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Guest Post: Michael A. Ferro on the Side Effects of Publishing

If you’re a writer, you dream of publishing your work. Maybe an essay, hopefully a collection of stories, definitely a novel. If you’re a writer like me, you figure the putting the words in good order is the hardest part– get the book finished (dammit!) and *then* you’ll be on easy street. Traveling the road to publication though is…well, not necessarily fraught with potholes or full of dead ends; the book will still reach the shelves of readers. But when an author (say, Michael A. Ferro) steps up to the podium at his next reading to share an excerpt, he first may lean in close to the mic and whisper a warning.

Welcome Michael A. Ferro as he talks about the side effects of publishing. Tune in to the end and enter the giveaway for a chance to win a copy of his debut novel, TITLE 13.

My Eye Exploded
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love (or Cope) with Publishing

It was mid-May of 2017 and I could not have been more excited: I’d signed a contract a few months prior to have my debut novel, TITLE 13, published by the wonderful press, Harvard Square Editions. My dream had come true. (And thankfully it wasn’t that one recurring dream where I turn into a hot dog and get eaten by a kid at a minor league baseball game.) Since I’d signed the contract at the beginning of 2017, I was feverishly working on preparing for the big publication date nearly a year in the future on February 1, 2018. One of the biggest tasks to complete was working with my unbelievably talented editor to get the manuscript finalized for the first printing of advanced reading copies. As someone who also works a full-time job, I thought I’d prepared myself for the amount of work that would go into getting my novel published.

I was stupid, naïve, and wrong.

One day near the end of the editing process and in the midst of other book-related activities, I noticed that I suddenly couldn’t see out of my left eye. It happened without warning. Through my left eye, all I could see was a large black “burn” spot like the kind one gets after they’ve been starting at the sun for a while. I remember thinking: Hmm, this seems not right. I asked myself whether I had been staring at the sun that day like an idiot. No, I hadn’t. Plus, it was dark out and I’d been working at my computer. Had I accidentally poked my eye with a toothpick? I wondered. Nope. The ordeal puzzled me more so at first rather than terrified me. Perhaps I just needed to sleep. As many writers know, long hours in front of a computer screen spent well into the night can often produce some oddball oculary concerns. I went to bed and thought nothing else of it.

When I woke the next morning, I still couldn’t see out of my left eye. Concerned, I did what any rational person in my situation would do: I ran to Google. After a bit of searching I was convinced I had cancer of the eye (as well as a nasty case of Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever), so I finally decided to visit a doctor (but not before I did a quick Google search for affordable, unadorned coffins). After being sent to the emergency room and seeing ophthalmologists for hours of observation and tests, they claimed they had just a few more questions for me.

“So, Michael, tell me: are you under a lot of stress?” asked the doctor.

Being a manly man, I didn’t want to appear weak, so I sort of shrugged off the question.

“Eh, I’m okay. How are you?”

“Michael…” the doctor said, looking impatient as I wasted their valuable time.

“I suppose you could say that I am a complete and total wreck, riddled with uncontrollable anxiety and fear,” I surrendered.

“I see,” the doctor said. “And would you categorize yourself as a ‘worrier,’ or someone who can be obsessive about certain things?”

I was too busy rearranging the tongue depressors, cotton balls, and other medical equipment on the examination table to listen. The doctor seemed satisfied with his assessment and made a note on his paper. He said he’d finally diagnosed my problem: Central Serous Chorioretinopathy.

As I heard the news, I prepared to call my mother and ask that the family bury me in my inflatable Tyrannosaurus Rex costume and that my house and all my belongings be placed in a trust for my faithful dog, Rube. Thankfully, the doctor informed me that I wasn’t going to die. Rather, he stated that CSR was, unfortunately, somewhat common in white males between 30-50 years of age who are not only highly stressed, but tend to be a bit obsessive compulsive and anxious by nature. Unfortunately, I could tick off all those boxes.

While there is no cure for CSR, I was told that my vision might return in time. As the doctor explained, some individuals release higher levels of cortisol (known as “the stress hormone”) than others, and that it can build up on the back of the eye, causing a rupture in the retina that allows fluid to pool under the central macula, effectively blinding the patient. The most important thing, the doctor emphasized, was that I needed to reduce my stress levels. He asked if this would be possible. I replied, “Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I have a book coming out next year and it’s quite an effort to do everything involved with that and also work a full-time job.”

“Oh, really?” said the doctor, noticeably interested now. “What do you write?”

“Literary fiction. The book is a novel.”

“Ah, what’s it about?” he asked.

I always find it hard to describe my novel to strangers. TITLE 13 is an eclectic mishmash of satire and emotional realism that follows the oft-absurd story of a young alcoholic named Heald Brown who lives in downtown Chicago and works for the federal government. And while there’s plenty of postmodern, Kafkaesque tragicomedy within the pages, much of the novel also centers around the brutal realities of addiction and the divisive nature that has consumed our society and poisoned our culture in a broken modern America.

“It’s a book about a stupid idiot,” I said to the doctor after a long pause. We looked blankly at one another.

“Ah, I see,” he said, his eyes returning to his clipboard. I was discharged shortly after.

Since then, I’ve been seeing an ophthalmologist monthly for regular checkups (not the same ophthalmologist—he’d had enough of me). My vision has improved somewhat and fluctuated from good to bad again, and odds are it will remain this way for the rest of my life I’m told. Still, all things considered, it could be much worse. I could be turned into a hot dog and eaten by a kid at a baseball game.

Plenty of writers, male and female, have similar dispositions: anxious, detail-oriented, and prone to high levels of stress. Whether it’s approaching deadlines, concerns over a career path or level of success, or just the arduous task of sitting down and actually writing something, it’s not an easy life to live. My experience in dealing with CSR while preparing for the publication of my first novel has taught me one important thing, though: if you’re lucky enough to find a publisher for your book, just take it one step at a time and don’t sweat the small stuff. Trust me—your eyes will thank you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and bred in Detroit, Michael A. Ferro holds a degree in creative writing from Michigan State University. He has received an Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train for their New Writers Award and won the Jim Cash Creative Writing Award for Fiction in 2008. TITLE 13 is his debut novel.

Michael’s fiction and essays have been featured in numerous online and print publications. Michael has lived, worked, and written throughout the Midwest; he currently resides in rural Ann Arbor, Michigan.

For more information on Michael’s writing and TITLE 13, check out his website, find him on Goodreads, explore his Amazon page, and read about him on his Poets & Writers profile. He’s been interviewed on Michigan Quarterly Review and Chicago Tribune Radio with Host Rick Kogan. He’s also keeping up his status on Facebook and Twitter. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

A timely investigation into the heart of a despotic faction within the government, TITLE 13 deftly blends satirical comedy aimed at the hot-button issues of modern culture with the gut-wrenching reality of an intensely personal descent into addiction.

Young Heald Brown might be responsible for the loss of highly classified TITLE 13 government documents—and may have hopelessly lost himself as well. Since leaving his home in Detroit for Chicago during the recession, Heald teeters anxiously between despondency and bombastic sarcasm, striving to understand a country gone mad while clinging to his quixotic roots. Trying to deny the frightening course of his alcoholism, Heald struggles with his mounting paranoia, and his relationships with concerned family and his dying grandmother while juggling a budding office romance at the US government’s Chicago Regional Census Center. Attempting to combat the devastating effects of his addiction, Heald’s reality digresses into farcical absurdity, fevered isolation, and arcane psychological revelation, hilarious though redoubtable in nature. Meanwhile the TITLE 13 secrets remain at large, haunting each character and tangling the interwoven threads of Heald’s life, as the real question looms: Is it the TITLE 13 information that Heald has lost, or his sanity?

ABOUT THE GIVEAWAY

It’s easy to enter. CLICK HERE, watch for an email on Tuesday, March 13th.

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Q&A with Lynn Sloan, author of This Far Isn’t Far Enough

“Right here, I’m laying you down, Momma,” I say, but I don’t feel anything important, just unbearably tired. I start to sing, “Precious Jesus, let me live my life in thee,” and lift the urn up–it’s not heavy, it’s not light–and swing my arm in as wide an arc as I can manage, and there she goes, sifting into the air, drifting full wide between the trees and over the brush, and out across the creek I can’t see, toward the distant houses with the lighted windows, through the night, maybe flying all the way to Egypt.

~ from “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble” in This Far Isn’t Far Enough

Letting go is never easy. We are rooted in tradition, in promises, in expectations. And yet, we inevitably reach that moment when the old, the familiar, the safe no longer serves, when we must release whatever anchors us in order to survive.

Lynn Sloan’s new collection of stories, This Far Isn’t Far Enough, is full of characters faced with the choice of letting go. For some, the choice is liberating, soothing. For others, the release is pinching, dangerous. In either case, such decisions are never simple, never so clean in consequence.

I’m honored to host Lynn Sloan today to talk about This Far Isn’t Far Enough. Her opening story, “Ollie’s Back,” will be read on NPR’s Selected Shorts in March. Here, gain insight into her work and enter the giveaway for a copy of her book (courtesy of Fomite Press & Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity). Sign up by Tuesday, February 27th. Now, welcome Lynn Sloan!

Christi Craig (CC): This Far Isn’t Far Enough brings together a myriad of stories about a young woman who wants to be a prizefighter, a widow living under the thumb of her husband even after he’s gone, and about an artist lost between fantasy and reality–just to name a few. Which was the first story you wrote, and how did this collection grow from there?

Lynn Sloan (LS): The earliest story included in this collection is “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble,” the one about a young woman who wants to become a prizefighter. That story came to be when I had a friend who wanted to become a prizefighter. After serious training, she invited me to her first fight. “What must your mother think?” I wondered as I watched my friend get pummeled, and pummel her opponent. My friend had not invited her mother to that fight or to any that came afterward. As far I know, her mother never found out about my friend’s short, but prize-filled boxing career. I had a little baby at that time, and I must have been grappling with how one adjusts to one’s beloved child getting beat up.

You asked if my collection grew from there. In fact, this collection didn’t grow up, it collected, like filings around a magnet. I like variety. Each time I finish one story, I want to try something different with my next. After I’ve written from a middle-aged mother’s point of view, in first person, as in “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble,” I want to try something entirely different: a naïve Army grunt, his third person point of view, and I want to try a different time frame, after WWII in Germany, before my own time. This became “The Gold Spoon.” Investigating varied characters and situations is a way of challenging what I do, and is my pleasure. A couple of years ago, I broke my ankle and was told I must keep my cast above my heart-level for a few weeks. Stuck on my couch, without the slightest urge to write, I decided to clean up my computer files. As I re-read these stories, I discovered that certain emotions link them all, even though the circumstances are different. Discovering this was an “ah hah” moment. My characters ache for love, they are compelled by regret and loss, and they can’t escape their pasts. These recurrent emotions and desires were the magnet that drew these stories together into this collection.

CC: In an interview on The Literary Fiction Book Review, you say, “Fiction reveals how we live beneath the surface of the obvious and the visible.” I’ve been ruminating on this sentence for a while now. Do you mean fiction allows us to embrace certain truths that we choose to ignore otherwise? Or do you mean fiction gives us more liberty to explore a character, a situation, a reaction to such depths that we uncover a piece of our core we hadn’t known existed?

LS: What’s below the surface is where the action is. Gestures and words can be deceptive or genuine. And isn’t everything more complicated than it appears? We read news items about a postal worker who leaves a million dollars to a medical school, and we wonder what did he deny himself to save that money? We read about a rancher who lined his driveway with Cadillacs half buried in the dirt, and we wonder if this was an expression of mockery, fury, or delight, or some impulse we haven’t thought of. You ask if writing might allow us writers to examine what we might prefer to ignore in our own lives, to “uncover a piece of our core”? I would say that writing opens us to empathy. By probing our characters’ needs and desires, we become more empathic with those unlike ourselves, and perhaps even those who are unlikeable. What makes this empathy possible is understanding ourselves and the links that connect us to others.

CC: With the last question, I’m thinking of “The Collaborator” and the protagonist, Daveen, who is caught in the politics of tenure and gender and her own version of #MeToo. I imagine this story was written well before the movement, so I wonder, when reality takes on the role of fiction and reveals how we live and think below the surface (which isn’t always pretty), does it change the way you view your work in retrospect? Do you ever think back on a character like Daveen and wonder how her story might shift if it were set in a post-#MeToo time?

LS: You are right. This story was written fifteen years ago, when feminists were regarded as scolds, hopeless bores, and pathetically retrograde. That’s how Daveen is regarded, especially since she broke off a friendship with a male colleague because of his sexual relationships with students. What was true when this story was written, what was true in the world that Daveen inhabits, and what is true today: patriarchy rules. In institutions like colleges, some men with power are attracted to younger, less powerful women, and it’s also true, some young women are attracted to men who possess power. Sex and power are two of the most elemental forces in culture. In “The Collaborator” sex, sexual politics, and power are the forces operating, but the story is about one woman, a thwarted feminist, and her response to a student whose sexual game upends her sense of self.

Each fictional character lives in a particular moment, as we all do. One of the things that interests me is how lives are lived within a historical context, and that context determines choices and possibilities. For Daveen, if she were living in this #MeToo time, she could turn to Human Resources with her complaints about sexual misconduct and she’d be taken seriously. If she were living twenty years earlier, she wouldn’t have a tenured position. Every story is set in a moment.

CC: What are you reading these days?

LS: I’ve just finished reading Joan Silber’s wonderful novel Improvement. Right now, I’m reading Patrick Modiano’s Such Fine Boys, a marvelous, moving novel that follows a group of school friends who are thrown into adult situations for which they were unprepared. Both novels include many characters, many stories braided together. Multiple stories—that’s what I like about story collections, too.

CC: What fuels your writing…coffee, tea, a certain view from the window, or a favorite pen? 

LS: My desk. It’s a small desk in a small room that’s really a hallway, but sitting at my desk focuses me. Sometimes I want to write somewhere else, like in a comfy chair by a window, or in nice weather, I’ll want to write outside, but as soon as my thoughts and words start to flow, I need to get to my desk.

~

Lynn Sloan is a writer and photographer. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and American Literary Review, among other publications, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is the author of the novel Principles of Navigation (2015 Fomite). Her fine art photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally. For many years she taught photography at Columbia College Chicago, where she founded the journal Occasional Readings in Photography, and contributed to Afterimage, Art Week, and Exposure. She lives in Evanston, Illinois with her husband.

Don’t forget: Enter the book giveaway by Tuesday, February 27th,
for a chance to win a copy of This Far Isn’t Far Enough.

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Suzanne Conboy-Hill: The Audio/Book that isn’t an audio-book.

I can’t always trace back to the day I met a particular writer, especially when that writer lives overseas and the furthest east I’ve ever travelled is Massachusetts, years before I took my writing seriously. But with the Internet and social media, the “when” doesn’t matter; the fact is, near or far, in state or not, we can fall into conversation with writers from all over fairly easily.

Such is the case any time I connect with Suzanne Conboy-Hill, a former psychologist, a writer (and an artist!) who lives in England. Suzanne has published essays, flash fiction, sci-fi, and more. Besides being an author, she is also the editor of a very cool anthology, Let Me Tell You A Story. You purchase the anthology in print form, but this is no ordinary book; it’s a collection of stories and poems with a unique reader in mind. I’m thrilled to host Suzanne with the inside story, and there’s a giveaway. I have two copies of her anthology ready to share. CLICK HERE to enter the giveaway by Tuesday, February 6th. 

Now, welcome Suzanne Conboy-Hill!

Let Me Tell You A Story – the audio/book that isn’t an audio-book.

Anyone who’s ever squinted at a book or a leaflet because they forgot their glasses will have had a glimpse of what it’s like to struggle with reading. Others struggle because of a global intellectual difficulty, some because they’re reading in a second language, and a good many because of dyslexia or a neurological condition. Not being able to read means you’re out of the loop and dependent on others to mediate the world for you.

Some years ago I sat with a man with intellectual disabilities who was about to be evicted from his home because he had broken the terms of his tenancy. My job as a psychologist was to understand why that was and try to help, so I started by getting him to read the contract he had signed. He read every word but so slowly and hesitantly that when I probed his understanding, it was clear he had no idea of what he’d read. He had guessed a lot, misunderstood basic words, and taken so long with each sentence that he’d lost any sense of it by the time he reached the end. From the start to the finish of each string of words, his was a hiccupping disconnect of sounding-out and misidentifications.

This goes for fiction just as much as fact – trip over words often enough and you give up, thinking the book or poem is ‘too hard’ for you. Or your reading is punctuated by dictionary searches to help make sense of it, which staggers fluency like speed bumps in the road. Personally, I have a problem with poetry – I read it as though I need to get it finished before some hidden timer goes off and it explodes. The craft and artistry is lost to me. Listening though, that’s a different matter. Hearing the weight applied to some words and the air lifting others; the cadences and the way some parts speed up, wind right down, or drop me onto a cliff edge with a two word sentence: those things become apparent when I hear a poem read.

I wanted to bring this to more people: to readers who need a nudge to find the music in the prose; to struggling readers who can’t hear rhythms over the noise of working out the individual words; to those who already read well but need help hearing words in a new language; and to people who can’t read at all due to cognitive limitations, neurological conditions, or plain old dodgy eyesight.

Luckily, the stars and planets aligned when phones became so smart they could carry apps that unlocked all sorts of worlds with the prod of a finger. Music, audio books, anything, available at a touch. When one of those apps also scanned the QR codes beginning to appear on envelopes and the sides of vans owned by enterprising businesses, the possibility of using that combination to bring the voices of authors straight from the page was not just feasible but easy.

How to demonstrate the idea took some thought. It had to be entertaining and comprise short pieces that might suit different audiences; a buffet not a four course fish dinner.

I chose writers I knew could both write and perform, and material that had already been published so I didn’t have to judge. We also used professional recording studios wherever possible. We were exacting – the audio had to match the text precisely. After all, if the idea was to support reading, we couldn’t betray the trust of struggling readers by allowing the two versions to differ.

Only one of us had ever recorded our work and you’ll hear the quality of that in Phillippa Yaa de Villiers’[1] beautiful readings of her poems. Lyn Jennings also has a profoundly microphone-ready voice. Speech and drama trained, Lyn can project through brick walls but also soften to a whisper when she needs to. The rest of us: Anne O’Brien[2], Tracy Fells[3], Nguyen Phan Que Mai[4], and I, were novices, but you will hear Irish, Vietnamese, and South African voices along with English Received Pronunciation, some of it with hints of Sussex or Yorkshire popping up like a dash of cinnamon in coffee.

This book is, I think, the first of its kind, and I hope not the last. In particular I hope people take the idea and use it to help anyone who is out of the loop. Community magazines, health leaflets, voting slips, the information inside packages you almost need a microscope to read. QR codes bring a personal reader to anyone who, for whatever reason, has trouble with written information or would just like to read along with a poet or storyteller the way they did as a child at bedtime.

There’s plenty more on the Readalongreads[5] site that might help. If you have questions please ask, and if you get a QR project up and running, I’d love to hear about it.

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

PS. A review would be fab!

Website: http://www.conboy-hill.co.uk/
Twitter: @strayficshion
Blog: http://conboyhillfiction.com/

[1] Phillippa was commissioned to write and deliver the Commonwealth Poem in 2014 before Queen Elizabeth II. She is currently a PhD candidate at Lancaster university, UK.
[2] Anne won the Bath Short Story award in 2016 and is also a PhD candidate at Lancaster university, UK.
[3] Tracy graduated in Creative Writing with Distinction from the university of Chichester in 2016. She was the Canada and Europe Finalist for the Commonwealth Short Fiction prize in 2017.
[4] Que Mai delivered the official International Women’s Day poem in 2014. She too is a PhD candidate at Lancaster university, UK.
[5] https://readalongreads.com/about/; https://readalongreads.com/readalongreads-2/; https://readalongreads.com/the-science-part/; https://readalongreads.com/who-is/

WHERE TO FIND THE BOOK

CLICK HERE to enter the giveaway for a chance to win one of two copies. Also, Let Me Tell You a Story is available from both Amazon (UK and US) and direct from Lulu.

ABOUT SUZANNE CONBOY-HILL

One-time artist, long-time NHS clinician, now-time word wrangler. Academic alphabet: BA(Hons), PhD, MPhil, MSc, MA. The first four in various kinds of psychology 1978-1998 and the last in creative writing 2014. Nurturing provided by Goldsmiths’ College (university of London), University College London, Institute of Psychiatry/Maudsley Hospital, Leicester university, and university of Lancaster. 

Forthcoming titles from Suzanne include Fat Mo, a novella telling the story of a young woman groomed and entrapped by the charismatic man for whom she works, and Writing as P Spencer-Beck, Not Being First fish and other diary dramas, also available via Amazon and Lulu. (A sample image from the illustrated edition, due in 2018, shown right.)