Pieces of Mind

by Vincent Zandri

  I'm now the prodigal son returned to a publishing world that's been turned over on its back. And I'm kicking some real ass!!!

  Gee, it's good to be back home.

  —2010

  Frank Nash: A Most Inspirational English Teacher

  I never set out to be a writer. Back in 1979, when I entered the Second Form in a 200 year old, all boys, military school called, The Albany Academy, I simply wanted to become a rock n’ roll star. Like Ringo or Keith Moon, I wanted to play drums in a huge rock band, make a ton of money doing it, get lots of girls, and see the world. While most of the uniformed boys sat attentively in math class, taking copious notes, I drew illustrations of huge drums sets and stared out the window.

  All that changed when for the first time, I was introduced to Frank Nash in my second term English lit and writing course. First thing that caught my attention was the classroom itself. The Academy was an old building even back then, having been built in the 1920s. Made of stone and strong woods, with real blackboards instead of chalk boards, the place seemed like a kind of time warp. A school caught perpetually in the 19th century instead of one that would see the 21st century in only two more decades.

  But Mr. Nash’s room had a special allure to it since it was filled with photos of famous authors, the most notable for me, was Ernest Hemingway. The framed photo was a famous headshot that I would later learn had been taken by the world renown photographer, Karsh, in 1957, the lens having captured the 58 year old Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning writer dressed in a big, bulky, turtleneck sweater, his Old Man and the Sea style beard and matching white hair giving him the look of a sea captain or world explorer, which of course fit the bill perfectly for since the adventurous Hemingway was all of those things and more.

  I recall Mr. Nash entering the classroom on the very first day of school, the weather still warm and bright and summer-like. He was a tall, thin man, who wore cowboy boots and jeans—a casual style which seemed to go against the more conservative wool-suited style of some of the more uptight Academy profs. A decorated war vet, he sat on a bar stool in the front of the class, and he talked with us like we were his bar buddies, not as if we were a bunch of stupid kids. Our first read for the semester was A Farewell to Arms, and when he described the novel to us, he did so in manner that seemed strange. First off, he referred to the author not as Ernest Hemingway, but as “Papa.” Was Frank Nash Hemingway’s kid? He talked about Papa’s writing habits, about his fishing and hunting and travelling, about his eventual suicide by self-inflicted gunshot. He even demonstrated how Papa placed both barrels of the shotgun inside his mouth, pressed them against the soft palate, and how he triggered the hammers with his thumb. I remember looking up at the Karsh photo and trying to imagine the writer’s head blown off, and I recall being thoroughly spooked, but somehow excited.

  Then, and only then, did Nash crack the book and begin to read that lovely, lush opening about being at war with the dust from the road clinging to the leaves on the trees and each sentence connected to the other with the conjunction “and.” Nash loved that opening and as tough and worldly as he seemed, I could see now that it was possible for a hard man to also be a sensitive man of letters.

  We talked a lot about Hemingway and war and adventure that first month of school and I came to realize that Frank Nash was an expert on Hemingway. I found myself so immersed in reading “Farewell” and listening to Nash’s lectures on writing and Papa, that I never once felt like scribbling a drum set in my notebook or felt the need to fight off boredom by looking out the window. That is, unless Nash was inviting us too.

  I listened and I learned and I wrote my first essays on Hemingway. I also wrote my first short story which Nash read aloud in class as an example of promising material. It was a story about spending a grueling Easter Sunday with my family and it was graded with a big fat, red, “A.” Nash pulled me aside and he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told him a rock drummer. And he laughed, and said, “Well, maybe you should write some stories along the way.”

  When we arrived back at school after the Christmas break, I was excited to see Frank Nash again. It had been a long Christmas break and I was eager to read some more classic novels and to write more stories. But something had changed. Nash was still there, but something had happened to him in the short time that we’d been apart. His hands shook almost uncontrollably, and he seemed out of it. His eyes were glassy and he looked gaunt and pale and sick.

  He lasted a few more days that second semester, but then he didn’t show up at all. When the Dean of the upper school sent someone to his downtown Albany apartment to check up on the English teacher, they found a reclusive Nash consumed in whiskey. Empty bottles of Jack Daniels were strewn about the living room and the bathtub was full of ice and cans of beer. The shades had been drawn on the windows and aside from stacks and stacks of books, there was only a desk with an old Royal typewriter sitting on top of it. The pile of manuscript pages beside it contained stories about the old Albany Academy. It turned out Frank was writing a biography of the old military school. He was, at the same time, drinking himself to death.

  In the Fall of the next year, the Albany Academy was still there, but Frank Nash did not go to it anymore. Eventually he sought out help for his alcoholism and returned to his native Vermont where he lived with fellow veterans, and wrote some of his own stories and poems. When my first big novel As Catch Can was published in 1999, my publisher sent him an autographed copy. But I never heard back from him. I wondered if he remembered me at all. I wondered if he read the book and if he had, if he liked it. But then, it wasn’t important if he did or didn’t. What was important was the fact that for three months, I was lucky enough to be taught by a man who felt as though he was so close to the words of Ernest Hemingway he could refer to him as Papa in every bit of the fatherly sense of the word. To this day, I think of Nash as Papa in the same inspirational manner. Nash altered the course of my young life and because of him I became a writer. I’m lucky to have known him and even more lucky to remember him the way he was when he was teaching and writing and was very happy.

  —2010

  What is Suspense?

  A promising young MFA in Writing graduate student asked me if I would answer a few questions for him regarding his academic thesis, which stems around the topic of "suspense." I guess it shouldn't surprise most of you thriller, mystery and noir fans, that not a whole lot of information can be found on the subject in the stuffy, closed-in world of academia.

  So here goes.

  Is there really such a thing as "literary suspense?"

  I’m not entirely sure what "literary suspense" means. Other than it means the precise key ingredient variety of suspense that's found in genre fiction, be it mystery, thriller, romantic-suspense, etc., that can also stand up there with the high-brow, quote "literary" unquote, fiction.

  From a personal POV, my first big novel, As Catch Can, was bought by Delacorte Press back in 1999 and was considered a "literary thriller." What this means is that I wrote what was then called a "Hitchcockian thriller" that contained both the necessary stuff to satisfy both the readers of genre fiction and literary fiction. In other words, the novel contained lots of conflict, drama, suspense, sex, violence, humor, lies, deceits and deceptions, and all those other things that make a thriller an exciting, can't put it down, read. Chapters were short, and sentences tight and taught, the dialogue as crisp, tough and in some cases, as cryptic as a Hemingway short story. But it also contained vivid imagery (I did my own MFA thesis on "imagery""), the occasional but not over-abused use of metaphor, and an emotional subplot of a man who is up against it all while having recently lost his wife to cancer. Delacorte promoted the books as a literary thriller reminiscent of Hitchcock's North By Northwest perhaps to open up the market to both literary fans and genre fans who might be willing to try out a new novel by an MFA grad who was also a rather serious minded freelance journalist.

  Even my newest bestseller, The Rem
ains, contains all the essential elements of a hard-boiled thriller, while quickly becoming popular with the more literary crowd. Once again, it's also been compared with Hitch's work. It's got pile-driving plotting, short chapters and plenty of action. But the story revolves around a painter and painting as an art. It's also told from the point of view of a female art teacher. Hardly the stuff of tough guy thriller fiction.

  So in short, yes, a novel can be considered both literary and suspenseful. Look for both in the best suspense novels that stand the test of time, like The Last Good Kiss, by Jim Crumley and To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway. Look for only the suspense part in novels that will be forgotten in time. No need to list the little buggers here.

  2. What are some techniques a writer can use to build tension?

  I posed this question on Facebook just a little while ago and each response differed from the other. In general though, most agree that writing short chapters, and short, sharp sentences definitely service to build tension, as opposed to long, flowing, obnoxious, Dickins-like sentences that tend to put you to sleep.

  This is personal, but I prefer to work in the first person, especially with an unreliable narrator who cannot be trusted and who might not always be in the right, but who is after something that is inevitably righteous, even if he or she has to break the law in order to find it. Not knowing if you narrator is going to turn out to be the one who actually killed the cat will always make for a riveting read. Check out my critically acclaimed and bestselling noir novel, Moonlight Falls, for instance. Again, it was compared to Hitchcock!

  Another technique is to put in all the violence and the action. I once had a writing teacher at MFA school who insisted that I only "imply" violence and action, not dramatize it on the page. For reasons beyond my control I followed his advice all that semester. But once it was over, I put all the good stuff back into my manuscript. He's now long forgotten as a writer. I'm a bestseller.

  3. Is the role of suspense different in mysteries than it is literary fiction?

  Suspense is dramatic conflict of one kind or another and every good story, literary or not, needs conflict. Otherwise there's nothing novel to write about. Even if you're subject is a plain old orange, you can find suspense: just what is it you're going to find underneath all that skin after you tear into it with your bear, bleeding hands?

  You're not going to find much in terms of who-dunnit suspense in literary fiction, but you will find suspense, even if it's a band of orthodox Jews and Romans who band together to crucify an upstart Jewish carpenter.

  4. Is suspense a necessary universal component of all fiction, no matter the genre?

  Yes. Otherwise it's poetry. There must be a reason for a novel to be written. That reason usually stems from a conflict or the birth of a suspenseful moment. I.E. A man comes home from work to discover his wife has packed up the kids and left him for good; a young woman walks into a coffee shop and believes she sees her former boyfriend. When she confronts him, he denies having ever seen her before; when a young woman begins receiving strange text messages, she starts to believe that the man who abducted she and her twin sister 30 years ago is back. And this time, he wants to kill her (the premise of my novel, The Remains).

  So there it is. My take on suspense. Right or wrong. But from a very personal point of view, I prefer not to read something that doesn't have suspense in it. It's like eating a chocolate chip cookie without the chips. It just falls flat and is uninteresting. A plain vanilla cookie with no color, drama or sweet richness. In a nutshell, if you haven't worked up a good sweat after reading something, it ain't worth it!

  —2010

  The Fall and the Rise: My Story Bulleted

  Here's how I first came to be published commercially in Big NYC:

  I wrote a novel called The Innocent about a prison warden wrongly accused of aiding and abetting the escape of a convicted cop-killer. It was based on a true story.

  I got an agent for the novel. Let's call him Slick.

  Slick sold the novel in two weeks in a deal totaling 230,000 clams. I loved Slick and dedicated the novel to him.

  The acquiring editor was a musician and a pretty smart lit guy who had also first bought Harlan Coben. Let's call him J. We became quick buds.

  J's only senior in the publishing house was a woman named L. She was the editor-in-chief I guess. She was a sweet lady.

  My publicist was young woman named V, whom I liked very much. Well, ok, I liked her a lot.

  There was a buzz about The Innocent from the start. Publishers Weekly published two pre-pub pieces. A record Japanese deal was struck. DreamWorks was all over the movie rights. Dutch rights sold.

  I joined a band with J, called StrawDogs, and partied like a rock star. I also partied with V, and well, you know . . . .

  Then something terrible happened. Talk of a corporate takeover infected the publisher's Times Square office. Suddenly everyone was worried about their jobs. Something new was about to be introduced to the book market as well. EBooks. Bookstore owners were in a panic.

  Too much time began to pass from contract execution to actual book publication. More than a year. As worries over takeovers and EBooks began to infect the publishing office, interest in The Innocent began to wane.

  J had to change the name of the book to As Catch Can because some author in a sister firm had published a book by that title a couple of years before. "As Catch . . . what?" I posed . . .

  A year came and went, and still As Catch Whatever hadn't been released. But they were working on it. The cover was finally completed, but it was rushed. No one really liked it, but too much time had passed, so it was used. It was an ugly green on top of illegible letters.

  Still, the book was published to amazing reviews like "Brilliant," and "The most arresting crime novel to be published this year." Maybe the reviews would aid sales!!!

  Borders Books took it off the shelves after six weeks. Big Commercial Bookstore Policy!

  Everyone at the publishing house was worried for their job.

  No one promoted Catch. Not even V.

  The hostile takeover happened. So did EBooks.

  As Catch Can drowned in Big NYC corporate turmoil.

  Slick refused to do anything about it when J suggested we take the book to another publisher. Slick didn't care. He'd gotten his money. He was playing the stock market and onto something else.

  The new "hostile" publisher had to take me on, under the pretense of contractual obligation. They published my second novel, Godchild, in mass paperback, shit it out, and quickly forgot about it.

  My editor at the time told me in confidence, "The publisher is preventing you from selling books."

  I'd lost all control. My rights were locked up. My lit career was not only in a stall, it was about to crash and burn. All because of corporate greed. My life entered into a tailspin . . .

  So what's to be learned here? Just because you land a big deal in NYC does not guarantee you huge success. In fact, it can spell disaster of major proportions. So what's happened to all the major players?

  Slick is reputedly running for his life, his office shut down, his AAR status revoked. Keep running Slick . . .

  The Editor-in Chief, L, is out of the business (I met her in the lobby of the Bertelsmann Building, her desk lamp in hand, tears streaming down her cheeks. She sweetly kissed me, and uttered, "Good luck." But what she really meant was "Rest in Peace."

  J is doing cool things at MTV with pop culture books. He couldn't be happier.

  I never heard from V again . . . But sometimes I wonder what she's up to.

  StrawDogs broke up.

  The publishing office is now a brokerage house.

  Borders went out of business.

  —2010

  La Dolce Vita

  A little boy in short pants jumping in a puddle of freshly collected rain . . . a bearded man with a blood-stained white apron wrapped around his paunch standing outside a butcher shop smoking a cigarette, a boar's head han
ging by a string inside the window . . . a stunning middle-aged woman wearing a short black skirt, knee length leather boots, tight jacket and slim eye-glasses, converses on a phone while walking hurriedly past . . . a young woman is black skirt, knee length boots, tight jacket and thick, long, black hair holds her boyfriend's hand while they peer at the muddy Arno, which runs over the banks this time of year . . . a squad of uniformed Carabinieri drilling with automatic rifles, trumpets and drums while the tourists and smoking cafe patrons look curiously on . . .

  These are just some of the sights and sounds I'm experiencing during my month long stay in Italy while I try and write the first draft the Moonlight Rises and while I complete The Dead Souls. It's also busy time because apart from seeing friends, I'm trying to tour the original trade paperback of my thriller, The Remains. We have something like 20 review commitments and every day brings a new challenge spreading the word. Same goes for The Innocent, the now bestselling re-release of As Catch Can. Both books have been big sellers out of the gate but I'm looking forward to these novels doing even better and reaching a bigger and bigger audience. Especially as the EBook and Kindle audience explodes over the Christmas Holiday. You fans should be able to collect my entire catalogue, including digital shorts for less than the price of a single Stephen King hardcover. Imagine that.