But I recognize a distinct sadness in my ex-wife's eyes now when I peer into them. I believe the sadness is wrought over something that could never be changed or reversed once it was put in place by the very same people who were once responsible for her wellbeing as a child and adolescent. Her adult life decisions and the effect it has had on her now as a middle aged woman ring out and reverberate with an irony so intense, it is both deafening and bone shattering.
But my ex-wife and I, we are no better than anyone else. Life isn't exactly fair. You win some and you lose some. But one thing however is for certain: we, as writers, are all victims of our desires, slaves to love, and powerless in the face of blind passion. We are artists and we are as much blessed by God as we are doomed by the fallen angels.
My ex-wife and I still love one another. We often remind each other of it. Many times I don't get off the phone with her without saying, "Love you." But we cannot have one another any longer. Perhaps it's too late to rekindle embers that have not only grown cold, but have disintegrated and seeped into the earth over the course of the many seasons. But if we are the least bit intelligent, we have both learned a vital lesson five years in the making. When you're dealt a hand of cards and you are forced to make the final decision on whether to stay in the game no matter the quality of the hand, or to fold them and walk away from the table, the decision better be the right one. Because when the time comes for the great dealer in the sky to make His call, and all bets are suddenly off, you will be left alone with your choice, right or wrong.
That choice had better come straight from the heart, because it will be something you must live with for the rest of your life.
—2011
Love Stinks
I write a lot about love.
I can't avoid it.
In any given story there's got to be a love element. Whether it's about falling in love, or out of love, or about avoiding love for a moment or two of lust, which can be lovely but entirely devoid of being in love . . . if you catch my drift.
Bear with me here.
Truth be told, I'm a total sap. So what that means is, I'm especially attracted to those stories that not only pit one man against the world, but that also contain an almost impossible to fulfill love story. You know, the stories about unrequited love, or love that's crushed due to vast distances in geography, time, or space. Then there's the love and war stories that made Papa so famous, and even the Hammett-style hard-boiled drama of the private detective who falls in love with the "dame" who turns out to be a black window. In the end he's got no choice but to watch her being carted away to jail while he flips up the collar on his leather coat, lights a cigarette with his Zippo, and walks away from it all in the rain-soaked neon lit darkness. If you've never read my noir novels, it's the latter image of love-gone-wrong that you will inevitably receive.
Romantic?
Yes.
Realistic . . . Even more yes.
I'm one of those authors who like Hemingway or Mailer likes to taut the tough guy image in his main characters (even if the main character is a woman like in CONCRETE PEARL). But I also like to show off their sensitive side. Mostly I do this by proving how prone they are to falling head over heels for someone (as opposed to heels over head). They don't just love with a logical perspective attached to the emotion. They love until it hurts; until they can't sleep or eat or function as a productive human being. In a word, they suffer love so much that they are reduced to a sweat-soaked bundle of or rags and bones. When these ill-fated characters are separated from their love interests by either geography or breakup, their imaginations play evil tricks in them. So evil that Richard "Dick" Moonlight, anti-hero of my Moonlight series, once placed a .22 caliber revolver to his head, and pulled the trigger.
That "Love is Kind" Bible passage that always gets read at weddings is pure bullshit.
Love isn't kind.
Love stinks.
Love hurts.
Love sneaks up on you when you least expect it.
Love is not friendly.
Love is like water torture.
Love will drive you to drink.
Love causes suicide.
Love sucks.
But for some reason, love is what we all crave and live for.
Falling hopelessly in love is unbearable. Especially when you find someone whom you've been searching for your whole life and by reasons of timing or commitment to another, can't quite as easily give the love back. Even if she wants to more than anything in the world.
Such is life.
Such is romance.
Such is Cupid's painfully sharp arrow.
—2011
A Few More Minutes with Andy Rooney
I'm having a trouble imagining a world without Andy Rooney. It's kind of like trying to imagine Star Wars without Yoda. How else are we supposed to move on with our lives while having to put up with its everyday absurdities, banalities, and garden variety foolery? Did I just write the word "foolery"?
Andy worked almost right up until the end. As writers we never retire. But he did give up the TV gig with 60 Minutes only a month ago, which should serve as a sort of be a warning to those seniors who insist on working well into their golden years. Don't give up the day job!
I can just picture this week's A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney if only we were to be graced with one more. He'd appear in the crumpled up suit he pulled out from under his bed, even though God would probably offer him a nicer choice of threads. He might look a little younger, maybe because he wouldn't be in pain. Old age is often accompanied by aches and pains. He might bear a little more of a smile. His eyebrows might be trimmed. But I think otherwise, he'd be the same old crotchety Andy. The subject of his spot would be "Retiring."
"It's not retiring that's hard," he'd write. "It's the dying part of retirement that is."
He might say that had he known he was gonna cash it all in within a month of retirement, he would have negotiated a better end-of-career bonus with the network. He would have coined this as a "Sure to Perish Immediately Upon Retirement" clause or something like that. Then he might have mentioned other famous men and women who have "retired" and died soon after. Since I can't think of anyone famous who has died very soon after quitting their job, I can tell you that I've had a couple of uncles who retired from the construction business and died within a year or so. It's a warning for my dad who at 76 is still putting in a full week. Keep working!!!
Andy was an everyman's writer in that he didn't believe in writer's block any more than a plumber believes in plumber's block. He once wrote: "Writers are repeatedly asked to explain where they get their ideas. People want their secret. The truth is there is no secret and writers don't have many new ideas. At least, they don't have many ideas that a comic strip artist would illustrate with a light bulb over their heads."
Andy's ideas came from the everyday. Like procrastinating before getting to work. Or having to deal with pulling out all that cotton filling in your plastic bottle of Advil. Once he wrote about how the French had expelled something like 47 then Soviet spies that year from France. "That's a lot of spies," he wrote.
I mean, how can you not smile and laugh a little on the inside when you read that?
I've met Andy on a few occasions, most of them having to do with a private high school we both attended up in Albany called The Albany Academy. I attended the place in the 80s and Andy in the 30s. The place has changed a lot in the many years since I moped around its marble halls. But back in the early 80s it wasn't much different than the school that Andy attended. It was a military country day prep school that prided itself on discipline as much as it did sports and the arts. We wore military uniforms and ate not in a cafeteria, but a "buttery." Also, Andy played left guard for the football team and so did I. We played the same position and we were both under five feet, eight inches. We took a lot of pounding in those four years, but we gave a lot out too. Maybe that's why we became writers. All that head banging will prevent you from looki
ng at the world in a conventional way.
I guess I've known Andy my whole life, having first taken notice of him when 60 Minutes would pop on the TV after the New York Giants football games. Even if we were bummed out about the Giants losing a barn burner to the rival Dallas Cowboys in the last minute of the last quarter, and even if we were in a black mood over having to go to school or work in the morning, we could always count on Andy gracing the screen in his wrinkled suit. You'd wait for the topic of his "few minutes" with baited breath. When finally he'd come out with something like, "It costs us almost a quarter for every mile we drive a car," we knew we were in for something special about something not so special. And that getting up in the morning and putting on your socks one at a time, wasn't all that different from the life he was living. Andy was just a regular guy in possession of an extraordinary talent.
I'm going to miss Andy Rooney and his words and his unconventional wisdom about the conventional. I'm going to miss running into him and having to remind him of my name and what I do for a living. That stuff never bothered me because I was such a fan with a little hero worship sprinkled in. Did you know that during World War II Andy spent about an hour hiding in a ditch alongside a road that had been strafed by German planes along with Ernest Hemingway? How many people can brag about something like that? But Andy would be the last guy on earth to talk about Papa. He'd be more apt to comment on how every buffet you dine at no matter how nice the facility always offers you Swedish meatballs. He'd write about how you couldn't resist the Swedish meatballs even after some of the gravy got on your tie and stained it. He'd show up on TV the next week with the same tie and the same stain. It would become a heated topic of discussion. A philosophy. A reason to carry on in the everyday.
Enjoy the afterlife Andy.
Keep writing.
Keep being you.
—2011
No Rest for the Weary . . .
I'm tired.
Beat.
Ripped to shreds.
Tossing in the towel.
Asleep on the feet . . .
I can't believe I just wrote all that. But it's true. I think by now you know me as this unstoppable writer guy who can't sit still for more than the few hours it takes every day to write his five pages. Invincible Vince, as it were. But since I got back from Europe a couple of months ago I've been undergoing some tremendous life changes, the least of which is signing the new deal for two new books and five backlist books with Thomas & Mercer/Amazon and also not the least of which is my oldest son's 21st birthday.
Life is different for me now in that I'm contemplating a change of living venue . . . a new heaven on earth. And even though I haven't quite figured out where I will call home over the next six months (whether it will be the US or Europe or both), I can tell that I'm now completing a life phase that includes the completion of four books, four short stories, and articles/blogs too numerous to count in the past five years. It also includes travels . . . travels encompassing Africa to Moscow and L.A. to Italy, sometimes for a weeks at a time.
These are just the things I can tell you. Because there are also things happening in my life that I can't quite reveal yet, although I will one day when it's right (It could be months from now!). I know, I know . . . I know what you're thinking. Don't be keeping secrets from inquiring minds. But let's put it this way. I haven't actually been "in love" (I mean real, gut wrenching love) in quite some time and it's possible that where ever I do decide to lay my head, she will be there with me . . . Enough said on that subject.
Back to business . . .
But now that I've signed my contracts, I've felt a wave of exhaustion and emotion pour over me like a waterfall. This isn't an unusual experience. Often when I complete a novel, I find myself sleeping more than I do spending awake time. It's not an unusual reaction to a job well done.
So what's my point?
I'm always preaching to my peeps to get those pages done, put ass cheeks to the chair cushion, ignore the world and write your pages. But, and this is a big BUT, when your body begins to send you signs that you need to take some time off and relax, don't ignore them. For me, the signs are attention deficit, trembling hands, lack of appetite, upset stomach, inability to enjoy the foods I normally enjoy, night terrors, melancholy, bi-polar like mood swings, and just a desperate need to get some serious sleep.
Or . . . wait a minute . . . Hold the freakin' phone . . . Maybe I'm fooling myself here. Maybe there's nothing wrong with my writing or work/travel schedule. Maybe all these "signs" as it were have nothing to do with too much on my work plate. After all, writing isn't just a job for me. It's a passion and a hobby and a religion all mixed up together. Maybe they have everything to do with something else. Maybe, just maybe, I've fallen in love again . . .
—2011
Renewing Your Writer Vows
I've experienced one of the hardest seven days of my life this past week with the unexpected and very sudden death of my dad who dropped dead while tying his shoes after having jogged his daily three miles and having gotten in a full free-weights workout. Being in the possession of a strong heart, even at 76 years of age, he over exerted himself on this particular morning and his heart stopped. No resuscitation possible, despite a valiant effort on the part of EMTs who worked on his chest for nearly an hour. By the time he arrived at the hospital in Albany he was DOA.
My dad was a giver and he liked to be involved even if in a small way in all the lives of his children and grandchildren. He was also a control man who liked to do things his way, and his way only. So now that he is suddenly gone, I find myself wanting to give him a call regarding matters that have to do entirely with him. The paradox is heartbreaking.
Despite the tragedy of his sudden death, I am nonetheless a better man for it in that I have had a lot of growing up to do this week, not the least of which is deciding how I am going to handle the next thirty to forty years of my life. How I can carry on in a way that will make him proud. Curiously, I find myself looking at my writing in a new light. I find myself wanting to work even harder and better than ever. That means slowing down on certain projects in order to grab the most meaning out of the fewest words possible. It will take concentration and a renewed effort.
I also find myself more committed to traveling to some of those exotic destinations I have not yet experienced. Borneo, Tibet, Mongolia . . . and beyond. Life is a process and like a story it has a beginning, a middle and an end. Often times we don't know when that end will occur. It can come when you least expect it, like when you're tying your shoes for instance. It's your responsibility to live that life to the fullest in the meantime. And living life means discovering things. The world is out there. Go walk it. And while you're doing that, work hard. Very hard.
Starting Monday, I am renewing my writing vows so that I can hit the New Year in full sprint. You should too. Here's how I'm going to conduct my days:
—Get out of bed by 7AM, and be at my writing desk with coffee in hand by 7:15
—I will write 2 to 3 pages in the morning (or if editing, 10 to 15 pages)
—At around 10:30, I'll go for a run and hit the gym.
—By 1:30, I'll be back at my desk for another 2-3 pages.
—When that's done, I'll put in an hour or so of marketing via the social networks and my blog.
—On Saturdays, I will work in the mornings and take the afternoon off.
—Sundays are days off (unless I have a deadline looming).
I'm going to commit myself to this routine even when traveling, so long as it's possible (I understand it's pretty hard to write sentences on your laptop from up on a camel's back). I think my dad would be proud to hear that I'm renewing my writing vows. Every day he got up, put on his running shoes and hit the pavement in the dark and cold of the dawn, and then he showered up and went off to work. Nothing stopped him from doing what he needed to do for himself and for those around him whom he loved and who depended upon him. He worked to both please himself and to mak
e the world know that he was here, if only for a brief but poignant time.
—2011
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About the Author
Winner of the 2015 PWA Shamus Award and the 2015 ITW Thriller Award for Best Original Paperback Novel for MOONLIGHT WEEPS, Vincent Zandri is the NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and AMAZON KINDLE No.1 bestselling author of more than 25 novels including THE REMAINS, EVERYTHING BURNS, ORCHARD GROVE and THE CORRUPTIONS. He is also the author of numerous Amazon bestselling digital shorts, PATHOLOGICAL and DOG DAY MOONLIGHT among them. Harlan Coben has described THE INNOCENT (formerly As Catch Can) as " . . . gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting," while the New York Post called it "Sensational . . . Masterful . . . Brilliant!" Zandri's list of domestic publishers include Delacorte, Dell, Down & Out Books, Thomas & Mercer, and Polis Books. An MFA in Writing graduate of Vermont College, Zandri's work is translated in the Dutch, Russian, French, Italian, and Japanese. Recently, Zandri was the subject of a major feature by the New York Times. He has also made appearances on Bloomberg TV and FOX news. In December 2014, Suspense Magazine named Zandri's, THE SHROUD KEY, as one of the "Best Books of 2014." Recently, Suspense Magazine selected WHEN SHADOWS COME as one of the "Best Books of 2016". A freelance photo-journalist and the author of the popular "lit blog," The Vincent Zandri Vox, Zandri has written for Living Ready Magazine, RT, New York Newsday, Hudson Valley Magazine, The Times Union (Albany), Game & Fish Magazine, and many more. He lives in Albany, New York. For more go to WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
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