppose it would be the importance of reporting. I know it’s not news to most writers. But it can be the difference between a decent book or article and a great one. Write down every little detail, no matter how inane or irrelevant you think it is. And include the color, the smell, the sound, what it looks like, the more sensory the better.

Slushpile:  What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without publishing tip you would offer to aspiring authors struggling to break into print?

Jacobs:  Flattery won’t get you everywhere. But it help. If an editor gets a pitch that starts by telling him how brilliant his work is – with specific details on why – then he’s more likely to keep reading.

To learn more about Jacobs’s work, check out his website.