Potato Karma

Back in the 1970s I published a vagabonding novel called Famous Potatoes. I used to get letters and still get email now and then that all say the same thing: somebody handed me this beat-up copy of Famous Potatoes, or I found it on a bookshelf in a commune in Nicaragua, or somebody in the Peace Corps left this in my hut in Africa, and so on…  I think I must've sold about a dozen copies total which somehow have circulated all over the planet to be read by thousands of people. Not a profitable way to make a living, but great karma which will profit me someday.

Last week I got another of those emails. This time, It was from a man named Gene who had borrowed a copy of Famous Potatoes from his college friend in 1979, and then loaned his borrowed copy to, Gene writes, "a sixties holdover character who lived out of his car and in his lingering drugged out fog, at some point this guy vanishing and the friend's copy of Famous Potatoes disappearing with him. This struck me as a karmically fitting fate for Famous Potatoes but it struck my more literal-minded  friend as me just having lost his copy of the book."

Ever since, apparently, Gene's friend has been giving him good-natured hell about losing the book in one of those tropes that run through a long friendship. After all these years, Gene found me on Facebook and wrote to me asking if there were a way to get another copy, so he could finally give it back to his friend. So I mailed an old beat-up copy of mine directly to the friend in New Jersey with the inscription: "Now stop giving Gene a hard time about this."

Last week, 34 years after loaning the book, it arrived in the mailbox of the unsuspecting friend. He immediately called Gene and said, "Holy shit.  You are a man of your word.  I’m sorry I ever doubted you.  This is absolutely awesome.  This is just unreal.  Thank you.”  Followed by: “How did you manage to copy Joe’s handwriting and make it look so real and get it sent out from California?”

I'm embarrassed

I'm horribly embarrassed.  Due to a software glitch, two of my ebooks have displayed wild changes in type size and fonts, often several sizes on a single page. 


It's fixed now.  If you downloaded Famous Potatoes or Clear Heart from Smashwords, you can re-download them now and get a non-glitch version.  The words are the same, but the viewability is much better.

You should be able to re-download for free, if you've already downloaded them before.  If you have problems, send me an email and I'll solve it.

365 Jobs: Graveyard Shift, Tilt-slab Ghetto, Mountain View

1973-1976

For three years I worked the graveyard shift.  Again I was operating computers, this time running a hospital information system in Mountain View, California.  The hospitals that employed us didn't appreciate the g-word, so when the suits were around we tried to remember to call it "night shift."  Mostly we forgot, and mostly the suits were scared to mess with us because graveyard workers tend to be cranky, anti-social — and hard to replace. 

I was one of a half dozen unshaven, badly dressed, all male crew operating a gaggle of computers, printers, tape drives, disk drives, and a decollating machine from midnight to dawn.  In the hospitals that we served, no doubt each night had drama: babies born, heroic surgery, blood spilled, and last breaths sighed — but we had no idea.  In our sealed climate-controlled empire, the only drama came from the little TV in the decollating room. 

The decollator took a printout on five-part paper and separated it into five stacks of one-part paper while disposing of the carbons between each layer.  Though noisy, dirty, and dull, the decollating job was popular because it kept you in front of the TV.  One of the San Jose stations ran three or four old black-and-white movies every night interrupted by Dodge commercials and a corny host who would urge people not to commit suicide.  Apparently it really bugged him that so many people killed themselves while watching his flicks. 

In my three years on graveyard I got an education in the oeuvres of James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Jimmy Stuart.  Everybody on graveyard could quote most of the good lines in, say, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  We'd drop what we were doing and gather to cheer the grapefruit-in-the-face scene in The Public Enemy.

For some workers, graveyard was temporary — an entry level, or a final demotion.  They soon moved on, or out.  For others, it was a lifestyle.  For myself, I took graveyard for the 10% salary bonus and the short hours.  We worked a six and a half hour shift from 12:30 to 7 a.m. with no scheduled breaks — although in actuality we took breaks all the time. 

We never left the building — why would we?  This wasn't North Beach.  This was a tilt-slab Silicon Ghetto.  If you aren't familiar with tilt-slab, it's a valid and useful construction method.  Concrete walls are formed and poured flat on the building site, then lifted — tilted by cranes — into an upright position, quick and cheap.  The result is a rock-solid structure, though ugly and lifeless.  Perfect for computer work.

Tilt-slab

At midnight I'd strap lights onto my legs and ride my old red Raleigh bike through the Stanford campus and the sleepy streets of south Palo Alto to the tilt-slab ghetto in Mountain View.  The ten mile ride at night was peaceful and meditative except when I got mooned by three men in a convertible or the time I got ambushed by water balloons near the campus.  Mornings, I'd ride home in the rising sun as drivers sipped coffee waiting at red lights.

Maintaining a marriage took some adjustments.  The moods didn't mesh.  I'd arrive home feeling chatty and wired just as my wife was groggily trying to wake up.  Or likewise she'd come home charged up from her day job just as I was awaking grouchy and stupid.

Days off were equally out of sync.  When my wife was off I'd try to stay up all day, which was the equivalent of taking an all-nighter.  On my days off I couldn't sleep at night, though I tried.  I'd take walks at 3 a.m. feeling like a criminal skulking the empty streets.  Many nights off, I'd take my dog walking into the summer-dry foothills to return at dawn reeking of pennyroyal and sage.  One night, walking across the Stanford golf course, the sprinklers suddenly came on.  I tore off my clothes and streaked the course, my dog and I, wet and joyous and totally alone.

In the winter rains I'd hang out at all-night restaurants.  At Kazu's Koffee Kup I shared a few silent breakfasts at the counter with pro football quarterback Jim Plunkett of all people.  He was an early riser.  We had an unspoken agreement: I'd never ask him about football, and he'd always borrow my sports section, The Sporting Green.  For some reason he never seemed to buy a newspaper.  Later I learned his father had been a news vendor with progressive blindness.

Other nights, I'd just sit at my desk and write.  I'd listen to country music.  I loved all-night trucker's radio from KOB Albuquerque.  I felt akin to the long-haul drivers all over the West.  A lot of that trucker vibe found its way into the novel I was writing, Famous Potatoes.

I became a friend of the night sounds: the distant freight train, the chuk-chuk of sprinklers, the owl perched in the oak outside my study.  From a hilltop of the cow pasture across the street from my cottage, I watched the winking of radio towers and descending lights of airplanes, the blackness of the San Francisco Bay ringed by silent street lamps.  I became a friend of the sunrise: the purple sky, the slowly surging energy of suburban flatlands as cars filled the streets and children walked to school.
 

Sunrise over Stanford

After 3 years of graveyard, my brain and body started sending unmistakable messages that all boiled down to this: Stop fucking with your circadian rhythm.  Besides, I'd seen all those movies 2 or 3 times.   I could have donned a necktie and switched to day shift, but for me the day culture at a computer shop would be a disaster.  For better or worse, I was solidly counterculture.

Meanwhile I wanted to get out of the easy money and easy work of computer operation and into something harder, something that seemed more real to me: building stuff.  Construction, repair and rehab.  A lot of people would consider it a downward career move, like a banker choosing  to be a welder.  For me it seemed right.  My wife was pregnant.  I wanted to work with my hands in a life that allowed for time off, for raising a child, for working part time so my wife could also work at a job she loved.  If I didn't get out of computers now, I'd never escape.

The day I gave notice, they took it kindly.  In fact, everybody said the same thing: "I'd like to get out of data processing, too."  On my last night, they gave me going-away presents of all my favorite things: a jar of peanut butter, a bag of peanut butter cookies, a box of It's-Its, a six-pack of Coors.

For the last time I rode my bike home as the sun rose. 

Late in the afternoon I woke up depressed.  To my surprise it was suddenly clear to me that I liked that job.  I'd come back part time if I couldn't find enough construction work. 

Graveyard screws up your life but it gets in your blood.  How weird.  I was going to miss it. 

365 Jobs, Day 75: Rolltop Desk

Cross-posted from my new blog, 365 Jobs:

Friday, March 16, 1973

“Do you hear the cats?” she asks.  Her name is Pat.  She lives next door.

“Cats?”

“At night.  They make a racket.  We can’t sleep.”

Pat and her housemate Amy live in a shabby bungalow.  I live above three garages.  In one of those garages Pat and Amy keep a white 1963 Cadillac, Arizona plates.  In another of those garages I stand right now, working with wood and talking to Pat.
     
“It’s not my cat,” I say.  But I understand what she's saying.  At night, when the cats make their racket, Pat and Amy are afraid to come out of their bungalow.

Pat and Amy are two white girls going to Stanford.  Graduate students.  Other than walking to and from their car you never see them.  Self-contained in that little house, they are not a part of this very mixed neighborhood - and the neighborhood takes note.  On the street in front of their bungalow somebody has painted FUKN DYKZ. Welcome to Cooley Avenue, East Palo Alto, California.

“I’ll see what I can do about the cats,” I say.

“Thank you.”  Pat is tall, very pale, with straight black hair that hangs to her waist.  She glances at my wood, my tools.  “What are you making?”

“A rolltop desk.”

“Wow.  You know how to do that?”

“No.”

That night, I hear no cats.

I’ve finished a novel and mailed it to Atheneum, who seem the most likely publisher, and while waiting for a reply I’ve decided to make my living with wood, to build something people might want, to craft it well and sell it.  For guidance I'm reading a book written by some fussbudget Brit about how to build a rolltop desk. 

Up to now I have never made a mortise-and-tenon joint in my life.  In the garage with the door wide open I work with chisel and back saw, brace and bit.  Not only will I build a roll-top desk, but I'll do so with hand tools.  The Brit would approve.

The white Caddy, emitting a wisp of blue smoke, pulls into its garage, Amy steering.  Amy is short and tanned, nicely rounded, with a bowl of curly blond hair.  “Hi.  I’m Amy?  I live next door?  Thank you for quieting the cats.”

“I didn’t quiet them,” I say.  “I didn’t do anything.”

An hour later a Ford Pinto pulls up in front of the garages.  Scattered on windows are seven Stanford decals.  On the bumper:  IMPEACH NIXON.  A bearded guy is driving with Pat riding shotgun.  Suddenly - it seems like an impulse - the bearded guy steps out of the Pinto.  Laughing, he unbuckles his belt, pulls it through the loops of his jeans, and hands it to Pat.  Then he drives off.

Smiling, a spring to her step, Pat doesn't even notice me as she skips to the house. 

That night before going to bed I step out on the balcony that runs along the front of the building just above the garages.  I'm listening for signs of the warring cats. 

In the darkness a moist wind rustles the eucalyptus tree, scenting the air like medicine.  Traffic growls on the freeway, just one block away.  The sky is black but a warm glow spreads upwards from a skylight in the bungalow next door.  In the daytime I never even noticed the skylight, but now on this night it is like seeing a well-lit stage from the dark balcony of a theater.

Tall pale Pat stands not quite naked in front of a mirror.  She wears white socks and is holding a black leather belt.  Lifting the buckle to her nose, she lets the belt hang down in front of her like a sword.  Her black hair flows down her bony back.  She has small pert breasts, surprisingly wide hips and a jet-black bush.  Studying her image in the mirror, she ties the belt around her waist, pursing her lips, looking critical and almost bored as if choosing what to wear to school tomorrow - if she were to attend Stanford clothed only in a belt and socks.

Still facing the mirror, Pat starts talking.  I can't see the rest of the room, but she must be speaking to Amy.  Pat places the thumb of each hand inside the belt like a western gunslinger.  It is not a casual chat.  Pat’s face has that serious, painfully picky demeanor of a woman analyzing a relationship. 

Suddenly Amy appears, throwing her arms around Pat from behind.  Shoulders heaving, Amy is crying.

Pat stands rigid.  Her thumbs remain hooked to the belt.  On her face: surprise and self-doubt.

Enough theater.  I turn away.  Partly I'm embarrassed to be watching; partly I'm afraid somebody will catch me.

In the street something is creeping along the gutter.  Not a cat.  A small raccoon.  Then comes a clatter.  Another, larger raccoon shoves aside the lid of a garbage can.  A bungee cord was holding the lid in place, but Big Coon has displaced it far enough to enter.

Small Coon stands on hind legs and starts rocking the can with Big Coon still inside.  Big coon pokes his head out the top and hisses.  They howl.  They growl.  Garbage war!

On the balcony are several bricks left over from a brick-and-board bookshelf I constructed - the kind of furniture I am capable of building.  Grasping one of the bricks, I toss it like a shot-put.  The brick lands with a crash on the lid of the metal garbage can.  Immediately a ringed body bursts from the top of the can and hits the ground running.  In seconds, both animals are gone.

The next morning, Amy and Pat depart together in the white Caddy, grim-faced and silent. 

I'm determined to create dovetails for the drawers, hoping to gain confidence before I return to the frustrating mortise-and-tenons.

The first dovetail sucks.

The second is okay.  Almost okay.  A few days ago I talked with the owner of a furniture store in North Beach, Columbus near Grant, an old Italian who showed me a desk he was selling, running his fingers over the side of a drawer, a look of distaste on his face, saying, “Feel it.  Feel for yourself.”  Though the wood looked smooth, my fingers felt roughness that just a little sanding would have cured.  “Nobody in America has taste,” the man said.  “Everything I sell is slightly shoddy.”

I would rather burn this rolltop than have someone call it slightly shoddy.

I try more dovetails. 

By the time the white Caddy returns I have built three drawers, slightly shoddy. 

“It was raccoons,” I call to them as they close the garage door.  “Not cats.”

“Can you do something?” Pat asks.

“I threw a brick.” 

Amy seems stricken - as if I punched her stomach.  “Please don’t hurt them,” she says.

“I just scared them,” I say.

Pat and Amy exchange a look.  Pat glares at me and says, “Don’t you dare hurt them.” Together they walk to the bungalow whispering, shaking their heads.

For that one moment at least, I have united them.

I tie a second bungee cord over the lid of the garbage can.  Just before bed I go out on the balcony to, uh, check for raccoons.  The skylight is dark.  No coons, either.

Over the next few days I become almost good at dovetails.  I resume  mortising - and chisel the tip off my left ring finger.  When I return from Urgent Care, it looks as if somebody spilled a can of tomato juice in the garage. 

For a couple more nights I check the raccoon situation - just doing what the ladies asked - but the skylight is dark or, if lit, nobody is visible. 

The coons never return.  Atheneum rejects my novel.  The letter arrives seven days after I mailed the manuscript.  The swiftness is stunning - and feels like a brick lobbed at my garbage can.

A job agency calls.  I accept a temporary assignment operating a computer for a tax-preparation company.

All those romantic songs, all those commencement speakers who tell you to reach for the stars - it’s idiotic.  Here’s my advice:  Start small.  Use veneered plywood, for Pete’s sake, instead of solid clear fir.  Use power tools and simple joinery until you get the hang of it.  And write what you know.

In the garage I take a sledge hammer to the unassembled pieces of rolltop desk. 

Without much hope I mail the rejected manuscript to an agent in New Jersey.  Up above the garages in my study, a door for a desk, wooden crates for shelves, I jot notes for a new novel with a subject I might know something about: a young man who with the best of intentions fails at everything.  I call it Famous Potatoes.

For my remaining time on Cooley Avenue I never again walk to the end of the balcony.  Unobserved, Amy and Pat will deal in private with their passions, their painful choices.  As will I.  The job I've just accepted leads to three solid years operating computers without enthusiasm, making decent money, moving out of East Palo Alto to a more rural slum, writing a pretty good novel about the man who fails at everything and loves everyone in a slightly shoddy way.

Cooley at 101, East Palo Alto, 1973

365 Jobs, Day 39: Fact and Fiction

Cross-posted from my new blog, 365 Jobs:

Wednesday, February 8, 1984

Mrs. Goldstein was a golden client.  She had the pride of "discovering" me and she bragged to all her friends.  Her big new house in Sharon Heights was built by a crook, and I was the savior.  With her and her friends I was fully employed for a while.

One day - this day, February 8, 1984 - she asks me how I got started.  It's the basic Jewish mother question: "What's a smart young man like you doing in a line of work like this?"  She's a kind, friendly woman.  So I end up telling her my whole life story, how with three novels published I still need to support myself doing construction jobs and that, most of the time, I love this work.

She asks, "Where can I buy your books?"

"They're out of print," I say.

"Don't you have any?  Could I buy one from you?"

"The problem is, whenever one of my clients reads one of my books, they never hire me again."

"Why?"

"They think the stories are true.  I write in the first person, and they believe that the main character is me.  And they would not allow that character to work in their house."

"Then you must be a very good writer if you make them believe that.  Don't worry.  I used to teach English.  I know what fiction is."

There's no stopping Mrs. Goldstein.  Reluctantly, I give her a copy of Famous Potatoes.

She never calls me again.

Symbionese Liberation Army! Holy F***!!!

This morning at 5 a.m. after too little sleep I awoke with a jolt and the thought: "Symbionese Liberation Army!  Holy fuck!!!"

Probably not too many other people can say that.  Anyway, what it means is that in my subconscious dream world the neurons finally clicked, and I realized that my novel and podcast of Famous Potatoes make a reference to the Symbionese Liberation Army, which didn't exist until 1973 and didn't become nationally infamous until 1974 when they kidnapped Patty Hearst. 

In my podcast description, and in the ebook edition, I state that the events of the novel take place in 1971.  Actually, the story covers more than one year, and one of those years obviously has to be 1973 or later.  I'll correct this in the podcast description and in the ebook blurb as soon as I can - which might take a few days for the changes to percolate through all the various servers out in the internet world.

Most of Famous Potatoes is based on, or at least inspired by, actual events in my life which took place in the years 1967-1971.  Billie, the character who mentions the SLA, is somebody (name changed) I met in 1970.  Obviously the real "Billie" couldn't have mentioned the SLA because it didn't exist back then, but the fictional Billie could because, hey, this is fiction.  I wrote the novel in the years 1974-1976.  Hence my confusion when, 35 years later, I wrote the podcast description and ebook blurb.

And by the way, isn't it time for a revival of the SLA?  They were hilarious - and murderous.  Naive - and despicable.  Nuts with guns, not too different from what we have today in certain groups making the news.

Famous Potatoes, the podcast, is complete.

I've uploaded the final episode.

Famous Potatoes, the podcast, is complete.

I'll read a selection from it tomorrow at Lit Nite.

Reading at Sullivan's Pub

Last week we had our monthly "Lit Nite" at Sullivan's Pub, combining the best of beer and books. Or wine and poetry. To celebrate the launch of my podcast and ebook, Caroline Graham joined me to read a passage from Famous Potatoes.Caroline is the voice of Elaine on the podcast. Caroline is 15, younger than the Elaine character, but she's good at capturing the combination of tough and sweet in Elaine.If you're worried about a nice 15-year-old girl reading in a bar, rest assured that she was accompanied by her dad. Does he look like somebody you'd want to mess with?

To the little potatoes all over this planet

The Famous Potatoes podcast has been out for one week. So far I've uploaded 6 episodes. There will be 18 in all. Most people wait until all episodes have been uploaded before they begin listening, but some people enjoy the weekly serialization.

Already about a thousand people are listening. Mostly in the USA, but also 55 in England, 30 in China, 20 in Australia, 18 in Ireland, 15 in Germany, 14 in Finland, 10 in Switzerland, and a smattering in Belgium, Netherlands, Japan, Korea, Israel, Brazil, Austria, Vietnam, Italy, Colombia, and one lone listener in New Zealand.

Vietnam. Holy crap! Brazil. Hello! I'm thrilled that you're listening to my little podcast.

I describe Famous Potatoes as "a cockeyed love letter to the USA" but it is actually a love letter to the little people all over this planet. I wonder what they make of me in Korea or Colombia. Do they see themselves? Do they see the USA in a new way? I'm a little person myself, supporting my family with a hammer and a plumber's wrench, unknown in the arched-eyebrow book world of Manhattan or academia and yet reaching people all over the world. I love it. I love podcasting. I love storytelling. I love the human voice.

Okay, I'll stop now. Sorry. I just had to say that.

A neighbor, by the way, didn't agree with the "cockeyed" description. He said Famous Potatoes was "a dog's-eye view of the world." Meaning, people as viewed from below by a butt-sniffing, dirt-digging, playful, funky, drooling author. Yep . Guilty as charged.

Edward Wong-Ligda

Edward Wong-Ligda deserves his own turn in the spotlight.
He's had a distinguished career as an illustrator, painter, and muralist.
I was lucky to find him for Famous Potatoes when he was just starting out.
He was living in a soon-to-be-demolished old farm building at the back of an orchard in Sunnyvale.
He told me, "You have to say exactly what you want me to draw because I don't have any imagination." Not true, of course. I couldn't show him any images of a dog killing a rattlesnake, but he drew this anyway:
Ed had a feel for highway americana
and foodand drinkalways in keeping with the earthy style of a book that was, of course, about that earthiest of subjects: potatoes.

Famous Potatoes is back!

Almost 40 years ago, I wrote a novel called Famous Potatoes. At the time I was making my living as a hippie handyman. A woman hired me to repair her shower. I botched it. What should have been a half day job turned into a 3 day nightmare in which the woman's house went without water while I had to call in help from my neighbor and good hippie friend, Sonny Hoppas, who was a carpenter not a plumber, who in turn called in help from a contractor friend who was also a carpenter not a plumber. (Lesson #1: Don't hire hippie plumbers.)

Finally we got the shower repaired. Meanwhile I got to chatting with the woman's hippie boyfriend, John Daniel, who as it turned out had a small press called No Dead Lines. We chatted a lot. There may have been marijuana involved. Anyway, he became interested in my novel and wanted to edit it—for free. I was delighted.

I was living at the time in a hippie compound on San Francisquito Creek near the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. My neighbor in the compound was an artist, a gorgeous tall raven-haired Amazon of a woman who shot a great game of pool, Linda Goodman, who wanted to go into the book-designing business. She became interested in helping to design Famous Potatoes—for free—as a showpiece for her skill. I was delighted. She knew a talented young illustrator named Ed Wong who lived behind an orchard in Sunnyvale (in those days, Sunnyvale had orchards). I'd have to pay him, but he was worth it. With Linda's supervision, Ed came up with a set of illustrations. I've always like illustrated novels and was willing to pay out of my own pocket for something I believe in. Eventually I hired Linda to do the layout and paste-up, and she found a cut-rate typesetter living in Santa Cruz (who I never met, but I always imagined her as a laid-back surfer hippie with typesetting skills - she liked to type editorial comments about the characters in the margins of the galleys like "Serves him right!" or "Good for her.").

Linda's boyfriend, Michael Riordan, was a nuclear physicist at SLAC who had written a solar energy book and wanted to be a literary agent. He wanted to shop my novel around. I was delighted.

John Daniel wanted to include Famous Potatoes in his No Dead Lines catalog but couldn't afford to print it. So we agreed that I would self-publish, using No Dead Lines as the listed publisher, and he would help distribute it.

The day of the print run, when the novel was literally on the printing press, I got a call from Michael saying he'd sold Famous Potatoes to a New York publisher, and they would pay me a $10,000 advance on the condition that I did not sell any copies of the No Dead Lines edition which, at that exact moment, was pouring out of a printing press in East Palo Alto. I could have called the printing plant and shouted "Stop the press!" but I still would have owed them $3000 for the print run after already spending $1000 for the hippie typesetter and something, maybe $1000 to Linda for layout and paste-up. So I let it run. $10,000 minus $3,000 for printing minus $1000 for typesetter minus $1000 for Michael as agent minus maybe $1000 to Linda for layout and paste-up was still a profit. Minus I-forget-how-much for Ed Wong was still a profit—barely. So the No Dead Lines edition went out of print before it even finished printing. Probably the shortest book run in history. A few copies got out there anyway. You can still find them on the internet used book market.

The New York publisher was Seymour Lawrence, the same man who published Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan. I was in good hands. He hired Ed Wong for a new set of illustrations and as I recall he hired Linda Goodman to supervise. Poor Seymour couldn't take his eyes off Linda, she was so lovely. For a book jacket they hired Heart Arts. The Heart Arts cover design won a National Book Award for best cover in the trade paperback edition. Again, good hands.

Famous Potatoes got great reviews in books and magazines all over the USA and, eventually, all over the world—except the New York Times, which loathed it. France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Israel, Sweden, Netherlands—the book did well. The snobbish disapproval of the New York Times, plus the subject matter, caused the book to become known as an underground novel. People started calling it an "underground classic."

And then eventually the world moved on, and the book (in the English language, at least) went out of print. For 30 years. Until now.

Famous Potatoes has just been issued as an ebook at Smashwords.com, who provide a great service for struggling authors such as myself. I'm in the process of bringing it out as a podcast at podiobooks.com. In a week or so it will be available on iTunes. Right now it's already up at podiobooks, who likewise provide a great service for struggling authors such as myself.

Michael Riordan went on to write several books himself on solar energy and nuclear physics. Ed Wong is now Edward Wong-Ligda and has his own cult following (they collect "Edisms" on Facebook). Sonny Hoppas, last I saw him, lived on a sailboat and still worked as a carpenter. John Daniel became Mellow Fellow (that was his title, meaning Director of Mellowness) at a hippie hot spring in northern California.

The moral of this story is that if you want to publish a novel, follow these simple steps:
1) Botch plumbing job.
2) Hire neophyte book designer.
3) Hire neophyte literary agent with a background in nuclear physics.
4) Hire a Mellow Fellow as editor.
5) Hire a neophyte illustrator.
6) Hire, sight unseen, an opinionated surfer hippie chick typesetter who does good work, cheap.
7) Trust the hippie network.
8) Spend your life savings on self-publishing.
9) Sign contract with prestigious New York publisher.

Nothin' to it.

Oh. And one more step:
10) Thirty or forty years later, you'll still be a struggling author.

Ah, technology ...

So far, three of my books are available as ebooks on Smashwords.com. Right now I'm preparing to upload a fourth. So I thought I'd check the formatting of my previous books to see if I could conform to the same style. When I checked, here on the left is what one of them looked like.

Here on the right is what it used to look like.

What changed?

I dunno.

All I know is I'm working real hard to make my books available at incredibly cheap prices as ebooks, and then the technology gets "upgraded" and everything turns into garbage. Sheesh.

If anybody reading this blog has downloaded one of my ebooks and is having any problem viewing it, please contact me.

Smashwords converts my manuscript into all the various ebook formats including PDF. What I am displaying here are PDF pages that have somehow become unreadable. I can't check the EPUB and MOBI or any of those proprietary files because I don't have a Kindle or any of those nice reading devices. So if you have one, and if my books are unreadable, please let me know. Otherwise I'll never find out that Smashwords needs to fix them. And you'll never get to read them.

In this case, I think the problem is that one of Apple's routine system upgrades has changed the Preview program, which is how I view PDF documents. The same document still looks good when viewed with Adobe Reader. It used to look good in Preview, too, but now it doesn't.

I'm sure Kindle and all those other reading systems upgrade their systems periodically. What happens to people with old files?

Book Covers

What do you like? I'm considering two different designs for the new release of my old book Famous Potatoes. Each design comes in two versions, square and rectangular. The square version will be on the podcast, the rectangle will be on the e-book. There will be no new printed book - plenty of them are still circulating in the used book market.

Here are some covers from the old printed books. The tailgate cover won a National Book Award as best cover design of the year. Unfortunately, I don't have the rights for it.



One problem is already obvious. I need to draw a border around the white spaces. I'll fix that.

Leave a comment or send me an email. I'd like to know what you think.

Blues Festival, Piacenza, Italy

Here I am at the Leaning Sign of Piacenza.

In a way, it was like going to summer camp: You travel away from home. At first you're a little scared. People welcome you. You make new friends. You see the world from a different point of view. You learn new skills. You come back a better person.

One thing I learned was how to make people want to read my book. It came to me during my first radio interview when the host, a man named Luca, asked me to explain the title. Here is what I said:

In the USA, each state has a different license plate. In the state of Idaho, every car, every truck, every motorcycle has a license plate with a message at the bottom saying “Famous Potatoes.” I always thought it was a funny idea: something so common, so ordinary, so down-to-earth as a potato could be famous. In my novel I write about people who are like potatoes - they’re the little people - the carpenter, the waitress, the truck driver, the prostitute - they live a hard life. They’re invisible. They have to be hard to survive. But if you dig them up, if you warm them, you can make them soft and sometimes you can make them sweet. That’s what I’m searching for in my writing: that softness, that sweetness in people who are living hard lives.

It seemed like a good answer, so I repeated it for the rest of my tour to about a dozen audiences. And each time after I spoke, people would go over to the book sale table and buy copies of Le Famose Patate. I wish I'd figured this out 30 years ago, when the book was first published.

Here are some more things I would say to the audience:

Another meaning of the title is that a potato lives underground, and in the USA, when you are hiding from the police, when you are living outside the law, it is said that you are living “underground.” The hero of Famous Potatoes is in a bar in St. Louis, Missouri on the Mississippi River when he gets in an argument with a stranger. During the argument the man is stabbed, and he dies. Everybody runs out of the bar and disappears along the river. It turns out that the dead man is a policeman. Our hero didn’t do it, but he can’t prove it, so he runs away - he lives underground - like a potato.

Another meaning of underground became apparent after the book was published. It was called an “underground novel” because it was popular among people who don’t respond to book reviews or advertising, people who passed it hand to hand and spread the news by word of mouth.

I sometimes feel like a potato myself. I’m a little writer. I’ve never been able to make a living from my books and have always worked with my hands.

Then, if somebody asked if the book was true, if it was based on my actual life, I would add:

People assume that everything in the novel is true, and I guess I should take it as a compliment that the writing was so believable. But not all of of the disasters and humiliations that happen to the hero are true, so it’s a little unnerving when a stranger comes up to me with sadness in her eyes, and she gives me a big hug, and she says “I’m so sorry about your testicles.”

Le Famose Patate

In Italy, I got my first look at the new edition of my book. The American title is Famous Potatoes and the original Italian edition, published 30 years ago, was Famose Patate. When I saw the new edition, two things were immediately obvious:
1. It was a high-quality edition, nice paper, nice endflaps, beautiful print job, soft almost leathery feel to the paper.
2. They'd changed the title. Now it is called Le Famose Patate.

So I innocently asked Paolo, the publisher, "Why'd you change the title?"

Immediately Seba, my translator, started shouting (in English): "See? I told you not to change the title! Never fuck with an author's title!"

Paolo, the publisher, shouted back: "It was the right thing to do!"

Then they switched to Italian and continued to shout at each other.

Hey, I was just asking...

It wasn't until a week later that I got the true story. It seems that in the last 30 years a new slang expression has emerged in Italy. While 30 years ago Famose Patate meant Famous Potatoes, now to the Italian ear Famose Patate means, um, excuse me but it means Famous Pussies.

By adding the "Le," it means Potatoes again. Don't ask me how.

Buon Viaggio!

Last October I got this email and thought it was a joke:

Dear Sir,
I am a literary translator and a journalist.
I often work with Mattioli 1885, the Italian publisher who is trying to bring your books back to Italy.
I know that the deal for the reprinting of “Famous Potatoes” is still in the works, but it also seems that it is a matter of days before it is official.
I was very curious and intrigued when Mattioli told me they would be willing to reprint your book, which I never had the opportunity to read but which I’d heard of.
I am the art director of an interesting music and literature festival, not far from Milan and from the headquarters of your publisher.
Your publisher has decided to bring you over to Italy to promote “Famous Potatoes” and has decided to take care of all your expenses (flight fare, food and lodging). We’d be delighted to have you appear at our festival, which will take place between the 10th and the 17th of May 2009.
You would be with us for the whole week and participate in a series of events. The festival started as a music festival only but now it is both a music and literature festival.
The music still plays a major role and we try to always make references to it, but you don’t need to be an expert…
You can visit our website (which is in Italian and English) on this page:
http://www.festivalbluespiacenza.it/fbn/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=145&Itemid=27&lang=en
In 2009, we should have the likes of: Jeffery Deaver, Joe Lansdale, Ronald Everett Capps, Anne Perry, David Liss, David Fulmer, Laura Lippman etc.
Please let me know what you think.
All best.

Well, it wasn't a joke. Tomorrow I board a flight to Milan. For 3 weeks I'll be reading (and singing!) throughout northern Italy. I'll be on Italian national radio. I've already been interviewed by an Italian newspaper. It's all a little weird for an old La Honda hippie who makes his living as a building contractor and has never been to Europe.

I don't know whether I'll be able to post from Italy (I hear the electrons are metric over there), (that's a contractor joke), but in any case I return jet-lagged and groggy on Tuesday night, May 26 to the land where we measure in feet and inches. Wednesday, May 27 I'll be at Sullivan's Pub for the monthly reading. Come on down and I'll tell you what happened.

Ciao.

Fame

So I walked into a bar last week. The bartender squinted her eyes and said, "Hey! Are you Joe Cottonwood?"

"Yes."

"I knew you from your book cover. I just bought Clear Heart to give my boyfriend for Christmas."

Now that's fame. Earlier this year, I got an email from a bartender in Liverpool, England who'd read Famous Potatoes.

And speaking of honors, I woke up this morning to read:

2008 Founders Choice Awards

This year’s five Founders Choice Awards for excellence in serialized audiobook production for titles here on Podiobooks.com go to:

• Joe Cottonwood for Clear Heart
• Nathan Lowell for Double Share
• Basil Sands for Faithful Warrior
• Scott Sigler for Infected
• Peter James Froning for Letter from China

About the Founders Choice Awards

The Founders Choice Awards are given annually — well, they will be given annually — to serialized audiobooks of impeccable quality.

Hey. My podcast wins awards. And bartenders all over the world are buying my novels.

Impeccable quality and a happy new year, everybody!

Joe le Plombier

In a file cabinet in my attic I've found a stack of French reviews of Famous Potatoes, which over there was called Les Tribulations de Willy Crusoe. (Willy Crusoe was the name taken by the main character when he was on the lam from the law.)

All the French reviews make note of my college degree and my occupation of plumber. None of the USA reviews seemed to find it worthy of note.

Here's the one I was thinking of (sorry, I can't type the accents). The reviewer was comparing Famous Potatoes to a recent work of French literature written by somebody who evidently had never dirtied his hands:

En definitive, c'est peut-etre ce qui manque a notre literature: des etres ronds et sales, dont les reves seraient aussi les reves des ecrivains. Des etres capables de s'attendrir, non sur eux-memes (cela, nous n'en manquons pas), mais sur plus pauvre, plus desespere qu'eux.

Rich Amerique qui a encore de pareils vivants. Et des informaticiens-plombiers capables de les observer.

Pauvre Europe, ou les detenteurs de diplomes universitaires ne deviennent jamais errants, ou il n'y a plus ni plombiers, ni reveurs, ni racines. Et ou les livres ne retentissent que de mea culpa...

-Jean Vigneaux in Pourquoi Pas? March 25, 1982

My French is rusty, and I can't be sure there isn't an element of sarcasm in the text. But I think M. Vigneaux was praising my novel and, oddly, the earthy roots of American literature. Would anybody care to translate? What's your take?

Joe the Other Plumber

"Joe the Plumber," also known as Samuel Wurzelbacher the unlicensed plumber who doesn't pay his taxes, is coming out with a book. I've been watching his 15 minutes of fame with detached amusement, but now he's threatening my status as the only published plumber named Joe.

Yes, me, Joe Cottonwood. I was a plumber. And an electrician. And a carpenter. If you read the bookjacket of my novel Famous Potatoes, the 1979 edition published by Delacorte, it says: "Joe Cottonwood is a young novelist living in La Honda, California. A 1970 graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, Joe Cottonwood has been a computer operator and now earns his living as a professional plumber..."

For the record, I am now a licensed general contractor. Back then, I was a handyman who did a lot of plumbing. The bookjacket could just as easily have called me a handyman, or a carpenter, or an electrician. I was all of those things. A French journal printed a long article in which some French critic made a big fuss about the fact that in America plumbers were publishing novels and how that could never happen in France. I'm not sure whether the critic was for or against the phenomenon of publishing plumbers. Him being French, and me being American, I suspect he was against.

I wonder what that critic will say now.

Why Self-Publish?

Thirty years ago I wrote a novel called Famous Potatoes. No big publisher would touch it (“too quirky”), so I self-published. By doing it myself, I got to choose the design and layout and general “feel” of the book. And I got to include illustrations, which no big publisher would have allowed.

I must have done something right. Seymour Lawrence/Delacorte saw the book while it was still in galleys and bought the rights. They kept the illustrations and general feel of the book - after all, that’s why they bought it - and then they designed a new book jacket while staying true to the spirit of the novel.

I got a savage review in the New York Times. My wife printed some quotes on a T shirt: “Stupefying dullness and improbability” on the front, “Mawkish” on the back. I wore it with pride. Loathed by Manhattan, I got a reputation as an “underground” writer.

Famous Potatoes was translated into seven languages. It went out of print 25 years ago, but I kept getting letters. With the advent of the internet, I started getting e-mails. They’re still coming, not just from the USA but also from Germany, Australia, Japan, France, Israel, Great Britain, South Africa, and lately from Italy. They usually say something like “I found Famous Potatoes on a bookshelf in some dusty hut in Guatemala when I was hitchhiking to Tierra del Fuego, and I just wanted to tell you how much I liked it.” They never say they bought the book; it seems people passed it hand-to-hand. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t make much money from it.

Now an Italian publisher wants to reissue Famose Patate in Italy and wants me to promote it in conjunction with the Piacenza Blues Festival - which I’ve never heard of, but it sounds like fun. Folks, I never get invited to anything. Well, okay, once, ten years ago I got invited to accept an award and give a speech in Hershey, Pennsylvania. But Italy! I’m thrilled!

In a few weeks, I’ll self-publish Clear Heart. Again, no big publisher would touch it (“too quirky”). No illustrations with this one - I couldn’t afford them - but I like the look and feel of the book so far. Maybe the podcast of Clear Heart is the illustration. I still have an offbeat audience, so I still don’t expect good treatment from the New York Times. Another T shirt, perhaps. But maybe, thirty years from now - should I live so long - just maybe, somebody will invite me to a do-wop festival in China.