Deep Fried Twinkies & Salted Caramel Gelato

And unlikely duo, those two desserts, but they sum up Las Vegas perfectly.

Sungyoon Choi & Me: who's the Gelato and who's the Twinkie?

On Monday, after a night in the sumptuous accommodations of the Venetian Hotel, Choi, her boyfriend Eric and I set off on the Grand Tour of Las Vegas. First stop: Old Las Vegas. The Fremont Street Experience, as the main drag is called, consists of four blocks where a few bandstands are set up at the crosswalks and a light show plays overhead on a giant ceiling suspended over the street. The ceiling captures even the iconic Vegas Vic and Vegas Vicky. I'm sorry to see them hemmed in, without the blue sky above them. 

Vegas Vic

Vegas Vicky

In my book I describe the Downtown Strip as "What the real Strip would look like after she’s gone home at the end of a long night, wiped off her makeup, thrown down her wig, and slipped out of support hose. And she’s sitting around in her underwear, scratching herself in front of the TV." In the Monday morning light, with all the neon dim, it's looking more run-down than ever. It's seedy and worn out and Choi is completely enchanted. Maybe her delight at Downtown Vegas is akin to my hankering for the old Times Square, with the crazies muttering on the corners and the porno shops and mounds of garbage and weird smells. It's more real, more authentic, though I'd have to say that a majority of tourists are not looking for authenticity when they arrive to either Sin City or the Big Apple. 

Choi does a happy dance when she gets to eat a deep-fried Twinkie at Mermaids Casino. Despite how revolting this might sound to some, and despite the fact that the deep-fry oil barely bubbles while the Twinkie is cooking, it's a big hit. Eric thinks it tastes like funnel cake wrapped around a Twinkie and then covered with chocolate sprinkles. I'm intrigued but can't quite bring myself to try it. My passion for deep fried foods has abated somewhat since my last cholesterol check. I do, however, play the quarter slots while waiting. I feed a dollar, and on the second spin three 7's line up. I make $10! Good omen? Let's hope so.


I drive them into the bleaker neighborhoods (we don't have to go far). It's funny, pointing out various landmarks from my book, as if the events really happened. "Here's where Walter meets Chrysto..." "I think Walter would live in that apartment building with Owen,  yes, exactly that one..." Choi won't be illustrating all these events, but you never know what will come into play, and since we're here I might as well give her the whole world.

Next stop is the now-defunct Liberace Museum. The parking lot is completely empty; there aren't many businesses left in the little abandoned strip mall. The museum itself is still there but not open to the public. We pay our respects. I should have brought flowers, or rhinestones.

We loop back to the Strip, stopping briefly at the Luxor before driving north back to the Venetian. It's not very crowded today—hard times, or a Monday? At the Venetian we hit the gondolas, taking a ride and imagining how the canals will look illustrated. We get lunch (Zine Noodles & Dim Sum—yum) and then it's back to the room to look at Choi's thumbnail sketches for the next graphic novel interlude. Even in sketchy form I can tell it's exactly right.


And then we're done. I work out at the hotel, do some writing, and treat myself to Mario Batali's restaurant in St. Mark's Square. End with some of his salted caramel gelato, which is now included in my deathbed meal, (right after that fried Greek cheese with the honey balsamic drizzle). It's a fittingly sweet and savory ending to a whirlwind trip.

Still Browsing...

Things are proceeding on the book front, though it's still in the "getting the book publisher-ready" stage. Got the first graphic novel section completed and delivered from Sungyoon Choi, and I think it looks marvelous. Heart-breaking, but marvelous. While we're waiting for rest of the artwork to be completed, Agent J would like to see if the manuscript could be trimmed down a bit and tightened. Sounds reasonable. I hope I'll have better success at trimming pages off my novel than I've had at trimming pounds off my frame this year (damn you, apple-bacon-cornbread stuffing!) Agent J will be looking over the manuscript this week and offer edit suggestions. This isn't unfamiliar territory; years of whittling novels into plays for Lifeline Theatre in Chicago (with half the company members looking over your shoulder, benevolently) should stand me in good stead.

And then there's the title... The book, Liberace Under Venetian Skies Untitled, has thus far Teflon'd itself against any new name applied to it. We're getting closer, though. The following is a few titles I've been monkeying with these days. Feel free to weigh in. Remember, the graphic is only there to give the context of it being a book. It's a shot I took at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Much of the book is set there, and in the neighborhood behind the neon of the city.

Okay, go:

Lots of meanings for "departures," all of them apt.

This one is Doug's favorite. 

Coincidentally, it's one he came up with, too.

This phrase gets used a lot in the book.

The main character returns, over and over, to a pivotal moment in his life, trying to replay it in different ways but unable to arrive at the truth.

Kinda grand, ain't it? God figure prominently in the book. 
Suggested by Christina Calvit, playwright extraordinaire.

This one was suggested by my friend Amy Hill,

who discovered it in the Wordle art of my manuscript.
Works however you say it.

Kind of active but whimsical, don't you think?

I like this one because it uses screenplay syntax, 

and screenplays figure into the novel. 

It also encapsulates the illusion of Las Vegas. 

I noodled with this one a bit. 




What about:

Or this?

Damn it, I'll get Liberace in there somehow!

Adventures in Publishing Part 2

Where the hell have I been? Sorry, sorry to be so out of action. I've been doing stuff, honest! And not just catching up on "The Walking Dead"and reorganizing my son's school library (which, yes, I have undertaken, giving further credence to my uber-geek status— Step-stools! Langston Hughes Quotes! Magnetic Chalkboards! Bookmarks with Neil Gaiman on them! We must have them all!). We've reached a bit of a holding pattern on the book front.

Agent J has been sending out feelers to editors of publishing houses that may be interested in a new literary work that combines prose with passages of screenplay and graphic novel (that's my book, for those late to the party) and the general feeling is, more of the artwork needs to be done in order to give it the best shot at being understood and sold. I had a feeling that this would happen, though at first we were thinking that having a sample of the graphic novel sections would suffice.  I ran the news by the illustrator,  Sungyoon Choi, who also had a feeling that this might be the case. Choi, being the lovely being that she is, has agreed to finish up the graphic novel sections so that we can go forward with a fully-completed manuscript by mid-January. I am of course incredibly happy and excited to see the graphic novel scripts I have written realized. Choi and I are going to Las Vegas next month to do some research, and we'll be working closely together on bringing it all together... (I have also recently discovered that I've been calling Choi by her last name all of this time, instead of Sungyoon, her first name.  Heh heh... I can only say in my defense that she encourages people to use her last name, as it's much easier than pronouncing her first. )

So I have a little time. Of course, there's stuff to be done. I have just finished going through my manuscript again, giving it a final polish. And there's the matter of the title... sigh. Who knew that the name would be so hard to come up with? Agent J (and a few of my close readers) have felt that "Liberace Under Venetian Skies" was too... narrow in its scope, and didn't represent the tone of the book. Since then I've batted many many possibilities around, but none have stuck so far. Of those that readers have seen, "And then She was Gone" was quite popular, but Agent J felt it sounded too much like a Lifetime movie (possibly starring Ms Sela Ward) and that put me right off of it. Back to square one. I'm sure I'll have many more options to post in the days ahead.

The name of my favorite Lifetime movie, starring Miss Tori Spelling

In the meantime, let me leave you with a very fun website for those of you writers who want to look at your work in a different discipline. It's called wordle (www.wordle.net) and it takes whatever text you paste into it, finds the most frequently-used non-common words, and makes it into art. COUNTLESS hours can be wasted changing fonts and layouts. Here's my book, set to wordle:

Hey, maybe there's a title in there somewhere. I'll have to look into that, just as soon as I watch zombies chow down on a few more folks from Georgia.

Which Book Would You Pick Up?

All right, I've been working all day and this is what I've come up with. I'm looking for a revised title for my novel. Right now, it's called this:

(I've added a little graphic, just so you can imagine it on a shelf)

Remember, I'm looking for something evocative, modern but fanciful/whimsical. The book is very humorous in a snarky way (the narrator is a 17-year-old boy) but with a lot of heartbreak and grief, especially in the story of the parents. It's got graphic novel elements, plus screenplay. Love, sexual awakening, loss, fantastical happenings, most of it set in Las Vegas. A lotta book, I know.

Okay, you're at Borders/Barnes & Nobles, browsing. What might catch your eye, title-wise? Ready? Peruse!

Kinda like this one, cause the main character's a budding artist,

 plus there's this motif of movement & stillness... 

The archeology is a metaphoric one, looking through the ruins of your past for answers...

You know, he did fly in a Vegas show... 

There are lots of people flying to and away from others in this book.

One of my witty friends came up with this one:

it's funny because it's true

This is the simplest, and evokes the heart of the book. Too much like that Ben Affleck movie? 

All right, that's all I got for now. This would be a lot of fun, if it weren't my book...

Comment away!

Update: Sigh... Agent J was not in love with any of them. I have the feeling he's "Liberace-averse," meaning he thinks having Liberace in the title is a turn-off. Poor Mr. Showman. Thanks for all the comments, though, maybe I'll use them as evidence if one title gets a lot of love!

The Name Game

All right, now comes the hard part.

One of the hard parts.

Agent J would like me to consider changing the name of my novel, Liberace Under Venetian Skies. He feels it's too... florid? and not indicative of what the book's about, or it's tone. This comment has come up a times with a few reader-friends, so I know it may be a problem.

What do I need for a title?

Something evocative.

Fanciful/playful.

Ideally, something that has the tension between the sublime and the prosaic. You know, like Venice and the Las Vegas version of Venice. Or something that suggests movement vs. stillness.

How tarnished is the name of Liberace? Too campy/tragic/distasteful, or has it gone round the horn?

These are the questions of our times.

I'll put up some possibilities later.

HITCHED

It started online. I found his profile, liked what I saw, sent him a note. He told me he wanted to see the whole thing. I obliged. Then, after a flurry of emails and one very probing phone call, he popped the question. Said he wanted to be exclusive. Oh, there were others, but I liked his passion and how his mind worked. His sweet words didn't hurt. Even though I've never met him, even though he lives in New York and I live in Los Angeles, I made the commitment. We're ready now to take the next step.

You do know this is about me getting a literary agent, don't you?

Literary agents function very much like acting agents, except that instead of sending you out for many different roles the lit agent is sending you (your work) out for one big sell. They are the conduit into the publishing world.  Many publishers won't even look at a manuscript if it doesn't come through an agent. I found Agent J through an old writing group friend who sent out an email a couple of years ago mentioning this agent, who was part of a new agency. J was part of my first round of submissions, and he responded really well to my book, the perhaps-to-be-retitled (more on that later)  Liberace Under Venetian Skies.

I took a couple of other interviews, but no one spoke as eloquently about the project as he. So I said yes. I know it seems odd to enter into a relationship with someone you've never met in person, but my writer friends assure me that it's not uncommon, especially if they're in the opposite coast.

So, my toe has tapped onto the Yellow Brick Road. Oh, I know, I haven't yet run into the trees chucking apples or the scary forest or the flying monkeys, but I'm on my way. Let's see where it goes.

Warning! Contents of a Graphic Nature to Follow!

I've got something really exciting to share with y'all today: some graphic novel art, written by me and illustrated by the mongo talented artist Sungyoon Choi. 

The novel I've written, Liberace Under Venetian Skies, is mostly in prose, but it also incorporates sections of graphic novel, handwritten marginalia and fragments of screenplay. I'm a big fan of graphic novels (my first love: The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman) and I find the juxtaposition of image and text to be an incredibly tensive and exciting experience. Unfortunately, my illustrative skills line up with those of paralytic chimpanzees. Enter Choi.

How I met up with Choi is a story of moxie and good luck. A couple of years back, I'd read a graphic novel that really moved me called American Widow, by Alissa Torres. It's a memoir of a woman who's husband died in the Twin Towers on 9/11 on his first day at work. It recounts how they met, how she found out about his death, and the horrible, protracted aftermath of her trying to find his remains, deal with her pregnancy and also get aid from government bureaucracies. It's pretty powerful, and it's all in graphic novel form. The illustrator, I noted, was Sungyoon Choi. I loved her work; it was simple and clean but quite evocative, using a very limited palette. I thought the style of her illustrations was exactly what I was looking for in my book. 

So I wrote her.

I found her website and emailed her, telling her how much I admired her work and explained my situation, that I was looking for an artist for a book I was working on and would she be interested in taking a look at it? I included an excerpt and sent it off, not expecting too much from this completely out-of-the-blue inquiry. Amazingly, she wrote me back. Even more amazingly, she was into the project! She liked the excerpt and was interested in working with me. 

We kept in touch while I finished up the draft and got it ready to send out to agents. I knew that having some artwork would help in defining the concept of the book, and Sungyoon generously agreed to illustrate four pages to use as a sample. I can't tell you what a particularly thrilling experience it was to open the email, click on the attachment and see the script I had written made manifest. I couldn't have been more pleased.

So take a look at this excerpt and let me know what you think.  It occurs at the end of the first part of the book. If you want to see it bigger, just click on the image:

Pretty cool, eh?

Adventures in Publishing, Part 1

As you may have heard, I’ve written a novel. It’s called Liberace Under Venetian Skies. Ta Da! It feels like I’ve been working on it almost as long as Flight 815 has been stranded on that island with the polar bears. The book’s been revised, scrutinized, analyzed, and truth be told, I’m crazy-cakes about how it turned out. I’m in that glowing honeymoon period where it’s done and there are only possibilities up ahead; it’s all mai-tais and complimentary macadamia nut shortbread cookies all around. I’ve overcome Hurdle #1:

Hurdle #1: Finish the damn book.

Champagne!

Now comes the hard part. I’ve got to sell it.

Hurdle #2: Find a Literary Agent

This process is eerily similar to looking for theatrical agent when you’re an actor (only I don’t need to get my teeth capped or lose ten pounds. Not yet, anyway) Referrals from other actors are the most helpful way to get seen by an talent agency; ditto with writing agents. To gain exposure as an actor, you’d perform in plays and showcases; writers do the same by getting their short stories published in literary journals and (ahem) writing blogs. And instead of submitting a headshot & resumé—

photo courtesy Suzanne Plunkett

—I send out to potential agents what is known as a query letter. It’s a one-page pitch of you and your book, enticingly described. I went to a seminar by the redoubtable L.A. agent Betsy Amster, who counseled reading book jackets to get a sense of how to sell your work. She also said, rather surprisingly, that it wasn’t a bad idea to compare your book to an established writer’s work (“it’s like a Raymond Chandler book written by Dr. Seuss”), as long as you do it tastefully. This gives the agency a frame of reference for your work. There really isn’t an analogous situation in the acting world; I can’t imagine an actor striding into an agency and announcing “I’m a little George Clooney, a little Dustin Hoffman, and just a smidge Dame Edna.” (Really, though, he wouldn’t have to— a theatrical agent’s going to type that actor as soon as the headshot crosses her desk.)

Advice on query letters can also be found at the excellent website querytracker, which helps you research agents & publishers and keep track of your submissions. Very recommended.

I’ve sent out a couple of query letters thus far, both referrals (Ms. Amster, however, recommends sending out queries out in bunches of about ten.) One of them has already yielded an interest in the manuscript. Here’s a sample of a letter I sent:

Dear Mr.XXXXXX:  
Hi, my name is James Sie and I had the pleasure of meeting you during at the Festival of Books workshop. I was the Asian-American guy who had written a novel told in several formats, titled LIBERACE UNDER VENETIAN SKIES. I would love for you to consider representing it.  
The book is a darkly-funny saga, the reconstruction of a tragic event that has blown a family apart, pieced together by a son who has no memory of the incident at all. It's told not only in prose, but with sections of graphic novel and fragments of screenplay. The book plays with formatting and image in a similar way to Jonathan Foer's EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE.  
Walter is a wry, isolated 17-year-old and budding artist who knows only too well the absurdities of life behind the neon of Las Vegas. He's taking care of his bedridden father and working as a tour guide in a tacky museum on the fringes of downtown. Walter's home life is shadowed by the absence of his mother, who abandoned his family when he was five. His discovery of the facts behind her disappearance is entwined with his parent's past adventures: how Emily, a former accordion player, chased a besequined vision of Liberace across the country; and how Owen, her grief-stricken husband, went searching for her amongst the gondolas of the Venetian Hotel. 
The three stories converge and refract through time, wandering in and amongst the gloriously artificial worlds of Las Vegas, which are both more and less magical than they appear. The Truth, in all its permutations, gets sifted through again and again, leading Walter to a place where everything is illuminated, and nothing is real.  
Prior to this book, I have written primarily for the stage; my plays and adaptations have been produced nationally, including a solo show about my Italian/Chinese upbringing called "Talking with My Hands," which was performed at the Mark Taper Forum. I'm currently a cartoon voiceover artist in Los Angeles; I've done the voices of monkeys, mafiosos and Jackie Chan, but this novel's voice is, I'm happy to say, all my own.  
I have included the first five pages in this email, as you had suggested, and would be happy to send the full manuscript so you can get a sense of how the different formats work together. Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.  


Sincerely,  
James Sie

Whatcha think? Does it entice? If you were at an airport bookstore carrying a bottle of Dasani and an overpriced bag of “deluxe”cashews, would you also pick up this book?

mock up purely theoretical

I’m not feeling too daunted right now. Yes, I know that I’ve still got rose-colored glasses perched on my nose, and that right now it’s a horrible time for the publishing world, but finding acting representation was no walk in the park either and I managed that. Actors are used to rejection; it’s in our wheelhouse. I haven’t gone looking for talent agents recently but I imagine that after a few no’s it’ll all come back to me. It’ll be like riding a bike. Or, more aptly, falling off of one. Again, and again, and again.