When they reached their haunted destination at 112 Ocean Avenue in the town of Amityville, Lee killed the lights and coasted curbside. The boys stared out the windows at the old, silent house. It was three stories high with seven windows facing the street, a few tall trees and a low, neatly manicured hedge set off a few feet from the front of the house. At a casual glance, it looked about as scary as a cucumber sandwich.
They had all been there before, even though the drive to Amityville was more than half an hour. Thee was something magnetic about the place. The house was famous for its ghostly legends, and the second-rate Hollywood movie that was based on all the weird stuff that happened after the DeFeo murders back in 1974, scaring the living daylights out of the next family that moved in until, one night, they fled the house and never returned. No one would ever know what really happened.
Lee turned around in his seat to once again retell the tale, his voice hushed and mysterious, drawing out the words to build suspense. “So after the murders, the Lutz family moved in,” Lee began.
The boys had all heard it before, about as often as Green Eggs and Ham, but no one tried to Lee up. After all, it was his car and they were a long way from home.
“I guess they got a bargain price,” Jude opined.
“Yeah, but after they moved in, all this sick stuff started happening,” Lee said. “Like, swarms of flies were everywhere, even in the winter. The father of the family used to wake up in a cold sweat every night at three fifteen — the exact same time of the murders. Green slime oozed from the walls. And one night they saw a demon’s face in the flames of the fireplace.”
I was recently invited for an interview by Brittney Breakey over at AUTHOR TURF. Brittney has really accomplished a lot with her site. It’s worth checking out. She’s recently interviewed Holly Goldberg Sloan, Sally Nicholls, Gennifer Choldenko, Jo Knowles, Kathryn Erskine . . . and my great pal, Lewis Buzbee.
For me, that’s a double-edged sword. I’ll be honest, I’ve always hoped to be the kind of person who somebody wanted to interview. It’s an incredible compliment. And a true honor.
In my career, some of the first work I ever did was interviews of authors for promotional brochures. I think Ann McGovern was my first interview, back when I worked as a junior copywriter for Scholastic. Or it might have been Johanna Hurwitz. I don’t think I saved them. This would have been in 1985, I guess. Life went on and I’ve interviewed some talented authors and illustrators over the years.
You’d think I’d have learned some things along the line, but my basic feeling is usually one of disorientation, a sense that I have no idea what I’m doing, most likely saying the wrong things, awkwardly. Oh well.
I do have lucid moments, times when I think, “Okay, not terrible.” But in general I can’t read things like this without wincing, without twitching and blinking too often. I don’t know, it’s weird. I try to be honest, authentic, and hope for the best.
It’s interesting you ask this, because I recently wrote about it in my journal. A theme that I’m exploring in the book I currently writing (or should be writing), which is a quasi-sequel to BYSTANDER. I have superstitions about talking about books before they are finished, but I’ll say this: In the summer between 7th and 8th grade, a girl in my homeroom died unexpectedly. I didn’t know her well, and wouldn’t call her a friend. When I first heard about Barbara’s death, I was with a bunch of friends –- I can picture it vividly, a bunch of us lounging around — and I said something dumb, snarky, immature. Of course, the death of a peer was completely new to me, a big deal, and I didn’t know how to react. I still feel a sense of shame about it, across these forty years, that one dumb thing I said that no one else even noticed. I’ve been reflecting a lot about identity lately, the idea of self not as a revelation, but as a made thing. Something you earn. Bryan Stevenson gave an incredible presentation for TED Talks -– everyone in America should Youtube it -– and he said, “I’ve come to understand and to believe that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” That’s a huge, complicated, controversial idea –- and it speaks directly to the topic of my next book. [NOTE: I’ve embedded Stevenson’s talk, below.]
Was there ever a time in your writing career where you wanted to seriously give up? If so, how did you find the motivation to continue?
Yes, I’ve wanted to quit. Absolutely. Mostly because it’s hard, and because I’ve felt (and still feel, though less so) insecure about my own ability –- that I was a pretender, a self-deceiver, a fake. Also, it’s a bunny-eat-bunny business that can crush your soul at times. As a husband and father, I’ve worried about my ability to provide for my family, to keep paying the bills. But that’s life, right? You have to keep getting up. You can’t just lie there on the canvas. That said: Every day I feel blessed that I can do this for a living. The hard is what makes the good.
What’s your favorite writing quote?
It’s not a quote, so much as an attitude about doing the work, a sort of blue collar distrust of pretentiousness. In a phrase, shut up, sit down, and write. Or not! But either way, shut up. It’s hard, writers are told that we need to promote ourselves, we need to “have a presence” on the web, we need to “get out there.” And I just keep thinking, we need to write great books. That’s all that matters.
Is there anything you find particularly challenging in writing? What comes easily?
The whole thing is a challenge. One thing about having published a bunch of things over a long period of time is that I’ve come to understand that each book is its own, self-contained thing. You write the story that’s in front of you. Then you write the next one. And the next. You don’t control what happens after that and, on good days, you accept that plain fact.
Over the past year I’ve twice crossed paths with a near-legendary editor, the much respected Christy Ottaviano. She works at Macmillan and, no, Christy can’t be blamed for any of my books. I follow her page on Facebook and just generally have a good feeling about her as a person. She seems nice.
On Monday, Christy wrote this:
I’ve been running all my adult life. I used to do it primarily for exercise, now I find I do it mostly for the peace of mind it gives me. My love of running has gotten more intense with age, perhaps because it is one of the few times during the day when I feel free of technology and the pressures of work and home. When I think of all the places I’ve visited or lived over th…e years, what’s imprinted in my mind in addition to the hotels, apartments, and houses are the various running routes I’ve repeatedly trekked — Cleveland Circle Reservoir in Boston; Henry and Clinton Streets in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and now the small neighboring town on the water near where I live in Connecticut. In our busy lives, we are all running from here to there, so it’s rather ironic to me that running is exactly what I do to take my mind off all the running around. How does this post connect to writers? In all my time publishing books, I’ve only had the pleasure to edit one novel where the protagonist is a runner. Is that because running appeals to a more solitary adult sensibility? Probably, but it’s a fact that there are more teen runners now than ever before so young adults are happily embracing the activity. Maybe there’s a way to put their passion for the sport in your stories. For all the writers out there — just some food for thought…
I replied that the main character in BEFORE YOU GO is a runner.
Here’s two brief excerpts — brief, because we don’t wish to bore anyone here at jamespreller dot com! — excerpts, because we (the intrepid staff here at jamespreller dot com!) don’t want anybody to think I’m making up this running thing. Of course, you might say I make things up for a living. But I’m not making it up about having made something up about running. I really did make it up!
What? Nevermind!
First excerpt, pp. 104-105:
Jude hit the snooze button three times before rising. He felt sour, his mouth stale and parched, his teeth wearing sweaters after a night of too much rum and coke and heartache. The house was silent. Jude shambled into the bathroom for a long, reviving shower. It helped. Failing to find a fresh work shirt, Jude fished the cleanest dirty shirt from the hamper. Sniffed it, frowned: pretty ripe. The shirt matched his mood. Mad at the world.
In the kitchen, Jude gulped a tall glass of orange juice. A note on the counter informed him that his father had gone out for a long, slow run. His father ran to get away from it all, yet despite all the hours logged and miles slogged, he always returned to the same place; the road never rose to lift him to some new, shimmering elsewhere.
Jude considered himself a different kind of runner entirely. First of all, his father jogged; Jude ran. Big diff. His father was one of those old guys who stopped after his run, winded and panting, two fingers on his neck, counting the beats of his pulse while he stared at the watch on his wrist. Goofy shit, if you asked Jude. A lot of times, Jude headed out in just a pair of shorts. No shirt, no shoes, a barefoot runner in the burbs. Nobody could say nothing, because Jude was faster than them all.
——
Second excerpt, pp. 163-164, after an argument with his mother:
And he ran. Barefoot. Ran without hope, without destination . . . ran to burn off the anger, ran as if he were chased. He started out too fast, puffing hard like a sprinter, churning through the changeless sprawl, the suburban streets named after Civil War generals, Sherman and Grant, Thomas and Meade. Then came the streets with the names of colleges, Princeton and Adelphi, Yale and Amherst. Finally his gait evened out, the strides became long and powerful, his breathing regulated. Becalmed. He stopped for a moment, flicked a thumb across his iPod, found Arcade Fire, and turned it up loud. You don’t know how it feels, he thought. How it feels to be me.
For the paperback publication of my young adult novel, BEFORE YOU GO, I was asked to answer a few interview questions for the back matter.
I didn’t really intend to share this here, but given recent events, and the fact I just stumbled upon it again, well, sometimes you have to trust in coincidence. Here you go:
Losing a peer when you are young is especially difficult. Do you have any advice for someone who has experienced this?
Advice? My first impulse is to give sympathy, to say how sorry I am, and to recognize that I cannot know exactly what they are going through. Life can feel impossibly hard at times. I remember when my oldest son — he’s in college now — was fighting cancer at age two. I was newly divorced, living in a stupid apartment, just a number of things going seriously haywire at the same time. My crazy “whirled.” There were days when I didn’t want to hang out or do much of anything. But here’s the thing: you do what you must do. The bare essentials. So I washed the dishes in the sink. Folded the laundry. Put on some music, flipped through a magazine, checked the scores in a baseball game, noticed how the leaves turned color outside my window. Life itself is this tremendous vital force. It leaks into everything. And if you allow it, life will pull you through. Before you know it, almost by accident, you are living again, swimming in that great river. You learn that the heavy weight you carry becomes lighter, more buoyant, and at times you temporarily forget. At the same time, the remembering is so important. Life shapes us, makes us who we are –- we endure the good and the devastating. The important thing, I think, is to keep your heart open, even though it hurts, and try to appreciate that you are loved. And, well, you put one foot in front of the other. Day by day. After a while you realize you’ve traveled a great distance. Your back has grown strong. And you are living again.
There’s really not a whole lot to like about writers, frankly. We tend to self-obsess. For example, try as I might to avoid it, I’ll sometimes wander over to Amazon.com to check out how James Preller, Inc., is making out in the sales ranks.
Then I look for Kentucky’s finest and tell myself that it’s never been about sales. It’s about writing from the heart, it’s about doing good work, it’s about . . . (and around that time I usually push aside the glass and just grab the stinking bottle).
I’m kidding folks!
But on a recent sojourn to the land of Amazonians, I discovered this:
What is it? It’s the German-language, ebook edition of Before You Go. And I have to say: I add NO IDEA there was a German anything for this book. Some people might assume that authors know about this stuff — that we’re consulted — but, nope, that’s not how the world works for most (if not all?) authors.
Mostly I’m just happy there’s an ebook German edition in the first place. That’s the sum total of my emotions on the topic: I’m cool with it.
Also, it’s interesting to see a different cover design. One early idea that I floated for the cover of Before You Go was to do something with real models, very loosely based on the classic Bruce Springsteen cover shot for “Born to Run.” Remember that? It was a groovy, wrap-around, gate-fold deal, and one of the great rock covers ever, in my opinion. Just look:
I saw Jude and Corey filling in for Bruce and Clarence. The black and white thing, the dynamic of friendship, the comfortable leaning on each other relationship, in a phrase: best buds. Another obvious approach for the cover was something with a beach setting. (Supposedly when the designer looked at that approach, it was deemed “too girl” for this book, though I never saw those treatments, and they were probably right, since “too girl” was not what we were going for.) Instead my publisher created something dark and moody with a traffic light, which was pretty arresting, too, and totally unexpected. Then they informed me that it was going to be the cover. The decision had been made. Thinking fast, I said, “Okay!”
I tell you this, Dear Reader, not at all in complaint. I’ve always maintained that this blog was about pulling back the curtain in the land of Oz, showing how it really works for a guy exactly (precisely) like me. There’s not a whole lot of consulting going on. You write the book. And the inside of the book, I think, is yours. But the cover, that’s the publisher’s. And you must trust that everyone working on the book — and there are many smart, dedicated people working on “our” book — will do the best job they can in publishing it. So you say, “Thank you very much,” and in my case, you mean it. You truly are thankful, grateful, happy.
It doesn’t mean that I love everything all the time. It’s not in my nature to love everything all the time. That sounds awful. Making a book is a collaborative process, with the editor as the central person who touches on every aspect. I just write the damn thing.
They had all been there before, even though the drive to Amityville was more than half an hour. Thee was something magnetic about the place. The house was famous for its ghostly legends, and the second-rate Hollywood movie that was based on all the weird stuff that happened after the DeFeo murders back in 1974, scaring the living daylights out of the next family that moved in until, one night, they fled the house and never returned. No one would ever know what really happened.
){kind=link}
