How I Became a Famous Novelist (6 page)

And this woman, I decided, who sits at a bookstore and assaults muffins and reads, was my target audience.

Of course such a woman would be enthralled by the idea of a club. All lonely people wish they were in a cool club. I certainly do—we’d have neat jackets and nicknames. That’s why readers are the top club-formers of America.

Of course she’d like secrets and mysterious missions. For loners, the next best thing to belonging to a club is guarding a dark secret or a mission, which makes shyness a heroic necessity. Perhaps she had a dark secret of her own—a house full of cat bodies stacked like firewood.

Of course she’d like sudden love stories. The Muffin Ripper wasn’t spending Thursdays fending off dudes at José McIntyre’s Margarita Night. For a love story to be plausible to her, it had to arrive suddenly, and the man needed to be bundled with another dose of dark secrets, to explain what took him so long. The best-seller list is always peopled with divorcées and wounded women who, on storm-tossed islands or the hills of Italy, find to their surprise that olive-toned men want to make careful Cambrian love to them.

If that’s what she wanted, I’d give it to her.

Tipping my cup to the woman who’d set my mind ablaze, twitching with creativity and caffeine, I folded up my book review and headed for the aisles.

I wasn’t so arrogant as to think my own first effort would stay on the best-seller list. Not for more than a week or two. I had a more realistic objective: getting hired as the writing
professor at a prestigious college. Williams, or Princeton, someplace kinda away from it all seemed nice. I’d read enough campus novels to expect sexual frolicking and light work.

But becoming a professor called for a particular kind of book, a “literary” book. These books can be identified in two ways. One: at the end of a work of literary fiction, you’re supposed to feel weirdly sad, and perhaps cry, but not for any clear reason.

Rule 6: Evoke confusing sadness at the end.

Two: the word “lyrical” appears on the back cover of literary fiction.

Rule 7: Prose should be lyrical.

Since the definition of “lyrical” is “resembling bad poetry,” I could crank it out. Just for practice, in my head I tried describing what the Muffin Ripper was doing, right then.
“Back arching like a perched swallowtail, her hand hovered with quivering gentility as she picked up a dropped raisin off the sheet-white floor. She raised it to her lips slowly, like a sacrament, as the dust of wheat flour drifted down her chin.”
Good enough.

Now that I’d started cracking the Code of the Novel, insights seemed to burst out at me off the shelves like firecrackers. Walking through the audiobooks, I realized that here was an entire market ordinary novelists didn’t plan for. There was a whole bunch of people who listened to books in their cars.

Rule 8: Novel must have scenes on highways, making driving seem poetic and magical.

Next, I bumped into the cookbooks, an overwhelming wall where in one eyeful were pictures of pastas and steaming meat stews
and mac and cheese next to piles of gravy-smothered biscuits. I decided to get some lunch. The human brain is easily lured by food. And people are fat these days and think about food all the time.

Rule 9: At dull points include descriptions of delicious meals.

Rounding the corner, I knocked some oversized volumes on
The Art of Pork
to the floor. Nearby a bookstore employee looked up from his reshelving with a flat expression. Bookstores are filled, customers and employees alike, with people who hate their jobs.

Rule 10: Main character is miraculously liberated from a lousy job.

I walked away as he picked up the books.

Rule 11: Include scenes in as many reader-filled towns as possible.

On my way out I passed “Local Interest,” right by the register. Here were books of old photographs of Boston, a collection of poetry by and about the Red Sox, a history of Newbury Street, and a few Boston-related novels, like
Murdah by Chowdah
and
Bud Light, Freckles and Hair Gel: A Southie Love Story.

I realized this was shelf space rife for exploiting. My novel should be “Local Interest” across the nation. I’d inject the names of popular bars in Ann Arbor and Austin and Portland and have our hero stop in for a beer or some chili fries. Impressed by my authenticity, locals would write up my novel for their local independent press. And I’d get free meals from grateful owners while on my book tour.

Time for a Chacarero! These tasty Chilean sandwiches are served from a stand near Filene’s, and at lunchtime the line stretches around a corner, following the track of the wafting smoke from the grilled steak and spiced chicken. It was one of those creepily warm winter days, and though this was a Saturday, the line was still full of discharged office dwellers with crossed arms and dangling ID badges.

I gave my protagonist a job. He should be like these harried types who eat lunch on the fly. Corporate, but in some vague capacity since I don’t know how real businesses work. “Human Relations” seemed safe. But he should also be totally awesome. A dexterous athlete and a soulful lover, with the wisdom of a mystic and the abs of a rock climber. He should have a set of unusual skills, like underwater caving. The schoolchildren who made J. K. Rowling a billionaire were the ultimate proof of.

Rule 12: Give readers versions of themselves, infused with extra awesomeness.

Awesome heroes stuck in mediocre lives are compelling, because they suggest that having a mediocre life may not be your fault.

In a way this was all just a subset of a rule all authors should memorize.

Rule 13: Target key demographics.

Ideally my protagonist would be somehow “multicultural.” Unusual racial backgrounds garner at least pretend interest from all readers. But as a standard-issue white male, I didn’t have much to offer. There was one black guy I knew well—my college
roommate, Derek. But no one wants to read about a black guy who went to Exeter and wore a bathing suit and a Star Wars T-shirt and spent all his time playing World of Warcraft. There’s only one interesting story about Derek.

The One Interesting Story About Derek

In junior year, he resolved to lose his virginity. He took a bus to Mount Holyoke, vowing not to return until he had achieved his goal. After a week spent sleeping in trees and dodging the campus police, he acquired a kind of folk-legend status, and a “not unpretty” woman in his words took pity on him to the approval and acclaim of all.

The point being, my protagonist would have to be a white guy.

I named him Silas Quilter. Silas had literary connotations that made readers feel smart. Quilter was the author’s last name on a book about rare coins I’d seen on the bargain shelf. Vague—lots of ethnic groups could get behind it.

By the time I got my sandwich, I’d earned it—earned the savory flatbread, seasoned beef, Muenster cheese, tomatoes, roasted red peppers, and green beans, all awash in spicy sauce and guacamole. I gave thanks to the Chilean people with each flavorful bite as I walked into the nearby Barnes & Noble.

Rule 14: Involve music.

Playing over the speakers was gentle adult rock with a folksy twang, a banjo in the background. This is what the NPR-listening, book-reading crowd likes best, tunes given a veneer
of hipness with some “authentic” element, but without the embarrassing emotions of country or the irritating cacophony of world music. So that’s what I’d include. It would sound good on the soundtrack when they turned my novel into a movie.

In the travel guides section, I picked up four Pathfinders books:
Corsica, Sardinia & the Balearic Islands, Northern Peru, Hilltowns of Tunisia,
and
Coastal Slovenia.

Rule 15: Must have obscure exotic locations.

Americans trust knowledge acquired abroad. The Mediterranean, in particular, has a potent sun-dried magic for them, as evidenced by their love of Andrea Bocelli and the Olive Garden. Even kids like Chef Boyardee. But as with any pornography, readers need increasingly weird and kinky thrills. Tuscany and the French Riviera don’t arouse anymore. I’d never been anywhere more exotic than Epcot Center, but how many readers would know I was fudging about the teeming markets of Sartène or the smell of
carapulca
in Trujillo?

Rule 16: Include plant names.

I also bought
Field Guide to American Trees, Plants, and Shrubs.
Sometime around 1970, writers decided it was crucial to include specific plant names. Take this example, from Cready’s
Manassas:
“Bivouacked amongst the mockernut hickory and the sourwood as the sun melted over the Rappahannock, Ezekiel still smelled the distant hints of trampled chickweed, torn up by the cavalry when old Jeb Stuart rode by last April.”

It was three-fifteen. I’d broken the craft of the novel down into sixteen easy-to-follow rules. I decided to go home and watch TV.

But on the subway a fear gripped me: the fear of falling short. Arriving at the Pawson wedding as a renowned author would be glorious. But the specter of ending up a failed novelist, that most pathetic of creatures, made me tremble. I imagined telling wedding guests the title of my novel, and receiving a dim look and “I’ll have to look for it” as they jumped away into a conversation about the shrimp Gruyère puffs. I imagined Polly and Lucy and Derek sending cheery e-mails (“loved it, duder” . . . “so vivid! now you’re in publishing after all!” . . . “can’t believe you’re a
PUBLISHED AUTHOR
!”) while texting each other to commiserate and worry about my sanity. I imagined the bearded Brooks himself coming across my efforts by chance, and letting out a hearty laugh as he glanced at my puny attempt to enter his charlatan’s Valhalla.

Perhaps in composing my rules, I’d held back too much.

Like a soldier on the eve of battle my instinct was to stuff my pockets with extra ammunition. Consider the Chacarero. With just grilled steak and Muenster cheese, it would achieve a certain modest success as a sandwich. But they didn’t stop there. Added were tomatoes, and roasted peppers. More than enough. Yet still, they added green beans—green beans, on a sandwich!—and
two
kinds of sauce. It’s the excess that sold it. That’s what kept the lines around the corner. Hold nothing back. That’s how you get your novel on the sacred table.

I took out the folded-up best-seller list from my pocket, this time looking at nonfiction. Anything people liked. I started writing.
World War II. Football. America. The afterlife. Wise lessons learned. Food again. Sex.

I needed more. Maybe readers weren’t a diverse enough pool. What did people watch on TV?
Crime. People accused of crimes they didn’t commit. Pursuits. Las Vegas. Natural disasters—earthquakes, tornadoes, etc. Families. Gentle humor.

My eyes darted around the subway car. A girl across from me was spread out along the bench, sketching the river as we rode across the bridge.
Art.
Next to her was an elderly couple. What do old people like?
Old people.
I went back and crossed off
Sex,
and wrote in
Telling stories.
At Charles/MGH two middle-aged women got on clutching Old Navy bags.
Bargains.

What kind of characters do people want?
Hoboes.
Hoboes had been popular since cartoons were invented. Lately they’d been enjoying an ironically appreciated renaissance.
Bounty hunters.
Always compelling.

I remembered something I’d read about a huge percentage of books being given as gifts.
Christmas.

My mind was now churning so furiously that I missed my stop. I got off at the next one and walked a mile home, staring down at the pavement, trying to slide all the pieces into place. By the time I walked in my door, I had it.

4

Outline

After a murder at the Las Vegas hotel where he works, Silas Quilter is accused of a crime he didn’t commit and forced to turn to the only person he has left—his grandmother. She makes him a bargain—she’ll help him stay ahead of the law if he’ll help her on a mysterious mission to bring a soul to the afterlife. Together they embark on a quest along America’s highways, drawn along the way by the haunting sounds of a beautiful country singer. As they dodge bounty hunters, we hear the tale that brought them together, a story of lost love that begins in the hobo camps of the Depression and on mud-stained college football fields, crisscrossing through the fury of World War II France to the islands of the Mediterranean and the kitchens and vineyards of Peru, a saga whose heartbreaking but uplifting end can only come in the swirl of a tornado, sweeping across the milkweed and the bluestem of the prairie on a Christmas morning.

A stunning literary debut, told with lyrical prose, gentle humor, and an artist’s eye,
The Tornado Ashes Club
is a novel for anyone who’s had love or lost it, learned a wise lesson or a dark secret, or felt the magic of the story that is America.

—Outline for
The Tornado Ashes Club
by Pete Tarslaw

My problem was that I didn’t know how to write a novel. I knew writers drank whiskey and sat around in bars, so I took a notebook and went down to The Colonial Boy, a pub with a half-assed Revolutionary theme on Mass. Ave.

I chose this place because I knew no one would be there, so I wouldn’t overhear any actual conversation that might confuse me as I tried to put down lyrical prose. I ordered a Jameson from the indifferent bartendress and took a seat in a booth under a print of the Boston Massacre, which was across from a photo of Carlton Fisk.

My basic plan for the whole thing: Silas and his grandmother are driving around the country avoiding bounty hunters. Along the road, they pick up a beautiful country singer, Genevieve (solid literary name). Genevieve and Silas fall in love. As the three of them drive around, the grandmother tells Silas the story of her long-ago lover, a man named Luke (biblical but still sounds cool). Whenever I wanted I could cut to Luke’s awesome adventures in World War II, in France or Peru or Sardinia. That would keep readers from getting bored.