Q: We’ll start
at the beginning. Why did you call your novel Retirement?
MDC: The title actually serves four
purposes, and none have anything to do with Medicare Part B, IRAs, Ensure or
the AARP. One meaning will be crystal-clear after the first line of Retirement. The second will make itself
known a good bit later. The third will jump out as the book winds down. As to
the fourth and final one, that won’t be revealed until the series reaches its
end.
Q:
And how many books will there be in the
series?
MDC: More than two and less than 10. I
already know all the titles. I’m sure that, in the months and years to come,
the number of volumes in this series will become public knowledge, probably shortly
after I blab it to the wrong person. But until then, “More than two and less
than 10” will have to suffice.
Q:
What made you write Retirement?
Was there a specific inspiration?
MDC:
I wish I could say that even as a little boy in Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, I spent endless hours of splendid isolation in my room, driven
by a burning desire to be but one thing in life—an author. I wish I could say
that, but that would be a lie. Truth is, I had a radio show on a small Florida AM
station in the late 1990s. I met a young guy there who’d written for newspapers
and was going to start his own weekly driveway paper. He asked me if I’d like
to be his columnist, and I said OK.
Shortly
before the launch of this paper, his funding collapsed and I was stuck with two
columns in search of a publisher. I went to my pool store later that week, and stacked
by their cash register was a brand-new neighborhood weekly. I called ‘em up, e-mailed
my work to them, and they agreed to make me a columnist. Although they couldn’t
afford to pay me, I had complete editorial freedom, and owned the copyrights on
my writing. A columnist owning his work is very rare at any local newspaper, by
the way, but I insisted. After nearly a year, they suddenly and unilaterally
decided that I would continue to write for free, but they’d now get to dictate
the topics of my columns. As that was an unacceptable breach of contract, I simply
stopped sending them my stuff.
But by then it
was too late for me. I now had a serious need to write. My mind wandered around
for a few days, tops. On April 17th, 2000, I wrote the first line of
Retirement. It’s the only line that
has never been touched.
Q:
You started writing Retirement
in April of 2000. When did you finish?
MDC: That’s a question with many
answers. I finished the first draft at 12:25 a.m. on Tuesday, March 26th,
2002, so it took just under two years. I was so thrilled to be done that I took
a piece of scrap paper and wrote the date and time down before tacking it to my
office bulletin board, where it remains to this day. After polishing Retirement for about a year, I began
sending out query letters to over 200 pre-qualified agents and publishers.
There were a few nibbles, but even those agents who initially bit spit out the
hook when they heard it was nearly 700 pages long. But I kept trying to sell it
while constantly rewriting and polishing.
Somewhere in
early 2004, I concluded that no agent would touch my book because of its
length, and no major publisher would touch me without an agent. A unit of
Markoni Communications had been involved in my radio and newspaper work, so
that’s who got the gig. I finally put Retirement
to bed on December 16th, 2004—nearly five years from start to
finish.
Q: Five years is a good bit of time. Will the
sequels take as long to write?
MDC: Absolutely not. First off, let me
make it clear that the remaining books are not sequels. They are all part of
one continuous narrative that’s already laid out. Most of the primary
characters are known, the background is painted, and I now know the direction of
the entire series, including the ending. Thankfully, there won’t be such a
lengthy wait time in getting the remaining books published. But the future
release dates do partially depend on the sales of Retirement. If it sells well enough for me to quit my day job, the
subsequent books will pop out all that much faster.
Q: May I ask you what your day job is?
MDC: You sure can.
Q: What is your day job?
MDC: You sure can.
Q:
Got it. So what do you hope your readers will take away from Retirement?
MDC: I don’t want to say anything that
gives away more of the plot than what I already spilled on the back cover. I
think a novel should reveal its secrets to the reader in its own good time, without
the author having to offer up the verbal equivalent of a movie trailer.
I will say
this, however. It would obviously be great if Retirement sells through the roof, is critically acclaimed, maybe
wins an award or two, and even gets made into a movie one day. All that would
be super. But I don’t believe any of those things are the real measure of
whether or not an author has truly captured the individual readers.
Q: Then what is?
MDC: If readers can’t put your book
down, can’t wait for your next one, and virtually browbeat everyone they know
into reading it. You hit that trifecta, and all the goodies will take of
themselves—because you’ve done your job.
