HANK FENN on sale!

My latest novel, The Adventures of Hank Fenn (Americana Book 4) is out in paperback and digitally at Amazon. Paperbacks are also available in store & online at Magers & Quinn, Uptown Minneapolis. It goes like this:

For Hank, Sam never became Mark Twain. As a riverboat pilot, Sam saved young Hank from the crushing paddle wheels as the boy stowed away on the City of Memphis. Sam returned Hank to Minnesota when news reached downriver that Hank's mother was on trial for killing the father Hank had run away from. Years later, in a barber's chair prior to his mother's funeral, Hank reads a frog story that's awful close to a tall tale Sam once told. The magazine claims it's written by a fellow named Mark Twain.

The Adventures of Hank Fenn sends Hank searching the West—and then the East—for Mr. Twain. All along he and Sam exchange letters and make plans that never seem to get them together—Twain always on the road or abroad. Hank does find hatred and brutality while railroading and mining throughout this new frontier. He finds Calamity Jane in a Wyoming mining camp and Custer breaking treaties. He finds the Emperor of these United States. Ultimately Hank finds love, boys to raise and gold to unearth on a Black Hills mountaintop.

Thanks, Will

PS: An interview from last month concerning an earlier novel, Bonus Man.

Thoughts on Northwoods, Bread Loaf, John Gardner

On the bus back from the Northwoods Writers' Conference in Bemidji I opened a volume of short stories to one by John Gardner called “Redemption.” At the conference on Friday, Judson Mitcham talked extensively about Gardner, mentioning the accident that killed him in 1982. The accident involved him and his motorcycle going off a cliff. He also mentioned an event in Gardner's childhood in which Gardner accidentally killed his brother with a piece of farm machinery, which of course tormented him for the rest of his life. I'm not sure if I'd heard that story or read “Redemption” before but they both seemed vaguely familiar.

“Redemption,” begins with a boy, Jack Hawthorne, accidentally killing his brother David with a tractor towing a cultipacker. Their father, Dale Hawthorne, is destroyed by this, as one could imagine. He blames himself, as a father would. Then comes this passage:

“Or he would ride away on his huge, darkly thundering Harley-Davidson 80, trying to forget, morbidly dwelling on what he'd meant to put behind him—how David had once laughed, cake in his fists; how he'd once patched a chair with precocious skill—or Dale Hawthorne would think, for the hundredth time, about suicide, hunting in mixed fear and anger for some reason not to miss the next turn, fly off to the right of the next iron bridge onto the moonlit gray rocks and black water below...”

I was at Bread Loaf in 1982 (see Jan. 21, 2011 post), two weeks before Gardner died. As Judson Mitcham talked on Friday about his days with Gardner, I recalled a talk given back in '82 on Moral Fiction. Gardner strode into a packed house at Bread Loaf, the crowd hushed as he reached the podium and said: “If you're not writing politically, you're not writing shit.” With that he left the room. I recounted this story later to Judson, adding that I had a one-on-one with Gardner several days after his “speech” and asked him about it. Gardner asked me what everyone had been talking about all week. He said that he could've spent 45 minutes on the subject but it wouldn't have had nearly the impact as hundreds of people talking non-stop about it for days. Judson said that he was at Bread Loaf two years later and people were still talking about it. And here we were, thirty years after that, talking about it still.

Anyway, if you're at a writers' conference and have a John Gardner story, you're bound to get people's attention (see Feb.2, 2011 post).

On the ocean

The Northwoods Writers' Conference has come to a close. A wonderful experience! When applying earlier this year, it seemed like a good idea to stay through Sunday since the Saturday morning events ran right up to the departure time for my bus. That decision has left me all alone here with 23+ hours to kill before my bus tomorrow. On-line weather says 80% chance of rain all day.

With my time I've written a new query letter, per Sheri Joseph's--the conference fiction guru--suggestions. Took a couple hours and it's much better. The sun peeked out and I took a last walk around Diamond Point Park. I sat at the very point and looked out over Lake Bemidji. A binocular-like contraption on a stand stood right in front of me. I thought to look out through it but decided against it--I liked the vastness of the lake and didn't want to diminish it. A kid--maybe eight--ran by me and right up to the binocular set-up. He looked out, then turned to what I assume was his sister and yelled, "Look! Can see the ocean bigger!" His sister ran up and took the quickest possible look before running after her brother.

With the wind blowing in, the waves actually crashed against the shore. I got up to come back here and write about the boy. Walking along the lake I watched a bunch of older kids swimming out past signs that read: DANGER! DROP-OFF. NO SWIMMING! They were plenty old enough to read, so they obviously took this as an invitation. Gimme a kid who doesn't know a lake from an ocean any day...

It's pouring rain right now and they're probably still swimming.

Meet Bob from Bemidgi

May have found a character in this fellow, Bob Bergh (B-E-R-G-H, he said, as in iceberg). Bob came up to me at Diamond Point Park on Lake Bemidji. Told me how they used to have a diving board here when he was a kid. Some kind of wheel too--which I didn't understand. He spat tobacco into the grass and asked me if I'd ever been to Venice Beach in California. I said I had. He told me about all the things he'd seen down there when he took an Amtrack. "Was on Price is Right," he said. Before I could congratulate him, he added: "Didn't get on stage though." As I shrugged, he said: "Saw that Door #1, Door #2, Door #3..."

"Let's Make a Deal," I said.

He spat again. "Yea, Monty Hall, 'cept now they got a colored guy doin' it."

"Did you get to play?" I asked.

"Nope." And he spat again. "Used to be a ventriloquist," he said. "Got a dummy and I can make his eyes wink." He showed his technique with an arthritic looking hand. "Used to write poetry," he said and launched into a reading--by memory--of one of his poems. I thought it sounded like it should be on a sampler and said so. "Yea, maybe I oughta get it published," he said and ripped off another one.

Feeling we had a connection here, I told him I was in town for a writers' conference. "Really?" he said. "What kind of riding? Cars? Motorcycles?"

"Writing," I stressed. "Northwoods Writers' Conference."

"Is that right?" he said and started in on his bad back. We traded hospital stories for awhile till he rattled off having fallen off a roof, getting hit by a pick-up and--just to put me in my place--his heart attack. With that he said he had to go. We shook hands. "Enjoy your thing here," he said and moved on (above).

Thanks Bob!

On Lake Bemidji

Looks like I'm heading to the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference up on shores of beautiful Lake Bemidji in late June. They take 13 people for their fiction workshop and I'm one of 'em. (Hoping they had more than 13 applicants.) Sheri Joseph (Georgia State Univiversity and fiction editor at Five Points) conducts the workshop--I must read her books and get acquainted. A guy from Milkweed Editions will also be there. It'll be nice to get out and go somewhere, even if it does involve a round-trip bus ride and nine days in a dorm room.