Category Archives: blog

Bluebeard

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Posted: August 2, 2018 at 11:09 pm

That evening, I sat in my favorite chair in la Pistache, the one beside the best reading light. I underlined incomprehensible phrases in La Provence in preparation for coffee with Cécile. The children watched The Adventures of Tintin on our tiny television.

“Daddy, can you help me with my homework?” asked Devon, five minutes before bedtime.

“Poor planning, Dev,” I said. “You’ve had all evening. Why are you doing it now?”

“I just remembered.” How could I be angry with him? I was a more skilled procrastinator in my youth. “I have some grammar and I have to review two pages of a story my teacher gave us.” I put down my newspaper.  

“Let’s sit at the dining room table,” I said. I interrupted my reading with pleasure; I liked doing homework with my children more than, well, anything. They both had a curiosity about learning I found satisfying. They were also petrified of being unprepared for class, and wanted the highest score in any academic pursuit. There was no disputing these traits were paternal in origin. 

“Dev, even though it’s late to start your homework, I love we have the time to do it together.”

“You always help me, daddy. Ever since I was a kid.”

“I appreciate that, Dev, but it’s not true. There were lots of times in Vancouver when I was working, or too cranky, and I couldn’t do this. In Aix I don’t have excuses. And you’re still a kid. You’re only in Grade Three.” 

We started with grammar, my weakest subject. Devon delighted in correcting me, with sly grins of superiority. He often forgot I was the reason he was bilingual. At lesson’s end, I used the incorrect French verb for “to know.” The word “savoir” means “to know,” in the context of knowing how to do something. “Connaître” also means “to know,” but it’s used when referencing a person or a place, as in, “I know Paris well.” It’s easy to mix them up.

Devon looked like he swallowed a canary. “Dad, you can’t use connaître like that. You have to use savoir.”

“You’re only eight,” I said. “How can you know that?”

With a straight face, he said, “I don’t know, dad. I just savoir it.”

“Okay, enough grammar. What’s the story about?”

“Get it, dad? I savoir it.”

“It doesn’t get funnier the more you say it,” I said. “Tell me about the story.”

“It’s called ‘Barbe-Bleu.’ That means Bluebeard in English.”

“Thanks for the translation.” I knew this story, a well-known French folktale. We read it together, and I wondered what sadists chose the curriculum for eight-year-olds. The story is summarized as follows:

A wealthy man lived in the country. As a consequence of his unattractive blue beard, none of the local ladies would date him. His neighbor had two daughters, and Bluebeard asked to marry one. The daughters refused, citing Bluebeard’s ugliness, and the small issue of the disappearance of several of Bluebeard’s former wives. Bluebeard had some swinging parties, allowing the ladies to see he was a fun guy, and one daughter finally married him.

After a month of marriage, Bluebeard told his young wife he was taking a business trip. He gave her keys to the house, the safe, and the cabinets holding jewels and gold. He also gave her one tiny key, and made her promise not to use it to open the small door at the end of the hall. Of course, as soon as Bluebeard left, the wife entered the restricted room. It was covered in blood, and Bluebeard’s former wives, throats slit, hung from hooks (did I mention Devon was only eight?).

In a panic, the wife left the macabre scene and locked the door. Unlucky, she smeared blood on the tiny key, and being magic, it was impossible to clean. When Bluebeard returned, he demanded to see the keys, and asked his wife why the tiny key was covered with blood. 

“I don’t know,” she said. 

“You may not know,” said Bluebeard, “but I know all too well. You have gone into the little room! And now you will re-enter the room, and take your place among the others.”  

The wife threw herself at Bluebeard’s feet, crying, and begged him…and begged him…and…

And that’s all we had of the story. Devon’s photocopy ended, mid-story, mid-sentence. He couldn’t read the ending, in which the wife was saved by her two brothers. They slew the serial-killer, rendering the widow both wealthy and Bluebeard-less. I worried about Devon going to bed with the image of Bluebeard’s many wives strung up on meathooks. As I tucked him into bed, he said, “Dad, you know what I was thinking about?”

Uh-oh, I thought. “Uhh, no. What?”

“You know what would be cool? In 1,000 years, people will look back and study us, like we’re prehistoric people. They’ll say, look, they actually reached down and used their hands to pick up a glass if they wanted a drink. Today, we have robot arms which bring the glass to our mouth.” 

How am I going to give up these precious moments? I couldn’t go back to Vancouver and resume my regular job. I couldn’t be like I was before, I couldn’t miss out on my children’s ephemeral years, those unrecoverable years, being an absent father. I pinkie-swore with myself I would structure my new Vancouver life to allow for maximum family interaction, maximum mental engagement, Provence-level. I immediately regretted binding myself to the unbreakability of a pinkie-swear, despairing I could not construct such a life and still make a living.

I returned to my favorite chair with my laptop and a glass of rosé. “Just savoir it?” I had to record that story before I forgot it. I laughed out loud while typing. Why can’t my real life be like this? Crafting stories from the quirks of everyday living for my own amusement. Unfortunately, blogging wasn’t a career; my vignette would be thrown into the blogosphere’s yawning maw, where it would be read by fifty friends and be lost in the beast’s intestinal tract along with millions of blogs written by unfulfilled millennials.

That thought threw me down another well of depression, too deep to escape. While I was down there, I came to a woeful conclusion.

(W)Inspiration

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Posted: May 15, 2018 at 7:44 pm

I was part of an awesome global conference on May 6th called WINSPIRATION DAY® (http://winspirationday.org). The Vancouver edition was just one of 20 simultaneous events worldwide. Winspiration connects people all over the world to empower collaborative thoughts and actions in creating a better future. Whew, that sounds heavy.

This is my artistic take on the Vancouver speakers (including me), and their main messages:

 

5 Ways NOT to Get Your Book Published

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Posted: March 13, 2018 at 4:04 pm

My completed memoir has been burning a hole in my laptop for about two years now. To say my publishing journey has been an exercise in frustration is an understatement of the magnitude of saying the Incredible Hulk has minor anger-management issues.

To briefly recap:

After months of trying, I finally secured an agent who loved my book and said my writing was “brilliant.” I didn’t trust his assessment, but it was encouraging to hear. Despite the “brilliance” of my book, said agent was unable to secure a  publisher. No other agents are clamouring for my attention. So, as I review my dumpster fire of a writing career, I have some perspective on the ways NOT to get your book published. Here are five things NOT to do:

Write a Memoir if You’re a Privileged White Male. For non-famous people, successful memoirs are written by reformed drug addicts, cancer survivors, victims of sexual abuse, or those with horrific stories of growing up. I find this especially annoying because I am positive my story will resonate with educated, disaffected office workers, afraid to face their mid-life crises. It’s a depressing fact that if you are an adult film star and call girl to a presidential nominee who, remarkably, became president, there’s probably a seven-figure book advance in your future.

Say “Yes” to the First Agent Who Offers a Contract. I should have waited for the right agent to come along – instead, I said yes to the first one because I was flattered and in a hurry. But having an unsuccessful agent and then firing him (before he fired me) was worse than not finding an agent. I think I’m less attractive to other agents now, somehow tainted because of past failures. And since a new agent is unable to contact publishers already approached by my first agent, a new agent may be reluctant to take on a writer with a smaller pool of potential publishers.

Suck at Social Media. My agent found an editor at a large American publisher who loved my book and its message. The editor agreed with my agent there’s a huge market of middle-aged office workers, stuck in their jobs and afraid to quit. Maybe he was one of them. In any event, he passed on my book because it was impossible to get internal approval for a memoir of a debut writer unless the writer had a HUGE social media following. In essence, the publisher wouldn’t back any writer who couldn’t produce a ready-made and engaged list of buyers – a writer who could sell 30,000 copies to his social media subscribers without the help of the publishing house. Which begs the question: if the writer can sell that many books on his own, why does he need a traditional publisher?

Refuse to Self-Publish. My plan has always been to secure a “traditional” publisher. This means a publishing house like Random House or Penguin. Once signed by one of them, a writer is assisted with editing, design, marketing, and distribution until the book ends up in Chapters or Barnes & Noble. The alternative is self-publishing, which can mean either ebooks or physical books. However, the writer is in charge of everything, and won’t have his books in a bricks and mortar bookshop (they’ll languish in his basement). If I had gone this route, my book would’ve been available, at least electronically, in 2015. There is nothing wrong with self-publishing, and I may do it  one day. But it has never been my dream, and I am stubbornly on a traditional path. You can see how far that’s gotten me.

Give up. Finding an agent and a traditional publisher for a new writer is a risky proposition at best. But as Wayne Gretzky famously said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” If I give up now, there is ZERO chance I will realize my dream. So I forge ahead, contacting potential agents (needed to approach large publishers), and smaller publishing houses who take inquiries from writers directly. I have a HUGE Excel spreadsheet of everyone who has said “no” to me. Every writer has a spreadsheet, or a wall of thumbtacked rejection letters (pre-email). It  goes with the territory, a badge of honour, and will make my victory taste all the sweeter. Maybe all it will take is one inspired, forward-looking agent or publisher to see my book’s potential. Or maybe another male will write a successful memoir, paving the way for mine. Maybe I’ll meet a guy playing hockey, and his wife’s sister’s ex-husband knows a guy who does the landscaping for an editor at Simon & Schuster. It may take a while, but it’ll happen. I won’t give up.

He Who Hesitates Is Flattened

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Posted: January 14, 2018 at 4:16 pm

I figured out the secret of success in life while learning how to cross the street in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Let me explain.

I’ve circumnavigated a Renault Super-Cinq through the confluence of twelve roads at the Étoile traffic circle in Paris. I’ve fought the crowds on foot through the streets of Manila, Hong Kong, Beijing and Guangzhou. One time, I even stepped in front of a throng of Lululemon-bedecked, West Van yummy-mummies ordering their morning grande, extra-hot, non-fat, low-foam, extra shot vanilla lattés at Starbucks. So I understand the threat to one’s person when crossing  against the flow.

But nothing prepared me to wade into the vehicular insanity of Ho Chi Minh City. Home to 10 million people and an equal number of motorcycles. I estimate 10% of the vehicles are cars, taxis and Ubers, while the rest are motorcycles and (for the hardy) bicycles. No one walks. Motorcycles are used to transport what SUVs and trucks carry in North America…..bags of rice piled on the seat behind the motorcycle driver, taller than his head.  A bouquet of wire lanterns ten feet in diameter. An ancient, hand-operated cement mixer on a wooden trailer, only connected to the motorcycle by the driver’s left hand. And a family of five: father driving, a toddler standing on a metal platform placed between dad’s feet, a 5-year-old sitting behind dad, followed by the mother, with a breastfeeding infant in the crook of her left arm, a cellphone at the end of her right. Only dad wore a helmet.

If there are driving laws, they are spectacularly ignored. Lanes are imaginative, traffic lights mere suggestions, safety a quaint fiction. More than once, I saw a motorcycle driving at the side of the road, against the traffic, on the highway.

There are few crosswalks, and their faded white lines mock the tourists as traffic speeds by, unabated. Remember watching the Tour de France on TV, and the peloton races by, maybe 200 riders in a pack, wheel to wheel, shoulder to shoulder? It’s like that, but motorcycles. Standing on the crumbling curb, you see no breaks in the traffic, no windows of opportunity, no Frogger-like path to weave back and forth, side to side.

If you wait for a convenient or safe time to cross, you will never cross. Here’s the key: forget there’s any traffic and walk straight across the road as if you’re the only one there. As Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” Also, don’t stop, hesitate, stutter-step, or look at the approaching traffic on your left (and it may come from the right!). Trust the cars and motorcycles and bicycles and tour buses and cement mixers will flow around you like water. They almost always do.

After two weeks in Vietnam’s asphalt minefields, I realized my newfound street-crossing philosophy could also be applied to achieving success in life: walk confidently, keep moving forward, and don’t break stride.

Billy at the Bat

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Posted: November 30, 2017 at 9:48 pm

The outlook wasn’t brilliant in the publishing world this year,

Authors watched their dreams of glory slowly disappear;

And with every shuttered bookstore, and breaks they could not catch,

A pall-like silence fell upon every ink-stained wretch.

 

A straggling few got day jobs, in deep despair. The rest,

Clung to the hope which springs eternal in the human breast;

They thought, “If Rowling created magic with her café-writ debut,

We’ll bet our homes and marriages, that we can do it too.”

 

But Young Adult rules writing, unless it’s Shades of Grey,

And the former is too childish, while the latter’s quite risqué;

So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy set,

For there seemed but little chance of winning: Publisher Roulette.

 

But Billy penned a memoir, to the wonderment of all,

Except his editor Colin, who was not the least enthralled;

And when the dust had lifted, and Bill wrote his seventh draft,

He realized three years wasn’t long for one to hone his craft.

 

From all three family members, there rose a lusty yell,

It rumbled through Lynn Valley, it rattled in the dell;

It pounded on Grouse Mountain, recoiled on West Van hovels,

For Billy, clever Billy, was ready to sell his novel.

 

There was ease in Billy’s manner as he wrote his book proposal,

There was calm in Billy’s bearing as it reached the waste disposal;

And when, responding to his agent, he wrote it thrice again,

No publisher could resist the pitch of Bill’s deftly wielded pen.

 

His Facebook friends applauded as Bill attempted the implausible,

Ten thousand blogs reminded him his dream was near impossible;

Then, when Reason said he’s doomed to fail, get off this ego trip,

Defiance flashed in Billy’s eye, a sneer curled Billy’s lip.

 

And now a major publisher called, a house without compare,

And Billy sat a-listening, in haughty grandeur there;

But the conversation dragged a bit….our author’s hopes were fallin’—

“Whaddya think?” asked Billy. “Not for me!” said Harper Collins.

 

From Bill’s kitchen, filled with loved-ones, there went up a muffled roar,

Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore;

“Kill him! Kill that publisher!” shouted Bill’s long-suffering wife,

And it’s likely she’d have killed him had not Billy saved his life.

 

With a smile of Christian charity our Billy’s visage shone,

He calmed his loving partner; he bade the game go on;

He signalled to his agent, and once more a query flew,

But M&S rejected it. His agent said, “Strike two!”

 

“Fraud!” cried Bill’s coffee shop pals, and echo answered “Fraud!”,

But one scornful look from Billy and the baristas were awed;

They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his temples quiver,

And they knew that Billy would make some publishing house deliver.

 

The sneer is gone from Billy’s lip, his teeth are clenched so tight,

He mails his last proposal to a house which should be right;

And now the author’s waiting, he trembles with his spouse,

And now the air is crackling with a call from Random House.

 

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;

And somewhere men are laughing, and children play en masse,

But there is no joy in North Van—Random took a pass.

 

(With Apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer)