I Thought Covid Would Kill Me

 No exaggeration. I thought Covid-19 would kill me. It all started out so innocently, as so many little seasonal colds and flus do. I went skiing on a Wednesday, but by Thursday evening, I was enjoying a beer in one of my locals after a day of writing, and I started feeling not quite myself. Rather, I could feel a fever coming on, and get this, my lungs ached right down to the ribs. I knew something was wrong, but I pretty much shrugged it off and said to my friend, "Think I'll grab some NyQuil at the supermarket before I head home." Every year I get a little something, and usually all it takes to kill it is a couple good night's rest with the help of some night time cough medicine. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, as my grandmother liked to say. 

But I suffered through that first night while the fever not only intensified, my entire body went into some kind of toxic shock that took the form of aching joints, muscle, and bones. It was a chore just heading the few feet to the bathroom, and all the while I was there, I was shivering with fever. The next morning, I called my doc and she told me to get tested, pronto. Since that would take a few days, she suggested I isolate myself anyway, and take plenty of fluids. I did as she told me. This wasn't an easy thing for me. Even though I work at a desk in my bedroom, I run and lift heavy weights day in and day out, and simply staying still in my bedroom all day was going to prove more difficult than it seemed, even being sick. Still, I did as I was told. 

The next day, I was tested and the day after that, the results came back in the form of a text message all in big red letters. Positive for Covid-19. Naturally, I tried to figure out where I could have contracted it. So did New York State who promptly called me, gave me my beginning and end dates for quarantine, and then proceeded to trace my movements. Like I said, I'd been skiing, I'd been to a couple locals that had been practicing safety precautions, and of course, the local mega-mart. Other than that, I'd been to the dentist, and a physical therapy session for my lower back. In the end, we never really could figure out where I got the dreaded bat disease. All I knew is I had it and had it bad. 

Now, I know of handful of men and women about my age who have had Covid. None of them were necessarily in good shape, and one of them in particular had been using a cane for severe lower back problems and was even in the hospital for bad kidney stones. Yet, his Covid case was a mild one. His symptoms were like a cold. That's it. Yet, what I contracted, kept getting worse and worse, almost like I had underlying medical conditions. Case and point: after around day 4, I started developing a severe bronchial cough. It felt like I was tearing my ribs out with every gut wrenching cough. 

Around day 5 or 6, I started coughing up blood. As I watched my blood circling the toilet drain, I pictured myself being dragged to the ER and immediately transferred to ICU. A nurse would turn to a co-worker and tell her to "Get a priest." That's the stuff that was swimming through my mind while I felt like I was dying. I called my doctor and she took charge, putting me on a steroid for the lungs plus a heavy duty cough medicine with codeine. It seemed to help. 

Other little things occurred. I didn't lose my sense of taste or smell, so much as food tasted like salt, and liquids like orange juice tasted flat and old. And boy did I sleep. Even though I did my best to keep up with my work schedule, I slept pretty much from 8PM to 8AM, and then again, 1-3PM. And even then, I had to tear myself from my mattress. But like the doc said, the only real cure for the disease is constant rest, and the inner hope that the virus doesn't start winning the war being waged inside your body. 

Now it's been well over two full weeks, and I am happy to report I'm definitely on the road to recovery. I'm even back to light workouts and short jogs. It's important to build up the strength in my lungs again. But it's sad knowing there are people out there who are getting this awful disease who will not make it. It will be too strong for them. It will attack their organs and make their lungs into so much toast, and it will kill them. As for me, I might have dodged a bullet with this one, but I've also learned a lesson. Life isn't cheap, but it can be fleeting. Despite Covid restrictions I made immediate plans for an adventure to the Middle East in late May, and I will make plans to be in Italy for most of the Fall. After that, I will finally make the move to a place that suits me and my work perfectly. Or who knows, maybe I will just keep traveling the world since I can work from where I want, when I want. 

I'm immune to this thing now, so they say. For how long, I don't know. But I will be vaccinated as soon as possible. I don't want a rematch with it. Facing a grim reaper in the form of a manufactured foreign born virus once in a lifetime was enough for me. 

I hope you stay safe, and avoid Covid-19 like the  plague. 

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For a one week more you can grab THE GIRL WHO WASN'T THERE in eBook for just $1.99 as a part of a Kindle Monthly Deal. Grab yours!!!!

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Here’s what I’ve Learned after Writing 45 Books

Yesterday I wrote The End, on my forty fifth full-length novel. At this point I now have 40+/- full-length novels in print, some of them traditionally published and agented, others published independently through my own imprint, Bear Media LLC. Up until the great indie revolution of 2008, and the introduction of the Kindle EReader and Kindle Direct Publishing, and all the independent publishers that sprang up because of it, I was relegated to writing maybe one novel per year and praying to God that my agent could sell it. If he couldn’t, it was back to the salt mines for Vince. 

But these days, I write as much as I want, when I want, and most of it gets published one way or another.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, as fiction writers, we are living in another golden age of genre fiction not realized since the early days of the Pulp serials back in 1930s, 40’s and 50s. It was a time when a writer could work for a penny a word and make a great living, so long as he or she was prolific, and naturally, very talented.

So after having spent the past eight years writing more novels than many more famous writers will ever write in a lifetime, including dozens of novellas and short stories, here’s a little of what I learned along the way.

--Discipline. Writing a lot of books takes disciple and dedication. It takes waking up in the morning, seating yourself at your writing desk and pumping out the words.

--Talent. The words you pump out must be good, if not great. There’s no pulling the wool over a reader’s eyes. They can tell when you’re feeding them garbage and in return they will reward you with terrible reviews and never read you again.

--Dedication. Like I’ve already mentioned, you need to be disciplined and dedicated. Making a living as a full-time fiction writer is not a sprint, it’s a long, slow, marathon. There will be times when you are exhausted and your bank account is in the red. You will want nothing more than to pack it in. Do not succumb to the dark side. Keep your eyes poised on the long term goal.  

--Naysayers. Never listen to the naysayers and the downers. If I’d listened to one of my best friends years ago who got in my face and said, “You’re not a writer!” I would never have written another word again. 45 novels, many trips trips to the Overall Amazon Top 5 Bestseller List (two number ones!), three spots on the New York Times Bestseller List, seven weeks on the USA Today Bestseller List, the ITW Thriller Award for Best Paperback Original (Moonlight Weeps), the PWA Shamus Award for Best Paperback Original (Moonlight Weeps), a Derringer Award Nomination (I’ve Got to Get Me a Gun), more than half a million bucks in advances, nearly a million editions sold, are but a few of the accomplishments that prove I’m a writer. Of course, I rarely ever hear from the “best friend” these days.

--Jealously. As writers, we live in our own worlds, so it’s easy to let our imaginations get the best of us. On occasion, we become suspicious and envious of others and their successes. Don’t allow this to happen. This isn’t a zero sum game. There’s plenty of success to go around. Just go out and grab your own little share of the pie.

--Rejection. Even after all my relative success, I still get rejected more than accepted. This isn’t Hemingway’s world where he handed a novel to Max Perkins and it was automatically published, warts and all. There are plenty of publishers who wouldn’t take on one of my books if a gun was pressed against their skull. Production companies like Mel Gibson’s and Stallone’s will be in love with one or more of my projects one day and the next, it’s crickets. That’s the nature of the game.

--Success. It seems to come in waves. You go two or three years of Meh, and then suddenly, you’re back on top. The books are flying off the shelves, you’re hitting all the lists, winning the awards, you’re being asked to do interviews with the likes of the New York Times. You’re appearing on Bloomberg TV and Fox News, and you’re a freaking rock star. And then, just as suddenly, it’s radio silence. Enjoy the successes, ride the rejections, and realize that this is a business of peaks and valleys. The highs are never that high and the lows are never that low.

--Discernment. Not everything you write deserves to get published. Yes, it’s never been easier for writers and would-be writers to bypass the traditional gate keepers if they so choose, and self-publish a title or a series. But that doesn’t mean you should. Hire a reputable editor who will tell you flat out, “This book is junk.” Sometimes it’s necessary to reject yourself. Don’t let hubris get in the way of your judgement, or your built-in shit detector. If a work is subpar and you know it, don’t publish it independently or traditionally.

--Fun. I do this for a living. I am a fan of writing and writers. I love typewriters. I love writing studios. I love the writer’s life and the romance of it all. I’ve written in cafés and coffee houses from LA to New York City, to Rome, to Paris, to Istanbul, to Casablanca, to Cairo, to Moscow, to Kathmandu, to Ho Chi Minh City and places I can’t even recall at the moment. As full-time writers and novelists we’ve been given a rare gift. We can work from anywhere. No one ever became a success just sitting in their living room and watching TV. There’s so much life to be lived. Writers should crave exploration and have an insatiable wanderlust. I know I do. So explore the world and write about it. Have fun.

Of course, I could go on and on, but I need to get back to my work in progress. I hope you’ve learned a little something from my journey. If it helps you make sense out of the writer’s life just a little, than I will have done my job. Writing is not easy, and being successful often comes with a price. For instance, I’ve been married and divorced twice, the latter breakup due to my “placing my writing above everything else,” or so my ex-wife claims. What a damn shame. But there’s nothing in the world that I’d rather be doing than putting words on a blank page and experiencing the rush of a newly published book. There’s nothing like it in the world, and there's no shame in that. 

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Proliferation to Profit: A Lesson Learned

Harlan Ellison. One of the most prolific pulp writers ever. Courtesy the NYTimes.

  

Do you write only when you feel like writing? Perhaps you consider yourself a hobbiest and you don’t much care about making a profit from your words. It could be that you have a day job, preferably one you like, and you don’t need the money that can potentially come from your writing. If that’s the case, may you go with God and prosper. 

But what about the rest of us who write for a living, be it as a freelance writer, journalist, blogger, nonfiction book author, fiction book author, or a rather strange and stressful all-of-the-above combination? We have no choice but to profit from our words, one by bloody one, or else the rent doesn’t get paid...The food doesn’t get served...The car gets repossessed. The words stop flowing, the cash stops coming in. What’s the only choice you have left? Getting the dreaded day job.

I'd rather hang from the ceiling by my nipples. 

Writing School

In writing school, I wrote far more material than was required by my professors. I wrote so many words, I drove some of them nuts. But when I told them that I planned on making a career out of my writing…that I planned on “entertaining” readers...I was only derided, and laughed at behind my back when the professors returned to their dorms for the evening. Well, laugh it up, because while you’re still teaching the same thing over and over again, year after year, I’ve sold hundreds of thousands of books and made close to a million bucks in the past ten years alone. And I’m not even close to being as popular an author as say the Dan Browns of the world, or even uber-successful indie authors like Hugh Howey or JR Rain.

The Value of the Written Word: Pay the Writer

Words should be exchanged for cold hard cash. I’m a staunch believer that if your words get printed, you should be paid for them. Sadly, we no longer get paid for everything we write. With the advent of the Internet, our words have become democratized. Blogs like this one are all the rage, but so are YouTube videos, Tweets, Facebook Posts, and more. I’ve even written for some stellar publications that no longer pay (they shall go unnamed). Payment, they say, is exposure, or perhaps the reader will pay indirectly by buying one of my books. I find this appalling on one hand, but reality on the other.

Writers have always had to beg and grovel to get ahead. Why should that change now?

 

Proliferation

What’s a writer to do? Quite simply, write. I’m not necessarily a speed demon at the typewriter, but I can easily write 2,000 new fiction words a day while also leaving time for blogs like this one and/or magazine articles. What’s 2,000 words a day equate to? Approximately one new novel per month. That’s a lot of books. My ability to do this day in and day out means that I’ve accomplished what I set out to do in writing school, when the profs were having a good belly laugh.

Proliferation is Profit but…

Just because I can, theoretically write one novel per month, doesn’t mean I should be publishing one novel per month. Over the course of three years, I’ve published maybe thirty products, most of them under my own imprint, Bear Media, and some of them with publishers like Thomas & Mercer (Amazon Publishing Imprints), Down & Out Books, and Polis Books (I'm what they call a hybrid author). My belief was that the more content the better. That might hold true for the romance genre, but as it turns out, it doesn’t necessarily hold true for the crime, hard-boiled mystery, and thriller genres.

Flooding the Market

I believe at present there’s something like six million books available on Amazon. You might ask yourself, How the hell can I compete? The market is flooded. But I firmly believe that I’m only competing against my own genre(s). Maybe there’s far more thrillers available today than when I first started, but many of them are subpar or aren’t really competition anyway. However, when I flood my own market with too much of my own work, I actually rob myself of royalties. Even if the Beatles had put out a new record every month for ten years, there would have come a time when they would have been stretched just a little too thin, and sales would have suffered. One must give one’s readers (and listeners) a chance to keep up. One must give them a chance to breathe, or so I've discovered.

Proliferation to Profit Conclusion

After speaking candidly with one of my publishers, 2020 will usher in a new phase for me, in which I will only publish one full-length novel per quarter. This should give my readers both old and new, a chance to catch up with all of my published works. It doesn’t mean I might not put out a novella or a short story or two in between, but full-length works will be released one once per quarter. That should make everyone happy, including my publishers and my wallet.

In this new golden era of writing and publishing, proliferation is extremely important if not necessary. But man was not made to eat a full meal, every hour on the hour. He was made to eat three squares per day. Anything beyond that, and you just make yourself sick. 

Vincent Zandri's lastest novel is The Extortionist. 

 WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

A Case of the Mondays

Photo courtesy Quartz

Anyone who’s ever watched the 1999 movie, Office Space, knows just how dreadful and soul sucking a day job can be. Being ball-and-chained to a small cubicle for eight and half hours per day is, to many people, a form of slavery. But hey, unless you’re independently wealthy, everyone’s got to work. We have to eat, right? We have bills to pay.

Too bad most Americans are said to be only $400 away from being flat broke, meaning, they not only live paycheck to paycheck, they can’t afford it when their car breaks down or the refrigerator goes on the fritz. If that’s not depressing enough, you’re still expected to show up for work on Monday morning.

A Case of the Mondays

In Office Space, the main character Peter, played by actor Ron Livingston, is so depressed after having arrived at his dull, soul sucking job on a Monday morning, he decides to skip out for a coffee along with a couple coworkers. They visit a nearby cheesy chain establishment, Chotchkies, which is sort of like TGIF Fridays on steroids. Like Fridays, the staff is not only expected to where an obnoxious uniform covered in “flair,” their attitude must be over-the-top happy.

The server Peter and his buddies get is just one such individual. As they sit down, the server, Brian, played by actor, Todd Duffey, plants a broad, if not obnoxious smile on his face. It’s a direct contrast to the gloomy, upside down faces seated around the table.

“Looks like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays,” Happy Server Brian says.

I’m not going to give away too much of the movie’s plot, but suffice to say, from that point on, Peter is determined to find a way not only to get rid of his job, which is presided over by his evil boss, William Lumbergh (Gary Cole), he wants to find a means of employment that will allow him to do nothing at all, every day, all day.

Maybe Peter didn’t realize at the time, but what he's talking about is passive income.

Writing as Passive Income

One of the main reasons I got into freelance writing and fiction writing in the first place was to avoid a day job. I was groomed to run an industrial and commercial construction company. Immediately after college, I was given a week off and told to report to the office. There was no backpacking in Europe with my friends, no heading to New York City to land a job perhaps as a cub reporter, no heading cross country to find my fortune on my own terms…no fun of any kind.

I was to report to the office and begin my apprenticeship as a junior executive. Here’s how the first year went: I hated every minute of it. Now this is not to come down on what many people would consider the opportunity of a lifetime, and it was. But the problem was, I knew in my bones the career wasn’t for me. I couldn’t stand being cooped up in an office all day checking packing slips and asking for quotes on windows and doors. It wasn’t my cup of tea.

Emotionally speaking, here’s how a typical week would go. Monday morning is a horrible experience exacerbated by lack of sleep, anxiety over what the day will bring, and the empty feeling of utter hopelessness since at that moment in time, another Friday seems like an impossible dream.

By Tuesday you loosen up a little and resign yourself to the job. By Wednesday you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thursday you’re starting to feel like you’re gonna make it after all. Friday you’re exuberant. Friday night you get drunk with the friends, and you do so again on Saturday. By Sunday the hangover kicks in and by Sunday night you’re miserable once again because guess what day dawns in the morning?

Rediscovering Hemingway

In my spare time, I read all the books I couldn’t read or didn’t have the time to read during my undergraduate years. I was especially fond of the Hemingway novels and short stories. I also got heavily into the Hemingway biographies, especially the Carlos Baker biography which, at the time, was considered the quintessential work on the adventurous author.

I loved it. 

I wasn’t halfway through with the big book when I realized, this is the life for me. Hemingway didn’t just write, he lived the life he was writing about. He lived in Paris, went to the bullfights in Spain, hunted lions in Africa, fished on the Gulf Stream, married a very rich lady, built a house in Key West, and what’s more, he never had a real job other than a few short years as a full-time newspaperman.

The Hemingway life was the life I wanted to experience. When the realization sank in, it was like a big bright light had gone off inside my brain and my heart. I felt lighter than air because I had found my true calling. It must have been what a priest experiences when he finally discovers his sacred mission in life. 

I didn’t waste any time. That day I announced to all my friends that I was giving up the construction business to be a writer. 

They all laughed at me. 

Proving the Naysayers Wrong

Proving the naysayers wrong would not only take determination, it would take guts and a willingness to start at the bottom. After all, back then, I had more enthusiasm than talent. I started writing on the side. Taking a cue from the great Hemingway, I got a job at the local Times Union Newspaper writing sports stories on the weekends. I also started freelancing for them. Stories ranging from fly fishing for trout and bass, to travel pieces, to book reviews. 

Again, like Hemingway, I tried my hand at writing some short stories. Before long I found myself getting published in journals like the Maryland Review, Fugue, Old Hickory Review, Buffalo Spree, Orange County Magazine and many more. My journalism was getting published in New York Newsday and Hudson Valley Magazine, and I would be accepted into the prestigious Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Vermont. I was working hard, but I was also making a little money and, more importantly, making my way as a literary neophyte. 

That’s when I applied to Vermont College for my MFA in Writing. I was accepted. Suddenly, my friends were no longer laughing at me. 

Back to a Case of the Mondays

There was no stopping me. I plowed through writing school like a man possessed and in the process sold a novel that would fetch a very major deal. And while that deal would have its issues, I would never again work a real job. That was over twenty years ago. The writing life has had plenty of ups and downs since then, but I can still wake up on Monday mornings, and if I so choose, roll over and go back to sleep. What’s more, I can do this in Italy if I want, as easily as I can do it here in New York. Books sales, for the most part, are a passive income monster. You sell books while you’re sleeping or, like Peter from Office Space aspires to, while you’re doing absolutely nothing at all.

Come to think of it, I’ve worked really hard for the right to do nothing.

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