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Jules Feiffer

I don’t know how old he is but according to the NPR interview I listened to this morning Jules Feiffer is in his 80’s and still teaching writing at Stony Brook University – South Hampton Campus. He’s also still writing and drawing, just finishing a memoir called Backing into Forward.

On the interview he was asked what advice he’d give to a younger Jules Feiffer when he was struggling with his art. He said, “I’d tell him to be kinder to himself. I tell my writing students all the time, just get something down. Then revise it later. Don’t try to be perfect first time out. This way you can be freer with your work. That’s what age has given me – freedom.”

Write something down. Put the commas and question marks and periods in later. You’ll figure out where they go. I like it.

My favorite Jules Feiffer books (and my son’s from when he was smaller) are Bark, George, and The Daddy Mountain. Check ’em out if you got little ones.

Posted by Joe Lunievicz | May 6, 2011 | Categories: Blog | Leave a comment

Review Two!

This is my second review from a blogger, Lawral the Librarian, and dovetails nicely with Richie’s Picks. Read her review of Open Wounds at lucy was robbed. Thank you Lawral for the kind words and support for the book!

It’s painful to wait for reviews to come in. I have an image from the movie The Producers in my head, where Zero Mostel and Gene wilder are sitting at the bar across the street from the theatre where Springtime for Hitler is running opening night. Of course they’re waiting for bad reviews so they can make money on a flop. I’m waiting for good reviews so my ego will survive to fight another day.

A bit of trivia. Gene Wilder taught stage fencing at HB Studio before my mentor, Joe Daly did. I heard he was quite good. Can you imagine being taught fencing by Gene Wilder? How about just being taught by him?

I still remember one of my first rejection letters from Amazing Stories when I was a lad of seventeen or eighteen and the editor wrote, “I can’t believe something this disgusting kept my interest for as long as it did. Thanks for sending me this.” It was a story about a guy who goes to the bathroom and has an encounter with a skeleton sitting on the toilet next to him who died in a fire forty years ago sitting in that same spot. I know. I know. But I was young and into skeletons then. Okay. Okay. I still am. But that was my first review. Fortunately… my writing has gotten better.

Posted by Joe Lunievicz | May 5, 2011 | Categories: Blog, Open Wounds | Leave a comment

En Garde

This is one of the reasons why people fence.

Coming on to the strip, you bring much imagination with you (including hundreds of movie images) in addition to a calculating, contact-chess like mind, and the instincts to survive (even with a blunt tip there is something, well… dangerous about the whole thing).

This is such a cool video. I found it on the New Orleans Fencer’s Club website homepage and it deserves to be seen. It is more hollywood than real foil but it is cool – especially the part where one fencer uses his weapon to slide down the side of a building – an image first used by Douglas Fairbanks in the 1926 movie, The Black Pirate only he slides down a billowing sail with his knife ripping the center as he holds on. This scene gets a mention in Open Wounds and is one of the main character’s (Cid Wymann’s) favorite movies.

What was I doing looking at the New Orleans Fencer’s Club website? Going to New Orleans in June for the ALA (American Library Association’s national conference). More on that later.

Posted by Joe Lunievicz | May 3, 2011 | Categories: Blog, Open Wounds, Travel | 1 Comment

MAGPI in Phili

MAGPI (the Mid-Atlantic Gigapop in Philadelphia for Internet2) is on the calendar for May 11 in Philadelphia.

May is heating up with pre-publication day gigs. I’m looking forward to each of them, even if I’m a bit nervous. Events are performances and performances carry their own load of anxiety – some more than others. In my day job as a trainer I teach people, amongst other courses, how to do public speaking and deal with their anxiety (it’s the number one fear people have – even more than death or marriage or child-birth). So you’d think it would be easy for me, right? Well… public performance (radio, face to face, even blogging) has its weight of anxiety for everyone – me included.

I have things in place to deal with anxiety – specifically yoga practices I’ve cultivated and studied over the last twenty years (they do work if you use them – especially breathing practices or pranayama), preparation (I never go in cold), being in touch with and knowing my process for being anxious (if I know my process I can deal with it better at each stage before I hit PANIC.), self-talk (hey… it works, I talk to myself – don’t you?), and practice. There are others but those are my go-tos.

Back to MAGPI.

My most excellent publicist, Marissa DeCuir at JKScommunications has set me up with this wonderful gig teaching an hour long workshop on writing action-scenes for 10-12th graders. There’s a lot of fight scenes in Open Wounds so I have something to say about how I like to write them and what kinds I like to read.

Digression: Favorite fight scene from when I was younger – The Fellowship of the Ring, by JRR Tolkien, the chamber of Balin’s tomb in the mines of Moria right through to the balrog on the bridge. Wow. It captured my imagination at 12-years old like no other book at the time.

Okay, MAGPI. Here’s the link. The workshop is called, “They Fight!” It’s not open to the public. It’s a distance learning gig from University of Penn out of Phili with up to ten classes involved remotely from ten different schools. But I wanted you to know about it.

I’m really excited – and anxious – the best combo to have because one without the other would either be impossible (just excited?) or miserable (just anxious?).

Here’s another piece. My friend, David Brown, actor, fight choreographer, teacher of stage combat, and all around excellent human being, will be helping me out with some swordplay demos and readings. He’s the best and I love to work with him so it’s a real bonus for the students and of course, him and I get to hang out all day on the drive down and back. I’ve promised him lunch. It’s great what friends will do for you.

Anyway… MAGPI. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Posted by Joe Lunievicz | April 28, 2011 | Categories: Blog, On Writing, Travel | Leave a comment

Advice for Visiting Bookstores

I talked to my wonderful and excellent publicist, Julie Schoerke from JKScommunications, and she gave me the following advice about visiting bookstores. I thought others might benefit from her experience. Although it’s specific to my book, the six areas to talk about should be relevant to all.

First, remember 5 Things I learned from Denver. Use those lessons as a frame for these.

Onward.

Introduce yourself and be nice.
Start with a short (one or two sentence) synopsis of your book. Here’s mine: “Open Wounds is the story of Cid Wymann, a tough kid from Queens who fights to survives a harsh upbringing in 1930s/1940s New York City. Cid succeeds and comes of age through the help of two father figures, both cripples – one emotionally and one physically – who teach him about the discipline, art, and science of fighting with the sword.” Okay… it’s a work in progress. But it needs to be something you feel comfortable saying out loud and it’s probably best if you just memorize it. As they say in acting school, say it like you just thought of it at that moment.
Give them an idea of how to market your book – especially if it appeals to a specific niche or target population. But remember… your book can appeal to everybody, just some folks might be more likely to pick it up than others. For Open Wounds I need to point out that it is a book for boys and young men in order to let YA booksellers and buyers know that it is not a girl targeted book. Boy books are out there but few and far between so that’s a way to get the attention of the bookseller and differentiate my book from the deluge of others coming through the door alongside it.
Differentiate further if you have comparisons to other books from blurbs or reviews. For Open Wounds I have two. “It’s a cross between The Book Thief and Gangs of New York.” And… “It’s part Oliver Twist and part Captain Blood.” The first I’ll use for the younger generation of booksellers and the other for more “experienced” (read my age) booksellers who might actually have seen the movie Captain Blood or read the Sabatini book from which it came – which, by the way, if you haven’t you should. It a great story.
Let them know you want to help them part 1: Say you’d love to do book fairs, books clubs, and school night special events. Remember you’re doing it for the exposure.
Let them know you want to help them part 2: Say you’d love to sign any books they have on the shelf (remember a signed book is a sold book – or so they tell me) and that you’d be happy to put the stickers that say “author autographed” on the cover for them. Also let them know that you’d be happy to do any requests for signed books that will be mailed out – if they get them – it’s a great advertising point for gifts.