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From Sports to Fiction with Jerry Izenberg · WriterCon

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This week on the writer Con podcast. Well, it's not original with me,
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but for many years when I was at the Harrold Tribune, I sat
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next to Red spicher most red columns, I guess at peach time, and
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somebody asked him, how do you write a column every day? How can
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you start? And needs to go first? I take a razor, I
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open up a vein, and I bled a little bit. And that's probably
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the best advice I've ever heard. Welcome to writer Coon, the gathering place
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for writers to share their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your hosts
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are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of the Red Sneaker books on
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writing, and Laura Bernhardt, Award winning author of the want Land Files book
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series. You're Writers. I'm joined as usual by Laura and our fabulous sound
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engineer, Jesse Ulrich. We're recording this episode a little early because Laura and
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I are going to be cruising this time out of San Diego and for summer,
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and we couldn't talk Jess into coming on board the vote just to record
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an episode of the podcast. I mean, what is that if there had
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been Star Trek actors on board. I bet you would have come. Would
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it require Patrick Stewart or like, would Neelix be enough to Nelix? That's
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a tough one. I would need more than jess Nelix. The actor's name
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I can't remember right now. He's a very nice guy, very nice man.
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But it has to me Nelix and one other side character. Sorry questioning,
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I just want to be clear. I was not insulting Neelix. In
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fact, he's my son Ralph's favorite. But it's the only reason that name
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came to mind. Okay, but I know you've done that Star Trek cruise
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many times, or at least a couple. Why can't we have a crew?
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I mean, we do the writer Con Cruise, by the way,
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that's coming up in April. Writers aspiring writers learn all about the crews on
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the website that's writercon dot com. But but that's for writers and people are
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thinking about writing and whatnot. Why can't we have us like a Star Trek
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where the writers are the draw that everybody wants to come on board and meet
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their favorite autographed You know, maybe if you're lucky, Jesse, you could
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end up in the hot tub with James Patterson. No, no, I
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jump out of that hot tub would I wouldn't jump out because I love hot
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tubs, but I just started. Yeah, he can probably afford the sweets
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to have their own hot tubs. Anyway, he would not No, he
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isn't hot tub with the regular folk. Who would you want to be in
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the hot tub with? Jesse? The author would would be the one that
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you would get a little giggly about. Well, obviously Brandon Satason would be
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great to have a hot tub. The uh, the two they make up
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James S. A. Corey, the two men who wrote the Expanse series.
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That would be fun. And of course Georgia R. Martins. I
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could yell at him to finish the book, but get back to work.
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You're on the boat, go right? Why are you here? If he
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came up? But we could yeah, okay, I want to work on
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this. Well, on the last episode, I think, or is that
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a future episode? I lose tracks sometimes, but I think on the last
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episode, we asked everybody to help us name the new writer con magazine or
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yes, nickname or something. So this time the question is how do we
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make this star not Star Trek, but star Author's cruise happen? Send me
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your suggestions? Okay, will burn at gmail dot com. All the contact
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info will be in the show notes. Laura, would you introduce our interview
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guests please? I would love to. I'm thrilled to introduce your Eisenberg.
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He has a career spanning over seventy years and we can't even put a cap
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on that because he is still going strong. He's still writing. He's columnist
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emeritus at the New Jersey Star Ledger. He's a five time winner of the
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New Jersey Sports Writer of the Year Award and a winner of the coveted Red
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Smith Award, which is the highest honor given by the Associated Press Sports Editors.
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He's been inducted into more halls of fame than I can count. Honestly,
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I tried to go out and figure it out, and the numbers were
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all over the place. It's just he's so impressive and he's done so much
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that it's really difficult to kind of bring it all into one introduction. However,
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we're going to be talking to him about his novel After the Fire,
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which he decided to write at the age of ninety. It was at the
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top of his bucket list, and I'm so excited to hear about that novel.
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Coming into being. George Foreman described this novel by saying it chaoed and
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fascinated him because he didn't see such beauty and intrigue coming straight at him.
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Hold onto your seat and read After the Fire nice. Well. I can't
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wait to talk to him. But first the news Jesse take us away.
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Our news stories consist of two major reports that have come out in the past
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week. As we record this first or report from the Frankfurt Book Fair,
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which a lot of people say is the most important book fair that happens every
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year. I got to be upfront. I didn't go this year, but
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some of my friends, including an agent represent some of my works, were
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there. Jane Friedman was there, and I thank everybody for their coverage.
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Here are some key takeaways from the Frankfurt Book Fair this year that I think
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might be of interest to writers listening to this podcast. Here's something that came
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from a longtime literary scout. Her name is Bettina Shrew and she said,
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quote the tend to focus and publish books that will get a boost from TikTok
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continues to be popular and we are reading more in this genre than ever.
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I just got a poison pause and point out she basically just created a new
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genre, the TikTok novel. Continuing with the quote, many of our clients
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are now looking for romance romanticy, which would be a combination of romance and
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fantasy, must fantasy and up market horror and gender bending fiction. Okay,
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I think about that for a minute. Here's a quote from somebody else and
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international sales director. Her name is Jimmy Davis, and she noted quote,
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there is one thing that everyone agrees on. Book Talk has made reading fashionable,
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and young people are fucking to bookstores in a way that they haven't seen
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since Harry Putter end of quote. Overall, twenty twenty three is looking like
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it's a disappointing one for sales, particularly in children's books. Middle grade paperbacks
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are really declining. But book Talk books, whatever exactly that is, that's
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doing well and there's going to be more of it in the future. Laura,
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any surprises, I yes, because I'm confused that we're we're seeing an
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upswing in younger people reading and yet the middle grade paper backs. So yes,
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it's good, But then the middle grade paperbacks in particular are suffering a
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decline, right, It's not because people are reading on devices. Now what
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I wonder how we explain that, Like young adult is doing well and even
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TikTok books or whatever that is, but the younger ones aren't reading as much.
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Yeah, well is it? Is it possible we've all just finally agreed
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that like paperbacks are not great reading devices. Like I've never enjoyed reading a
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paperback. It's they're small. You can't ever like hold in one hand easily,
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I'm wondering, and don't have enough like ways to read on their phone
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or an iPad or a computer if they just switched over to ebooks. Yeah,
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I think ebooks and then hardbacks are the two ways people actually like to
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read, and so those are gonna be the two that continue to to go.
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Yeah, it's impossible that they're reading, but not in a way that
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requires them to actually buy anything. I mean normally children's books, who would
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expect to be bought by parents. But I mean when I was reading it
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bed time, usually you had a big book that you held that people could
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see the pictures at least. Yeah. Let me tell you. My sister
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has two sons and a daughter, and the last time I saw all three
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of them were showing me off there like Apple watches, they all had devices.
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They're very young, so maybe this is maybe this is the new trend.
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Can you read on your Apple Watch? I hope not. No.
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I was shocked that they had one. I don't. I don't know.
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Maybe it wasn't actually an Apple, but they had like Disney themed, you
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know, fancy watches on their arms, gave them all kinds of digital readouts
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and stuff. Yeah, did you guys notice the reference? You knew I'd
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bring this up to amidst all the categories romanticy and all that was literary and
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up market horror? Yeah, what is that? What is that? What
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does that mean? I don't blend things too much, like he's saying,
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what is that? Now? It doesn't communicate well to us. But the
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horror that isn't scary, because when I hear people talk about literary thrillers,
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it's usually a thriller that isn't thrilling, but it's like upmarket horror, like
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horror that happens at like fancy stores. I just I don't understand what the
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term means. I think that's traditional publishing and particularly the Big Five acknowledging that
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they're primarily publishing genre fiction, but implicitly saying, but ours is better market.
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If they're going to descend to horror, the least respected probably romance,
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isn't it. But at any rate, horror doesn't get much love. But
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now it's very popular with young people, so they've got to cover it.
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So it's up market horror. Yeah, remember Jesse thinking, Yeah. Yeah,
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Also like, let's not forget hockey hockey romance. It's just one fascinating
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trend after another. Okay, news story number two, and this is a
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report from the Author's Guild pertaining to author income. For those who don't know,
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the Author's Guild is an organization based in New York. It's probably the
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closest thing writers in America I have to a union, and just in the
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in the you know, for full disclosure, I'll acknowledge that I have been
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a member in the past, but I'm not currently. Okay, here's what
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their report says about authoring. Well, let's take this in stages. Okay,
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because this is Jesse, get the charts ready, this is going to
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be like lecture time. No, it's not. It's but the problematic nature
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of this research. I wanted to point out because they can only get information
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from people who will actually respond to the surveys or the polls, and that
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tends to skew older. So as you can save five, chart number one
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out there is sixty five older People older than me make up thirty eight percent
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of this overall sample. So is that going to impact the results? Well,
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of course it does bring up chart number two, which has to do
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with the genre or category that people are writing paired with their income. No
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surprises here. Romance has long been the most widely read and published genre,
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but despite being the genre that is already hugely ahead of everybody else in sales,
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it's now seen considerably more growth in the last year. Other types of
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commercial fiction like sadly mystery thrillers are dependable but not seeing increases like romances,
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and that leads us to chart number three, which is when I think it
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all gets really interesting. This is the same chart, but now focusing on
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people who consider themselves full time authors. In other words, anybody part time,
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anybody who's got a day job or isn't financially completely committed to authorship has
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been excluded. So what difference do you see now, Well, romance authors
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come out on top way out on top. They earn more from book Why
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aren't I writing romance? Because I am just wondering the same thing. At
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least you didn't say, because you're not romantic buildings, why am I not
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writing it? I was the not why aren't you writing it? But why
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aren't I writing? Anyway? So they earn more from book sales, from
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book sales alone than from any other type of income. Now, just to
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clarify, because we said these people are full time authors, other types of
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income they might still get would be on our area, from speaking engagements or
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from being a book coach or selling something on their website. But now here
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we're looking at just the income they make from book sales, and it's pretty
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impressive. Romance is not only the dominant genre, it is becoming even more
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so. But overall, here's one of the most important income relating things that
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I saw here. You can see that when you know pairing traditionally published versus
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self published author, and you can see when the self public authors start out,
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they tend to not make very much money, which is exactly what you
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would expect. They make little compared to those few who get traditional deals maybe
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even advances. Well, that makes sense, bearing in mind that only a
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handful of people are going to get those traditional book deals. But these statistics
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indicate that if that self pubbed author just keeps going long enough to become well
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established and generally speaking, it looks like the five year mark is the critic
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on average, I mean, don't expect it all happen five years and one
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day later, But on average, it appears to take about five years to
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make your mark, and at that point, if they last that long,
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the self pubbed authors are more likely to out earn their traditional publishing counterparts.
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I said that so convoluted in such a convoluted way. Let me straighten it
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out a little bit more. Self published authors might start earning less, but
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if they give it five years of hard work, they may well be out
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earning traditionally published authors who said it the same time, who started at the
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same time. Which makes me wonder, Okay, if we've only had self
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published authors for about a decade a little more and five years is enough to
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make a difference, what is the publishing world going to look like in another
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five years? Will self pubbed authors continue to get smarter and savvier, or
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as they have done in the past, will traditionally published authors start copying what
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the self pubbed world is doing, you know, will they figure it out
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or fall further behind? I don't know. What do you think, Laura?
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I saw a chart this past week as well that actually broke it down,
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not over time frame, but how many books self published authors had compared
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to how much income they were bringing in. Yeah, it was very eye
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opening. It was pretty consistent where I fall on the chart. I also
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fell into that income range. It was a little, i'm not gonna lie,
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a little discouraging because it was showing that not just the five year mark,
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but that you would need somewhere between twenty five thirty fifty books to be
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able to earn the kind of money that you could truly live off of if
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I put that into years. And let's be honest, Bill, you've got
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sixty two books that you've published in how many years? Thirty plus, thirty
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plus? Super impressive, So compared to you, I'm still aspiring. So
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people can maybe compare their beginning journey to where I'm at. But I start
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thinking to myself, I'm how old, how many good years do I have
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left? How many books I have to write every year to try to get
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to the point where I might make it into the bracket that would enable me
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to consider myself a sustainable somebody who can truly live off of what I'm writing.
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Fortunately, I have a partner who's incredibly understanding and tells me just write
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the books you want to write. Let me worry about the money. Not
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everybody's in that situation. You're talking about the cat right buster f well,
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as soon as he is, No, I think all he cares about is
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how often I play with them and give him treatsting right next to you right
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now, let him on his leash and take him outside, which isn't happening
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today because it's raining. But you know, that's something that could have been
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more discouraging for someone who doesn't have somebody that says understanding and who might look
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at the time that they're devoting to that and ask them, is how is
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this worth it? Like it's taking you away from me, and what are
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you showing in return? It's it just if you don't quit, you cannot
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fail. That's our motto. And I'm going to keep at it. I'm
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going to keep about it. So don't get discouraged by these numbers. No,
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well, clearly, But you did ask me how do I feel about
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traditional publishing. I thought you were going to say you're going to fall further
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behind. I think people will unless unless there's a big swing, people decide
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this is too hard. I need to get somebody with a little more leverage
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behind me. But what we miss out on is that we're still going to
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be required to do all the marketing and the publishing. Getting a bigger publisher
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doesn't equal huge sales numbers. And I'm actually finding it a little encouraging what
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you're showing here. Just we stick with it, and we keep going and
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eventually just keep making little baby step progress. I wish it wasn't baby steps.
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But and the other clear takeaway I think here is if current trends continue,
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by the year twenty forty nine writers out of ten will be romance writers,
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but apparently so much better. No, Okay, here's the real kicker
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that I was going to end with. Yes, romance authors appear overall,
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doesn't apply to everyone, of course, but on average appear to be doing
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really well. What also becomes clear, and all these charts and statistics,
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romance authors are doing well because they out work They outspend and they out hustle
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most other authors, and that money that they put into it comes back to
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them. It's an investment that bears, you know, in time. According
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to these statistics, romance authors spent an average of two full days a week
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on marketing and promotion. Think about that. I mean, most people self
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included right first, and then when there's time at the end of the day,
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you might do a little bit of that. But these people are giving
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two out of seven let's guess that they work seven days a week, given
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how productive they are, giving two of those seling over to marketing and promotion
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of their work, that's way more. In fact, statistically, according to
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the author's guil, that's forty five percent more time spent on marketing promotion than
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those miserable mystery thriller authors who are also surveyed. And I just mentioned this
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because Laura, you know, we got a conference and people are always looking
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for the magic bullet. You know what it used to be. What word
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processing program do you use, or what laptop do you use, or what
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you know, what's your day look like? We always ask people and you
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think, you know, everybody is looking for the magic bullet that will turn
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them into a productive and successful writer. But it looks like the magic bullet
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is just commitment and hustle, doing the work and doing it consistently. I
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would agree with that because I think by the time you're trying the latest thing,
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the latest and the greatest thing that's getting attention, people are going to
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have moved on to the next. It's just like trying to write to genre.
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If you're trying to catch something that's happening right now, you're going to
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be behind the curve no matter what. Same thing with marketing. People want
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to hop in and try what's working right now, but if it's already beyond
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that crest, you're going to fall behind. I think you have to do
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what's best for you. Maybe you can find the new creative thing that helps
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pop your book that would be useful. All right, much to think about
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in these two reports. Jesse cueue up the music. Let's talk to Jerry
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Eisenberg. Jerry, Welcome to the podcast. Hi Jerry, it's good to
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be here. Thank you. All right. Traditional first question, if you
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could offer writers one piece of advice, and I bet you could offer a
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lot, but if you had to choose one, what would it be.
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Well, it's not original with me. But for many years when I was
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at the Harold Tribune, I sat next to Red Smith most read columns,
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I guess at peace time, and somebody asked him how do you write?
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How you write a column every day? How can you start? And he
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said, well, first I take a razor, I open up a vein
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and I bleed a little bit. And that's probably the best advice I've ever
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heard. I got scapule a of you, no doubt. Yeah, hey,
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you just celebrated a birthday, right, let but I had one.
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Okay, I'm not ninety three. And what can I say about that?
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I don't know I have it? Well, tell us the secret. I'll
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give you some info. But we just last week and celebrated my mom's ninety
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fifth birthday. Oh wow, And so I want to know what are the
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secrets so I can start doing it. What are your secrets? Well,
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there's two secrets. One is one secret is my ability to write, and
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that happened because I have an oversupply of venom, which is the greatest stimulate
24:30
in the world. And the other secret is be a moving target. You
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know, I had seventy two years with my newspaper, well not really,
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some of it at the debut and some of it making democracy safe for you
24:48
two in Korea. But basically there was some over sixty years for the same
24:55
paper. And I discovered that the best. I used to go into my
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office all the time, and I wore a trench coat and a hat,
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and they say who is he? And by the time I'd be out of
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the building and they never caught up with me. So, Jerry, I
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assume that paper you mentioned is the Star Ledger. Was that your first writing
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job. How'd you get started? Oh? That was simple. When I
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first joined them, they were the poster boy for illiteracy because we had two
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newspapers in the city and this was number two, probably out of two newspapers.
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It was probably number thirty four. And I was in college. And
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what I did was I made arrangement. They take kids to go to you
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know, kids that are high school kids, they go to football games and
25:49
whatever else, and they call it the necessary information. That's the first thing
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I did. So it really wasn't pull employment because I was too busy trying
26:00
not to go to class but still get my college aparma, and I worked
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that very well. I had with the base of a hundred percent, and
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I'm not good in man because I went to school in York. But nevertheless,
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on a base of a hundred percent, I put out the school's newspaper
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for forty five percent. And then there was a bar around the corner call
26:26
of the place, and I spent about forty five percent of my college time
26:30
there. But it left me free or ten percent to go to class on
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the days that I chose. Well. I think it's in incredibly impressive that
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you worked over sixty years at the same newspaper. I'm agog about that,
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but that's not all you were doing. You've also written a number of books
26:53
about sports. There are nonfiction books, including Once There Were Giants was incredibly
27:00
successful for you. We have to ask what made you decide at the age
27:06
of eighty nine that you wanted to switch it up and write a novel.
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Oh, that was simple. Somebody told me I couldn't it was anything,
27:15
and he said, I'm not going to handle He said, Darry, you
27:18
have an international reputation as a sportswriter. He's right about that. I'm in
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eighteen warves of Fame, and four of them are not in this country.
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I think that's because they were a shame to tell people in it. But
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nevertheless, I just decided I could do anything. So I had already written
27:40
an autobiography, which I wrote too soon. I already had written a play
27:48
in one act play. I already had written nineteen billion different newspaper columns,
27:55
and what was left to me. I had a number of historical things.
28:02
But the thing was I had never written a novel. I have never written
28:07
a collection of poetry, although there's some very sensual stuff I gave my wife
28:11
on the anniversary, and I I am working on a collection of short stories,
28:19
and the novel is not in my repertoire. I was fortunate enough to
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find a great publisher, an understanding editor, which means she kept him out
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show when I wasn't going to give in, and it worked out beautiful.
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I mean, I really, I'm gonna tell you something I written. I'm
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working on my sixteenth book now, which is in order, but which is
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a Larry Doby the first black to play in the American League. It was
28:48
his second black to play in organize baseball. He was my friend for forty
28:52
five years, and nobody really knows what he went through because it was old
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Jackie Jackie Jackie jack to play in New York. And that's the reason it
29:02
worked that well had a much tougher time. Cleven. Schools were not integrated
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when he got there, the hospitals weren't integrated, and as a matter of
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fact, not much was integrated. And he went to hell. And because
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he was my friend for so long, we would discuss these things. And
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the genesis of that book I can tell you later on, but we want
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to get to the novel. And what I was going to say is,
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of the fifteen books I've already done, I never you know, you see
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you or your people are going to you send me Lari, send me case
29:48
of books I never opened. I did open them. I opened and I
29:52
read it right away. There's only one other book, the one that I
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just put out, called Baseball Cheese and Needed hot Dogs. Growing up in
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Newark, New Jersey in the nineteen thirties. Fish is very similar to some
30:07
of the stuff that's happening now in terms of anti semities in any but it's
30:12
not a serious book unless you take me seriously. Nobody does, so it
30:18
works that far. But I started to say, those are the only two
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books I ever opened. You know, when the hardcovers come on good,
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I put one on the shelf and that's the end of it, because I'm
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not interested in rereading the stuff. There's no reason to read it again.
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I know I wrote it, so who cares. But these two books I
30:40
do read, and the novel i've read, I always say, read all
30:45
the way through about five times, probably looking to catch lea and an error,
30:51
but I never did. And she also, oh, I'll give you
30:56
an idea about how easy it is for me to edit. I mean for
31:02
somebody to edit me. And my sympathy goes out to or particularly in this
31:06
case. I called him up in a semi paddic and I said, Lara
31:12
is a guy in his book called Uncle Louie. You got to get him
31:18
out. She means you, no, not get rid of him. Change
31:22
his name, make him Uncle Pietro. But can't be Uncle Louis because he's
31:30
a living legacy of the mafia, and with the kind of friends he has,
31:36
they'll say you should chew him. After the guy cooperated with me,
31:40
so we had to take him out. So Lara said to me, I'm
31:44
sitting here amazed and impressed. Did you actually know a member of the mafia.
31:48
And my helpful reply was, Laura, I know a lot of memories
31:52
of them, and when you get the phone call take the fifth. Well,
32:01
you're bringing up the fact that you are doing such an excellent job of
32:07
capturing and saving these moments in time. And you also mentioned that unfortunately some
32:16
of what you describe is happening earlier in your life either never went away or
32:22
has come back around is rearing its ugly head again. You really do a
32:24
fantastic job one and I would call after the fire historical fiction. So this
32:30
this one wasn't memoir. It was well, I'll tell you, Shelvy now
32:34
that it's been that long enough that no one's going to show me it ain't
32:37
fiction. Everybody in this book has a different name, and I swear I
32:45
don't know the originals. I swear that to the to the last Dollari's guy.
32:50
But I also, uh, there are two people who I use their
32:53
real name because I knew that one was Carlo Gambino and one was Richie de
32:59
boupre Go. And believe me, you cannot MOWI each people. I don't
33:06
want to try to. Well, you drew heavily from your life experiences.
33:12
We knew that. I went back and was looking at some of the reviews
33:15
of the book online, and one of them, one of the reviews says
33:19
that the book is so well researched and very accurately depicts new work at the
33:23
time. But I lived it. That's why did you actually have to remind
33:30
yourself or do any research or was this still very I know what I had
33:34
to do. I had to research street names and stuff I've forgotten over the
33:38
years. But talking about research the new book that came out, I will
33:45
say this, It's a ninety three year old guy looking at the first twenty
33:49
one years of your life, and I didn't have any notes, but it
33:54
worked. So my memory has been pretty good. But a lot of great
33:58
memories. Right. But okay, so that one you took experience and turned
34:04
it into fiction. But I think you referenced this earlier. Earlier this year,
34:08
you published an actual memoir, right, Yeah, it's a memoir of
34:13
the first twenty one years of my life. So they're going to be three
34:16
or four sequels. Well, I'll tell you that it ends with a perfect
34:22
shut up for sequel, but I will not do it between the one good
34:27
thing I did between the ages of twenty two when I left to make the
34:31
world safe for you guys. The one thing about it was that I am
34:40
I want to say it right, I didn't. I didn't want, well,
34:53
I'll ask your question, because I was trying to find a way to
34:55
say it with that second. I didn't want to talk about the next twenty
35:00
years of my life because I've had three marriages. One is depending in the
35:08
book. Tell you if there's any anxiety, I'll tell you. I finally
35:13
I did after you know, after I got to be twenty two, where
35:19
them bokains and they were pretty much disasters, except it gave me the joy
35:25
of being a single parent to two great kids. So that was that's all
35:30
I got out of it, really. But after that I was not a
35:35
very desirable person. I spent too much time in the middle of neon sunshine,
35:43
if you can interpret that. I was not a reliable person. My
35:49
job I always did now my kids I always cared for. But the point
35:53
is I don't want my kids, who are pretty smart, to figure out
35:58
and put them to know if it's got my name on it, that it's
36:01
me. And those twenty years I just you soon lose. I met a
36:07
woman when I was forty nine years old, and we have been married for
36:13
forty five years. Wonderful, Well, a miracle, not wonderful. I
36:19
mean, I mean, I can't imagine anybody in world put up with me
36:22
for forty five years. Well, let's talk about that. How you do
36:27
it, though, isn't it? That's how you write the second book?
36:29
And it ends with your character arc you marry, You've grown up, you've
36:34
moved on something. I'd like to but I'll tell you I did some things
36:37
I'm really not proud of. So we're at that. Those years go by,
36:43
But you brought some of the important threads from your life into the book
36:46
After the Fire, Oh yeah, which you're talking about a relationship between a
36:54
Jewish boy and an African American woman in new work in nineteen sixty eight,
37:01
following the riots that happened in nineteen sixty seven, Yes, sixty yes,
37:08
what was there a question here? Allawa? Yes? I thought you could
37:12
you could talk about that, because that's one of the that's one of the
37:15
things from your life that's true. That's a good reader. The whole marriage
37:20
of yours that you're talking about, we had, we had pretty tough times
37:23
in the beginning, he really did. And but you know, and and
37:32
racism is a multi edged short. I will give you two experiences where we
37:40
experienced it from black folk. My wife at this capital in those days quickly
37:49
would go to spring training a kadie for me. But she worked, so
37:53
you can only get away for a little while. And there's a cafeteria in
37:57
Saint Petersburg, Florida called Morrison's, and the kind of audience they had.
38:07
They hired Casey Stengel as a spokesman when he was seventy nine, so you
38:14
realize the kind of cafe was. We go in here and she said,
38:16
I love the potatoes here, and there was a woman behind the cattle happened
38:21
to be black. And I said, well, wait a minute. I
38:24
said, miss can you give her some more potatoes? And I didn't say
38:29
her, I said, my wife. And the next thing I knew she
38:31
was wiping potatoes up because she splashed it deliberately. Then another time we went
38:37
we weren't married yet, and we went on a trip to or Tampa because
38:46
I had to cover football games, and we go into what she wanted.
38:52
She had a couple of secretaries working for her, so she wanted to bring
38:55
back little souvenirs. I said, well, go get them. So staying
39:00
she's at the counter now with ash trays crap like that, and she I
39:04
would never buy anything like that. And she's standing there and I'm to her
39:08
after, but about a half a foot behind her and African American woman who
39:16
is the quirk, says to me, can I help you, sir?
39:22
And I knew I understood right away what was happening. And I said,
39:27
I don't know if you could help me, but you can help my wife
39:31
now through the change at her. The reason I'm telling you those that side
39:38
of it because on people don't know that side of it. Believe me,
39:40
there was more a lot more on the other side in terms of racing.
39:45
But you know, after and she she was very nice. I'll tell you
39:51
she came from it. I'm not going to mention it a wealthy community in
39:55
New Jersey. I came from the bottom of the and uh, I was
40:01
urban. It was a free kid, and so we had different backgrounds.
40:07
And it hit her a little harder. And I said to her, you
40:12
know, those people are not staring at us. You're wrong or you're just
40:22
such a handsome couple, or you're such a beautiful woman, that's why they're
40:25
looking. And she bought it. That was a pretty good salesman in those
40:30
days. Good but we had we had problems. We had no question about
40:36
it, and it wasn't easy and they had all I gave them more problems
40:40
than I had in the book, Laura that you edited, Uh, well,
40:45
it's because it's fictionalized. We had to ramp it up a little bit.
40:52
This has been absolutely fascinating talking to you, and I feel totally guilty
40:57
about having to wrap it up. Could we maybe get you to come back
41:00
on the podcast again something, maybe after your next book comes out. I
41:05
don't believe you're just sitting on doing nothing. What are you working on now?
41:07
Yes, the book, I'm working on it, I said Larry Dobe
41:12
and I said book that it's a teachable lesson for people. Larry Adobe is
41:17
starting to get some credit now for seventy two years you fell through the cracks.
41:24
And the simple answer is the name of the first chapter is Cleveland.
41:30
And Brooklyn Jackie was in New York with all the media, and Larry was
41:36
in Cleveland with all the segregation, and it's like it's like, well,
41:42
Jackie did it, so it's over. But the way Larry explained it to
41:45
me, listen, Jackie took all the original crap. He really did.
41:51
But you know I took the same crap. And nobody ever said we're going
41:54
to be nice to the second Negro. And I think that's some up American
42:00
in a lot of ways when we go this is the Greatest country. Where
42:04
my father got shot for this country in World War One in nineteen seventeen.
42:10
His gift to me was the American flag for my first wedding, And right
42:19
now there's another frag hanging outside my window. There will always be one in
42:22
honor of him. And the book that is the book, the most recent
42:30
book. It's a love story between my father and me and baseball and America.
42:37
And I will come back, of course I'll come back, and I
42:44
will. In fact, the next time I come back, we'll have to
42:47
go longer. Sounds like, can we wrap up? You have any final
42:53
parting words, any survival tips you've learned along the way. A lot of
42:57
our listeners are writers. Is there something that you'd like to say to them,
43:00
maybe something you wish you'd know when you started on your journey. Oh
43:04
well, for my style of writing, writing fiction, which is had all
43:12
of one book, I would like to recommend an author who never gets any
43:17
credit in this country, and he's my favorite author. And his name was
43:22
He's gone now Nelson Aubrey from Chicago. He wrote about the South Side of
43:29
Chica. I wrote The Man with the Golden Arm and too much to his
43:32
credit. He packed his bags and Otto Premature said, where can you go?
43:38
We're going to make the movie you get He said, I see what
43:40
kind of movie you're making. You're not making my book. I'm going home.
43:45
I pay your money. Nobody pay me money. I just want to
43:50
say goodbye. I promise you I won't let the door hit me in the
43:52
ass on the way out. And he wrote like he talked, and I
43:58
think I do in a way too. I think you do too. Hey,
44:01
thanks so much for being on the podcast. Just a few parting words.
44:24
Let me remind you that my new novel, Partners in Crime, the
44:29
Big Team Up between Daniel Pike and Ben Kincaid, has been released and is
44:35
on sale now. If you haven't joined the writer con Facebook group, yet,
44:39
hey, do it. It costs nothing. Go search for a writer
44:44
Con and join the That way, you could more frequently hear all the news
44:51
going on in the writer world and maybe even to make contact with other people
44:57
who are similar to you and what you're attempting to do right now, Make
45:01
some friends, get some beta readers who knows you need to be there,
45:06
and also, of course subscribe to the writer Con magazine or the completely free
45:10
writer Con newsletter. You can even go You can even get both of those.
45:16
Just go to substack and search for a writer Con or send me an
45:20
email Wilburn at gmail dot com and all the contact info will be in the
45:24
show notes so you don't have to remember it. Just remember this until next
45:30
time. Writers, keep writing, and remember you cannot fail if you refuse
45:37
to quit. See you next time, assass