Happy 60th Birthday to City Lights Bookstore

I find the death of the bookstore to be sad. I have found myself taking my sons to my local independent bookstores and even having pit stops when we are on the road at a Barnes and Noble. It makes sense – B&N have good bathrooms, passable coffee, and we can walk around.

I am as much to blame for the demise of the bookstore as anyone. I deny any connection to my first public author signing at a Borders and their announcement the next day that they were closing all stores.

I buy most of my books online and as ebooks. It is not just a matter of convenience or price: I genuinely believe in the environmental necessity of ebooks. As an author, my focus is on creating an online platform and this translates (outside the first week or so of a book launch) into consistently selling more ebooks than tree books.

But I realize that I am increasingly treating these trips to a bookstore like a visit to a museum. I will tell my children how you can make spontaneous choices this way, ask advice from staff who are always genuine book lovers (they would not work there I assume otherwise), and enjoy the smell of the bookstore.

My kids know that I am not exactly telling the truth. We rarely buy books on these visits, scouring the bargain bins perhaps, and I often resort to their please to purchase something that I will look it up used online.

I recently went to a book launch of a friend and bought her book at the store, standing in line to get her autograph. It is the actions of a good friend showing up for someone they care about. The book was one-third more expensive than it was new on Amazon. But this is a friend and, in a strange sense, I felt an appreciation for the staff of the bookstore for hosting her.

But one bookstore stands alone, at least in my stomping grounds. Last month City Lights celebrated its 60th birthday. There is a great article here and I don’t want to simply hash out the same story.

When I first came to the US and told someone that I dreamed about using fiction as social activism and commentary on our society, they smiled: “You gonna be another Kerouac?”

I could see the disappointment on their face when I asked: “Who?” I looked around, half expecting the immigration police to appear, tear up my green card, and deport me to Canada.

Patriotically, I devoured On The Road and The Dharma Bums, and this began a long and wonderful journey into the beat movement. I feel privileged to still meet men and women who were beatniks. The sequel to Unwanted Heroes is a modern day tribute to the beat generation.

When I told someone of my new interest, they promptly sent me to City Lights (and the Jack Kerouac Alley, and the museum, and oh those delicious Italian pastries in North Beach!).

I often return to City Lights and always buy a book. I stand in reverence on the top floor, which is dedicated to the beatniks who gathered there under Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I wrote a scene in the sequel to Unwanted Heroes, which I really witnessed as an elderly couple came upstairs and were looking through a coffee table-type book of the beatniks in Paris. They found a photo that included the old man. We spent a wonderful hour together as he reminisced. It was a very special hour and one I will never forget.

That doesn’t happen at an online bookstore. Even if this gentleman had crafted a well-written article about his time in Paris, it could never compare to sitting and listening to him telling it in his own voice.

It was a magical moment – so thank you to City Lights for still being around. I will bring my sons to the bookstore and they can buy any darn book they want!

Happy 60th birthday.

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Alon Shalev writes social justice-themed novels and YA epic fantasy. He swears there is a connection. His latest books include: Unwanted Heroes and the 2013 Eric Hoffer Book Award for YA – At The Walls Of Galbrieth. Alon tweets at @alonshalevsf and @elfwriter. For more about the author, check out his website.

Getting Creative

This week, as part of my virtual book tour, I stopped by Richard in Anderson, South Carolina.  His blog is Bound & Determined (to find a good read). Richard reviewed The Accidental Activist (he is the first person to hug my book … at least who admitted to doing so!). He also posted a short article that he requested I wrote on The Creative Process.

Thank you, Richard.  

The Creative Process
I was recently asked in a workshop how I find time to write. I had surprised the audience when I asserted the ability to write a 90,000 novel in 100 days. I write at this pace while holding down a challenging full-time job and being an active and involved husband, father, and community member. In fact, I have done this twice in 2011 and could keep writing if I didn’t have to attend to marketing and promotion.

I can write anywhere - even in a redwood forest.

Many authors have their own personal framework: the sacred space in their house, listening to certain music, the writer’s retreat, and many more. Whatever works for you is right, but my desk in our kitchen. I swivel my chair around and I am at the dinner table. I can write in coffee shops, on the train ride as I commute, or while several boys enjoy a rambunctious play-date in our tiny house.

Writing has always been a natural process for me and I rarely need to spend much time deliberating what my plot is going to be or developing my characters. From what I hear, this is not typical.

It is a state of mind. When I am writing a novel, I am in an intimate relationship with my characters. Since I do not plan my novels before writing, I am absorbed in the plot, sharing the thrill of what might happen next, just as my readers and characters experience it.

I am able to switch off, to leave my characters and focus at work or home, and switch back on when I have an hour to write. What I do think is important is that I am writing consistently. When I am in the creation process, I must write every day. In fact, I am pretty sure that I become quite insufferable when I am not keeping up with my characters.

The Accidental Activist, a political courtroom drama in which two young individuals are sued by a multinational corporation and need to defend themselves in court, is based upon a real court case. The food giant, McDonalds, sued two activists in England in the 1990’s and the archaic legal system did not allow legal aid to be granted in a libel trial (they have since overhauled these laws because of this case). Try to blow up the Queen’s Corgis (her dogs) and the state provided you with a lawyer, but not for libel. So the plot was pretty much laid out for me. With what happened there, I didn’t need to embellish.

The Real Heroes - Helen Steel & Dave Morris

But even when I do not base a novel on something that really transpired the story has always quickly taken shape. For example, A Gardener’s Tale is a reflection on the fast-disappearing rural life in England and the magic of the Pagan religion that still permeates village society, or Unwanted Heroes (release Spring 2012) which is a critical view of how we in America treat our war veterans, as seen though the eyes of a young English Kerouac-wannabe in San Francisco. The first draft to both these novels were each written in a quick and intensive period of time.

New Cover, New Edition

It is an amazing thrill, a rush, to see the novel come to life under my fingertips. It is what makes the periods between writing so frustrating, and what keeps me always coming back for more.

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/ and on Twitter (#alonshalevsf).

Synopsis – request feedback

These are exciting times. As mentioned in my last blog, I will submit my new manuscript to the first of two contests over the weekend. I would appreciate any feedback to the synopsis which I have pasted below. Feel free to critique in the comments below or by email to alshalev at bigfoot dotcom.

It is also exciting to see that people are picking up Oilspill dotcom in its e-book format from both Smashwords and Scribd. The world of e-book is accelerating and I am so happy to be part of this wave. If you have read the book, please post a review on these sites and also Goodreads if you hang out there.

To all who follow my blog and my progress as an author – Happy New Year – I appreciate all your support and encouragement.
Alon
http://www.alonshalev.com/

Unwanted Heroes (80,000 words)

Unwanted Heroes (80,000 words)

Good coffee, vintage wine and the magic of San Francisco bring together an elderly, battle weary Chinese American war vet and an idealistic and pretentious young Englishman. But when repressed memories suddenly surface, they discover a more dangerous commonality where the key to release for each of them lies in an unlikely partnership.

Will Taylor finds employment as a barista at The Daily Grind in the Financial District of San Francisco and is inspired to write his breakout novel. Walking the streets of Kerouac and Ginsberg, Taylor discovers a beautiful city and cutting edge culture alongside the harsh underbelly of American society.

When his boss suddenly disappears, Will unravels an injustice he must try and help rectify before he loses his friends, his sanity and love. He needs all the help he can find and all the allies he can muster. A homeless professor, precariously balanced between intellectual pinnacles and mental abyss, offers advice and contacts. Taylor’s Goth girlfriend initiates him into the West Coast counter culture, while her Nob Hill father digs up his own military nightmares to help another haunted soldier in desperate straits.

The unique culture of San Francisco lends itself to the comical aspects of the novel, offset in a rollercoaster of emotions where comic follows tragic. When Will meets his Goth girlfriend’s parents for dinner at their home on Nob Hill, the only conversation piece he can offer is teaching them to toast in twelve languages. In the ensuing abrupt scene change, he is frantically searching a military graveyard at night, looking for his boss who has suddenly disappeared without his medication.

Unwanted Heroes confronts the issue of homelessness and, in particular, American war veterans who could never readjust into society. This novel is a tribute to a beautiful, unique and quirky city and its people, and yet highlights those who sacrificed so much to keep it and America free.

As such, Unwanted Heroes fits into a genre of novels written by authors who want to effect change in the world. Erin Brockovich, The Rainmaker, A Civil Action and The Appeal, are comparable works in this respect. In addition, the humorous scenes reflect the influence of Christopher Buckley and Christopher Moore.

But above all, Unwanted Heroes is a story of injustice, friendship and romance, as seen through the eyes of a struggling young writer from across the Atlantic, who brings more baggage than just his shiny laptop and romantic ideals.