The NEW one.
I call it the new one because in this business where everyone from agents to editors to your own mother are hypercritical, it's never what you've done, it's always what you're doing now. At one point, a William Morris uberagent was repping it. I remember sitting across from her in her Manhattan office. She had a pair of brass knuckles laid out on the desktop. Sexy. She was eating a bagel. Slowly. I remember being hungover and thinking, "How the hell did I end up here?" But then I also recall thinking, "Hmmm, I wonder what it would be like to get it on right here in the office?" Truth be told, her assistant and I were exchanging, let's call them, "racy" emails at that time. It was fun and dangerous. In any case, despite the agent's talents, she couldn't sell the book. But eventually another agent did, to a small press in Arizona. Probably my best work to date and Heyday Films has taken an interest...for now.
Dedicated to my daughter, Ava.
"Catch."
The big one.
The one that brought in a whole bunch of money via now semi-missing lit agent. Together we must have hit every bar in NYC at one time or another. 'Course when I should have been promoting I was playing drums in my then editor, Jake Hoye's band, partying my nuts off, crossing over professional boundaries with my publicist (Ha!:), spending money as fast as Delacorte could write the checks, and generally, disintegrating. The book gets these rave reviews like "Brilliant" from the NY Post and getting reads from DreamWorks and George Clooney. Even Harlan blurbs it. I've suddenly got a stunning new girlfriend who wears, get this: braided pigtails. Very schoolgirl sexy! She wants me to "teach her how to write." She's suddenly down in NYC with me every other weekend. We take off to Europe. We have a ball and become soulmates. Now writing lessons switch over to "Was it good for you too?" We laugh a lot, drink coffee in bed, and plans trips. I figure, in terms of love, I'm set for life. But then it all goes bust when my publisher gets bought out. I'm without my editor and publisher. Still I've finally found a soulmate. But success, bedpals and the Bertelsmanns can be cruel mistesses. Little did I know I had only just entered into a deep, dark, wilderness from which I would not reemerge for five years.
The second and, as it turns out, final novel in the Keeper Marconi series. I'm involved in a dreadful ghost project with a Dallas cabillionaire at the time and quickly going broke. My new relationship is breaking down. I can't write. I have no interest in promoting the book. I'm a basket case. My sons from my previous marriage are having a difficult time. Nothing holds my interest. But then wait, hold the phone, the writing student and I decide to get married. A big white wedding ensues. What happened to just getting married on the beach with a few friends in attendance? We get a big house in the burbs. But I'm not writing. The wife starts looking at me with eyes so cold they could split rock. She says things to me like, "Too bad the writing thing didn't work out." But she's angry and who can blame her.
I split of course, but I'm prone to making stupid decisions. Somehow, that's when new ops open up. I become a journalist again. Just like that, I'm traveling all over the place. Destinations like Africa, Greece, Turkey, Russia.
I'm also writing again. Three completed novels in four years. Is it possible I'm not marriage material? Or is it a matter of, you can have a wife or you can have your writing. Take your pick.
A labor of love and hate.
I'm a young neophyte with a few good short stories published in some decent journals. I'm a fulltime MFA student and working in the job I was groomed for since birth and hating it. Not that I'm not grateful for the opporutnity to run a company (most of my friends think I'm crazy for giving it up), but I want to write and there's no getting away from it.
I pen a story called, Permanence, to the sound of Thomas the Tank Engine (my son Jack is 4; Harrison or, Bear, as we call him, is 1) and it gets picked up by several publishers, Orange Coast Magazine among them. The L.A. cats pay me a whopping 600-large for some stuff I made up.
I turn it into a full-length novel, submit it unagented to some pubs, but most reject me until I find this basically crooked press, Northwest Publishing from out of the Bible Belt in Salt Lake. Mafia Mormoms essentially. They take it on, publish for no money, and go belly up within the first couple of months. My in-house publicist calls me in tears saying she hasn't been paid in weeks and the FBI has entered the building and taken all their computers.
But isn't God great?
Wow....Northwest, Delacorte, Jimmy Vines...do I know how to pick 'em or what?
Still, Permanence is one of my most literary and ambitious novels.
It's also pretty rare now and a good copy can run in the hundreds.
BTW: Front Cover pic credit goes to me. Smithfield, RI, Spring 1986.
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SHARING THE LAUGHTER AND THE TEARS, THE GLITCHES AND THE TRIUMPHS, AUTHORS FACE IN THE PURSUIT OF THEIR AMBITION TO WRITE. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. © Sia McKye 2009 all rights reserved
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Back Story
PATHOLOGICAL....New Short Story!
December, 2009: First Pre-Pub reading of Moonlight Falls at the Albany Public Library.
Read the TU "Crumbs Review"
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Praise for Vincent Zandri Books:
"Vincent Zandri explodes onto the scene with the debut thriller of the year. As Catch Can is gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting. Don't miss it."
--Harlan Coben, author of The Final Detail
"A Satisfying Yarn."
--Chicago Tribune
"Compelling...As Catch Can pulls you in with rat-a-tat prose, kinetic pacing...characters are authentic, and the punchy dialogue rings true. Zandri's staccato prose moves As Catch Can at a steady, suspenseful pace."
--Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
"Exciting...An Engrossing Thriller...the descriptions of life behind bars will stand your hair on end."
--Rocky Mountain News
"Readers will be held captive by prose that pounds as steadily as an elevated pulse... Vincent Zandri nails readers' attention."
--Boston Herald
"A smoking gun of a debut novel. The rough and tumble pages turn quicker than men turn on each other."
--Albany Times-Union
"The story line is non-stop action and the flashback to Attica is eerily brilliant. If this debut is any indication of his work, readers will demand a lifetime sentence of novels by Vincent Zandri."
--I Love a Mystery
"A tough-minded, involving novel...Zandri writes strong prose that rarely strains for effect, and some of his scenes...achieve a powerful hallucinatory horror."
--Publishers Weekly
"A classic detective tale."
--The Record (Troy, NY)
"[Zandri] demonstrates an uncanny knack for exposition, introducing new characters and narrative possibilities with the confidence of an old pro....Zandri does a superb job creating interlocking puzzle pieces."
--San Diego Union-Tribune
"This is a tough, stylish, heartbreaking car accident of a book: You don't want to look but you can't look away. Zandri's a terrific writer and he tells a terrific story."
--Don Winslow, author of The Death and Life of Bobby Z
"Satisfying."
--Kirkus Reviews
"Sensational…Masterful…Brilliant."
--New York Post
The even newer one. I went into a writing frenzy after I split with my second wife five years ago (has it been that long already?) Truth be told, as much as I loved her, I didn't get much done during our 6 years together, 3 of them as husband and wife. But we are still close (sometimes very close...hmmm) and this novel was very much inspired by our relationship. An Amazon bestseller in Hard-Boiled fiction for 7 straight weeks, it's still an Amazon Top 100 "Hot New Release!"
