How I Became a Famous Novelist

by Steve Hely

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

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

  Rule 14: Involve music.

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

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

  Rule 15: Must have obscure exotic locations.

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

  Rule 16: Include plant names.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4

  Outline

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

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

  —Outline for The Tornado Ashes Club by Pete Tarslaw

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

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

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

  IDEAS

  • Grandmother should talk like one of those wise old ladies who’s amused by everything. She should have lots of stories of hardship. Made her own soap? Had to slaughter favorite chicken?

  • Use words to describe old ladies that make them sound beautiful (graceful, regal, etc.).

  • Silas should be the kind of guy who notices the beauty of light filtering through a beer bottle.

  • Silas and Grandmother should come across Genevieve when she’s playing to a rowdy pool-hall audience that doesn’t appreciate her subtle lyricism.

  • To get thirties and World War II details right, add old movies to Netflix queue.

  • Luke in World War II: he hides in a haystack. He sleeps with a farmer’s daughter in Holland. He sees something that takes his mind off the war (nuns? children playing?). He has a chance to kill a German, but he doe
sn’t because the guy looks homesick. Luke throws his gun in the ocean (symbolic).

  • Luke was a high school football star, but he also read poetry to Grandmother under the stadium.

  • It turns out that Grandmother promised Luke that, when he died, she’d throw his ashes into a tornado. So they chase tornadoes.

  POSSIBLE METAPHORS / MOVING SCENES

  • Woman who says stuff that turns out to have extra meaning when it’s revealed she’s in a wheelchair.

  • They pull over by a prison and see the prisoners working on the farm. One of the prisoners tips his hat.

  • Gambling / taking a chance (on love? ironically named horse? “he’s scared, like us, but that’s the kind of horse that runs his heart out, like he’s got nothing to lose”).

  • Overheard conversations at truck stops (blue collar earnestness).

  • Everybody singing along to the same song (Patsy Cline?) on the radio. It reminds them all of different stuff (first kiss, night before he shipped out, etc.).

  • They pass some kids going to the prom. Genevieve says she never had a prom, so Silas dances with her in a cornfield.

  This was all terrific, but I didn’t know how to get started. Do you just start writing sentences? That seemed a bit rash.

  By now the whiskey was making me sleepy. I got up to order some boneless buffalo tenders.

  At one end of the bar was a rough stack of old newspapers. There was a week-old sports section with two cigarette burns over Tom Brady’s eyes and a Want Ad folded open to guitar amps. But beneath that I found a catalog for the Metro Boston Learning Center. I flipped through and there it was, between “Winning the Airfare Game” and “You and Your Wok”: “Writing Your Novel: From Idea to Publishing.”

  Everybody has a book in them—even you! Gain insight from a published author into how to get your idea out of your head and onto the page. Learn techniques, styles, and tips on everything from creating characters, building suspense, and making your work marketable to how to beat writer’s block. Meets Mondays at 8 P.M.

  The next day at work I was in a better mood than usual. I lingered with the koi just long enough to watch my favorite, Lumpy, eat a piece of a Maple Frosted Donut I’d picked up at Dunkin’. Lisa looked busy with files as I approached, but when I passed she said potatoes were going to grow behind my ears if I didn’t get a good scrubbing soon.

  Alice’s sweater that day was emblazoned with an outline of Rudolph made out of rabbit hair or something, with a red bead for the nose. This despite that it was well after Christmas. She held out her hands like a scale.

  “Okay. On one hand, we’ve got a very dumb young man from Manhattan. His essay is about how he learned about other cultures when the doorman at his building took him to a cockfight.

  “On the other hand, we have a Russian girl. Her essay is about how she wants to attend Brown. She’s under the mistaken impression Madonna went there. Jon Sturges says this is a priority assignment, because her dad is some kind of oil guy or something.”

  We flipped a coin, Alice went off to fix cockfights and I ended up with the oil baron’s daughter. Not trusting her English, she’d written her essay in Russian and then used a computer translator:

  Madonna, by her is convincing feminitaj, has inspired her the artistic individuality, and her courageous states on the political problems, the women all over the dirt. Because of her example I wanted to visit university Brown.

  It was simple enough to redo. I Wikipedia’d Brown and found that Kathryn S. Fuller, former president of the World Wildlife Fund, went there. I whipped up some froth about how “this inspiring woman offers a clear example of the kind of dynamic leadership I myself hope to provide someday, as my own nation, Russia, continues its uneasy transition to democracy and faces its own environmental challenges.”

  I was done by eleven. With the rest of my day I tried to draw a sketch of myself in the style that The New Yorker would print next to its gushing review. I imagined middle-aged women, drinking coffee, arguing passionately about Silas and Genevieve and the scene where Luke is given a ceremonial knife by his host in a hut on the coastal hills of Tunisia. I imagined myself giving an interview to Tinsley Honig as the Atlantic crashed beneath the deck of my tasteful mansion. Her blue eyes would drink it in. Then later, with the camera crew gone, I would make tender love to Tinsley in my bedroom with cathedral ceilings that overlooked the back of my estate, where one pool flowed into another pool in a miniwaterfall. The point was, while all this was going on, Polly would be in some D.C. apartment with her hair in curlers, nagging her unfortunate shrivel-testicled husband to put the kettle on.

  But all this was roughly 300 pages away.

  So that night I went to St. Joseph’s School, where the stairs down to the basement reminded me of the taste of square pizza slices and cups of applesauce. I found the right room, 12B. A wave of nostalgia hit my nostrils as I smelled the industrial cleaning solvent janitors splash on linoleum floors.

  The only other student present was a fat man in a T-shirt that read “Something’s Cookin’ In … Tennessee.” He had gamely wedged himself into one of the twisted desk-chair combinations that were arranged in a circle beneath a battered map of “The United States In The Civil War.” He sat there playing games on his cell phone.

  The instructor was at the teacher’s desk, fussing about with papers. For ease and accuracy I’ll call her SpaghettiHair HamsterFace. She whisked around when she saw me. From two yards away she stank of cigarettes.

  “I’m sorry—are you in this class?”

  I was prepared for this. “Oh, I thought Janine talked to you.”

  “Janine? No.” Then she waved her hands around like two hummingbirds. “Okay.” And I took a seat.

  Janine Figero was a name I’d gotten out of the back of the Metro Boston Learning Center catalog, where she was listed as “Head of Programs.” I gambled on adult education classes being appallingly disorganized, I figured if I threw Janine’s name around, no one would give me any trouble about joining midway without paying.

  My classmates trickled in, until there were seven of us. A small and bespectacled lady, who looked like the kind of grandmother who writes long letters, sat down next to me and poured herself a cup of coffee from a thermos.

  Then SpaghettiHair HamsterFace picked up a worn paperback off her desk. It was decorated in streaks of hideous blue and orange pastels, and the title read Sun Tokens. It looked cheaply bound.

  “Okay, let’s get started,” she said angrily. She opened a Diet Coke and took an unladylike swig. “So we’ve been talking about creating that sense of vividness, scenes that really seem alive. Also, the internal, getting at the character’s feelings and thoughts and putting that in words. Those of you who have been here before have heard me read from my stories drawn from my experience in New Mexico—here’s a passage I think gets at some of the things we’ve been talking about.”

  Just as she was about to get started, Alice walked in.

  This was a delightful surprise. My coworker had a Mead composition book pressed to the Rudolph poof on her ancient sweater. She didn’t see me at first. HamsterFace gave her a dark look for lateness, and Alice scurried to a desk opposite mine. As she sat down she saw me and I smiled at her—the only thing to do, really. Alice’s eyes bulged like a comedian of the silent film era as HamsterFace opened Sun Tokens and started declaiming:

  “Lovemaking for me, on the porch of the bungalow,” she read, “was frenzy, teeth and biting and hair meshed against teeth, blind clenches against skin, mashing jammed knees and elbows, scratching and pulls, fingers stretching in mouths and crunching against the sandalwood boards, stickyhot tangles of toes entwined in flesh. Urges ancient and animal bubbled out like tar through the cracks in our humanity. We rammed at each other like bison bursting forth in a dawnspring… .”

  One of many amazing things about all this was how many students were taking notes.

  Alice was staring at me with an investigative look, as though I
were a word search.

  Hamsterface continued for a few minutes, reading as though she were almost bored with her own brilliance.

  “Our couplings were a lie, but they were an honest lie. And that was enough.”

  She closed the book and set it down behind her.

  “Thoughts?”

  Nobody said anything. Then the grandmother next to me slurped some coffee and declared, “Very vivid. I did have a question. When the speaker, the narrator, refers to her lover as”—she glanced down at her notes—“‘baboon-thighed.’ What does she mean by that? Is that a compliment?”

  Hamsterface pulled on the Diet Coke. “Yes, but it’s nuanced. That nuance is a good thing to work on in your dialogue.”

  Some people noted this.

  “All right, so, reading. The assignment was epiphanies. Did people find that difficult?”

  The grandmother gave emphatic nods. Alice stared down at her pencil and avoided my gaze.

  “So let’s go around the room, and everybody can read a passage from their epiphany scene.”

  First at bat was a put-together woman in a pantsuit who’d been discreetly checking her BlackBerry all night. She read from her financial thriller: Amelia, stunned, swiveled in her chair and faced Tom. ‘Confitrade may manage online investment portfolios in the convertible bond market, but they’re not making their money from growth assessment, Tom. They’re making it from cocaine!’

  A young man with a complexion like wet plaster who weighed maybe eighty pounds read from his first-person account of a lovelorn dolphin: Eniok stayed in the corner of the pool as he heard the Man make man-noise at Ongtak. He could do nothing. He thought only of being free in the Deep Place, where the fish didn’t smell of man-stink. And he decided to escape.

  As we kept going around, through confusing mysteries and adverb-choked accounts of love, I could see Alice growing nervous. I saw her look around, as though she might make a break for it. Finally we came to the guy in the “Something’s Cookin’ in … Tennessee” T-shirt. He explained that he’d been working on something that “wasn’t sci-fi, precisely, but a sort of sci-historical fiction, alterna-fiction version of the Pocahontas legend.” His reading concluded with this sentence: His moans from the pain delivered by the energy tendrils were muted by the plastic sheathing on his biosuit.