Shoddy workmanship left me scratching my head last week...
May 28, 2007The Jacuzzi repair man hobbled up the steps like Quasimodo; his son, a pimply teen, followed, carrying the tools. “I had a car accident, disc problems,” Quasimodo said, grimacing. “I also need a hip replacement operation.”“Jesus,” I said. “Can I get you guys some coffee or juice?”“No thanks.”The son opened up the Jacuzzi door and poked around with a wrench and voltage meter. I said to the Quasimodo, “You fixed a leak two years ago at the end of the season, and it went bad within a month. I kept calling, but your wife said that you’ve been going through a bad patch, that for a year you were out of business.Quasimodo nodded.“Are you sure you don’t want a drink?”“We’re fine.”I went back into the kitchen to do some work. About ten minutes later Quasimodo called out, “You need a new pump.” Damn, I thought, thinking it was just a faulty repair that he’d honor and fix at no cost. “How much?”“Three hundred to six hundred depending on the size, plus installation.”“Jezz. That’s why it’s leaking?”“Yup.”I grabbed the receipt from two years ago for five-hundred bucks and reread the work he’d performed. “Look at this,” I said, “pump repair. You fixed it last time; it hasn’t had an hour’s worth of operation since you did that. How could it need a new pump?”“Hmm,” he says and instructs his son to check something with that meter. The Jacuzzi makes a buzzing sound. “We got lucky,” he says, averting my eyes. “We can fix this.”Earlier in the week I refinanced my house to lower my payment and pull a little cash out to cover expenses. I’ve lived here fifteen years and have refinanced three other times. In the process of getting this loan I discovered that all the prior mortgages were still attached to the house title. Although the banks got paid, the title stated that I still had five mortgages. “The lawyer who did those refinances was sloppy,” this new attorney said. “He should have cleared that up. You’re lucky it didn’t wreck your credit. “Folks tend to do what you inspect, not what you expect. If I hadn’t had that receipt, Quasimodo would have stuck me for another pump repair. And a lawyer at two-hundred-and-fifty an hour should do what he’s paid to do.As Quasimodo drove away in his banged-up Ford pickup, I wondered what he was saying to his son. Perhaps: If that guy hadn’t kept the receipt, we’d have made an extra five hundred bucks. But what I hoped he had said was, “Son, I should have fixed that damn pump the first time.”Either way the son was probably figuring out how to tell his dad that he was hanging up the tool belt -- he was heading for law school.

good news in the bad news...

The Weekly Journal
Is there good in bad news?

May 20, 2007

This week I considered throwing in the towel after a promising lead for an agent went south. Rejection is part of the publishing process and I've had lots of it; I often spiral for a few hours after getting zinged -- this time was different.

I'm not a quitter. I'm Mr. Confidence. There is nothing I can't do, and I have a track record to back up the bravado, but to date, I have failed to get an agent to represent my fiction. This week I had enough.

"What you need to do," a good friend suggested, "is get the manuscript printed, then die."

He wasn't kidding. Go to ebay and you'll find lots of deceased authors fetching princely sums for unknown books.

This week's rejection was awful because of how positive it was. Here's what happened:

After sending out tons of queries in January for my novel, I finally connected with someone that got me. The agency was a solid, mid-tiered NY group. In early April they wrote via email:

Dear Mr. Williams,I've spent the last two days completely absorbed in your novel. Chuck's candid, raw narrative left me breathless; I felt as if I were mourning with an old friend in the comfort of my living room. .This is a quick note to spread my encouragement to you and let you know that I'm passing your manuscript on to X. I will be in touch with you soon.

You can imagine my excitement. No one has ever been this enthusiastic. And yet, I've had many encouraging notes over the years; none panned out. X was the decision maker here, not the note writer; I knew better than to get my hopes up.

But I did. I mean why would anyone send this if they didn't think X would like it? And each day news did not arrive, I grew less hopeful; then this showed up:

Dear Mr. Williams,Thank you for letting me read MY YEAR AS A CLOWN. I apologize for the length of time it’s taken to respond; this was a difficult decision for me. I’m also sorry to say that I just fell short of falling in love with this. You’re clearly a talented writer with a keen eye for character development, but for some reason I failed to connect with it fully. I know that’s the most frustrating thing a writer can hear, but I trust that you’ll find (or have found!) a representative who’s whole-heartedly passionate about this.

Thanks for thinking of me and best of luck on your path to publication. Please feel free to send me any of your future projects. Sincerely,X (dictated, not signed)

I was talking on the phone when I read that email. The person on the other end thought we'd been disconnected. I had indeed gone mute. My head was spinning. There was bile in the mouth. I ended the call quickly, walked out on to my deck and tossed the cordless phone into the woods.

I didn't sleep for two days. I barely ate. I talked to no one. The end of this month marks nine years of trying to make a living as a writer. My creative progress has been nothing short of miraculous, but I'm no closer to getting a novel published than I was in year two, when an ICM agent requested the manuscript of my first novel after reading fifty pages (ICM is a top-tier agency).

That book didn't sell either.

I've climbed higher mountains. I moved out of the house before I was 18 and haven't taken a dime from anyone since. I was the first in my family to finish college. I published a non-fiction book, selling 15,000 copies before I turned 30. I once saved a baby raccoon from certain death, but I can't get an agent to represent my fucking fiction.

So I was done. Finito. Sayonara. Hasta la vista, baby…

What brought me back was my ability to keep rewriting. Before that first note had arrived, the rest of the leads from my January blitz had dried out. A few agents had made suggestions (a rarity from what I'm told). I was already rewriting when that first note appeared, but I didn't want to send them the new version since they liked what I'd already sent; instead, I kept rewriting. And that's what pulled me out of the muck this week: I had a new and improved Clown ready to go.

On Friday I rebooted the query process with the fresh manuscript.Now that I've started a consulting business, the pressure to squeeze cash out of writing has eased. But I still need to disconnect getting published from success. That's not easy in a world where folks judge the quality of wine by the price, songs by the chart position, books by the number of copies sold. So what was the good in the bad?

Most writers just get a form letter.

X said he'd look at other material.

Someone in the business said she was completely absorbed by my novel.

Blah, blah, blah…

In the end I still got dinged.

This week I was slammed. It was the worst blow ever, almost getting knocked out for good; but I got up before the count of ten. I can't control the reaction to my work; but I can control my response. Next time, and no doubt, there will be many next times, I plan to stay on my feet.

Home is never the same

No wonder Cherry Hill was the base for America's most recent foiled terror attack -- the world's first shopping mall was built there.

May 14, 2007

I think of Cherry Hill, New Jersey as home even though I left in 1976 and rarely returned. My mom moved out in ’81, and I lost contact with friends still in town. But this week I’m thinking about Cherry Hill because several of the men caught in the Fort Dix terror plot lived there.

It’s difficult to imagine seeing your father killed by a dictator, or having your friends blown to bits in a car bombing; not that it excuses terrorist acts, but you can see how a kid sours under such circumstances. And yet these young men grew up in New Jersey. Granted, things have changed in my home town, and these men are of a different generation. Pockets of immigrant conclaves did not exist when I was growing up there, but it’s still difficult to imagine Islamist Extremists blossoming in the same place where I lost my virginity.

One of the families moved to Cherry Hill from Turkey in 1992. Mr. Tartar experienced the American Dream -- he started out as a dishwasher and ended up owning a pizzeria near Fort Dix. Unfortunately, his business is on the brink of bankruptcy because of a boycott, despite being estranged from his 23 year-old son. The kid had left home at 18 and got in with the wrong crowd. What happened in Cherry Hill to make this young man susceptible to such extreme influences?

I can’t imagine anything happening there that could have turned this kid into a potential terrorist. But I’m not Muslim. I’m not Turkish. My father wasn’t a dishwasher. How could I know of anything that this kid experienced? And yet thinking back to my youth, I realized even in my day, there was an underbelly to what was considered a great place to live, home to America’s first enclosed shopping mall; even Muhammad Ali lived there at the apex of his career.

I graduated high school in 1976 in a haze of pot smoke. In my junior year, the son of a high ranking, law-enforcement officer threatened to kill me because I pressed charges against him for throwing a brick through my folk’s living room window – my step-sister had a party and she knew better than to let him in. We were lucky that's all he threw.

A few years after I graduated, one of my high school teachers hacked his girl friend to bits with a pen knife. In the late 80’s, the rabbi that had led our services, got caught for having his wife murdered.

The Cherry Hill underbelly.

Last year my mom and I returned to see the old neighborhood. The blue spruce we’d planted all those years ago towered over the house; the nearby farm was now a shopping center; but for the most part, things looked the same, much like any other solid, middle-class, suburban American town.Although that kid got away with throwing the brick through my folks window, Rabbi Nuelander is behind bars, Otto Krupp, the teacher, also got caught, and these young men will pay the price too, if found guilty for this terror plot.

You just never figure this to happen so close to home; and yet if you think about it, it has to happen in somebody’s home town; this time it was mine…

There we were in NYC...

May 7, 2007

Thanks to all those that came out to see our first NYC appearance in over five years. Where have we been? Well, my marriage fell apart and I dug a hole and buried myself for a while. When I reemerged I wrote a novel. I did a publishing deal in Nashville. I went to Haiti. I had a few short stories published. I made a CD. But I never got back to doing any gigs.

That needs to change…

We had a great time and it seemed like everyone that attended had a good night too. The Rockwood Music Hall is a wonderful venue – low key, friendly, and intimate. It’s in a great neighborhood. I hadn’t been on the east side, south of Houston, in ages. It used to be dodgy around there, but now Whole Foods occupies an entire block just around the corner. New cafes and clubs have sprouted up like weeds.

We did an hour set playing old and new songs, some of mine, some of Gerry’s. Earlier in the year, Gerry and Paul played with me at the Towne Crier Open Mic finals – but that was only two songs. We hadn’t done a real set in a very long time. When I do an open mic, I'm often by myself, and the time just before I go on stage is when the butterflies flutter. It's a lot easier when I'm with Paul and Gerry, they're a distraction. Gerry just had his hair buzzed, and that was enough to keep my mind off the jitters.

When you're doing several shows a week, you find comfort on the stage and hit the ground running, but when you aren't doing a lot of shows, it takes several songs to find that groove. Because the sound at the Rockwood was great, we felt comfortable right away. We hit our stride early, and by mid-set I felt like we were in my studio performing for friends.

Michael Brunnock helped me get the gig and his band played afterwards. Michael is from Ireland and he’s quite a talent – a little Damien Rice, a bit of Jack Johnson, maybe some Waterboys and Paul Brady. The band is tight and showcases Michael’s songs well. He sings about war, Jesus, and his homeland, love and lost. For all those that missed us, we’re hoping to get back in early June.

Michael Brunnock
Rockwood Music Hall