The silence of the Lambs

Recently I had the pleasure of being interviewed on Megan Willingham’s AdviceRadio program, Writers, Authors N’ More.

Strike that.

I’ve recently twice had that pleasure.

Back up.

I should explain first that Megan’s show is a full hour. That means that I’ve spent two full hours on the air with her chatting up my book, Lost in the Ivy.

If you know me, you know I’m not the chatty type. Five minutes on the phone and I start getting antsy. Ten minutes and I’ll do just about anything to get off the line. “Um, I've got to go. My cat just coughed up a hairball the size of a small planet.”

So it’s an extraordinary accomplishment that Megan managed to pull out of me two hours worth of valuable air time.

If you don’t believe that I can maintain a conversation for a full hour, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll send you a copy of the second interview free of charge. Really. Just click on the e-mail link to your left, write “Send me a CD,” along with your mailing address, and I’ll get a copy out to you ASAP. (Why don’t I just upload the interview to my Web site? I tried that but it seems the file is too large. That’s why I’m offering the CD to my readers at no cost, except for the time it takes to send me an e-mail.)

Now where was I? Oh, yes, I was about to explain how I came to be on Megan’s show not once but twice within a six-week period.

Go back to mid-September when I called in for the first time to Megan’s show. A few minutes after my call-in I hear Megan introducing not me but Bette and J.J. Lamb, authors of Heir Today. Initially I thought that they’d scribed a book about the strands that grow out of one’s epidermis but I learned later that the couple had written a P.I. tale about a twisted inheritance scheme.

I am not a Lamb. Though I’ve been known to become sheepish when put in an uncomfortable situation. Like this one.

My thinking, as I listened to dead air, was that the Lambs would eventually chime in and then I’d be introduced. Instead, I got nothing but silence from the Lambs. I was Hannibal Lecter munching on dead air.

After a minute or two that seemed like an eternity, Megan’s assistant interrupted and mentioned that I was on the line. This is followed by the unmistakable sound of scrambling in the radio studio, which was then followed by Megan returning to the air and announcing that she was cutting to a commercial break.

By this time I’d been on-the-air live for nearly five minutes without speaking a word when Megan returns and apologizes profusely to her listening audience as well as to her guest, little ol’ me.

It turns out there’d been a scheduling mix-up and, as a result, Megan knew nothing about me or my book. Despite this seeming adversity, she plowed forward and somehow filled in the remaining 55 minutes of air space with me. The interview, not surprisingly, was awkward at times (more than once she referred to Chicago’s baseball-playing Cubs as the football-playing Bears), but it wasn’t, in my humble opinion, a complete waste of air space.

I figured that was the end of the story but then a couple weeks later I got an e-mail from my publicist informing me that Megan had invited me back on the show. I’m sure this had more to do with her trying to make up for the initial mix-up than it did my natural wit and charm. But there I was back on Megan’s show for my second hour in the radio spotlight. This time, fortunately, the light shined much brighter.

Here’s how Megan introduced me the second time around:

“Randy, I must tell you I read your book in one sitting. I loved it. I fell in love with it and I couldn’t stop reading it…You captured me.”

Intros don’t come much nicer than that. And the rest of the interview lived up to the intro. Megan found a way to bring all that I’d put into the book come out for her listeners. That’s a true testament to her talents as an interviewer and to her love of books and the craft of writing.

There’s no need for a third time. I’d gotten my charm on the second one.

Winding down

I finally got around to cleaning up my Appearances page and it struck me that it's almost over.

My mini-book tour, that is.

Almost two months ago I started down a path I'd never taken before. It began with a launch party in my hometown of Evanston, Ill. From there I went with book in tow to Rockford, Ill., Joliet, Ill., Winnetka, Ill., Milwaukee, Wisc., Waynesboro, Va., and Washington, D.C.  

And then there were two.

Stops, that is. Two places left on my Appearances page before I close the book on my Lost travels.

Lost, indeed.

I went into this directionless, without a compass. The path was not always a smooth one. But it's been an adventure like none I've ever taken, and I don't think I'd do any of it differently even if given the opportunity to do it over again. I've met so many truly inspiring people along the way and gotten support from so many family members and friends. Selling books is nice, but the greatest reward that I've gotten from writing a book is that it has connected and reconnected me with so many people. Value: priceless.

So where do I go from here?

On Saturday, I'm joining up with one of those connections, John Knoerle. A couple weeks ago we were paired for a book signing in Winnetka, which I wrote about in a previous blog entry. I invited him to join me on my next stop at The Bookstore, 475 N. Main St., Glen Ellyn, Ill. He liked the idea and so did the owner of The Bookstore. We'll be at The Bookstore at 1 p.m., reading excerpts from our books, taking questions and, of course, signing books.

The last stop is Saturday, November 19, when I'll be one of the authors at a free book fair at the Chicago Cultural Center,  Michigan and Randolph, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Hosted by Illinois Woman's Press Association, the event features "Meet-the-Authors" guest MC from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Diantha Parker of WBEZ. Guest speaker from 1-2 p.m. is June Skinner Sawyers, author of Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader and Chicago Portraits: Biographies of 250 Famous Chicagoans.

After that I return to my true love: writing. The next novel has been on the back burner for the last few months as I've put all of my energies into promotion during that time. I'll still be doing a book conference here and there, but for the most part the promotion for book No. 1 will be done.

I'm looking forward to getting back to work on that elusive book No. 2. Maybe someday you'll see me on the road again with book No. 2 in tow. For the time being, though, I'll be happy just sitting at home, at my desk, punching away at the keyboard and seeing what kind of adventures my brain has in store for me.   

A new review

Another review of Lost in the Ivy is out. This one comes from AllBooks Review. 

Hey, I wouldn't be posting a link to it if it wasn't a good one.

Or would I?

Guess you'll have to read it and see for yourself.

A mystery writer has to keep his readers guessing, right?

A Cubs fan finds hope in Sox' success

After eighty-eight years, Chicago has a baseball champion.

That’s a long time to wait.

You’d think it would cause euphoria – and perhaps in some neighborhoods it did (although probably only those that are geographically south of Chicago’s Loop). As I understand it, there were spontaneous (and in some cases not-so-spontaneous) eruptions of joy in the city and beyond.

Not in my neighborhood, on the northern border of Chicago. All was quiet on Wednesday night up here. Not a creature was stirring, certainly not a Cubs fan.

No, I awoke Thursday feeling refreshed. No hangover. A solid eight hours of sleep.

Am I happy for the White Sox?

I get that question a lot.

Should I be happy for them? I don’t know how to answer that one. To me, they’re just any other baseball team – one that’s not my team.

Yes, the Cubs and the Sox share the same city. But to me, they’re worlds apart.

I am happy for my friends who are Sox fans. They’d suffered enough.

Other than sharing the same city, that’s the one thing Cubs and Sox fans shared until this year: losing. The two Chicago baseball teams had gone longer than any other teams in baseball without winning a World Series: a combined 185 years.

Last year, when the Boston Red Sox fought off the supposed “Curse of the Bambino” to ride to World Series glory, the media made much ado about how long their poor fans had suffered without a championship. But the Beantown fans didn’t have to wait as long as the fans from the South Side of Chicago.

Futility, it is called. And no baseball city has known futility better than Chicago.

In four magical nights, though, the White Sox swept aside not only the Houston Astros but also the notion that losing and baseball necessarily go hand-in-hand in the Windy City. That's a positive step forward for Chicago baseball.

For the past couple decades, the South Side baseball fans have suffered not only from not winning. But they also had to live in the shadow of that North Side team.

There’s little doubt that the South Side baseball fans have been afflicted with an inferiority complex. Although Chicago is technically a two-baseball team town, in recent years it hasn’t seemed that way. All of the attention has been poured on those so-called loveable losers, the endearing Cubbies.

Some Sox fans might hate the Cubs and vise versa. What I hate is the term loveable losers. If it isn't an oxymoron, it should be. Some people actually seem to believe that there are Cubs fans who revel in losing. I don't get that theory. Sure, there may be some masochists our there who like the thought of rolling in cow dung, but those are some truly sick people. 

On the other side, many Sox fans grew to resent their North Side counterparts over the years. It's hard for me to understand how one loser can be jealous of another, but that's basically what happened.

How did it happen? I guess it can be traced to the image of the Sox being the ugly step-sister to the pretty and likeable Cubs. But it wasn't always this way. And it didn't have to be this way.   

To understand the Sox’ decline in Chicago the White Sox need to look in the mirror.

The Sox’ team owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, over the course of the last decade put on a textbook course on how to lose a fan base.

First, in 1988, Reinsdorf threatened to move the Sox to Florida, a tactic to gain momentum for a new ballpark.

Second, in 1992, the Sox traded its most promising (although at the time raw and inconsistent) slugger, Sammy Sosa, to their cross-town rivals for the aging, breaking-down George Bell. Six years later, of course, Sosa and Mark McGuire would captivate a nation in a home run battle for the ages that would revive a sport damaged by strike (more on that coming). Although Sosa’s legacy would end up crippled by a corked-bat controversy and rumors of steroid use, he single-handedly brought the Cubs franchise back to life. Fans started coming through the turnstiles just to see Sosa and didn’t stop even after he got run out of town

Third, in 1994, Reinsdorf became the catalyst behind the1994-95 baseball strike. Ironically, the White Sox were in first place in the strike-shortened 1994 season – a year that many considered the Sox to be legitimate contenders. After the strike, Reinsdorf broke up the team and began a rebuilding effort that bore little fruit until … well, until the 2005 season.

So Chicago became a Cubs town largely because the Sox’ brain trust (and I use that term loosely) did everything in its power to turn off its fan base.

Perhaps winning will bring the fans back to the South Side and make this once again a true two-baseball team town. That, in my view as a Cubs fan, would be the second best thing that could happen as a result of the Sox’ success in 2005.

The best thing that could come of the Sox winning the World Series, from my perspective as a Cubs fan, would be that winning finally becomes contagious in Chicago baseball. Few things would make me happier than to have the Cubs shake that image of loveable losers.

In the last two years, the baseball gods seem to have tried to make amends for past wrongs. Before last year, the Red Sox hadn’t won it all since 1918. Before this year, the White Sox hadn’t held the trophy since 1917.

Two down. One to go.

Cubs’ players haven’t worn World Series rings since 1908. By all historical rights, next year really, truly should be the Cubs’ year.

And that’s why this Cubs fan was quietly rooting for that other Chicago team.

Congratulations, White Sox!

Only in America

Chicago to Milwaukee to Washington, D.C. One week and three stops on my mini-book tour in support of my fiction debut, Lost in the Ivy.

Reverse the order of the cities and you have a rough road map of my life.

I was born in 1961, in Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. By 1967, I’m living in an apartment in West Allis, Wisconsin, just outside of Milwaukee. By 1970, my residence is a townhouse in Country Club Hills, Illinois, a south suburb of Chicago. And I’m not even ten years old.

I hadn’t planned on my mini-book tour retracing the path of my life. It just worked out that way.

In fact, the connection didn’t even hit me until I got to Milwaukee. When the realization struck, I can’t say that a wave of nostalgia overcame me.

If the dimmer switch has darkened most of the memories of my childhood days in Milwaukee, there is barely a flicker of recollections of my infant and toddler days in D.C. There’s a worn album of faded photographs, and there are the stories my parents told me of being at the funeral procession for JFK, at the age of two.

That’s the history that I carried with me when I traveled to the nation’s capitol this past weekend.

On Friday afternoon, my plane landed at Dulles Airport. From there my journey took me on a two and a half hour drive to Waynesboro, Virginia, a small town nestled in the scenic and historic Shenandoah Valley.

Until a few months ago, I had never even heard of Waynesboro. So how did I end up there?

It all began a few months back with an e-mail that had been sent through my Web site. Addressed from Officer Mark Kearney of the Waynesboro Police Department, it was an invitation to come to Book ‘Em, an innovative book fair designed to raise awareness about the link between high illiteracy rates and high crime rates. Participating authors donate a minimum of 40 percent of the sales price of all books sold, money that goes directly to literacy programs.

So that’s how the whole journey began. To this day, I’m not at all clear on how Officer Kearney even found me. But he did, so there I was in Waynesboro, on a chilly, soggy fall day, along with seventy-four other authors.

I was paired at a table with Paul Doyle, who had come by train from Boston. An ex-prizefighter who looks like he still packs quite a punch, Doyle recounts his days in the 1970s as an undercover operative with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration in his book Hot Shots and Heavy Hits: Tales of an Undercover Drug Agent. I haven’t read his book yet, but, judging by some of the stories he shared with me while passing the time at Book ‘Em, I’m certain it’s a good read.

Other authors I met included fellow mystery writers Robert W. Walker, an ex-Chicagoan who has authored an incredible forty-three books (no, that’s not a misprint) and Maureen Robb, who, it turns out, once wrote for the agriculture magazine in California where my father now serves as managing editor (a small world, indeed). If you haven’t read either of them before, give them a try. You might just find that you like what they have to offer. Too many readers out there get stuck in a rut and just keep reading the same old, tired stuff. Experiment a little.

And I met a very interesting author from Richmond, Virginia, who was seated at the table next to me and goes by the unforgettable name of B.L.U.N.T., which, I found out, stands for Black Lady Under New Terms. She describes her approach as “straight up with no chaser,” and that about says it all. Check her out.

If you include me, that accounts for roughly 7 percent of the authors in attendance. There were many others that I had the great fortune of chatting with and many others that, due to time constraints or logistics, I never got the chance to even meet (next time, hopefully).

If there was any disappointment, it was that I didn’t sell more books. This was a familiar refrain I heard from many authors. Turnout, for reason or reasons unknown, was down considerably compared to the event’s first year. As an example, I participated in a panel discussion with five other mystery/suspense writers, in an expansive high school auditorium, and counted eight people in the audience.

Children’s authors seemed to fare better than those of us who write adult stories, and perhaps that’s the way it should be at a book fair whose purpose is to promote literacy. Still, you want to sell a lot of books, because, well, that’s the main reason you come. If people don’t come, you don’t sell books and the literacy programs that would benefit from those sales don’t get as much money.

Unfortunately, people just didn’t come. Certainly not in the numbers that we all thought they would.

In some ways, I feel most sorry for those who didn’t come. Truly, it is their loss. Kearney and his supporting cast put on a great show. Hopefully next time more will see it.

Officer Kearney sent an e-mail to all participating authors afterward. Although he sounded a little discouraged by the turnout, he was not down and not even close to being beaten. He is one of the most upbeat, optimistic people I’ve ever dealt with, and I suppose you have to be that way to do his job.

“You will hear more from me over the next few days, weeks, months etc.,” he wrote. “No matter what, you are a part of what I am doing. I’m determined to make the future of this country better in whatever way I can. So, thanks for helping me out and thanks for being a part of this. “

It was that kind of hopeful thinking that got me to come out to Waynesboro in the first place.

From Waynesboro, I drove in darkness through country roads that took me through parts of Virginia where my ancestors roamed some three hundred years ago, if the genealogical research done by my mother and I is accurate.

Late Saturday night, I made it to my birthplace, Alexandria, where I was lodging for two nights. I ordered room service and crashed.

Overnight, the skies finally cleared. Bright and early that morning, I beat the tourist buses and toured The Capitol Mall for the first time since I was a toddler. Take away the politicians, and it’s a pretty amazing place.

From there, I went to a less impressive mall, The Shops at Georgetown Center, where I did a book signing at Waldenbooks. I didn’t have huge expectations for this but I at the very least thought that the bookstore would know I was coming. They didn’t, even though my publicist had confirmed with them – not once, not twice, but three times. Which just goes to show that you should never have any expectations when it comes to book tours.

I will say that the assistant manager at Waldenbooks was quite apologetic and accommodating and quickly tried to make amends by setting up a table for me. In two hours there, I sold a couple of books. One went to a friend of a friend who was kind enough to make a special trip to see me. The other went to a woman who was touring D.C. with her son, Raffi, to whom she wanted the book signed.

Before I learned that she was from Austria, I asked the woman if her son is a baseball fan.

“No, I think he is now a fan of America, though,” she said.

Now there is at least one copy of my book in a home somewhere in Austria.

I signed eight other books that were put on display by the front desk, and then drove off to my final stop, which I thought was going to be a bookstore but turned out to be a Middle Eastern restaurant that used to also be a bookstore. A few weeks ago they went out of the bookstore business. That brings us back to rule No. 1: Never have any expectations when it comes to book tours.

I didn’t sell any books at that Middle Eastern restaurant, but I got a really nice dinner on the house. Unfortunately I came two days too late for the belly dancing. Next time I’ll have to plan better.