Stories of Joy & Triumph

Would it have killed the photographer to tell me to fix my hair?

Stories of Joy & Triumph

It's been a while since I blogged.  The contributing factors:  I haven't really cared about anything enough to blog about it, I've been investing time and resources in my newsletter, which felt like a more efficient means of getting the word out about One Man Guy, and because let's face it: it's hard to imagine an entry that's going to get as many hits as the one about my wedding, and not just because we had a freakin' rainbow, as clear proof we're going to get that God loves the gays.


Recently, however, something got me so riled up that I took the keyboard again.  After a certain public library obtained One Man Guy, it decided to place it in the adult section, instead of Young Adult.  

First of all: how could I possibly know this?
Well, I'll tell you how.  Like most things, it traces back to Vassar College, where I directed a production of Six Degrees of Separation (cast pictures below).  

(Top Row, L to R: Alec Duffy, Ken Perko, Rachel Stack, Linsay Firman, Brian "Dingo" Lamont, Gerard Karsenty, Kevin O'Hara, Kevin Maher.  Middle Row: Geoffry Milam, Milton Welch, Amy Boyce Holtcamp, Michael Bird, Josiah Trager.  Bottom Row: Jeff McKay, Marguerite Moreau, Angela Goethals, Matt Newton.)

I remained friends with the actor playing Flan Kittredge, even after he left New York, through the magic of facebook and a deep affection we shared.  Turns out a relative of "Flan"'s works at a Public Library Whose Name I'm Not Disclosing.  This relative heard about my book, advocated for its purchase even though, "Some dingleberries in charge of such things apparently expressed some concern over its non-traditional content."

The compromise, apparently, was to purchase the book, but to put it in the adult fiction section to make sure that young people's mind aren't polluted by its non-traditional content, even though in an email that "Flan" forwarded to me, "ALL the other membership libraries have it in YA, as does Barnes & Noble."

I have been incredibly moved by young people's reactions to One Man Guy, from the teens I meet at B&N whom I convince to buy the book, to the ones who write me via my website to tell me what the book means to them.  Some samples quotes:

 "It's the girl that you saw at Barnes & Noble a few days ago. :) I finished your book the night that I got it. I really enjoyed. It was really funny and I just couldn't put the book down." -Jasmin

"Hi Michael! I recently finished your book One Man Guy and fell in love with the story. I can relate to the characters. Thanks so much!"  -Jacob


"I'm a part of the LGBTQ community and this book means something to me.  The reason i read this book is because i was looking for a book to read on the plane to Cali and I picked up your book and saw what is was about. My aunt was the one purchasing the book and saw the cover and whisper "no no this supports homosexuality" and would not buy. I did not want to make a scene but I was so angry that i made it a personal goal of mine to read and one day own the book. Thank for make me feel proud of my sexuality and who I love."  -J. Thomas


"Thank you so much for writing this book.. It has given me so much hope that when I come out to my parents they won't freak out.. I'm the same age as Alek is in this book.. It's just made such a difference on how I look at everything."  K.W.   




Truth and Justice and the American Way prevailed, however, as the library's director, in response to this fierce advocacy, decided to move OMG into the YA section.

I'm so grateful for everyone who has championed my little book, and helped it find its readership.

p.s.  I just got an email inquiring about the availability of OMG'S tv/film rights!



 

Blog Hop

Author Blog Hop

Elise Forier Edie

I got invited to do this author blog hop thing and since I haven't posted in (who even knows how long) and because I like the author who invited me to do it so much, I said yes.

Elise Forier Edie wrote the book and co-wrote the lyrics to the ah-mazing musical Rebel Girls, inspired by the Bread and Roses Strike of 1912 in Lawrence, MA.  I was match-made with Elise and the show's composer, Tina Lear, to direct a workshop of their musical.  They were awesome.  With the help of lots of index cards and yummy snacks, we holed ourselves into the CAP 21 conference room and re-organized the entire show in a day.  They trusted me, I loved the material, and we had one helluva time.  Apparently, Elise even blogged about how great our experience was.

So when Elise invited me, I took Bob Moss's advice: say yes.  I said yes.  Here are the answers to my questions, and at the end of this post, you'll find Elise's info, along with the info of three other fab writers whom I invited to participate in this thing.

1)  What am I working on?

My first book, One Man Guy, is being published in May (Macmillan, FSG).  It’s about Alek, a fourteen-year old Armenian boy who falls for New York City, the music of Rufus Wainwright and a totally hot skater boy over the course of one epic summer.

I’ve been working on my second book, The Aether Wild, for a few years.  It’s a collaboration with two friends, Suzanne Agins and Rosemary Andress, who are both primarily theater directors like me.  How many directors does it take to write a book?  Three, apparently.  The Aether Wild is a science fiction/fantasy post-apocalyptic adventure story about a girl determined to save the world at all costs.

My day job, as day jobs go, is as a theater director.  I’m currently in rehearsals for aproduction of Spring Awakening (themusical) in Syracuse, and am in pre-production for my next production with TheUpstart Creatures, a company of theater artists I assembled last year.

Other projects include adapting Paradise Lost for the stage and a commission from the Sloan Foundation, which I’m using to write a play about Lucretius, the Ancient Roman scientist/philosopher who wrote De Rerum Natura, which translates into something like: The Way Things Are, The Nature of the Universe  or The Nature of Things.   

2)  How does my work differ from others of its genre?

To be honest, I haven’t read many coming out stories, so I’m not exactly sure what the norm is.  Going by the feedback I’ve been getting from Goodreads, it seems like most coming out novels fall on the angsty side.  I came out when I was twenty-one (and not to my parents until I was twenty-three) and I remember how incredibly anxiety-making it was.  I was not, however, especially interested in writing that because my parents, like the parents of most people I know, accepted my coming out with great love.  I’m not saying it wasn’t awkward, or that other people’s coming out isn’t more traumatic.  I just felt like we’d seen and read that story plenty, given how the times are a-changin’, I wanted to write a story in which the coming out wasn’t the big deal event.

3)  Why do I write what I do?

Wendy Wasserstein

For most of my life, writing was like going to loud bars: I knew lots of people who appeared to enjoy it, but it never occurred to me that it was something I myself would like.   Then Wendy Wasserstein died and I missed her, and writing was an activity that I associated with her, having been her typists for five years.  So I started writing as a way of remembering Wendy.

When I write a play or book, it’s because I can’t not write it.  Something about the story demands to be told.  I have one such story bubbling inside of me.  I don’t want to write it, in that I’ve very busy now and over-committed and don’t really have time, but it is insisting on being told and so soon, I imagine, I will start typing.

On a more conscious level, I try to write stories that I don’t think have been told (or told enough) yet.  Many readers of One Man Guy learned about the existence of the Armenian genocide through the book, and the idea that I can help tell that story feels incredibly important to me.

4)  How does my writing process work?

When I’m dealing with the frightful proposition of a blank screen, I need to write early, before my husband wakes up, when I’m barely conscious, when I can’t filter or even think about what I’m writing.  I usually have a sense of what I’m going to write (I outline and research heavily before I begin), but I do my best first-draft writing first thing in the morning.

Then I’ll try to do something that has nothing to do with writing – I’ll go to my yoga studio or do some cooking, take a bike ride.  I’ll revisit the pages in the afternoon, and often be totally surprised at the words I’m reading, as if someone else wrote them.  I find that’s the best way to look at my own work.

When it comes to re-writing, I’m better at that in the afternoon.  I like to work a little, take a nap, work some more.  I prefer to do that at tables, rather than desks, because tables are bigger and I like to spread out.  Or, if I just need to read, I like to do that lying down on a sofa, because then when I want to take a nap I don’t need to move.


The Writer Who Invited Me To Join The Blog Hop

BLOG: http://www.eliseforieredie.com/blog.htm

TWITTER: @EliseForierEdie

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/EliseForierEdie?ref=hl

BIO: http://www.eliseforieredie.com/bio.htm

GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7495615.Elise_Forier_Edie

AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/Elise-Forier-Edie/e/B00HFEFOGE/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

The Writers Whom I Invited To Join The Blog Hop (all Vassar Grads, oddly enough)

Amy Boyce Holtcamp - was my muse in college, the lead of just about every play I directed.  She continued to go to UW to study directing, and now lives in the sexiest city in the country, New Orleans, with her rock star-dramaturg husband Victor who teaches at Tulane and often proofs my blog out of the kindness of his OCD heart.  Amy is one of my favorite collaborators, a great writer and director. 

Mary Beth Caschetta and I met at the memorial service for Ann Imbrie, who had taught us both at Vassar a decade apart.  Ann had mentioned Mary Beth regularly, and by the time I met her I felt like I had already known her.  Being able to share the loss of Ann with someone else who had known and loved her was incredibly valuable to me, and I love how Mary Beth writes about painful things directly and unsentimentally.

Isaac Butler, on the other hand, got to Vassar the year after I left, and we met at Soho Rep, where he assisted me one summer producing a festival of new plays.  Like me and Amy, he's a director and writer, and without a doubt the most well-read and well-watched guy out there. 

Getting Published

 

GETTING PUBLISHED

The cover of my book might look something like this.

Firstly, thank you all you wonderful readers – thanks for taking the time to check out AWFUL GOODNESS, thanks for your comments, and thanks for your support.  J'adore.  I do wish more of you would post comments on the actual blog, rather than email them to me under the veil of discretion, like a straight man sneaking out of a gay bar.  Your comments are insightful and witty – why not share them with the world?  And why not bolster my blog by showing that you actually read it?  You have nothing to be ashamed of.  And if you did, I would tell you – don’t worry.

Many people I’ve met, friends and strangers both, have expressed interest in how I sold my first book, One Man Guy (in bookstores in spring 2014).  So instead of dedicating this post to my Paradise Lost project, I thought I’d write about that instead.  My friends, many of whom are incredibly successful and accomplished, appear very impressed by my sold book, but to me, it’s like being a chimera in a field of unicorns.  I’m sure if most of my friends were writers and I ended up on Broadway, the response would be the same. But here’s what happened, for those of you who are interested.

COLLEGE CONNECTIONS

Rafa dancing with Julia.

Joy Peskin was Linsay Firman’s roommate senior year at Vassar (they were one year ahead of me).  Linsay Firman was my last girlfriend before I came out fifteen years ago, continues to be one of my best friends and most amazing people I know, and is married to Shane Rettig, a composer and sound designer of the highest caliber.  She is also the mother of my god-daughter, the unbearably beautiful Julia Rettig. 

 

Joy and I would run into each other at Linsay’s various functions after college (such as her 30^th bday, for which I cooked up an amazing Cuban feast, hired salsa dancers to teach us some steps and went dancing until the wee hours, ending up at Cafeteria after the wee hours before it was SEX IN THE CITY popular).

Around seven years ago, when Joy was at Penguin, we were hanging out at one of said Linsay’s events and she said to me, “You should write me a gay young adult novel.  It’s an up-and-coming genre.”  I was between directing gigs, and I thought, “Why not?”  So I wrote around fifty pages, sent them to Joy, she gave me feedback, I re-wrote them, and we worked that way for around two years until an entire novel existed.  As an editor, Joy taught me so much about writing and how to work with writers, experience invaluable to me as a director when I’m working with playwrights.  Once we felt the product was as good as it was going to be, Joy sent it to her publishers.  We couldn’t get them to bite, and as disappointed as I was, I figured that was the end of the book (at the time called THE SUBURBS SUCK).   

Maybe the point of this project in some large, cosmic sense, I thought to myself, was just to start me writing, and I was thankful for having done it for that reason.

FIVE YEARS PASS

A few months ago, I got a call from my agent, Josh Adams at Adams Literary (Joy hooked me up with them when we couldn’t sell my books all those years back).  I figured he was calling to drop me, because with the exception of a proposal that I hadn’t actually written and a few chapters of an aborted YA Shakespeare project, I had been totally unproductive as a novelist. 

Joy had since moved to Farrar Strauss and Giroux, at Macmillan, and had expressed interest in working on my old book at her new home.  “Would I look at the manuscript and see what I thought?”  Josh asked.  I remember the call came in late March:  Rafa and I had traveled to Mexico City because his father had passed away, and it was exactly the kind of buoyant news one wants during sad times.

I read my manuscript.  Because I hadn’t looked at it in five years, I could read it with clarity, almost as if someone else had written it – the kind of objectivity every artist wants, the kind directors strain for as they sit through their second week of previews, trying to remember what it would be like to be an audience member who’d never seen this show before, sitting in the house for the very first time.

I understood why Joy and I hadn’t been able to sell it all those years back.  The manuscript was bad.  The sentences were clumsily constructed, big lumbering trolls, crashing into each other as they tried marching to a common cause. 

This wasn't the kind of image I was looking for, but I thought it was so weird I should post it.  What's Spidey doing hanging out with a bunch of trolls?

And yet, the characters were interesting, and most of the structure was somewhat salvageable.  And more importantly, Joy had faith in the project, faith that I didn’t necessarily have myself.  Every time I’ve directed a play or written something, I’ve reached a point of utter hopelessness, and the person whose faith I can substitute for my own becomes someone to whom I am deeply grateful.  Joy was that person, not just because she told me to write it in the first place, but because she believed in me and it from the get-go.

I tried to read through without a pencil in my hand, but the editor in me (I worked as Wendy Wasserstein’s typist for five years, often editing her work as I went along) couldn’t help himself, and I began marking as I went.  Sometimes I’d re-arrange on a micro level, sometimes I’d re-order on the macro.  As bad as the manuscript was, I could see a good book inside, trying to get out, trapped by my inexperience as a writer all those years back.  But that was then.  And this was now.

Joy and I agreed that I’d re-write the first fifty pages (I ended up deciding to do sixty – the entirety of the new Act I) and she’d show them to the powers that be at Macmillan and see what they said. 

WRITING IS RE-WRITING

Re-visiting the material was joyful for me.  I felt more confident in my abilities, and the distance I had from the old stuff allowed me to re-write it without sentimentality or preciousness.  I came up with a new first scene, showing the main characters, an Armenian family, going out for dinner, because Armenians in a restaurant is a recipe for comedy (see Peter Balakian’s BLACK DOG OF FATE). 

http://amzn.to/UWC2Sb

I worked on those pages, gave them to Joy, got her notes, worked on them again, then waited anxiously to hear what the powers that be at Macmillan thought.  The pitch meeting, where editors present their projects, kept on getting postponed, until I finally received the news that they responded to the material, and the project had received a green light.  Joy and I celebrated by going to Almayass, the first Armenian restaurant to open up in New York in years, coincidentally around the corner from Joy’s office in the Flatiron building.

http://www.almayassnyc.com/

THE TAKE AWAY

What’s the take-away here?  The first is to let other people’s imagination of you surprise yourself.  Joy looked at me, and instead of seeing a marginally employed theater director between gigs, saw a potential gay young adult novelist.  And as thrilled as I am that ONE MAN GUY (new titled) is going to exist in the world to be read, the most valuable outcome of writing it is not that it will get published, but rather, that it got me writing in the first place, and without that, I’d never be writing this blog, for example, or THE AETHER WILD, the post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy adventure novel I’m working on with Rosemary Andress and Suzanne Agins.

Isn't this image great?

We’re all in it for the long haul, so take your time and have faith. 

I’m going to end this post before I choke on my own sentimentality.  

Next up:  I'm going to switch gears, get into food, and post about my killer tofu scramble recipe.  Then I'll get into some juicy gay marriage stuff.