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Confessions of a Reluctant Pitchman

When I started this blog, I had a tidy little vision:  twelve posts in twelve months, leading up to the publication of my book. 

A year of gems, spilled on the page for your entertainment and edification.  What a lark!

I didn’t write twelve months, and I didn’t reach twelve posts, but that’s hardly a shame.  There are plenty of words in this blog, and the entertainment and edification aspects were oversold from the get-go.

Just Maria was published last Friday.  (Hold for applause.)  All that’s left to do is to ask you to buy my book.

So, friends, family, strangers:  please buy my book.

For someone who has spilled so many words in shameless self-promotion, this is a surprisingly hard thing for me to say.  When I call myself a reluctant pitchman, you’ll have to take my word for it.  The blog has been fun, the website is cool, and seeing my name on the spine of Just Maria is a dream come true.  But I have entered the task of selling this book with half a heart at best. 

I want you to read my book, of course, and have my book, and even buy my book.  I just don’t want to ask you to do it.

It’s unseemly, is what it is.

Pardon me if this seems disingenuous.  If I was really all that reluctant a pitchman, I wouldn’t have built the website, made all those sad little Facebook posts, taken meetings with publicists, written this blog, or written this post.  Perhaps it is better to call myself an ambivalent pitchman.  Equivocal.  Hesitant.  Hypocritical.  Choose your favorite. 

I’ve thought a lot about why this is so, truly I have.  I had another thousand words on this topic.  I spoke them into my phone, transcribed them dutifully, and set about to editing.  I made artful points about art, commerce, and ambition, complete with meandering digressions on music criticism, Lutheran humility, and the peculiar stench of desperation.

Reading back, I axed it all.  Enough is enough.

Thanks for reading, thanks for being, and go get you some.

If you wanna.

-Jay

Just Maria is available now in paperback, hardback, and e-formats. Order now from Regal House Publishing, Malaprop’s, Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your books!

And leave a review on Goodreads!

By Jay Hardwig, ago

Contracts, Edits, & Acknowledgements: In Which I Sweat the Small Stuff

It’s been almost two years since the giddy phone call when Jaynie Royal and Regal House said yes to Just Maria, and I said yes to Jaynie and Regal House.  At the conclusion of the call, Jaynie said she would send along a book contract for my review.  She encouraged me to have my lawyer look at it, but even as she spoke those words, I’m sure she knew the truth:  I don’t have a lawyer.  I don’t know anybody who has a lawyer.  I know lawyers, sure, and I know where to find one if I ever need one, but I would never consider them mine.  My lawyer?  Who in my income bracket has a lawyer?

I understand the word my here is not a possessive in the traditional sense.  Rather, it refers to a tradesperson you use with enough frequency to think of them as yours.  So, sure, I talk about my barber, my mechanic, and my firewood guy.   But my lawyer?  I’m afraid not.  I am not wealthy, nefarious, or criminal enough to need a lawyer on a regular basis.

So while Jaynie and I both knew I could ask around and find an entertainment lawyer, she and I both knew I would not.  I did take the contract to my friend Allan Wolf, a published children’s author with a drawer full of similar contracts.  His advice?  Just sign it.

Oh sure, he looked through it, noted a few ways it looked different from his own contracts, but we agreed that it was largely boilerplate, and if there were provisions in there that were going to jump up and bite me in the butt, both of us were too dense to know what they might be.  Just sign it, he said.  And I did.

(Disclaimer:  If you are reading this blog for legal advice, please stop.)

From there commenced the two-year process of bringing Just Maria to print.  That might seem a long time, but this is standard in the book trade.  Indeed, Allan told me it was a good sign it would take so long to get the book published—evidence that I had landed with a reputable press, in line with industry standards and serious enough about their work to schedule things years in advance.

The editorial process was new to me, by turns exhilarating and mystifying, and punctuated by long bouts of nothing at all.  Though frustrating in places, I heeded the advice of my friend Jake Morrill.  “Enjoy it,” he said.  “You might publish another book, and you might not.  Enjoy the ride.”

First I had to clean up my manuscript, to get it ready for the Regal House editors, following the rules of the Chicago Manual of Style.  I had to ensure that my indents all lined up, that my apostrophes were turned and tucked in the proper direction, that my em-dashes and hyphens were consistent and distinct.  I raked through the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb, and sent it off for review.

My next task was to compose my Acknowledgments and Dedication.  I suspect all writers find these tasks to be rewarding and intimidating in equal measure.  For the Acknowledgements, of course, you want to thank all those who helped without leaving out anyone out, all with the appropriate mix of modesty and gratitude, while also keeping it short.  Writing the Acknowledgements Page is surely an art form in itself, with its own rules, expectations, and etiquette, but it’s a forgiving one:  while I’ve read Acknowledgements pages that interested me more than others, I’ve yet to run across one that I thought was bad.  It takes someone with a pinched and small perspective to criticize another’s gratitude.

Harder was the Dedication.  I knew it would go to Nita, my wife, who is the love of my life and has supported me from Day One.  She batted not an eye when I told her I wanted to try my hand at writing, even if it meant we’d be poorer than we might otherwise be.  She also led me into the profession that I have truly loved and that provided the source material for Just Maria:  the education of children with blindness and visual impairments.  How to capture that in a few short words?  I spent as long on my six-word dedication as I had on whole pages of my book.  This is what I wrote:

To Nita:  Pathfinder, Cloudlifter, Hiking Buddy.

I don’t know if she has seen it yet.

Once those were submitted, we started the back and forth of editorial review.  My editor at Regal House was Pam Van Dyk, and she read with a sharp eye and keen instincts.   Contrary to my imagination, we did not send drafts back and forth, marked up with red ink and wrapped up with parcel paper and twine.  This was 2021, after all.  We used a shared Microsoft Word document, with comments and track changes turned on.  Pam had a comment or suggestion on almost every page, and it took me weeks to read, consider, and respond to them all, making changes where changes were due.  Most were minor – a word here, a comma there – but some were more substantive, as we explored the characters’ motivations, inclinations, and means of expression.  I have never in my life had anyone read a piece of my writing as closely as Pam read Just Maria.  And while I did not take every recommendation she made, it was gratifying to be part of such an intimate exchange about the words I had written, what they meant, and how they might be better.  We settled on a final draft and pronounced it ready to publish.

Next came typesetting, galleys, and final proofs, as we poured over the manuscript to spot any stray errors that had escaped our notice on previous readings.  I found this to be the most tedious of the entire process.  By that time, I had read the words in Just Maria so many times that they ceased to hold meaning for me.  I could scarcely focus for a paragraph, let alone a page or chapter.  I read as close as I could, but not close enough.  There are at least two typos in the final copy:  you might catch them, I did not.

Then came the waiting.  I was set for a Fall 2021 publication date, and when they set up the release calendar, I landed on the back end: January 7, 2022.  That’s next week, if you hadn’t noticed.

It’s been seven years since I started Just Maria, three years since I finished it, and almost two years since I signed the contract with Regal House.

In four days, it hits the shelf.

Giddyap.

Next post: Confessions of a Reluctant Pitchman

By Jay Hardwig, ago

How I Found a Publisher

Five years, five thousand miles, and at least five drafts later, I had finished Just Maria.  

My wife liked it.  My mom did too.  But I didn’t want them to be the only ones to read it.

It was time to get published. 

A longshot, I knew.  I had never published a book, and had published precious little at all in the last twenty years.  The field is crowded.  Words proliferate.  But I had to give it a shot. 

I could have published it myself, easy, with a few bucks and some chutzpah.  There are plenty of ways to self-publish these days, from print-on-demand services to the so-called “vanity presses” that will turn your words into a book for a fee.  Many writers use these services, and walk away satisfied. 

But that’s not what I wanted.

I wanted a book, in print, from an established publisher.  I wanted a physical object to have and to hold, to place upon my shelf (and yours, too, if you weren’t looking).   I wanted my name on the spine, my bio on the back, the whole mess.  But more than that, I wanted someone to say yes to Just Maria. 

I wanted a gatekeeper.

When I was younger, I felt different about the gatekeepers.  They were the ones who kept telling me no, after all, and that was a tiring word to hear.  Then along came the Internet, the barriers to publication fell, and all of the sudden there were more gates than keepers.  Anyone with half a notion could post their words online, for free or close to it.  Many, many people have.  Some of it is great, some middling, and some dreadful, but you have to appreciate the egalitarian spirit of it all.

(I do.  This site, this blog, these words you are reading right now depend upon it.  No gatekeeper, no oversight, no editor.  Just a few bucks a month to a web-hosting service, and voila!: I have my own little corner of the Internet.)

So, sure, I could have posted Just Maria online, in less than a day’s work.  But as I said, I wanted someone other than my Mom to tell me it was good.  Someone I didn’t know, who didn’t know me and didn’t care about my feelings. Someone in the field who saw in Just Maria enough promise to want to publish it, to use their own time and money to see this little book to print.  I wanted a gatekeeper.

Of course, I’d wanted that before.  And like I had with previous books, I set a Rejection Goal.  For Just Maria, that goal was 20:  if I could just get 20 rejections, I could shelve the project without remorse, and get on with my life.  At least I tried. 

I was doing good, too, piling up rejections at an impressive clip.  Two, five, ten, twelve.

I was sending Just Maria to agents and small presses, to people whose names I found online. Some responded and some didn’t, and those that did mostly offered the perfunctory pro forma kindness of the standard rejection letter:  doesn’t meet our needs, not the project for me, best of luck.  A few included some gentle words of encouragement to soften the blow.  Every writer recognizes this as standard operating procedure.   No offense was meant, and none was taken.

Then came Query #14.  On November 12, 2019, I submitted a cover letter, synopsis, and fifty-page writing sample to Regal House Publishing, via their online platform.  I paid a $5 processing fee and moved on.  I expected nothing, save another rejection.

Seven days later I received the following email from Jaynie Royal of Regal House Publishing:

Thank you for your recent submission. We enjoyed your excerpt and would like to read the entire manuscript if it is still available.

(Still available?  Why yes, yes it is!)

I sent the full manuscript.

Then, on December 2, 2019:

Thank you for sending a hard copy of your manuscript to our office. I have now completed my read of Just Maria and found it deftly written and utterly engaging. I would like to discuss next steps regarding our upcoming acquisitions meeting – if publication with RHP and Fitzroy Books remains of interest to you.

(Does publication remain of interest to me?  Why yes, yes it does!)

Jaynie sent a longer questionnaire for me to complete prior to the acquisitions meeting—biography, marketing strategy, comparable titles, and the like—and told me they would meet on January 15th.  I sent her my pitch and waited.  January 15th came and went, without a word.

Then, a few days later, I got the phone call I’d been waiting to hear since I was a much younger man: we want to publish your book.

I don’t remember the details of that phone call, but I do remember the feeling:  incredulous, cautious, and a little bewildered, sure, but most of all I was thrilled.  Happy.  Downright giddy.

I’m sure I asked a few questions, perhaps even relevant ones, but my response, in a nutshell:

Where do I sign?

Next post:  Contracts, Edits, & Acknowledgements: In Which I Sweat the Small Stuff

By Jay Hardwig, ago

How I Write: In Which I Describe a Man Trying To Think Up Words All By Himself

It was Interstate 40 that made me want to write again.

Specifically, it was the hour I spent driving it each day, commuting from Asheville to my job as a Teacher of the Visually Impaired in Haywood County, North Carolina, hard by the Tennessee state line.  Once I arrived, I got out, stretched, and got back in my car to drive still more, from school to school, visiting students scattered throughout the county. 

I logged a hundred miles a day, most days.  I spent a long time looking out my windshield, wondering what would come up next on my radio.  These were beautiful drives – if you’re going to be looking out a windshield for large chunks of your day, Haywood County is a right nice place to do it – but after a few years I got tired of listening to music. I turned off the radio and started talking out loud, mostly to amuse myself, and after a while I brought a tape recorder along.  The next thing I knew I had the first two chapters of Just Maria.

I write best on the move. It started with the album reviews I wrote for The Austin Chronicle back in the 90s. I would grab a pile of new releases, throw on my Discman, and take myself a walk, stopping every song or two to scribble notes on a pad I kept in my pocket.  Soon enough, I ditched the notepad for a mini-cassette player, and before long I was composing the first drafts of all of my writing by talking to myself.  Out loud.  

Those novels I mentioned earlier, the essays, the children’s poetry?  All yammered out first into a recorder, and transcribed into print only later.  This blog post?  I’m talking into my phone right now, hiking the Pump Gap Trail in Madison County, North Carolina, a six-mile loop that runs along Silver Mine Creek and up to Lover’s Leap.  I’ll transcribe these words at home, sooner or later, and run ‘em through several edits before plunking them on this site.

I’ve found that writing this way is easier for me.  My thoughts flow more freely.  There is no blank page to mock me; no expectant cursor, so patient and unforgiving; no first draft of my clunky prose staring dolefully out at me from the screen.  I edit as I walk, going back and re-recording bits, trying out new phrases and giving notes to myself.

“Rework that first sentence, but make it funnier.” 

“That’s a little maudlin.  Try again.”

Just Maria was written this way, during the free time I had on my drives to, from, and around Haywood County.  At first I used my trusty micro-cassette recorder; later, I graduated to the Voice Memos app on my phone.  Occasionally I might stop for a stroll, to tackle a particularly troublesome patch of prose.  If you saw me in those days, circling the Lake Junaluska walking path while talking to myself, chances are I was working out a minor plot point in Just Maria.

I did this for years, spilling words into the blank spots in my day.  I would steal spare moments at night to transcribe those words.  I still wasn’t sure I would finish the book, but I convinced myself there was no harm in prattling on.  It made the miles pass by more quickly, that’s for sure.  As long as I liked what I heard when I listened back, I kept going.

Three years later, I had a book.

I planned to end this post by recalling where I was when I spoke the last words of Just Maria into my phone, more than three years after I spoke the first words of the novel on some lonely stretch of I-40.  What mountain pass, what lumber truck, what roadside cow bore witness to that moment, never knowing its significance?

It feels almost cinematic, this moment:  a writer, yours truly, speaking the final words of his novel into his phone, his face registering satisfaction, serenity, and already a sense of loss.  The world whirls past his windows as he ponders what it is he has just done.

It must have been so sweet.

But I don’t remember it at all.  Not one bit.

I must have cast my eyes ahead, and just kept driving.

Next post: How I Found a Publisher

By Jay Hardwig, ago

Ambition vs. Indolence: And the Winner Is . . .

I was 42, and ready to give up writing. 

No, scratch that. 

I was 42, and had already given up writing.  It had been years since I wrote anything of note, years since I’d stared at the sky trying to come up with better words for what I was trying to say.

What I was ready to give up was the idea of writing.  I was ready to give up the idea that I was a writer, or a vision of the future in which I wrote things down for other people to read.

If that sounds like a hard realization, it wasn’t.  As I described in my last post, I had given the writing life a good shot, had some success even, but the path was petering out.  My childhood dream of putting a book on the shelf felt more and more far-fetched.  I had written four books, and gotten four books worth of rejections.  As I like to tell my kids, I may be dumb but I’m not stupid.  It was time to pack it in.

Again, this wasn’t a hard choice.  (You know what is hard?  Writing.  It’s not as hard as actual work, mind you, but it does take a steady supply of time, diligence, and belief in oneself.  At various times, I ran short on all three.)  Sure, I was giving up a childhood dream, but I wasn’t a child anymore.  I was forty-two, and old enough to know better.  Most of my adult life has been a battle between ambition and indolence, and it felt like high time to declare indolence the winner and let it take a nice victory lap.   I had already picked out a nice hammock and was ready to leave the writing to others.  The world would not notice the difference.

My nineteen-year-old self might have found this retreat an unpardonable compromise, but my forty-two-year-old self saw it as a reasonable accommodation to reality.  It’s a compromise most folks make sooner or later, at least when it comes to their art.  Some are tired of the obscurity, some are tired of the poverty, and some are just tired of the work. 

What’s more, I had changed. My values had changed. My goals had changed.  My definition of success had changed.  Things that were once important were not so important anymore.  My fire had dimmed a bit.  It still glowed warm, but not as bright.

Again, this was not a dramatic switch.  I have always had a lazy side.  I am fond of naps.  And beers.  Sometimes beers, then naps.  And of laying on my back in a patch of grass, and gazing at the sky.  A fine life, with much to recommend it, but it doesn’t always get you to the top of the heap.

In eleventh grade, my world history teacher told me she expected the best from me, but she rarely got it.  I suspect she is not the last to feel that way.

I get my work done, well enough, and walk away.  That’s my default setting anyway.

The amibitious side of me sees this lazy streak and can’t help but wince.

The lazy side never had much use for the ambitious side anyway.

In my early forties, I decided the lazy side had won.

I don’t guess it spoils the ending to say that I spoke too soon.  This website, this blog, this book is proof enough of that.

At 42, I was ready to pack it in. 

At 44, I started my next book.

What can I say?  I found myself with a good idea, some time to think, and enough left in the tank to give it one more go.  Most likely, I was signing up for four more years of anonymous toil, followed by another batch of rejection letters, followed by the realization that I should have listened to my lazy side the first time.  Still, I plunged in. 

It started with one line, the line that would become the first line in Just Maria:

My friend Sam—he’s blind, like me—says that to tell his dirty undies from his clean, he has to sniff ‘em.

After that, I was all in, back in the saddle and writing more days than not.  It was fun, exhilarating even, but I swore to myself:  this will be the last one.

Next post: How I Write

By Jay Hardwig, ago