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49

Remembering Publishing Pal Peter Warner, RIP

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I am happy I can revisit a blog post I wrote and published almost nine years ago, when publishing friend Peter Warner was launching a book of his own, The Mole—The Cold War Memoir of Winston Bates: A Novel. It was a clever turn on meta spy fiction, and I loved it reading it back then. I share this today, to honor Peter, who died last September, age 79, and for whom there will be a memorial tomorrow which I’m going to attend. Peter was for years the chief in NYC for Thames & Hudson, the publisher of illustrated books, where he was a participant in dozens and dozens of international co-publishing arrangements. The occasion for my post was the novel’s launch party, hosted by Will Balliet, a longtime editorial colleague of mine when we were both at Carroll & Graf, who succeeded Peter at T & H.

Peter and I were members of a monthly lunch club, Book Table, where I always enjoyed conversing with him. His literary skills were prodigious, and extended to this engrossing thriller, a historical narrative that spans the Suez Crisis, the downing of an American U-2 plane, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, and Watergate, all told in a faux memoir by Canadian protagonist Winston Bates. I loved it, and so did readers like author Stacy Schiff. She blurbed it thus: “Who better to trust for a through-the-looking-glass tour of Cold War Washington than a short, self-doubting Canadian with a photographic memory? A rich, buoyant ruse of a novel.” I am glad I can share word of it again with friends here.

50

Chuck Verrill, Editor and Agent, RIP

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Went to a memorial today for Chuck Verrill, longtime editor at Viking Press, and later agent for many great books. Held at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, the brief speeches by friends and colleagues were full of sweet memories and humorous stories. Speakers included Stephen King; Scribner’s Nan Graham; Verrill’s fellow agent Liz Darhansoff, who made Chuck her agency partner in 1991; Abigail Thomas, a longtime Viking editor, and memoirist; and a number of family members. Verrill worked with King on his books for more than forty years, first as his editor and then as his agent.

I didn’t know Verrill well, but we did have lunch a couple times over the years, and I remember he enjoyed hearing about how in 1979 King was on tour for his early novel The Dead Zone and he visited Undercover Books, my family’s bookstore in Cleveland. King was escorted by a Viking sale rep named Dennis Ciccone, and the subject came up of other Viking novelists being published by the Press at that time. I mentioned that I had enjoyed Ernest Hebert’s The Dogs of March, set in New Hampshire, and Howard Frank Mosher’s Disappearances, set in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. King, a Maine native, beamed hearing me extol his fellow New England writers, and agreed that both of those novels were exceptional.

At the memorial on Saturday, I learned that Chuck Verrill had for a time been an editorial assistant to the estimable Viking editor Alan Williams, who was himself editor for work by Mosher. #publishing #friendship

51

Remembering David Janssen in “The Fugitive,” an Every(Wronged)Man Hero

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My favorite male TV star from childhood was David Janssen in “The Fugitive,” playing the wrongly convicted Dr. Richard Kimball. The sympathetic protagonist endures the loss of his murdered wife, then gets collared and condemned for the killing until a train wreck en route to the “death house*” frees him from the clutches of the implacable Lt. Inspector Philip Gerard. Played by the sober Canadian actor Barry Morse, Gerard, like Javert in Les Miserables, tracks the escaped man from one end of the land to the next. Floating from town-to-town, job-to-job, Kimball relies on the anonymity a loner could still have in the 1960s—no one ever asks him for so much as a Social Security number. I don’t think the program could be made today. The show was inspired, in part, by the real-life murder of Marilyn Sheppard in Cleveland, with her doctor husband Sam the accused, which I also paid attention to in the mid-60s. As the fugitive who could never set down roots anywhere, in each teleplay forced to abandon newly forged friendships, Janssen’s Kimball somehow maintained a grim good humor, which I’ve always admired. The show still looks good nowadays.

I have no doubt that my enjoyment of “The Fugitive” is part of the reason why I have always been drawn to publishing books about the unjustly accused, such as Dead Run: The Shocking Story of Dennis Stockton and Life on Death Row in America. by William F. Burke and Joe Jackson, Introduction by William Styron. One of the first posts I published on the blog was the story of how I came to work with Styron in championing Dead Run.

#TVShows #1960s #exonerations
*The pulse-pounding Intro, with its line about “the death house” was voiced by the baritone actor William Conrad.

52

Manhattan’s Metro Theater, Reopening at Last

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In 2012, I was excited I could report this on my blog, some good news for denizens of my Manhattan neighborhood, and other New Yorkers.

http://philipsturner.com/2012/07/15/alamo-drafthouse-cinema-coming-nyc/

Following Sept 11, 2001, which hit NY’s infrastructure and economy so hard, and Superstorm Sandy in 2012, which added to the damage, it would have been a real shot in the arm for the city to have the renovated movie theater open just four blocks from my apartment, but alas, in 2015, this was the outcome to Alamo’s interest.

http://philipsturner.com/2013/12/08/alamo-drafthouse-cinema-abandons-renovation-metro-theater-nyc/

Last week with my wife—artist Kyle Gallup, who made a collage of the Metro marquee seen below—we were walking up Broadway at 98th Street in front of the old Metro, where we were surprised to see the building’s omnipresent steel doors had been raised and people were working inside. Kyle took a picture:

Now this week comes the welcome news, first in via Westside Rag, and then today in Gothamist that the Metro will finally be reopening. Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine told Gothamist reporter Ben Yakas that though he himself had been skeptical himself—due to the past abandonment by Alamo—he’d spoken to the CEO of the as-yet unnamed exhibitor, who told him that the company has actually signed a lease. Renovations will begin soon to turn it into a cinema complex with multiple screens and an event space, to reopen in 2023.

53

Pre-ordering “The Barrens: A Novel of Love and Death in the Canadian Arctic”

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For friends of this site who’ve been reading about and are intrigued by the novel coming in May 2022 from Arcade Publishing, The Barrens: A Novel of Love and Death in the Canadian Arctic, by the father-daughter duo from Minnesota Kurt Johnson and Ellie Johnson, you can now pre-order it on the publisher’s website. This link is to a buy button for a number of different booksellers.

The novel is picking up a number of enthusiastic endorsements from readers and writers.

“Terrific novel about canoe trip taken by two women in subarctic Canada. An adventure book, a relationship book, a celebration of the outdoors and the challenges one faces in an at times dangerous environment. It reminded me a bit of Peter Heller’s The River.” Andy Weiner, a publishers’ sale representative

“The Barrens grabbed me from the opening pages and never let go, a riveting adventure story written by a father-daughter team who clearly have wilderness chops.”—Michael Punke, author of The Revenant and Ridgeline

I’ve rarely come across a novel that’s simultaneously so economical and fulsome, that’s as restrained as it is brimming with unspoken wisdom, and that manages all this while also being propulsive in its storytelling. It’s bravura work that demands a wide audience.”—Peter Geye, author of Wintering and Safe from the Sea

“A deeply compelling tale, told in vivid, elegant but concise prose, The Barrens carried me along, swiftly as the river at the heart of the story. The central character, Lee, will break your heart, although she’ll have none of it. Love, loss, life and death, against a landscape as raw and ancient as the human heart. Most highly recommended.”—Jeffrey Lent, author of In the Fall

“As harrowing as the whitewater adventure it chronicles, The Barrens is an epic tale of wilderness survival and death in the techno age. The writing throbs with presence: the life-force embedded in Canada’s northern frontier landscape and in the life-scape of its queer young heroine as she journeys toward selfhood. Co-authors Kurt and Ellie Johnson reveal the pulse of identity, born of the stories we weave. A mesmerizing, devastating read.”—Carol Bruneau, Canadian author of Brighten the Corner Where You Are: A Novel Inspired by the Life of Maud Lewis

“The Barrens is the raw and moving story of two young women paddling by canoe down one of North America’s the most remote rivers—of their coming of age, their love, and terrible loss. I’ve rarely come across a text that is so visual, and so tangible. The Barrens is a vivid portrayal of the Canadian subarctic, and of the human drive to persevere.”—Alex Messenger, author of The Twenty-Ninth Day: Surviving a Grizzly Attack in the Canadian Tundra

#debutnovels #wildernessfiction #canoeing #paddling #Canada #ThelonRiver #queerlit #writers #writingcommunity

 

54

Sold: “Heroes are Human: Lessons in Resilience, Courage, and Wisdom from the COVID Front Lines” by Bob Delaney with Dave Scheiber

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I’m delighted to announce the upcoming publication of Heroes are Human: Lessons in Resilience, Courage, and Wisdom from the COVID Front Lines by Bob Delaney with award-winning journalist Dave Scheiber, which will be the first book published in the US to tell the stories of healthcare workers struggling through the pandemic, with guidance on how they can heal from the herculean challenges they’re facing. It’s scheduled to come out in October 2022 from City Point Press, a distribution client of Simon & Schuster. Our deal for it was announced on Publishersmarketplace this morning.

Delaney’s first book was the 2008 USA Today bestseller Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob, also co-authored with Dave Scheiber, for which I was his editor and publisher at Union Square Press. During a dangerous undercover assignment while a New Jersey State Trooper in his mid-twenties, Bob fell victim to post-traumatic stress (PTS). He recovered with the aid of peer-to-peer therapy—a key ingredient of the new book—and afterward enjoyed a 25-year career as a referee in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Delaney and Scheiber are also co-authors of Surviving the Shadows: A Journey of Hope into Post Traumatic Stress (Sourcebooks 2011). Over the years he’s established himself as a nationally respected leader in dealing with PTS and recovery from trauma. He addresses members of the US armed forces and foreign military, law enforcement, firefighters, first responders, and since COVID began, healthcare workers.

Delaney served the NBA not only as a referee—making it to the top of the field as an “NBA Finals” level official—but also as a supervisor of referees and a spokesperson for the league’s philanthropy NBA Cares. He is known to sports and mainstream media all over the country. The authors will be working with the same high-profile publicity firm that made Covert a national bestseller, which has experience with the NBA and the USA Dream Team squads that won Olympic gold medals.

Heroes are Human is made up of oral history-style testimonials from nurses, doctors, techs, and family members relating their experiences—caring for patients, talking with the very sick, Face-timing with the loved ones of the ill, and trying to save lives the past two years—in Delaney’s empathetic voice, detailing how they can alleviate anxiety and reduce their stress, with examples of peer-to-peer dialogue. The combination of gripping first-hand accounts from doctors, nurses, and families in the COVID trenches joined with Bob’s message of healing and acceptance will be a balm to our fellow Americans from whom so much is being asked.

I’ve long admired and respected Bob’s salt of the earth wisdom and am grateful that we’re working together again to bring his healing message to a wide readership.

[caption id="attachment_17362" align="alignright" width="240"] Bob Delaney accepting the 2014 Basketball Hall of Fame Human Spirit award.
(Copyright NBAE via Getty / Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler)[/caption]

 

55

New York City Winters, Then & Now—Climate Change Reflections

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I moved to New York City from Cleveland in early March of 1985, almost 37 years ago. In many of the winters I’ve experienced since the move east, the Hudson River would become icy, as attested to by these pictures I took in January 2015.

Sometimes the ice would be close to shore, as seen here, with the tidal nature of the Hudson ensuring the river didn’t freeze hard. But in the ’90s, I remember extended runs when temperatures didn’t rise above freezing for days or weeks, and temps in the twenties, teens, and single digits were common. Then the ice would become more solid and fill in across the middle of the river. With the tidal shifting less impactful, the ice could stretching toward New Jersey. Someone foolhardy might’ve thought they could walk across, but that would have foolish indeed.

Despite the blustery cold, it was thrilling to watch and listen as the floes heaved, ground, and pitched against one another. I used to feel like I was in my own private Shackleton expedition. If you’ve read Alfred Lansing’s stirring narrative about that sojourn to the South Pole, the ships became trapped amid colossal bergs that stoved in their sides and collapsed their masts. The sailors were driven to near madness by the grinding and gnashing of the ice.

The past several winters? Not so much, a function of planetary warming, I believe. Our winters are definitely becoming less cold. More evidence of this? Flocks of geese used to visit the Hudson shores seasonally, and leave for months at a time, flying further south for warmer climes. Now they’re resident year-round.

 

56

Looking Back on 2021, Our Year in Editing and Agenting

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Yesterday I began totaling up the volume of our business in 2021, to prepare for writing an annual year-end blog post, and I’m pleased to confirm it was by far the best year Philip Turner Book Productions has had since I began operating outside the staff job/corporate publishing world in 2009. My son Ewan, 25, has been working with me for the past two years; it’s good to have a colleague and partner. As Executive Editor and Literary Agent, he heads up our New Stories division, devoted to cultivating new work in fiction, narrative nonfiction, and memoir.

Looking back on the year that ends today, I see that in 2021,

  • We edited manuscripts and book proposals from twenty-five different authors;
  • We sold ten new titles to book publishers, books that will be published in 2022 and beyond. and one title to an audiobook company which came out in 2021. We dispersed advances and royalties to fifteen authors and rights holders. Our sales this year were:
  1. THE BARRENS: A Novel of Love & Death in the Canadian Arctic by father-daughter duo Kurt Johnson and Ellie Johnson, sold to Arcade Publishing, who will publish it on May 3, 2022. This is the first title we’ve sold under our New Stories rubric.
  2. PICTURE SHOW PLAYLIST: Pop Music in Film from the Crystals to Rihanna by Nate Patrin, sold to University of Minnesota Press, whose first book Bring that Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop, we also sold to UMP, which they published in 2020.
  3. LURKING UNDER THE SURFACE: Horror, Religion, and the Questions that Haunt Us by Brandon Grafius, sold to Broadleaf Books, which will be published around Halloween 2022.
  4. YOURS, FOR PROBABLY ALWAYS: Martha Gellhorn’s Letters of Love & War, 1930-1949 by Janet Somerville, sold to Penguin Random House Audio with actress Ellen Barkin as the narrator of the audiobook, published in May 2021.
  5. CINEMA OF SWORDS: A Popular Guide to Movies & TV Shows About Knights, Pirates, and Vikings (Plus Samurai and Musketeers) by Lawrence Ellsworth, translator of Alexandre Dumas, sold to Applause Theater and Cinema Books

    6. .

  6. THE ULTIMATE PROTEST: Malcolm W. Browne, Vietnam, and the Photo that Stunned the World by Ray E. Boomhower, sold to University of New Mexico Press, which in November 2021 published Boomhower’s Richard Tregasksis: Reporting Under Fire from Guadalcanal to Vietnam
  7. ROOSEVELT SWEEPS NATION: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal by David Pietrusza, sold to Diversion Books, to be published August 2022.
  8. LAST CIRCLE OF LOVE, a novel by Lorna Landvik, acquired by the Lake Union imprint, Amazon Publishing
  9. HEROES ARE HUMAN: Lessons in Resiliency, Courage and Wisdom from the COVID Front Lines by Bob Delaney with Dave Scheiber, co-authors of the bestselling Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob, placed with City Point Press, distributed by Simon & Schuster, to be published Fall 2022.
  10. THE KREMLIN’S NOOSE: Vladimir Putin’s Blood Feud with the Oligarch Who Made Him Ruler of Russia by Amy Knight, sold to Northern Illinois University Press distributed by Cornell University Press; we earlier sold Knight’s Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder (St Martin’s Press, 2017).

In 2021, books that we had sold in earlier years were published:

1) Ten Garments Every Man Should Own: A Practical Guide to Building a Permanent Wardrobe by Pedro Mendes, published by Dundurn Press.
2) Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theater by Alexis Greene, published by Applause Theater and Cinema Books
3) Between Two Kings: A Sequel to The Three Musketeers (Musketeers Cycle, Book 5) by Alexandre Dumas, translated by Lawrence Ellsworth, published by Pegasus Books
4) Richard Tregaskis: Reporting Under Fire from Guadalcanal to Vietnam by Ray E. Boomhower, published by University of New Mexico Press, and as an audiobook by Blackstone Publishing.
5) The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing (The Pot Thief Mysteries Book 9) by J. Michael Orenduff, published by Open Road Media.
6) In addition, a manuscript I edited in 2021, THE MOST PRECIOUS GIFT: Memories of the Holocaust, A Legacy of Lisette Lamon, was self-published by David Mendels, the late author’s son.

Also, coming in 2022 will be an anthology about the book business, Among Friends: An Illustrated Oral History of 20th Century Publishing and Bookselling edited by Buz Teacher, co-founder of Running Press. It will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, and I have contributed a personal essay entitled, “The Education of a Bookselling Editor.”

Ewan continues to write his own fiction, having completed a story collection in the realm of anthology horror, and is working on a novel. As he likes to say, his touchstones fall somewhere between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Rod Serling. His work may be read upon request.

After 2022, we eagerly anticipate publication of DEVOURING TIME: Jim Harrison, a Life by Todd Goddard, the first biography of the acclaimed fiction writer, master of the novella, gourmand, ardent friend, hunter and fisher, which we sold to Blackstone Publishing.

Entering what will be my thirteenth year working as an independent editor and literary agent—a longer tenure than any of my in-house positions—I am more energized than ever by the opportunities to work closely with authors, more than closely than I was able to do during my latter years in corporate publishing. Even with the many challenges the book industry is facing, such as many bookstores open for only limited, distanced hours due to the lingering pandemic, I am optimistic about the book business, as readers are eager to have the companionship of books, and writers are driven to tell their singular stories.

We work on a wide range of material with special affinity for imperative books that really matter in people’s lives. I’m always interested in first-person work from authors who’ve passed through some crucible of experience that leaves them uniquely equipped to write their book. If you have a project you’re developing, or a personal essay, and want to discuss your work, or a project you think may be ready to offer to publishers, please don’t hesitate to contact one or both of us. We already have a number of terrific projects lined up to edit and represent in the new year, and we’re hopeful 2022 will be a strong year in publishing and the book business, , and a better year for us all. 

As always, please get in touch if you or someone you know is seeking guidance about publishing. Ewan can be reached at ewanmturner [@] gmail [.] com, while my contact info is philipsturner [@] gmail [.] com.