Got What It Takes To Be A Writer?

Last evening I watched a new movie presented by HBO called Hemingway and Gellhorn. It offered a fascinating but sadly cliched view into the life of two of the 20th century's greatest writers. Both were portrayed as hard drinking, whiskey bottle by the side of their typewriter, bombs blasting in their bedroom, always traveling to exotic locales, wild sex with every sentence individuals. Like their novels, much of this is made up. But then, in some ways Hemingway and Gellhorn lived up to this over romanticized image.

Giving credit where credit is due, the literary couple were more than what was presented on the silver screen (or LCD TV in this case).

In reality they both struggled over their writing, and painstakingly wrote their articles, stories and novels, often wrestling with every word. Hemingway would produce on average no more than 250 new words a day and in the prime of his life, took three straight years off from writing altogether. That's how hard it was for him.

Martha would write alone, sometimes for three or four solid hours a day. Then she would toss it all out and start over the next morning. Like her lover, she possessed a very fine built-in shit detector and in this, she was her own worst critic.

Truth is, they never drank booze while they wrote. They didn't get hammered the night before and wake up fresh and write like the words were simply bleeding out them. This is the stuff of Hollywood. This is romance. This is pure bullshit.

The truth about Hemingway and Gellhorn:

Their writing came first.
It came before love.
It came before war.
It came before partnership.
It came before car payments and mortgages.
It came before children.
It came before health and sickness.
It came before leaky roofs and broken refrigerators.
It came before school PTA meetings and dinner with the neighbors.
It came before birthdays, anniversaries, funerals and graduations.
It came before Christmas.
It came before fun.
It came before happiness and sadness.
It came before God.

This is why fifty years after Hemingway's death and fourteen years after Gellhorn's (both of them by suicide), Hollywood is making movies about the couple. Because they were the best at what they did. And to be the best, you must make tremendous sacrifices.

Being a writer is not about being available to the world. It's about locking yourself away, at a great distance if need be, in order to work. Work alone, with yourself, without interruption. It's selfish and it is painstakingly hard work. In Hemingway's words, it is like "biting the nail."

Do you have what it takes to be a great writer?

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Life is Short...

On my way to the gym this morning I almost rear-ended a Jeep that had one those black, vinyl tire protectors wrapped around the spare tire which was attached to its back gate. Painted on the tire protector were the words,

Life is Short. Live it.

Simple. Declarative. No decoration or funky colorful illustrations to further stress and/or dilute the point. Like the cups that are cracked and hooked above the sink, it made me think (thanks for the metaphor Wilco!). We all have choices to make in life. If we're lucky and have the means to do more than just subsist on what we make for a living, we find ourselves having more choices to deal with than we do decisions. So often life is a matter of no choice and it becomes an endless, almost hopeless pattern of work, TV, bed. You wake up one day and you're old, or worse, terminally sick. 

But those who wish to avoid the old, shoulda, coulda, woulda, would do well to pay attention to the words on the Jeep. You must make some very hard life decisions that might not always be so popular with those who love you. Those people who consider you family, friends, and even lovers and partners. Your decisions might even be considered selfish. But then, you must live with yourself day in and day out. If you are a writer or an artist, then you more than anyone know full well what it is to live alone, even when you live with someone else.

As my 47th year winds down, and my new books BLUE MOONLIGHT and MURDER BY MOONLIGHT get ready for publication in December, I look at my writing desk and see two more novels in the draft stages. I see my passport. I see some spare Euros and a whole lot of world I haven't yet experienced. I have my health, my career, my hopes and dreams. Over the past six months, I've spent more time at funerals and wakes than I have over the past six years combined. I know that one day, when I least expect it, my life will come to its final conclusion. Dust to dust. Worms to the flesh.

But for now, I fully realize that I'm left alone to sort out some serious decisions. Life decisions. In doing so, I will keep this clearly in mind:

Life is Short. Live it.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Video Games

"Lana Del Rey is a Gamer."

My sons play video games.
Ok, that's an understatement. Not only do my sons (Jack 21 and Bear 17) play video games, they own literally thousands of them. They also own every gaming system available, both TV adaptable and hand-held, and they collect retro systems from the '00s, 90's 80's and even an Atari "Pong" system from the 1970s. The games they purchase and play often arrive to our home in strange packages wrapped in brown butcher paper, postmarked Japan or South Korea and even China. These games will be designed and presented entirely in an Asian language that somehow my sons understand.

The games they play range from G-rated to Mature to Violent with names that have become entirely familiar in and around video gaming circles: Final Fantasy, Mario, Tekken, Street Fighter, and lots more, 

The gaming doesn't stop there.

As many gamers do, my sons are also into the tangental aspects of gaming like graphic novels, video anime, feature length straight-to-video movies, and more. They also maintain a special allure for Bruce Lee, who's early Kung Foo movies curiously follow a video-game-like plot-line of "level's" of battle or fighting, despite their predating practical video game development by a decade or more.

Lately my boys have been designing their own video games starting with humble miniature games in order to educate themselves to the complications and nuances of the art. One day they hope to make their mark on the industry with big games that will be distributed throughout the world.

I grew up with video games which back then in my early teens, were mostly located in video game parlors. Back when you could find records in record stores and books in bookstores. Nowadays it's getting harder and harder to find a video game parlor since just about every household owns some kind of video game system like a Uii or a PlayStation. Certainly just about everyone has access to the Internet. But I never really got into them since I more or less knew that once I was hooked, I would forever be dedicating half my life to sitting in front of a whole bunch of computer generated pixels.

But video games still fascinate me. Especially the ones gamers refer to as "Kill Games."
These first person kill games put you the player in the position of the chaser while you hunt down a series of victims which more often than not assume the form of Zombies (that way they can't ever really be killed). But there are other kill games in which you hunt enemy soldiers or bandits or rednecks driving fast cars. I was curious about what goes into the design of these games and designers who might become so obsessed with making them so realistic and life-like they might go to extraordinary lengths to create them. Like murder for instance. So fascinated in fact, that I decided to wrap a stand-alone thriller around the idea.

The plot I had in mind was not just a simple murder. But an elaborate hunt and chase which would culminate in a murder upon which the chaser would record the victim's screams prior to perishing. The screams would then be used in the design of a Violent First Person video game that would closely resemble the actual hunt and chase that inspired it. That in mind I created a video game designer who is a master of disguise and a serial killer. A man who never stays in the same city for very long and who operates under as many different aliases as he's had facial reconstruction and voice enhancement surgeries. He is a man who will stop at nothing to observe how another human being reacts to a hunt and chase, and he's determined to translate the experience for the video game as accurately as possible.

Even though my sons were able to provide me with almost all the research material I needed for the novel (minus the murder part!) it still took me almost three full years to write the psychological/suspense/horror thriller, SCREAM CATCHER. It's now coming at you in e-Book, trade paper and in a matter of a few weeks, audio, screams and all. It's my contribution to an entertainment genre that has not only fascinated me for a long time, but become an art form unto itself and a way of life for my sons. And even, a living.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Boise has Babes

There is more to this career than writing, marketing, and reading. Travel is part of it. Which anyone who reads this blog knows I love to do. I spend more time in a plane than I do in my apartment. But in addition there is the presentation of my experience, knowledge and advice I'm invited to share at conferences.

Halloween weekend I was privileged to head back to that secret haven of literary genius Boise ID. I spoke on the industry, balancing life, the future of publishing and my career in general. My publicist Bri got some photos for the Vox. Unfortunately she was never around when I wanted a picture of one of the good looking women, usually married, that passed by. Wonder if she planned it. Anyways below are what she captured.

IBE was held in downtown Boise

Here I spoke from Backlist to Bestseller

On a round table with Don Jacobson, Tim Vandehey, and Maryanna Young discussing the future of publishing

Later there was an author mixture but most of those pictures we won't show. However, here is a few.

My bro (and Abe Lincoln lookalike) and the brains behind Stone House Ink Aaron Patterson.

Donna Fletcher Crow has been writing books for 30 years.

And that's Bri. Aaron celebrated by taking all Stone House's people out for dinner. Mmmm Lasagna

THE BIG THRILL: SCREAM CATCHER

THE BIG THRILL:

Scream Catcher by Vincent Zandri

This is how your life ends: Not with a whimper, but a scream!

Jude Parish is afraid. The former violent crimes cop turned bestselling true crime author has a fear-filled demon lodged inside of him. A demon so real he can only imagine a slimy reptilian beast with scaly skin, black eyes, and razor-sharp fangs having taken up residence inside the place where his once confident and fearless soul resided.

Now, in the wake of his literary success, the ever anxious Jude is hoping to lead a quiet, peaceful life in the idyllic Adirondack vacation town of Lake George, New York with his new pregnant wife, Rosie, and Jack, his young son from a previous marriage. But when Jude becomes the accidental witness to a bizarre “kill game” in which the killer, video game designer and master of disguise, Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox, insists on recording the screams of his victims prior to shooting them dead, the ex-cop’s life is turned upside down.

When Lennox is arrested by the L.G.P.D. and Jude is asked to act as the state’s “star witness,” he has no choice but to fight his demon-fear and take on the role. But what he doesn’t realize at the time, is that the killer’s arrest is actually the first level in what is a carefully designed and scripted first-person video kill game that will involve his entire family as “players” and “victims.”

How will the kill game end?

Like all violent video games, it will end in death. But it won’t be “Game Over” until Hector Lennox catches the screams of his tortured victims.

*****

“Scream Catcher has the classic Zandri flair, short chapters, cliff hanging chapters, twists and turns, non stop action and page turning suspense. However, this had more drama, less quirky, quip dialogue and more of a psychological thriller plot. Masterful!!!!” –CMash Loves to Read Book Blog

“Readers will be held captive by prose that pounds as steadily as an elevated pulse… Vincent Zandri nails readers’ attention.—Boston Herald

*****

Vincent Zandri is an award-winning, bestselling novelist, essayist and freelance photojournalist. He holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College and is a 2010 International Thriller Writer’s Awards panel judge. His novel As Catch Can (Delacorte) was touted in two pre-publication articles by Publishers Weekly and was called “Brilliant” upon its publication by The New York Post. Zandri currently divides his time between New York and Europe. He is the drummer for the Albany-based punk band to Blisterz.

To learn more about Vincent, please visit his website: WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM