Scott Sparling

Why Indie Bookstores Rule

Posted on Jul 2nd, 2011

This weekend, you could celebrate independence by lighting a firecracker. Or you could go to an Indie Bookstore and buy a book. Or both, actually – it’s not an either/or choice.

One reason indie bookstores rule is economics—money you spend in local stores tends to stay in your community. And supporting local booksellers is an excellent source of good karma and may also improve your sex life. 

Plus, it's very likely you’ll find some great books that the major chains might not carry. Such as, well, Wire to Wire.

Some specifics: Last week, a big stack of books went out the door after my reading at Powell’s Books. (Thanks, all!) The Multnomah Country library has 50-plus holds on Wire to Wire. The Oregonian ran a prominent and very positive review at the end of June. Independent bookstores all over the country are carrying it. But you can’t buy the book at the Borders in the town near where I live.

And it’s not the fault of the local Borders—they’d like to carry it. But that decision is made at corporate HQ in some distant, unknown city where faceless…wait a sec, Borders’ HQ is in Ann Arbor, Michigan! Hey, Borders—Michigan native here, story set in the Wolverine state, founder of the Segerfile. Hello??

But the point is not to beat up on Borders or the other national stores. I’m sure an economist would say that they play an important role, because economists will say anything once you get them liquored up with a little cash. Okay, wait – the point is that freedom without books might be impossible, and the best source of those books is the independent bookstore near you. So find one, and celebrate the Fourth by buying a book. Mine if you want, or any other.

And maybe skip the M-80s. You’re gonna need those fingers for turning pages

____________

UPDATE: August 29, 2011

Well, obviously Border's decision not to stock my book had disastrous consequences for them. And while they were going under, I was going around the Northwest and my home state of Michigan visiting some indie bookstores that are very much alive. Here are a few photos from some of the book stores.

Powell's Books in Portland, OR and Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle, WA

Schulers Books in Okemos, MI, Michigan News Agency in Kalamazoo, MI, and Horizon Books in Traverse City, MI

Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, WA; The Book Store, Frankfort, MI, with Jesse Burkhardt

Third Street Books in McMinnville, OR; Village Books in Bellingham, WA

___________________

It's the Fourth of July: I wanna hear a little revolution out there. The MC5, “Ramblin’ Rose.” 

Your Powell’s Cheat Sheet: 10 Questions

Posted on Jun 28th, 2011

The worst part of any bookstore reading is the moment right after the author says, “I’d be happy to answer any questions.” The painful silence. The awkward attempt to avoid eye contact. I’ve experienced this firsthand. As an audience member, I always feel like I ought to have an intelligent, insightful question at the ready—after all, I’m a fan of whoever’s reading, or I wouldn’t be there. But in the face of that silence, my mind goes blank.

To solve this for you when I read at Powell’s City of Books (Thursday, 7:30 pm, downtown Portland), I’ve prepared the following aid. Just choose any of the questions off the list below and practice them in the bathroom mirror until they feel spontaneous. If you need to write the key words on your hand, that’s fine. No one’s expecting a professional performance. The important thing is to be yourself.

Wire to Wire Questions

1.  Is Northern Michigan really that full of losers?

2.  How did you learn to ride freights? Would you consider teaching others?

3.  What kind of drug is a "Smiling O" exactly, and where can I get some?

4.  Did it actually take you 20 years to write Wire to Wire, or would it be more accurate to say that it took the publishing industry 20 years to get around to seeing the value in your book?

5.  Which character in Wire to Wire are you most like—Rose or Lane?

6. When robots attack, is it better to respond with logic or brute force? (Wait—skip this. Wrong book.) 

7. Do you have any charts and graphs that explain why Wire to Wire is not really a crime novel? 

8.  Have you secretly designated a well known, contemporary writer as your rival, and has that other writer won any major prizes lately? What does this desperate need for a rival say about you?

9.  Wire to Wire has yet to be included on any of those bogus "Best Books of Summer" lists that the mainstream media use to plug books that are already getting tons of publicity and need no further promotion. Does this mean summer might be canceled? 

10.  Will it seem selfish if I buy multiple copies of Wire to Wire? I'd like to have a spare in case I lose one.

Bonus Question: Is Tin House the coolest publisher in the world, or what? 

Better get practicing. See you on Thursday!

_________

Hey, Mr. Powell's Marquee Man: Put my name up in lights, 'cause it's a miracle I'm standing here today: "Real Mean Bottle" by Bob Seger. 

Posted in Wire to Wire

Powell’s on June 30

Posted on Jun 26th, 2011

The Northwest is home to a lot of great bookstores, and I've had the pleasure of visiting four of them in the past weeks. A special thanks to everyone who joined me.

Third Street Books in McMinnville was a special treat. It's a wonderful store and a great place for my first solo event. Iron Legs Burk, my freight-riding friend, showed up to surprise me. Ears Two of Segerfile fame was there as well. There were decades of history in the room, along with new friends. And I made some charts and graphs to explain why Wire to Wire isn't really a crime novel, but an homage to one. 

Elliott Bay Books, the next stop, is now on Capitol Hill -- right next to the Comet Tavern, where I spent many evenings and a morning or two when I lived in Seattle. Writers from the Wet Dog and Touchstone writers groups came by. In effect, those two groups were my MFA program as I began Wire to Wire.

Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park was new to me. It's a fabulous store, made even better by old friends from Antioch College and Seattle. We closed the place down, then stood in the parking lot talking until the police cruised by.

And Village Books in the Fairhaven section of Bellingham is an amazing place -- especially when you stay a block away at Fairhaven Village Inn, where they also love books and authors. Before and after, I traded stories of freights, writing, and Puget Sound with a friend from my Seattle days.

Next up is Powell's -- Thursday, June 30, 7:30. The City of Books is a highlight of any book tour. When you live in Portland, it's also the place you dream about. Come join me if you can. 

_________

Play some Live Bullet: The Wire to Wire tour continues in Michigan in July. "I've Been Working." 

Kicking out the jams

Posted on Jun 18th, 2011

I’ve been guest-blogging on a lot of sites lately. Here are links to some of the places I’ve been.

Powell’s Books – Five posts for Portland’s legendary bookstore. 

Book on the Tracks

Is it dangerous? That's the question people ask when they find out I spent a large part of my youth hopping freight trains and traveling in boxcars across the Midwest, through the western U.S., and across Canada.  Read more.

Crime and Lowlifes

A friend regrets to inform me that she won't be reading Wire to Wire. Tip: Never say that to a guy who's got a blog. Read more. 

Burning Down the House

Imagine a world where sex & money are out of control. Wait - how is that fiction?? Read more.

Saying Thanks

They say I've spent 20 years writing Wire to Wire. Really? That long? I guess it's possible — I lose track of time and get distracted easily. What I do know is that there’s little, maybe nothing, that I've worked at harder in my life. Along the way, many people helped. Here are four you should meet. Read more.

Heavy Music

Made in Michigan — Why Seger's music means so much to me. Read more. 

NW Booklovers – Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association

What You Need Most

One summer when I was visiting Michigan, a friend invited me to stay. I'd already spent six weeks in his guest room, gathering material. "Your book's all about Northern Michigan," he said. "Why not just stay here?" Read more.

Largehearted Boy – Book Notes

I remember exactly where I was when I decided to quit my job and write a book: at a Prince concert in Washington state. Can you hear the Purple One change my life in the Tacoma Dome? – "I know, I know times are changing / it's time we all reached out for something new / that means you too." Read more.

WORD bookstore

Scott Sparling, meet NYC.

The first scene of Wire to Wire takes place on 23rd Street in New York. A musician plays “Purple Haze,” but without an amp. I can picture it pretty clearly, but I’ve never actually been to that intersection. Read more.

Shelf Awareness, Book Brahmin – Interview

Q: What books did your high school girlfriend give you?

A: I remember three: The Kama Sutra, Siddhartha and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. I didn't know what to make of the Kama Sutra with all its lingam and yoni stuff. Read more.

My Book, My Movie

I’m stumped. I have no idea who should play the main characters in Wire to Wire. Here’s what I do know. Read more.

What Writers Are Reading

When I finished Wire to Wire, I wanted to catch up on what others in the Northwest were writing. Read more.

The Page 69 Test

Page 69 is actually one of my favorite pages in the book – seriously – and one I almost always include in readings. Read more.

 Seattleite Magazine – Interview

"When I was living in Seattle, I read an interview where Dylan said, if you want to create something, go find the electricity. I was working for Seattle City Light, but that was clearly the wrong kind of electricity." Read more.

Book Divas – Ask A New Author 

Three rejected titles for Wire to Wire and some good writing advice. Read more.

A social media post on using social media. Read more.

My rejected PR tactics and other advice: Read more.

That's the list for now, but it's bound to grow. While Wire to Wire is on the shelves, I'll be blogging until they make me stop.

___________

Let me up on the stand. And let me "Kick Out the Jams." 

Posted in Wire to Wire

The road begins and ends in McMinnville

Posted on Jun 6th, 2011

On a summer night in 1989, the freight-riding careers of Spider Rider and Iron Legs Burk came to an end in McMinnville, Oregon. We were two Michigan kids who lived near the tracks and fell in love with trains in the early ‘70s. We both ended up – or ended up so far – in Oregon.

Nights and weekends, when we were young – when we should have been chasing girls, drinking beer, or stealing cars – we’d steal away to the railroad tracks instead and grab ladder rides. One day, we got in a boxcar and rode a couple hundred miles down to Elkhart, Indiana and back. When I got home, and my parents asked what I'd been up to, I answered,  "Hangin' out with Deeg." That was his nickname. Freight stories were shared on a need-to-know basis back then, and our parents didn't need to know. They certainly didn't need to know our freight-hopping names. 

After that, we were hooked, and we rode everywhere. Durand, Owosso, St. Paul, East Dubuque, Minot, Havre, Yakima, Spokane, Eureka, Petaluma, San Luis Obispo, Sacramento, Bakersfield, Barstow, Salt Lake City, Santa Fe, Denver, Grand Junction, Omaha  – more towns than I can remember, though they're written in our journals.  And all across Canada: Kamloops and Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat and…well, the unit trains, the one-a-days, the slugs, and the hotshots. Any train with fresh orders and hoses hooked, we rode.

______

By 1989, things had changed. We both had jobs. Jesse was married and I was about to be. Boxcars were in short supply, replaced by container trains, and empties were rarer still. And we had lost a step or two, or at least I had.

But one day, Jesse – Iron Legs – put out the call, as he always did. One more trip. Portland to McMinnville. Leave work early. Meet me on the bridge. I said yes, as I usually did.

We rode south and west all afternoon and into the evening, and when we jumped out in McMinnville, we might have said something like, "Maybe that’ll be the last time ever." If that's what we said, we probably didn’t really believe it. But here it is, twenty-plus years later, and our freight-riding days seem to be done. You never know, though – we’ll both be in Michigan this summer, and if Jesse sees a slow-moving freight, well...I'll keep you posted. As things stand now, though, McMinnville was the end of the road.

______

So perhaps it's fitting that on June 16, at Third Street Books, McMinnville will be the beginning of the road for the Wire to Wire bookstore tour. Sure, there were a couple of warm-up dates out east last month. I read with a group of terrific Tin House writers at WORD in Brooklyn and the KGB Bar in Manhattan. Good places to loosen up and test things out. 

But McMinnville will be the first Oregon date, and the first time I read solo. Not even Iron Legs Burk will be there.

It’s being billed as a workshop/reading, where I’ll tell you everything I know about crime novels, which won’t take long. So if you’re anywhere near Third Street Books in McMinnville, Oregon on June 16, stop in and say hello.

When it’s done, I’m taking a walk down to the freight yard for old time’s sake, and you’re welcome to come along.

_______________

Iron Legs Burk in Oregon: Wanting things that can only be found in the Darkness on the Edge of Town.

Posted in Trains | Wire to Wire

“Stunning emotional depth”

Posted on May 15th, 2011

The June Playboy has Mick Jagger's daughter undressed, but my favorite pic is the one of Wire to Wire next to a great short review by Anthony Vargas. 

"In this impressive debut, Scott Sparling lends contemporary grunge to the genre as he embraces its trademark obsessions with sex, cash and dead ends. His all-too-human cast of contemporary boxcar drifters, glue sniffers and thugs is drawn in an impressionistic style that makes for stunning emotional depth."

The issue also features a food article by Jim Harrison and fiction by Robert Coover, so this month you really can buy it for the articles. 

And in case Ms. Jagger wants to know, my turn-ons are Seger, power lines, and long romantic walks in the freight yard.

“Things on fire…”

Posted on May 6th, 2011

Kirkus Reviews calls Wire to Wire "A dizzying, speed-laced debut novel...with plenty of peek-between-your-fingers moments for good measure." Including some combustible stuff. Here's the full review:

With Dexedrine-slamming rail riders, a glue-sniffing femme fatale and a lead protagonist whose point of view is skewed under the best of circumstances, the book is a worthy combination of Bob Seger nostalgia and dope-fueled noir, but it’s not always the easiest story to follow. The framing device: video editor Michael Slater’s editing suite, where the pill-popping film slicer screens scenes from his own life. Michael has never been quite the same since a peculiar, life-altering incident. While riding on top of a hurtling freight train with his amigo Harp Maitland, a power line zaps the young adventurer with 33,000 volts to the forehead. Now Slater has a head full of holes, and he sometimes sees people who aren’t there.

From there, it’s a hallucinatory road trip from Arizona to Michigan, which Slater describes in loving detail. It’s a blistered postcard of passing Americana, stitched together with diners, pool halls and pickup trucks, not to mention the freight trains that Sparling himself rode.

Technically, it’s a crime novel—there’s violence and sex and things on fire. But it’s obvious that the author is more interested in what’s bouncing around in his hero’s fractured head and spilling it out onto the page than he is in tidy endings. Slater explains his peculiar interests to a fellow traveler as a train narrowly misses a cow on the tracks. “I was disappointed,” he says. “I wanted to see the cow explode. Things start to go wrong and I like to watch.”

A strange, formidable novel about crossed signals and damage done, with plenty of peek-between-your-fingers moments for good measure.

I love that "violence and sex and things on fire" part, but also their tip that it's really not a crime novel in many ways. At least not to me. Though I would like to see a cow explode. 

The Strip Club and the Grange

Posted on Apr 20th, 2011

Okay, I didn’t actually do a reading in a strip club, despite various statements that I may have made on Facebook and elsewhere. Not everything you read online is true – I mean, I'm trying to promote a book here.

And technically, I did do a little reading in a strip club – Portland’s Club Rogue – but only as part of a video shoot for the book trailer. No one else was there except the film crew from Juliet Zulu, Tony Perez from Tin House, and Sandria Dore, a dancer who was oddly unimpressed to meet an author. Although that was in the script, so maybe she was just staying in character.

We were filming in Club Rogue because Michael Slater, one of the main characters in Wire to Wire, has a habit of going to strip clubs at various points in the book. He doesn’t go to see naked women, however. He goes there to feel the fear of exposing his loneliness and need:

“One dancer in particular had his number. She made him look left, she made him look right. She had him on a little string. She was extremely good-looking and the fear she inspired scoured a month of crap off his soul.”

And yes, that's a Bob Seger t-shirt I'm wearing. Perhaps another reason why the stripper ignored me.

After the shoot, just to see what it felt like, I stood by the pole and read to the empty room as the film crew packed up. I’ll be replicating this experience in bookstores soon, minus the pole, but hopefully with an audience. The tour schedule is here. Come and make it rain.

_____

I did, however, read, at the Springwater Grange in Estacada, Oregon, last Saturday night. Friends, acquaintances, and passers-by who were quick to believe that I gave a reading in an empty strip club were suddenly doubtful when I claimed to have read in the Grange Hall. People, you’ve got it backward – the Grange was amazing. Writers Night at the Grange was like three levels better than the best reading you can possibly imagine.

It attains that status through the goodwill, generous heart and friendship of Stevan Allred, who has organized the event for the Estacada Area Arts Commission for the past nine years, and from Joanna Rose, author of Little Miss Strange, who teaches with Stevan at the Pinewood Table and shares the stage with him at the Grange.

Every year, a third person is invited to join in reading – often one of their students – and this year it was me. Go ahead, take a guess as to how many people come out on a Saturday night in Estacada to hear writers read. Nope, you’re low. Double it. Still low. I counted nearly 70 people. It was an amazing experience – a perfect, confidence-building way to debut Wire to Wire and start the book tour.

The theme of the night was On the Road. Joanna read a beautiful piece about a road trip through rural Oregon, snow, and memories. Stevan read an essay about a real 1970s freight-hopping trip that took me back to my youth – reminding me that, originally, I jumped freight trains for the same reason Slater visits strip clubs – to scour the fear off my soul.

After the reading, there was a huge party at Stevan’s house, as there is every year. When I say it was a terrific time, that’s true. When I say I regret starting a fight and stabbing a guy, that’s not. But feel free to spread the rumor. I’ve got a book to promote, and I could use the buzz.

Thanks to Juliet Zulu for the production still at Club Rogue, and fellow writer and previous Grange-reader Steve Denniston for the shot of me at the podium.

_________

Say it takes you an hour to drive through rural Oregon to the Springwater Grange. Say you've been waiting for this all your life. Roll down the window and play this fucking loud. Steve Earle, "Feel Alright."

Posted in Trains | Wire to Wire | Writing

Louder

Posted on Apr 10th, 2011

Next weekend I’m reading an excerpt from Wire to Wire at the Springwater Grange in Estacada, Oregon. It’s a big room, and I’ve been practicing for it, working on getting it loud.

I can do loud, but I don’t do it naturally. My speaking voice is normally a little bit quiet. In fact, a long time ago I adopted the line from the B-side song “The Quiet One” by The Who: I ain’t quiet – everybody else is too loud. (For younger readers, The Who are an a cappella group from Leeds, known for their delicate harmonies.)

On the other hand, when I started learning fiction, my writing voice was the opposite of my speaking voice: I always wanted the writing to be loud. A blast of voice is how I would describe my early style now, though at the time I called it incantatory – because I had read that Kerouac and Joseph Conrad, both of whom I liked, were incantatory writers. I wanted sentences that went on for pages, doubled back on themselves, and emptied the bench of every punctuation mark known to man, especially semi-colons. Dashes were good too.

Of course, I was doing this at about the same time Raymond Carver was revitalizing the short story with short, direct sentences that displayed exactly the opposite signal to noise ratio. (In Carver’s case, all signal, no noise.) My allegiance to the sound of a sentence (caring more about how the syllables fell than the story being told, would be a harsh way of putting it) might have been an early warning sign of the long road ahead. But I wasn’t deterred.

In fact, I once sent a friend an unmarked cassette tape with a message, written in Sharpie, probably in all caps, that said: “This is how I want my writing to sound.” On the tape was an Elvin Jones drum solo. I bought some of his albums to listen to when I wrote.

(And I still have them. Filed under J right next to Joan Jett. Go ahead - imagine me as a vinyl aficionado if you like. It’s not really true, but I like the way aficionado sounds on the page. Which explains why I once changed my name to Johnny Revillagegado for a very brief time. But that’s a whole nother post, as we would say in Michigan.)

Eventually I finished a story built around voice. It opened like this:

It was a new time and we rode slam hard, rode it on flatcars and hoppers and bulkhead flats, in empty woodchip cars, gons, auto ramps, and piggies all over the west, the prairies and dirty western towns of district nine, Kalama, Lillooet, Sutter’s Portage, dozens of towns seen from the frame of a boxcar and eyes numb past blinking. Towns of dust where dirty kids threw rocks at the train – in laziness, not maliciously – and empty towns on the straight flat where the last lit beer sign burned thirty miles into the night.

The story worked, sort of – it got published in a low-circulation newsletter – but soon I discovered the limitations of voice (like the problem of wearing the reader out). And I started reading Robert Stone. Since then I’ve read the opening sentence of Dog Soldiers about 7,000 times. “There was only one bench open in the shade and Converse went for it, although it was already occupied.” A setting, a character, and an action, all in 19 fairly quiet words. My admiration for that, and for the rest of the book, started me on a new path – one of looking beyond voice. Beyond loud.

_____

I would still be lost on that path today – wandering through the woods, eating acorns, clutching an unfinished manuscript for warmth – were it not for Stevan Allred and Joanna Rose. Stevan and Joanna teach writers in Portland at The Pinewood Table, named for the table in Joanna’s living room. I joined the group in the early 2000s, thinking I would stay for five weeks or so. I stayed for five years instead. I read every word of Wire to Wire around that table; the parts that puzzled me most (and there were lots of them) I read two or three times. If not for Stevan and Joanna and the other writers at the table (from whom I learned nearly as much) there would be no book, no blog, no readings. Among the many things I learned at that table was when and how to stop writing Wire to Wire.

Stevan and Joanna are both reading at the Grange this coming weekend – Stevan organizes the Writers Night event once a year. This year, the theme is "On the road." I’m thrilled to be reading there with them. I’ll be going to a lot of great bookstores this summer – places I’ve always dreamed of reading. But nothing could be more perfect than starting with Stevan and Joanna at the Springwater Grange in Estacada.

As far as I’m concerned, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

____

Elvin Jones explains how to build a drum solo around the melody of "Three Card Molly." 

Posted in Wire to Wire | Writing

Crossing the Big Lake

Posted on Mar 26th, 2011

When you’re growing up, you see the world at a certain scale. And if you grew up on the outskirts of a small town in southern Michigan, years ago, that scale was pretty small. 

I can remember two things that shook my sense of size when I was a kid. One was the Ford Rotunda in Detroit. Like thousands of other families, we went there to see the Christmas display – before it burned down. The other world shaker for me was the fleet of Ann Arbor Railroad ferries – mammoth ships that carried entire freight trains across Lake Michigan. I didn’t have any idea what big was about until I saw those ships.

The railroad ferries also carried passengers across the Big Lake, from Northern Michigan to Northern Wisconsin and back. These ships were so foreign to our experience, that my friend Deeg (that was his name at the time; it keeps changing) speculated that a ticket to Wisconsin would certainly cost $100 or more. I happened to know it cost only $10, and began to plot ways of tricking the other $90 out of him. A few years later, Deeg or Doug or Jesse or D.C. or whatever he’s calling himself these days, showed me how to hop freights, and the situation was reversed: he knew stuff I didn’t, like what it meant when the hoses were hooked, and which boxcars would be set out first on a train. To his credit, he never tried to trick me.

As I wrote Wire to Wire, set in the Michigan of my imagination, I knew I had to include the railroad ferries. I discovered it was hard to write about something so big. I found myself putting mammoth in every sentence. The cliché “as long as a football field” kept trying to get in the prose. In the end, I’m not sure I captured how much space they filled up in my head. They were freakin’ big.

Of course, by the time I finished the manuscript, I’d learned it was the small things – words that aren’t said, a touch, a glimpse of loneliness or friendship – that really matter, and that they are even harder to put on the page.

The ferries still stun me though. I’m going back to Michigan this summer – the schedule for the W2W reading tour is up on the Events page – and though the railroad ferries are gone, some of their car ferry cousins still remain. I hope I get a chance to ride them again. 

_______________

"Swimming in the Big Lake, taking it easy." Bob Seger's "Brave Strangers." You weren't expecting "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," I hope.