Midtown America
My red-eye flight from Seattle to Newark was uneventful, if by “event” you mean any kind of sleep whatsoever. I was too tired to calculate how many, or few, hours of sleep I’d had over the past few days, but I did manage despite my grogginess to find the shuttle and make it to my hotel in Manhattan – the downtown Marriott, at less than half the lowest published rate via Priceline (I may need to dedicate my next book to Priceline, without which this tour would not have been possible).
After checking in, I took the subway to midtown, where any fatigue I might have been experiencing fell instantly away in the charming presence of two friends from college, Becky Westerlund Coletta and Katie Duffy Gallivan. They took me to lunch at an old-school steakhouse with a lunch menu straight out of Mad Men (crab cakes, filet mignon, creamed spinach), and we had a great time catching up. Becky, Katie, and I attended Loyola University in New Orleans, where we worked on the Maroon, the college newspaper. Those days (and long nights) at the Maroon were a blast, and I take the position that there’s no better way to become a better writer than to be surrounded by massively-talented friends who are as fiercely supportive as they are competitive.
I didn’t want lunch to end, but the business of selling books waits for no author. I spent the rest of the day with the brilliant, delightful, wonderful, did-I-mention-brilliant? editor of Gutshot Straight, Peggy Hageman. It was Peggy’s last week at William Morrow, so the afternoon was a lot more than just tinged on my part with sadness. Still, it was great to spend some time with Peggy as we trekked around Manhattan signing books. The highlight was a stop at the legendary Otto Penzler’s legendary The Mystery Bookshop. Gutshot Straight was one of their January selections, so there were a lot of books to sign. That gave me the opportunity for an enlightening chat with one of the Mystery Bookshop's ace staff members, Ian Kern (in photo, with Peggy).
After that, Peggy and I met a couple of people from Morrow for drinks: my new editor, Gabe Robinson, a fascinating guy who seems – excellent sign – much smarter than me; and my favorite marketing guru in the universe, Jean Marie Kelly. For the record – and it pains me to say this, because I’d prefer to take all the credit for myself – any success that Gutshot Straight happens to achieve in the marketplace is due primarily to the efforts and expertise of Jean Marie, publicist Joanne Minutillo (who didn’t join us for drinks because she had the good sense to be in Florida, not New York, on this Friday evening in January), Danielle Bartlett, and everyone else at HarperCollins/Morrow. Holy shit, they’ve been amazing – that’s all I’ll say because, like I said, it pains me to give credit where credit is due when that credit is not due me.
While in New York, I also had the pleasure of meeting up with Jay Neugeboren, my former professor and thesis adviser at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Jay taught me a few things about fiction writing. As in: just about everything. When I started the MFA program at UMass, I didn’t, for example, know what a third-person limited perspective was. Nor, until I took Jay’s workshop, did I truly understand the power and the glory of a well-structured declarative sentence. Jay also taught me the gospel importance of economy. I still have one old short story manuscript of mine (20 pages long) on which Jay wrote a single comment: “Great work. Cut seven pages and send it out.”
Next: The Frozen Midwest.
After that, Peggy and I met a couple of people from Morrow for drinks: my new editor, Gabe Robinson, a fascinating guy who seems – excellent sign – much smarter than me; and my favorite marketing guru in the universe, Jean Marie Kelly. For the record – and it pains me to say this, because I’d prefer to take all the credit for myself – any success that Gutshot Straight happens to achieve in the marketplace is due primarily to the efforts and expertise of Jean Marie, publicist Joanne Minutillo (who didn’t join us for drinks because she had the good sense to be in Florida, not New York, on this Friday evening in January), Danielle Bartlett, and everyone else at HarperCollins/Morrow. Holy shit, they’ve been amazing – that’s all I’ll say because, like I said, it pains me to give credit where credit is due when that credit is not due me.
While in New York, I also had the pleasure of meeting up with Jay Neugeboren, my former professor and thesis adviser at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Jay taught me a few things about fiction writing. As in: just about everything. When I started the MFA program at UMass, I didn’t, for example, know what a third-person limited perspective was. Nor, until I took Jay’s workshop, did I truly understand the power and the glory of a well-structured declarative sentence. Jay also taught me the gospel importance of economy. I still have one old short story manuscript of mine (20 pages long) on which Jay wrote a single comment: “Great work. Cut seven pages and send it out.”
Next: The Frozen Midwest.
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