Unlike my first novel, which took me 30+ years to write−In
The War Zone is not about war or the military. Rather, it is an
uncommon contemporary love story. The protagonist−Gibb Quinn−is a former street
fighter raised by his single mother in a trashy Las Vegas trailer park. A
scholarship to the University of Portland, compliments of the Bishop Gorman
High basketball coach, enables Gibb to escape from his gangbanger neighborhood
to become a star computer salesman for the Big Byte Corporation in Seattle. His
is a quintessential American success story until the company sends him East to
rescue a failing retail outlet. Despite his Ralph Lauren wardrobe bought especially
for this assignment, Gibb could not be more out of place in Chatham,
Connecticut - a tight coastal hamlet full of old fashioned, narrow-minded
natives that treat him as a "Vegas hustler." (It’s more a case of
Gibb having left Las Vegas, but being perceived as though Las Vegas had never left
him.) More interested in his place on the Big Byte leader board than being
accepted socially by the natives or the local business types−the “Regulars”−Gibb
concentrates on becoming number one in sales in New England.
All is well until Alicia Farrell, aka the virgin princess, aka
the Belle of Chatham Township, and her mink-clad mother−members in good standing of
the local aristocracy−visit the Big Bye store to purchase a PC as a Christmas
present for the family patriarch, Judge Farrell. Alicia, who is promised to
Josh Bingham, Jr., a Yalie member of the other ruling family, has deferred her
admission to Yale Law School for a year while working as a paralegal in her
Uncle Tom Farrell's law office. The trouble starts when Alicia's weekly visits
to the Big Byte for computer software lessons convince the Regulars the Vegas
hustler has designs on her. This, in turn, sets the rumor mill on fire. Gibb's
protestations that his interest in Alicia is strictly platonic fall on deaf
ears. The resulting boycott of the Big Byte store puts Alicia at odds with her
family and the townspeople, generally. From there the story proceeds apace to
its surprise ending.
Did you
try the traditional route to publishing, i.e. querying agents/publishers?
Years ago, with my first novel, APO 123, I went through the process from
beginning to end, without success, trying my best to interest agents and
publishers from coast to coast. After I had collected a drawer full of
rejections, I gave up and for several years relegated the manuscript to my
safety deposit box. At the urging
of my friend, mentor and fellow writer’s club member, John Henry Irsfeld, I
revisited it and on his recommendation, in 2010, published it with CreateSpace.
By that time, Irsfeld, whose first novel Coming
Through was published by Putnam, had resorted to CreateSpace to
self-publish his latest novel, Night
Moves. This despite Irsfeld being a distinguished professor of English and
creative writing at UNLV and on a number of occasions having being recognized
for his writing talents. Irsfeld’s experience was enough to turn me against
wasting time going through the same drill as I had in the past. Incidentally, APO 123, is now in the hands of a Los
Angeles TV syndicator whose staff has pronounced it’s content suitable for use
in producing a 10-12 week, one hour, TV series. When In The War Zone was finished and ready for publication, I felt
satisfied enough with CreateSpace to again publish with them, as opposed to one
of the other self-publishing alternatives.
Do you
belong to a critique group? Have they helped improve your writing?
Yes. I am a founding member of
Lefty Salazar & Associates, a Las Vegas writer’s group. One of the other
founding members, the above-mentioned Professor John Henry Irsfeld, reviewed
the manuscripts of both my novels and offered advice that improved my writing.
(The third founding member is Jack E. Sheehan, who has a best seller to his
credit.)
What is
your writing process?
It’s worth bearing in mind that in
college I majored in economics. Never did I take a course in creative writing
or read a book on the subject, although while attending Stonehill College I did
have the lead in the senior play. While stationed in Verdun, France during the
height of the Cold War, acting as an Army prosecutor in a command consisting of
15,000 people, I sent frequent letters to my Judge Advocate General’s Corps
classmates and copied my best friend in law school. Mine was such an
unconventional experience (akin to a M*A*S*H for lawyers), that I was
determined to preserve the stories for my fellow Cold War Warriors, as well as
for other friends and family members. 15 years later, while a partner in a “white
shoe” corporate law firm, I retrieved the copies of my letters from my best
friend, the contents of which, a veritable wealth of material, was the basis
for fictional APO 123. The challenge
was to work the material into the structure of a novel, about which I knew very
little. Before sitting down at my typewriter, I read and reread The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby−Hemingway and
Fitzgerald being the two authors whose style of writing I most admired. This
was the sum and substance of my preparation. From there, I proceeded in a
stream of consciousness manner to compose a 1200 page−two volume manuscript−a
story in itself. 25 years later, after rewriting and rewriting and rewriting−along
the way revisiting The Sun Also Rises a
number of times−my writing style had evolved to its present state. My two
biggest problems were (1) training myself how not write like a lawyer, and (2)
constantly reminding myself that I was not writing my biography and had license
to rework the stories in ways that would be the most entertaining and of the
most interest to readers.
My second novel is a work of pure
invention, the beginnings and ending of which came to me with relative ease.
Once the first draft was finished, the rest was rewriting ad nauseam.
The shorthand version of my
writing process as it has evolved over time, is to sit down at my computer with
a dictionary and thesaurus at my side and write either what comes into my head
or material I have made notes about.
Do you
outline your story or just go where your muse takes you.
In the case of APO 123, the
challenge was dealing with an overabundance of material/individual stories (the
original manuscript gave picaresque a bad name), weaving the selected ones
together in a coherent story line and in fictional form. In the case of In The War Zone−a work of pure invention−it’s
safe to say I just went where the muse took me. In terms of the protagonist’s
observations of Las Vegas manners and mores, however, I was able to call upon a
wealth of personal experience. Like other writers I have read about, ideas came
to me in bed, in the shower, and everywhere in-between. In each case, I
hastened to scribble them on notepads for later transmission. On many such
occasions, I was accused of being pre-occupied, but loath to admit it.
Did you
hire an editor to review your manuscript before publishing?
My wife, Trish Brebbia, is credited with editing both
manuscripts.
What have
you’ve learned during your self-publishing journey?
Most of all that, with the kind of
fiction I write, it’s all about the story. As far as self-publishing is
concerned, I’m sure you know as much about the process as do I. Showing their
insularity/smugness/omniscience, it wasn’t until self-publishing (led by much
maligned Amazon) evolved into a $billion industry, that the mainstream publishers
jumped on the bandwagon. Suffice it to say some 16 of the best selling e-books
on Kindle were self-published. What does this tell us about the keen eyes and
ears of the major publishers who are trapped below decks on the good ship “blockbuster”
while waves are washing over the decks? My wife and editor, who averages about
a book a week, finds that these days more often than not books published by the
major publishers contain editorial mistakes, detracting from the value of what
used to be one of their specialties. Now that the major publishers are hurrying
to get to the front of the self-publishing parade, there is hope for all
aspiring writers with talent. I count myself among them.
Besides
Amazon, are there any other sites where your books are for sale?
APO 123 also is
available at the CreateSpace e-store and Barnes and Noble and on Nook. In The War Zone is in the process of
being converted to .mobi and ePub and will also become available on Nook and
possibly Barnes and Noble. Both books are available through Brian Jud’s Premium
Book Company book marketing program for non-bookstore retailers. As soon as I
have time, I intend to explore the possibilities of making both books available
on iPad and other channels. It seems apparent that these channels alone are not
sufficient to gain traction in the very competitive book marketplace.
What kinds
of marketing [twitter, facebook, blog, forums] are you involved with for
promoting your book(s)?
I have a webpage: www.johnhenrybrebbia.com
with a blog, and a facebook page, but haven’t yet figured out how to maximize
their utility.
Since last April, I
have made author's presentations at The Works independent bookstore in Pacific
Grove, CA, the University Club in San Francisco hosted by a member of the board
of the San Francisco Literary Society, the public libraries in Provincetown, MA
and Chatham, MA and the iconic New England Mobile Book Fair independent
bookstore in Newton Highlands, MA.
For the past 2 months, I have been
contacting reviewers on The Indie Reviewers List. So far I have had 5
acceptances, plus a review from the Portland Review of Books is in process.
What
advice would you give a new author just entering into the self-publishing
arena?
If you are sure you have the talent and a story worth telling/reading,
follow Winston Churchill’s famous admonition: “Never give up! Never give up!
Never give up!
At the times when I was most
discouraged, I would remind myself of how, after John Kennedy O’Toole committed
suicide because he could not get A
Confederacy of Dunces published, it took his mother 11 years to convince
someone that counted (Percy Walker) to read the manuscript and convince a
publisher – in this case, the Louisiana State University Press – to publish her
son’s satirical masterpiece, publishing phenomenon and ultimate winner of the Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction. (Oddly enough, during his military service, O’Toole was
stationed at the same Army post as my friend John Henry Irsfeld.)
What’s
next for you?
My plan is to devote most of my
free time to marketing In The War Zone. In the meantime, my youngest son,
Christian Brebbia (Yale, NYU film school), and I and others have formed a movie
production company. Once I have gained enough traction from In The War Zone to raise the funds, we
will commence principle photography on a feature film entitled Teeth. Christian and I co-authored the screenplay,
which is based on a short story of mine.
Teeth is a
zany comedy/satire about Hans Potts, a New Jersey orthodontist, and his horse-faced
mother, Miriam, two world class bigots who flee from ethnically challenged
Camden, New Jersey to Los Angeles seeking peace and contentment. Then from
ethnically challenged Los Angeles they set their sights on the old south seeking
peace and contentment. En route in their moving van, they become marooned
in Gumball, Texas, a tiny town in the Texas Panhandle. Gumball is in a
segregationist time warp ruled by an old fashioned, moonshining sheriff and
it's all downhill from there. Instead of peace and contentment, the Potts’
manage to incite a war among the KKK, a congregation of black
Presbyterians, a moonshining segregationist sheriff, a corporate raiding party
headed by a Jewish Napoleon, and the US Treasury Department. So there!
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