Coming Soon to a Stadium Near You!

It's hard to believe that in a few short weeks, school will be out and camps underway and the drum corps season even closer to stepping off.

As DCI revs up, so too does the summer season for Building the Green Machine. Check back here and on the NEWS page for announcements about the bookstore release July 1, bookstore signings in your town and special sales and events at drum corps shows.

I'll be hitting the road with the Cavalier Promotions Inc. souvenir trailer to bring the book directly to YOU. Check out the dates and show sites below, and plan on stopping by to say hi and chat about drum corps history -- the kinds of crazy stories you'll find in the book, and the kind that will be written on and off the field this season!

It's going to be a busy -- and fun -- summer!

See you soon,

Colt


Where to look for BTGM on the road this summer

June 21 -- Rockford, IL
June 23 -- Port Huron, MI
June 26 -- Oswego, IL
June 27 -- Bloomington, IL
June 28 -- Madison, WI
June 29 -- Naperville, IL
June 30 -- DeKalb, IL

July 1 -- Lexington, KY
July 2 -- Fairfield, OH
July 5 -- Kalamazoo, MI
July 6 -- Michigan City, IN
July 7 -- Louisville, KY
July 15 -- El Paso, TX
July 16 -- Midland, TX
July 17-18-19 -- San Antonio, TX.
July 20 -- Denton, TX
July 26 -- Atlanta, GA
July 27 -- Charlotte, N.C.

Aug. 3 -- Rosemont, IL -- Cavaliers' 60th Anniversary Banquet!
Aug. 4 -- Naperville, IL
Aug. 7-9 -- Indianapolis -- DCI quarters, semis and finals!

:>>:>>:>>

Good News about a Great Cavalier

You know the type of feeling you get when good things happen to an even better person?

Well, prepare yourself for a case of the happy shivers.

1972 Cavalier Gary Moore's book, about his father Gene's major league baseball dreams, dreams which were ultimately sidetracked by World War II, during which he served as a guard for captured German submarine prisoners (and taught them to play the game he loved) is one of those sparkling success stories in life and in publishing you never get tired of telling. The heart that he put into working on this book, delving into his family's past and our nation's pasttime, as well as the gruntwork he has done to spread the word, is a great example for anyone trying to achieve any goal, let alone penning a bestseller.

But then, that's the type of effort he always put in with the Cavaliers. And he had some great examples in the corps to learn from.

Well, cue up another case of the happy shivers for how hard work has paid off for Gary. On Monday, Gary will kick off his national book tour for the paperback edition of Playing with the Enemy, released by Penguin, and the audiobook version, released by Illinois company Oasis.

Oh yeah, and the major motion picture of the book begins shooting this spring.

Shivering yet?

The latest iterations of his book come on the heels of a sensational hardcover run with Savas Beatie, whom many of you will recognize as the publisher of Building the Green Machine. As I note in the book's Acknowledgments, Gary is responsible for "opening the door" to a powerhouse independent for my story of Don Warren's life and the corps loved by so many. Well, that's a bit of an understatement. Gary has bowled me over -- continuously -- with his enthusiasm for my little feat of drum corps history, and has always been there with a kind word, advice, a laugh, a cheer, what have you. In other words, the kind of guy the Cavaliers regularly turn out from their ranks, a man anyone would want in their corner.

Well, let's offer Gary an enthusiastic drum roll for his latest success. (I'd make it a fanfare, but then, we all know what an old stick-wielder would say to that.) Couldn't happen to a better guy.

And if you're all about sinking your eyes into a great story, pick up your copy of Playing with the Enemy. There are a few autographed editions of the hardcover left -- get them while you can! And a great paperback and audiobook to add to your collection.

And if you've got the time -- hopefully, I've given you the inclination -- stop by the Barnes & Noble on North State Route 50 in Bourbannais at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 31, and show your support for a great Cavalier. That's when the book tour kicks off -- fittingly, in his hometown. Visit www.playingwiththeenemy.com for more info.

Above is a look at Gary in his Classic Cavaliers duds -- playing the snare, second from left.

Grappling with the Revision Monster

Grappling with the Revision Monster

When it comes to my fiction, I am alternately driven and confounded, which I guess is as good a sign as any that it's worth pursuing.

I came into grad school scoffing at those who might write me off as merely a journalist, since my foundations were always in creative writing and fiction, and since I applied what I knew about that craft to the best of my nonfiction work. I think where I am now in my development is picking at the lock of revision, struggling to open the secrets that lie guarded there. Maybe there's a danger in making too much of this. You simply work at the material until it is ripe, until it moves, until it hits the target cleanly. But then, it must be a particularly sticky challenge since for many the material comes rather easily, but realizing the material's potential takes a great deal of time -- and work.

It is probably also a sign of my still-toughening skin in the matter of writing fiction that whenever I ask for criticism there is the blush of hope that my critic will be bowled over, and the material will have been born whole and perfect. And that when criticism comes, on the first read I fail to detect the positive feedback, and hear only the questions, and the cuts, and then despair that I'm truly in over my head, the secrets won't be unlocked, the way is barred.

Thankfully, I give criticism a second read, and then a third. And begin to calm down. And remember that if my journey has led me this far, perhaps equipped with a thicker skin I can make it a bit farther down the path.

Eventually you've got to shut out the demons you conjure to stymie yourself and focus on the real task at hand, that by dismissing your inner doubts as so much poisonous and unproductive black smoke, you can instead find the real and helpful voices that can lead you from a heap of drafts to a stack of finished pieces.

Yikes, maybe I spent too much time reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow this morning. (In an old supplementary reader, published 1880.) Stripping all the artifice away, I guess I'm saying: Do we ever get over that childlike voice in the heart of us wondering, "Am I any good? Do I have a shot?"

So many variations on the answer to that, when the only one that matters comes from myself. And with that weighty prelude, I dig in to revising, hoping that I find a way for the arrow to hit the mark.

Getting Linked for Literature

When I decided to jump the track of my journalism career and veer into the uncertain world of freelance writing, I was blessed to have an arsenal stocked with weapons and talismans that made life on the outside a little less shadowy.

Foremost, my wonderful wife, who is also a writer, understands me and my passion and supports what I do. I cannot stress enough how important this is.

Second, my "chops" were in pretty good order, since as a newspaper reporter, and a prolific one at that, I wrote every day. When I wasn't writing, I was interviewing, or laying the groundwork for writing. And when I wasn't doing either, I was dreaming about doing both. I had a nice foundation of six years eating, breathing and sleeping writing.

Along with the chops came discipline. I knew the only way to get a story out was to get it out on the page.

Fourth -- and I didn't mean when I started this blog for it to be so ordered -- I had a soft place to land when I left the Naperville Sun. I was already well into a book project, and I had made up my mind to apply to MFA programs in order to find myself a new community of writers and contacts (very important) and continue honing my craft. I also want to teach. Now, I hadn't been accepted to Columbia when I handed in my resignation, but I had made up my mind that no matter what, I was going to go for it, I would write my way through whatever came up. OK.

The good news for me is that it's work out so far. Oh, I still lie awake some nights gnashing my teeth over money, fretting over the impracticality of leaving a career where I was solidly contributing and getting immediate gratification for an industry where progress is solitary and slow. But that conviction remains: I will write my way through whatever comes up. And now that I'm nestled into my fourth semester of grad school, with my nonfiction book just out, and a few freelance credits to my name, I'm looking forward to what's next. And taking stock of what I know -- and can share.

This is all a lengthy preamble to spotlighting a few of the reasons I'm blogging in earnest this year. The literary reasons, anyway. At school, I have ample opportunity to swap contacts, share publishing stories (many of which, inevitably, are about rejection), get turned on to tips and secrets, compare notes on process and find that crucial audience of peers that can help lead you to breakthroughs in your craft. As I pointed out above, I was well on the way to finding these thigs for myself months before my first semester in the MFA program. I knew I couldn't thrive without them. Much of writing is lonely, but you can't hope to succeed at it without the (at times painfully) public side: submitting your work, querying agents and publishers, contacting the media (from the other side now, for me), interacting with readers, networking, reading your work aloud in public (for some of us, A THRILL; for others, an invitation to their own beheading).

Early on, though I made it my mission to write every day, no excuses, when the writing wound down I also made sure to put in some productive time researching the business. I buried my nose and affixed a forest of Post-Its to market guides like Writer's Market and Jeff Herman's Guide to Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents, and agent tomes like Betsy Lerner's The Forest for the Trees. I eyeballed the fine print at the front of story collections, noting the journals where my favorite authors were published, as well as where Best Of... compilations found their stories. I also did a great deal of research online, fattening my Favorites menu with book publishers, agents, journals to submit to, web sites of writers I love, useful blogs, places for industry news and legal advice -- anything relevant, I socked away.

Getting this blog up and running, partly due to my publisher's beginning blogs on the book biz from a publisher's perspective and insider tips on book marketing, reminded me that all the links populating my own, personal bandwidth could also benefit YOU. At school, we get our fill of this stuff, and thankfully. But even my classmates have connections and insights that I don't have; any chance we get, we mine each other. Well, now a lot of the stuff I have, I've laid out here, like a Thanksgiving spread you're welcome to belly up to: dig on in!

This morning, I expanded my "For Writers" list into four categories: agents, industry news & advice, other writers, and submitting. This is by no means an original or comprehensive set up. Many of these links will lead you to sites and blogs that have a wealth of other information, and that's by design. This collection represents a chunk of what I have and use at the moment -- and a lot of my loosely-organized system depends on my "site hopping", following one fruitful contact to get me to the next, and the next, and so on.

So, about the lists:

The Agents category mostly contains sites where agents blog. These are the ones I've been reading for a year or more now. They're windows into the publishing world. Agents blog about query letters, and manuscript reading, and sales, and the way they do their business. Very useful to know for writers attempting to break in. And at the top of the list is a useful place to start -- or even finish -- your search for representation. Who knows how long AgentQuery will be free? Check it out!

The news and advice list is pretty self-explanatory and could have been twice as long. Of particular use to me are the legal advice sites: I've linked right to the pages I draw stuff from. For Chicago writers in a pinch or a jam, Lawyers for the Creative Arts offers pro bono services.

The Other Writers list could also be longer, obviously. These are a few of my faves, many of whom, like T.C. Boyle and John McNally and Jim Butcher and Marcus Sakey, blog about the biz and share their own tales of publishing and offer insights into process. I may in the future link to some of my colleagues here -- up-and-coming writers you should put on your radar screen.

Lastly, because it's so long (and hardly complete), is a list of journals you might want to submit to, or indexes of the same. Some I've tried knocking at, others I'll get to, others are the dreams we should all keep dreaming. As with any, make sure you familiarize yourself with what they publish before sending your stuff on over. The clot of query letters is thick enough with uninformed writers gumming up the works. There's also a link in this section to The Unsung Critic, who champions the cause of beginning writers (particularly screenwriters): he (or she) reads manuscripts and writes a review on the site. If that's your bag, baby, crinkle it.

Feel free to drop me a comment or a line with your experience following these links or surfing the waters of rejection/acceptance. And in all cases, GOOD LUCK!

Confessions of a Chronic Page-Turner

One of the questions I get a lot as a writer, and that I also ask a lot of everybody else, writer or not, is “what are you reading?”

I admit to being a lot more curious about what others are reading than eager to share my own list. It’s such a personal thing to me, and how can I expect you to understand, or get down with what I’m reading, without a ten-minute mini-sermon on my influences, or book-buying habits, or some sheepish disclaimer about why you caught me reading a romance (it was for Popular Fiction class!) and why I enjoyed it (it was by Jennifer Crusie, a super-witty, highly humorous fellow Ohioan).

Nevertheless, I’ve been made to answer this question a lot since jumping the track as newspaper reporter (maybe they think reporters don’t read) and setting out on my own to write and publish a nonfiction book and return to grad school to teach and write a few more.

“What are you reading?” came up in my first tutoring session. My undergrad student confessed what, in all honesty, if we’re being honest with ourselves, we probably all feel: “I haven’t read much of the ‘good books,’ and I’m trying to catch up.” Well, what do you say to that? I’d hardly describe my reading list as being populated exclusively with writers in the literary canon, and just because I like something, doesn’t mean you will. Chances are it’s part of my own quirky make up as a writer, and I’d suggest that any writer serious about the craft cling to and take pride in their unique crushes in reading, while also staying open to trying new stuff.

It’s like Billy Joel said about music and food, and here I’m paraphrasing (I recently read his biography and I know this quote is in there, but fifteen minutes flipping and consulting the index yielded zip: why is that usually the case when there’s a specific thing you’re hunting?): there are so many flavors and varieties; why limit yourself to just one?

So how do I respond to the question?

In teaching, it’s about what you bring into the classroom. Through 40 years of its Story Workshop Method, Columbia College has developed an extensive reading list, with materials tested and proven to spark improvement in student writing. The range of stories and novels covers the forms writing can take – letters, dreams, model telling, folktale, story-within-a-story, etc. – and generally works with an eye toward giving students’ permission to write about the deep, personal stuff, to take that first crack at transcending self-censorship, which often blocks out our best stuff. So, you see selections like the ministratin’ episode, from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and “Tralala” from Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, as well as successful student pieces from the past, collected in the college’s award-winning Hair Trigger compilations. To these lists, tutors draw on their observations and hunches about tutees to bring their own selections, which are ideally ferreted out in the tutor training class beforehand. For example, I dipped into “The Vomitorium” chapter from John McNally’s The Book of Ralph to illustrate character, voice, place and movement. Reading for the classroom is partly about finding a connection to the elements that prove useful in your own writing.

On my own, though, I’m more of an impulse/committed reader when it comes to book devouring. I like to wander the aisles and run my fingers along spines, look at the names of authors and publishers, flip to a random page and see how the music of the voice moves me. On the romantic end, I’m a streaky reader, devoting myself to one author for a month or more, weighting my shelves with everything by that writer I can get my hands on. Some of these, I guess you could say, become my favorites, books and writers I’ll return to every year, for the rest of my life: John Updike, Ray Bradbury, Rick Bass, Nabokov, Capote, Michael Chabon, T.C. Boyle, Denis Johnson, Robert Olen Butler. Some are flings, no less passionate in the devouring, though fleeting in my obsession: Buzz Bissinger, John Feinstein, Philip Roth, Dave Barry, Annie Proulx, J.K. Rowling, Jonathan Lethem, Chris Abani, Tom Franklin.

Here are two characteristic examples of my book-buying/-reading habits from 2007.

First, my wife and vacationed in Maui for our fifth anniversary. We were walking past the tourist traps in downtown Lahaina – art galleries, T-shirt shops, eateries fine and profane – when I spied a used bookstore down an alley. We spent about an hour in there, and I walked out with: The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, by Jimmy Breslin; They Whisper, by Robert Olen Butler; Running With Scissors, by Augusten Burrows; and one other my shelves have since swallowed. Didn’t make my return-flight luggage any lighter (I was already toting three or so novels), but a nice mix of literary fiction, fiction by a wise-ass New York newspaper columnist (Breslin), and memoir.

Second instance: Columbia’s writing department sets up a used book sale every fall, and in addition to my usual back-breaking pack, I bought and bagged these to take home: Lake Wobegon Days, Garrison Keillor; The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan; Schindler’s List, Tom Keneally; three Richard Brautigan books bound in one edition; and two Creative Nonfiction journals, including vol. 1, issue 1. All for under $5. While I’m a sucker for buying new, I also kick my heels at buying used in a quantity to make my forearms sting without straining my wallet. I also dig “finding” books, like the giveaways frequently piled atop the table outside the department office. My idea of geekdom is becoming utterly absorbed with the “letters” issues put out by journals, like the Missouri Review edition chronicling correspondence from Alfred A. Knopf’s files. That, and reserving a place of honor on my bookshelf for the two volumes chronicling the best of the Ohio Review, which marked the grand finale of the journal in 2001.

So that’s what I mean about reading being personal. I could say a lot more about my choices above, and my patterns of reading (and planning to get to) them, but why? You’ve got your own page-turning peccadilloes, after all. Or at least you should. Nick Hornby spends a bit of time detailing his in The Polysyllabic Spree, which, after you’ve read about his bookish habits, and likely laughed a bit, too, you can always go out and acquire the stuff he’s been poking his nose in.
Lately, when “What are you reading?” comes up, I’ve been steering folks to a great source I found while researching a class oral report in November. The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (first public library in the nation, folks) keeps a nice selection of reading lists on its web site at http://www.clpgh.org/. Developed by librarians, there are lists targeted for teens like “Holden Caulfields for the New Age,” and “Believers and Doubters,” and “Thrillers and Mysteries for the Adrenaline Junkie.” On the adult side (look under “Discover More”), their categories in fiction & poetry (be sure to check under New Arrivals, too) include “Bodies! Where Would We Be Without Them?” Its description: “A bounty of fiction featuring the human body both inside and out, as vehicle, curse or blessing.” Its titles: The Illustrated Man (Bradbury); The Flawless Skin of Ugly People (Doug Crandell); and The Electric Michelangelo (Sarah Hall), among others.
With the aid of search engines, you’re never short a reading list these days. That’s a good thing, especially when considering sobering statistics like these, compiled by publishing researcher Dan Poynter:

* 1/3 of adults don’t read a book after high school.
* adults watch an average of 4 hours of TV a day.
* 80 percent of U.S. households didn’t buy a book at all in 2005.

Yikes. What more can I say about that? Ask away, perhaps. “What do you read?” is preferable to “Who’s Mark Twain?”

As a final blog-buster in a long entry, I’ve mostly been keeping track of what I’ve read each of the last five years, when I remember to write it down, which is more often than not. Perusing my list for the year just ended, I counted 11 short story collections, 28 novels, 14 nonfiction biography, memoir, journalism and letters, 3 writing reference/instruction. A good mix, and it varies every year. Here’s how it broke down for me, in mostly random order. With that, I consider the question answered... for now.



Where I’m Calling From
– Raymond Carver (second time)
Childhood and Other Neighborhoods
The Coast of Chicago
– Stuart Dybek
The Bell Jar
– Sylvia Plath
The Diary of a Madman... and Selected Stories
– Nikolay Gogol
Best of Hair Trigger
– Columbia College short stories, other stuff
Other Voices, Other Rooms
In Cold Blood (second time)
Collected Stories
– Truman Capote
Truman Capote: Conversations (collected interviews)
Conversations with Capote (ed. Lawrence Grobel)
Capote (by Gerald Clarke)
Too Brief a Treat (Capote letters, ed. by Clarke)
A Bridge to Childhood (by one of Capote’s relatives, about his childhood)
– books about Capote!
The Bluest Eye
– Toni Morrison (second time)
“Bartleby, the Scrivener”
– Herman Melville
“The Metamorphosis”
– Franz Kafka (fourth time?)
Mystic River
– Dennis Lehane (third time)
Jesus’ Son
– Denis Johnson
Men and Cartoons
The Fortress of Solitude
– Jonathan Lethem
All the King’s Men
-- Robert Penn Warren
The Book of Ralph
America’s Report Card
-- John McNally
The Lost Grizzlies
The Ninemile Wolves
-- Rick Bass
Becoming Abigail
Graceland
-- Chris Abani
Aspects of the Novel
-- E.M. Forster (third time)
The Bronx is Burning
-- Jonathan Mahler
Little Children
-- Tom Perrotta
The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight
-- Jimmy Breslin
They Whisper
-- Robert Olen Butler
Cobb
-- Al Stump (fourth time)
Running with Scissors
-- Augusten Burroughs
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007
-- collected stories
Welcome to Temptation
-- Jennifer Crusie
Writing from Start to Finish (second time)
Writing from Start to Finish: Teacher’s Manual
-- John Schultz
The Blade Itself
-- Marcus Sakey
Kill Me
-- Stephen White
A Darkness More than Night
-- Michael Connelly
Go Tell it on the Mountain
-- James Baldwin
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (third time)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (second time)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (second time)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
-- J.K. Rowling
Storm Front
-- Jim Butcher
Rats
-- Robert Sullivan (second time)
The Golden Compass
The Subtle Knife
-- Philip Pullman
Billy Joel: The Biography
-- Mark Bevo
Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription
-- William F. Buckley Jr.