Pieces of Mind Read online

  There's a woman yelling through the wall behind my bed. Someone is playing the flute. I hear a little boy singing and he's banging a drum. Tomorrow I will walk the streets of Florence in boots, jeans, and a leather jacket with the collar turned up. Some tourists will stop me and ask for directions. I will tell them that I am from New York. They will look puzzled. For a brief moment, we will be acting in the same Fellini film.

  I will walk away.

  Alone.

  —2010

  Vincent Zandri: Sponsored by Budweiser Beer!

  Lately there's been talk amongst publishers, agents, and authors alike that e-Books might one day be offered to the public for free (ok, I know this is happening now, but I mean ALL E-Books). Instead of the reader paying the author/publisher, sponsors will pay in exchange for product placement inside the text. Since the books are read via electronic reader, readers will be able to link to specific product websites, and even to that author's own books should the opportunity present itself.

  I wondered if a scenario of sponsorship is realistic or if I even unintentionally mention the name of popular products and services inside the text of my books and more importantly, if I did so organically. In other words, do these products become included in the story because they belong there or because I might want them there in order to collect a payment?

  Here's a small chapter of a new novel I'm working on, Moonlight Rises (the sequel to Moonlight Falls). Let's see how many instances of product placement there are without me forcing them into the text (I'm not gonna link to all of them because I'm a writer more than a blogger and I've got a lot of work to do . . . but you get the point!).

  Darkness fills the bedroom.

  How long had I been asleep? An hour? Three? It had to be at least three. I looked at my fifteen dollar Target special wrist watch. Fifteen past seven. I’d slept for over five hours. I slid off the bed, more than a bit groggy. There was some blood smeared on the bed sheet from where I rolled over onto my side. I touched my shirt and found that it was wet. I turned on the lamp, pulled off the shirt and the old dressing, checked the wound in the mirror above the dresser. The stitches were still intact. I put on a fresh dressing and a clean shirt. I’d slept long enough. Time to get to work. Find out if Paul Czeck was who he says he was, and if he was in fact looking for a man whom he swore he was his biological father.

  I had the Dell laptop open on the kitchen counter, a Bud tall boy open beside it. Thank God for Verizon wireless internet. Allowed me to multi-task. I switched onto Google and typed in the name “Paul Czeck” in the search engine. Not a damn thing came up. Nothing about him belonging to a professional society of engineers, nothing regarding high school or college alumni. No Facebook page, or Twitter account. As far as the internet and social media was concerned, Czeck was anonymous. And considering he worked for a facility that dealt on a daily basis with classified nuclear information, maybe that’s the way it was supposed to be.

  I sat back, took a sip of beer.

  The pain in my side was getting worse. I tapped the wound gently with my fingers. It sent a small shockwave of sting up and down my side. The Lidocane had officially worn off. I got up, found the Advils in the cabinet above the sink, poured four into my hand. Sitting back down at the table, I swallowed all four with a swig of beer.

  Next search. I got the website for The New York State Society for CPA’s. Now there was some excitement. I typed in the name, Howard Roth. I got a single business address that was located downtown, Broadway. Not far from where those three thugs beat the snot out of me. I wrote the address down on a Post-a-Note, stuffed it into my wallet. Tomorrow I’d go pay a visit to Mr. Roth’s office, see if he did in fact look like the man in Czeck’s black and white photo, only thirty-plus years older.

  Next item. Maybe there was nothing noteworthy about Czeck on the web, but I could bet the mortgage he was located in the White Pages. And that’s the way it turned out. He lived in a North Albany suburb called Loudonville. Four Orchard Grove. It’s exactly where I would be heading that evening, soon as Georgie got here.

  So there you have it. You count the instances of product placement. And I'll admit, I forced a couple in there, like the Target wrist watch one. But I did that to make a point: if as authors we wanted to cash in a on product placement, you see how easy it would be.

  However, I was shocked to learn that popular products and services do appear more than I thought in my work. I wonder if they appear often enough for these companies to pay the author for their appearance much like film production companies collect a hefty payment for product placement in their popular movies? Only the future knows.

  For now, I have to get back to work on the novel, and the all important climax which just happens to be taking place at McDonalds which this week is featuring oatmeal for breakfast and a return of the all beef, double . . .

  —2011

  The Business of Writing! The Art of Selling!

  Back in 1922 a young writer who decided to move to Paris in order to pursue his muse was shocked to learn that many of the writers and artists who lived inside the famous city weren't really writers and artists at all. They were simply poseurs. Or posers.

  People who sat about the cafes and pontificated upon the world of the arts, what was wrong with it, how they were going to somehow make a difference and turn everything that existed up until that moment onto its head. They would smoke and drink and drink and smoke, and talk and dress all in black and grow goatees and mustaches and they most certainly looked like writers and artists, but in the end they were a bunch of do nothing nobodies. Yet it was these same poseurs who came to hate the new eager young writer. In him they recognized something they lacked. He possessed drive. He possessed energy. He possessed ambition. And most of all, he possessed a talent that would only come to fruition from both hard work inside his writing studio and hard work selling himself as an adventurer and fearless sportsman to the general public. He was the real deal and for a long time, arguably "the most interesting man in the world." That young writer's name was Ernest Hemingway.

  Just recently I attended a party hosted by a quote—Artist—unquote. Many artists were in attendance. Since I'm not an entirely anonymous writer and thriller author living in Albany, New York, I found myself the brunt of some backhanded jokes about my promotional "postings" for my recent bestsellers on the social networks. It was all supposed to be in good fun and I smiled and sucked it up. Ha Ha! The artists I'm referring to dress like artists. Long unwashed hair, chin beards, Salvation Army clothing. Some do yoga; some work in academia. One or two are extremely talented. A few others are talentless. They don't do gluten, and never, ever, do they utter a single non-PC word or phrase, unless of course, it's directed at someone not accepted inside their tight circle or someone they don't really like, such as a writer who not only spends his days writing but actively promoting his published work as though it were not an art necessarily, but a business.

  But the truth is, writing is a business. Successfully selling your writing is an art.

  My dad is going on 60 years in the commercial construction business. He is tremendously successful. He didn't get wealthy because he sat around talking about building. He didn't pretend to be a successful businessman by hanging around conferences, and country clubs, and ritzy bars buying expensive cocktails for pretty girls. He achieved success by working day and night, seven days a week. Often, he was scorned by other extended family members as being "all about his work." He was called "selfish" and "self-centered" by some of the very same people he put through school and later on, took care of financially. He wasn't so selfish then was he? I might not have followed in my dad's precise footsteps but I have learned an awful lot from him about running a business. His golden rule above all others? Work for yourself. Be your own boss, even if it means returning bottles and cans for the five cent refund for a while.

  It's true, writing and the business of writing takes up a lot of time. Most of our time, that is if you are to pursue i
t to the best of your ability. And in my case, it can cost you dearly. I've been married twice and divorced twice. I still have difficulty maintaining a lasting relationship. I live in an apartment since I simply cannot keep up with a house. I travel often on assignment or out of pure wanderlust, because to sit in one place for too long is death for a writer. In a word, I am always working.

  But the work is paying off in book sales that have quadrupled over the past year, and promise to quadruple again over the next six months. I am now lecturing to International Journalism students at the state university and in 2011 alone I will finish two new novels and write a good draft of another. I can't tell you how many articles, blogs, and digital shorts I will write but it will be a lot.

  In the end, it's the work ethic that pays off. The follow-through, and finishing what you start. Just ask Ernest Hemingway. He is probably the best known of the Paris "Lost Generation." he is still a bestseller, nearly fifty years after his death. The poseurs who frequented the cafes and showed scorn for a "sell out" like Papa are long forgotten. They remain nobody. My dad, continues to run his business and works a 70 hours week at 75 years old. He is wealthy but he doesn't act like it. I also work every day, whether I'm traveling or not. In the new era of writers having to promote themselves through social media, blogs, virtual tours, appearances, book trailers, and more, there is no end to what has to be done. Plus you have to carve out precious time to write and read. Tough to maintain a family life at the same time, yet my kids aren't complaining. They too want to be writers.

  Oh, and as for those artists I mentioned before . . . They need to work day jobs in order to support themselves. I don't have day job. A real one, that is. I work for myself. I'm a writer.

  —2011

  Do You Miss Typewriters?

  When I first got into this business, it was not uncommon to find writers who still used typewriters on a daily basis. Now, I'm talking 20 years ago. But it's a fact that back then, Jim Crumley, Robert Parker, Norman Mailer, Hunter Thompson, (hell, even Hemingway had he lived into his 80s) were using typewriters, even if they were powered electrically like the famous IBM Selectric.

  'Course, all the writers I just mentioned are dead now, and so too it seems, is the typewriter.

  I loved that famous picture of Papa seated at a desk in Ketchum, Idaho, looking healthy and burly, shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, while he pounded out the manuscript that would become For Whom the Bell Tolls. To me the sound of that machine-gun clatter only a typewriter can make is music to the soul. Especially the clatter from a manual typewriter. Back then I envisioned myself doing the same thing, typing out my stories and novels in single-extended-index-finger style on an old black Remington portable, not unlike the one Papa is using in the famous photo.

  I'm a sucker for old typewriters and whenever I see one in an antique store or junk shop, I usually pick it up. I even wrote the first draft of Moonlight Falls on an old Olympic my wife Laura purchased for me at a garage sale way back when. I still have that typewriter, even though the ribbon is all used up. I do not however, have the wife.

  I have another identical Olympic that is in pristine condition, ribbon and all. I also have an old Remington Rand Model No. 5 from the 30s or 40s, a pre-war Remington my grandfather used in Europe to type out his daily reports while fighting Germans in France and Germany. I have a one-hundred year old Remington that I can hardly lift (but it was probably considered the highly portable laptop of its day), and several other models, the names of which escape me now since I keep them down in a room set aside for me in my dad's office building.

  Today I use a Dell Vostro 1320 Laptop, which I like a lot. I wrote The Remains, Godchild, and The Innocent on Dell laptops, after having penned them out in hand on blank yellow legal pads. In fact, I've gone through several laptops at this stage of the game, and at 46 and a half, I suspect I'll go through a lot more. I'm thinking maybe a MacAir 13" is in order since I travel so much.

  I like laptops precisely because they remind me of the old typewriters, even though they don't have that romantic "ding" that happens every time the carriage reaches its limit, and you have to swing the carriage back in place with your right hand, locking and loading it for the next line. There's nothing like a good machine on which to make words and sentences. What I don't like about laptop computers is they grow slow, burn out, on occasion freeze up, or just shutdown altogether, and your work, some or all of it, is gone for good. Such are the risks of all mod cons.

  I wonder, if Papa were alive today, what he would be writing on. Probably a laptop. I doubt he'd use a big desktop computer. They wouldn't be portable enough for a man who liked adventure almost as much as he did making up stories. I wonder how he'd feel about For Whom the Bell Tolls not only becoming an Amazon bestselling Kindle book, and at the same time, far outselling the paper versions.

  Almost certainly he'd still be writing his manuscripts out by hand in blank note books (cahiers), several penknife-sharpened Ticonderoga No. 2's at the ready. Because even though typing and books have gone electronic and digital, one thing has not changed, nor will it ever change for a writer. And that's the enormous possibilities that exist, when you sit down at your writing desk in the early morning and do the existential stare-down with a blank page.

  —2011

  How We Write

  There's a great scene in a movie called HEMINGWAY (yah, with cap letters) that came out about 20 years ago in which actor Stacey Keach plays a rough, tough, marauding Ernest Hemingway who says what he means, means what he says and is willing to prove it with his bare-knuckle fists.

  The movie also portrays Papa Hemingway sitting at a pool-side table in the back yard of his Key West home, in front of his typewriter, a bottle of whiskey handy by his side. He's got the blood stained T-shirt on from his fishing adventures on the Gulf Stream, and he's pounding away at the keys of the old Remington with muscular arms and a tight but well fed belly. All around him people are swimming and drinking and having fun. His girlfriend is also present while his wife occupies the house.

  Nothing could be further from the truth.

  Hemingway never wrote with a whiskey bottle on hand, nor did he make it a habit to write outside, preferring the solitude of his bedroom, but with the door open so that he could enjoy the muffled but somehow soothing ambient noise of the daily household routine. For the Nobel Prize winning author, writing fiction was not something you did when you drank. It was something to be approached with all the dedication and clarity of mind and memory of a monk. He often wrote standing up as often as possible, having once said of his craft and lifestyle, "Travel and writing can expand the mind, but also the ass." Hemingway was six feet tall.

  That said, the late noir master, Jim Crumley once commented that he liked to drink beer when he wrote. When the writing was going well, he would actually burn off the alcohol as fast as he put it in. Crumley also liked to write standing up, but found it difficult to find something that was the right height. Crumley was five feet, ten inches.

  Norman Mailer used to climb a rope ladder that led the way up to a ship's mast constructed inside his Brooklyn brownstone. Once up the ladder he was forced to negotiate a gangplank that led to his small loft studio. One false move and down the Pulitzer Prize winner would go, one full story. Mailer never drank when he wrote preferring total sobriety, and the occasional candy bar. He also never wrote standing up. Mailer was five feet, eight inches tall, but slightly less than four feet sitting down.

  I too try and write standing up, when I can, but like Crumley, it's tough to find something that's the right height. But like Hemingway I use my bedroom (or hotel rooms!), with the door slightly open so that I can hear what's going on with the kids. I wrote my first big novel The Innocent (As Catch Can) to "Thomas the Train Engine" and Disney's famous "Fantasia." I also wrote a full draft of that novel up in an empty room inside an old insurance agency that a friend offered up to me. I recall one morning he came into the room, coffee in hand and proceeded to tell me
a joke about the three 'guinea pigs,' which was a kind of Mafioso take on the old Big Bad Wolf and the Three Pigs nursery rhyme. That joke immediately went into my novel, and gave it a kind of tongue and cheek boost that readers often comment on with a smile. Oh, and how tall am I? Five feet, seven and a quarter inches.

  I don't drink when I write, but I have written dispatches from Europe for RT and other news agencies while having a drink or two at bar or cafe. Journalism doesn't distinguish between night and day so often times you have to drop everything to get a story out. That includes dropping a pretty good buzz or even a girlfriend if you have both going.

  But as far as the fiction goes (and I'm at work on my 8th book now), I write clear-headed and sometimes with music going. I prefer the romantic tones of Ralph Vaughn Williams but lately have been listening to Phillip Glass. On occasion I'll play Zoot Simms and Bucky Pizzarelli for an added noir element. I try not to write with the internet engaged, nor do I pay attention to emails. Well, ok, sometimes I do. But I don't answer IMs. I could get an IM from the Virgin Mary when I'm writing and I would still ignore it.

  I asked some FB peeps how they write and the answers I received were as varied as they were interesting. One person wrote with headphones on, the music "blaring" in her ears while she sometimes drinks coffee or tea, or even wine. Another gets up at 4 in the morning, thinks through the first cup of coffee, then hits the keys for the next one. Another insists on a broad view of her garden, and yet one more stressed the importance of exercise while engaged in a novel, having walked more than 40 miles per week during a recent novel draft.