Introducing PRETTY MUCH TRUE…
I’ve been fortunate to work with some wonderfully talented folks with the little indie imprint I run, Missouri Breaks Press. Carol Buchanan’s Gold Under Ice was a worthy successor to her Spur Award-winning debut, God’s Thunderbolt. Ed Kemmick’s collection of Montana yarns, The Big Sky, By and By, has found an enthusiastic audience and is a High Plains Book Award finalist. And today, I’m proud to welcome a new novel, Pretty Much True…, into the Missouri Breaks fold.
Kristen J. Tsetsi’s Iraq war novel, a penetrating look at the impact of the conflict on the homefront, both confirms and expands the Missouri Breaks mission. It is, first and foremost, an excellent work of high literary value. It also moves the imprint beyond the boundaries of the American West and into a wider, more universal, American experience. I’m so proud and thankful to be associated with it.
With that, I’m going to yield the floor to Kristen, so she can introduce you to her novel. Please consider purchasing a copy. Links are at the end.
*****
Kristen J. Tsetsi
I couldn’t be more excited, and more honored, to be published by Missouri Breaks Press. Pretty Much True… has had a few years of publishing struggles, with more than a couple “almosts,” and to finally land with Craig Lancaster’s indie press, to have someone of his judgment and experience want to publish this book I’ve believed in and continue to believe in, means more to me than I can say. I will be forever grateful.
Pretty Much True…, at its most surface level, is about a woman waiting for her lover to get back from war. Why this story?
For two reasons, really. First, I’m very attracted to, and captivated by, human drama and the truth that lies silently beneath the surface of almost every relationship conflict. Those very private, complex factors that build and steam.
Second, I believe love pain has to be the most intoxicating, distracting, passionate, discombobulating emotion we’re capable of experiencing, and it’s something I’ve always been compelled to write about. When I was in a marriage I no longer wanted to be in, that desire to escape appeared in my short fiction. Another time, when I recognized the difference between married love and real love, one of which I had and one of which I wanted, that became short fiction.
When the man I’d loved for a decade finally became mine only to deploy to Iraq three weeks later, I was thrust into the most torturous experience of my life, both emotionally and psychologically. The nature of the uncertainty has only been matched by the month my father spent in ICU with less than a 5% chance of living. Combine that kind of uncertainty with the romantic love of two people who have been, by all accounts, star-crossed for a decade. (Can there be a more complicated, messy love than one interrupted by war? Likely not.)
Once my husband—who was “just” my boyfriend, at the time—had been home for a year and I was able to release the after-effects and look at the experience from an artistic perspective, I knew it had to be a story. Not only because it had all of the elements that make the kind of story that would have me riveted if I were to read it, but because there was so much truth to explore, so much about a war story people had never been exposed to before in all of the soldier stories they’ve read or seen in theaters. It’s part of the larger war narrative that’s been largely absent and that is every bit as valid.
Pretty Much True… isn’t a Dear John love and war story. It’s not about missing someone, pining away, or sticking yellow ribbon magnets on a bumper. It’s about a state of not knowing, of losing control, of the friendships and love that form or fall away in a world that, to those who are closest to war’s effects, has become a funhouse mirror reflection of the world they knew before.
If Pretty Much True… were a movie, what cable channel would it play on?
The creator of Unfunnyme.com, Tera Marie, recently said of Pretty Much True…, “If books were people, Pretty Much True… would be the love child of The Bell Jar and The Things They Carried.” So, I’d have to say HBO. There’s a lot of intensity in the story, and HBO handles intensity amazingly well.
A cross between The Bell Jar and The Things They Carried. So, it’s character-driven?
Very much. There’s no “In a world when…” plot to speak of, but there are several character arcs launched from the springboard of the war, and each character has his or her own personal conflicts that are exacerbated by the war. They also have their unique ways of dealing with those conflicts, whether that means, for example, making a decision about a romantic relationship or coming to terms with nagging demons.
Some nasty politics surrounded the Iraq War. How political is Pretty Much True…?
Politics appear without making the book a political statement. It would have been impossible to ignore that aspect. When the person you love most is, as you see it at home, in constant danger of dying, and politicians and TV commentators are yammering on about the war like it’s a game of RISK, that has an impact. It’s just as much a part of the war story as bullets flying in a war zone.
Who is most likely, and least likely, to enjoy this book?
Early copies were read by readers whose interest has long been genre fiction, and they wrote to tell me that the story had captured them. Men have read advance copies and have expressed things to me in emails that led me to believe they enjoyed it as much as, if not more than, women. So, the two demographics I might have expected would be cool toward it have surprised me by becoming the most likely to enjoy it.
Those who may not enjoy it as much are certain military spouses who mistakenly think this is commentary on all military spouses or significant others. The protagonist’s behavior, a vehicle used to communicate a larger feeling, would probably not speak well of a group of people, were the character intended to represent them. But she isn’t. Just as Full Metal Jacket is one story about specific characters and their war experience, just as Casualties of War is another story about specific characters and their war experience-and not commentary on all soldiers of all wars–Pretty Much True… is a war story about very specific characters, and a certain set of war experiences. There are many, many war stories. This is just one of them.
How much of Pretty Much True… is true?
All of it is true, and none of it is true. (I’m not trying to be clever. It’s just true.)
He had questions; I had answers
Please allow me to commend to your attention this story at Self-Publishing Review, in which A Life Transparent author Todd Keisling says some very nice things about my new book and is kind enough to toss me some questions about writing and publishing.
While I was more than happy to chat about Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure, the best part of the interview, for me, was the opportunity to chat about Missouri Breaks Press, the little publishing house I run out of my living room. I started this little business because my professional background is rooted in the production side of publishing. I’ve spent most of the past twenty years as a copy editor and designer (a layout man, to use a waning term), and it’s because of that background that I’ve been as interested in the physical construction of my books as I have been in the writing of them. When I branched out into the book business a few years ago as a novelist, starting my own house and looking for work to put out there was a natural extension of things.
I’ve had extraordinary good fortune with the projects I’ve chosen. My good friend Carol Buchanan, whose first novel, God’s Thunderbolt, was an indie sensation and a Spur Award winner, was kind enough to cast her lot with me for her follow-up, Gold Under Ice. And that book has been every bit the wonder that her first book was, becoming a Spur Award finalist.
My second book, Ed Kemmick’s The Big Sky, By and By, has been a hit around these parts, where Ed is well-known as the City Lights columnist at The Billings Gazette, where he and I both toil.
In both cases, I’ve had the privilege of working with terrific writers and better people. As I said in the interview, those successes have given me the confidence to release my own work through Missouri Breaks Press, as I will with Quantum Physics. My first two novels, published by other houses, have allowed me to build the relationships with booksellers and readers that make going it alone a little less fearsome. And, of course, I’m not alone. I had a lot of help and input in these stories, and I turned them over to the steady hand of a terrific editor. I’d no sooner do my own editing than my own heart surgery.
And that’s what I have to say about that.
Speaking of Quantum Physics …
Thursday is the final day to get an advance, signed print copy of the book for the low price of $10.50. That day, right here, a new promotion will be announced, this one of interest to folks who brandish e-readers. You don’t want to miss this.
Publishing: pleasure and pain
Welcome to Day 4 of Honesty Week.
Look, I don’t know how I feel about self-publishing. Back when I first did it, in those yonder days of early 2009, it was in the most rudimentary way possible. I uploaded my book to CreateSpace. I used one of that service’s horrible pre-fab templates for my cover. And then I tried to get people to notice I’d released a book, all the while slowly refining the book’s appearance.
When a Montana publishing house, Riverbend Publishing, came calling for the book in August 2009, I happily signed it over, and I’ve never regretted that decision.
With my second novel, The Summer Son, I cast my lot with Amazon Publishing, and I’ve been happy with those results, too. Despite the scraps of carping you’ve seen during Honesty Week, publishing has been very, very good to me. But it still sucks. More on that in a second.
In between those two books, I started writing a bunch of short stories. A couple of months ago, I pulled them into a collection. I wrote earlier this week that story collections are the red-headed stepchild of the publishing world. So rather than facing a protracted and frustrating period of pitching these stories to the handful of publishers who actually appreciate short fiction, I’ve opted to release them myself under the auspices of Missouri Breaks Press, a publishing house I founded a couple of years ago to release under-the-radar literary fiction and nonfiction that interests me. I’ve been pretty damned successful with it, too, if you don’t mind my saying so: My first release, Carol Buchanan’s Gold Under Ice, was a Spur Award finalist. My most recent release, Ed Kemmick’s The Big Sky, By and By, is getting some grand notices. So, yeah, I’m self-publishing, but what I’m doing today bears almost no resemblance to what I did two and a half years ago.
With Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure, I did it the right way. I engaged the services of a top-notch editor, one who is thorough and honest and hard-nosed. (Let me know if you want the name; I can’t recommend him highly enough.) I engaged the services of a good book designer (that’d be me, someone who has spent the bulk of his professional career as a designer of publications). The marketing piece, the toughest for any writer and one nearly every writer has to bear to one extent or another, will be mine, too.
So, am I now a dedicated self-publisher? Probably not. I always figured my career would be a patchwork of things: some traditionally published novels, some magazine pieces, some small-press stuff, some self-publishing. At the end of each project, I try to figure out the best route. Betting on my own publishing house seemed like the right choice for this one.
Now, about publishing: It sucks, except when it doesn’t. The economic model is a mess. Giving millions of dollars to vapid entertainers for their memoirs and novelty novels (Kardashian sisters, anyone?) while shunting workhorse midlist novelists to the sidelines is a dumb thing and bad for the culture. Returnability is a financial killer. Royalties really suck. A lot of people have figured out how to make a good living at self-publishing e-books, and now that distribution is no longer the sole province of the big publishers, more people will have that opportunity. The digitization of books has been a great equalizer. Some think this marks the end of the world. Others think the possibilities are just beginning. Count me in the latter group.
There are plenty of places you can go that will outline the whole self-publishing revolution for you. This guy, for instance, really knows his stuff. I won’t even attempt to explain all of that.
My assumption is that readers want good books. That’s what I’m trying to deliver, regardless of imprint. Which brings us to the interactive portion of today’s post:
How often, if at all, does the publisher of a book influence your decision to buy? Tell me in the comments.
Progress Report: 6/14/2011
It’s been a light week. And, dammit, I deserved it.
A few things:
- Finally, the Ed Kemmick book, The Big Sky, By and By, is for sale in advance of its official July 26 release date. If you’d like a signed copy, please jet over to Ed’s site and make a totally safe PayPal transaction. If you love Montana and Montanans, this book will not disappoint you. I’m damned proud to have it as the second release from my little literary house, after Carol Buchanan’s Gold Under Ice.
- I’m hitting the road this week, heading up to Ronan, Montana, to talk to the Friends of the Library group there. Ronan was a great host last year when I was thumping 600 Hours of Edward, and I’m really, really looking forward to talking to my friends about my new novel, The Summer Son. This, I suppose, is the unofficial kickoff to my summer book season. Check out my calendar for the other stuff I have on tap.
- My collection of short stories, tentatively titled Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure, is in the hands of a trusted editor before I move it along to my publisher. Really, really excited about these. Really, really hoping the publisher will be, too.
And now, a personal note:
Today is the 72nd birthday of my dad, Ron Lancaster (shown above with my dogs Bodie and Zula). (By the way, them’s my legs behind him.) I’ve written some about his difficult life, and my occasionally difficult dealings with him. I’ve never shied away from the fact that The Summer Son is, on some level, both a vehicle for working out my frustrations with him and a love letter to him.
But I’ll be telling him today — as he will never see it here — that I love him very much and am blessed to have him in my life.
Happy birthday, Pops.
Progress Report: 5/3/11
The bin Laden news in my workaday life has impeded my writing somewhat this week — life advice: your steadily paying job comes first, always — but I’m pushing the plow down the field. I’m about 7,000 words into a first draft of a novel project, which is enough to be developing some confidence but not nearly enough to actually talk about it. So we’re done with that topic.
I’m most excited about the work I’m doing with Ed Kemmick on his forthcoming book, The Big Sky, By and By. The book is with the printer, and we’re awaiting a proof copy. If all is good with that, we’ll soon have copies to sell ahead of the official release date, July 26.
I’m really, really proud of what we’ve done on this book. My little basement publishing house, Missouri Breaks Press, isn’t prolific — this is just our second book — but I think we’ve picked real winners both times. The debut title, Carol Buchanan’s Gold Under Ice, was just honored as a Spur Award finalist. I suspect that Ed’s book is going to find eager readers here in the place where he’s made his considerable reputation as a reporter and writer.
That’s it for this week. And it’s enough.
Something to talk about