Author Interview ~ David Blixt

David Blixt was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan. At the age of 13 he grew too old to take the local acting class, and was hired to teach it. For the next twelve years he taught theatre and creative writing for the Ann Arbor Public Schools. Meanwhile, after learning to bear a strong hatred for Shakespeare through regular English classes, he was surprised to find himself cast in a production of Romeo & Juliet. In doing that one play, he discovered what so many people have learned - Shakespeare is meant to be spoken, not read.

Somehow, between that time and this, David has become a professional classical actor, traveling as far as Greece to perform in the ancient amphitheatres. He has worked at the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, First Folio Shakespeare, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, the Shadow Theatre Company, the Goodman Theatre, CityLit, and A Crew Of Patches. It was through his first directing work on a Shakespeare play - again, Romeo & Juliet - that he was received his first inspiration for a novel - THE MASTER OF VERONA. David lives in Chicago with his wife Jan and their young son, Dash.

What book or project is coming out or has come out that you’d like to tell us about?

THE MASTER OF VERONA, just out from St. Martin's Press. Set in 14th century Italy, it combines Shakespeare's Italian characters with the characters of Dante's Inferno and the real people of the age. At the center is the love triangle between Romeo & Juliet's parents.

Tell us about your journey to publication. How long had you been writing before you got the call you had a contract, how you heard and what went through your head.

Here's the journey, as it happened to/for me:

Fall, 1998 - Had the idea for the novel, started doing research
Summer, 2000 - Started writing. Scrapped the first draft after two chapters, plowed back into research, then made a much better start
Summer, 2001 - Finished the first draft - 250,000 words - and started shopping it around to agents and publishers
2002 - After many lovely rejections, I got an offer from an independent agent. Out of desperation to have someone in my corner, I signed with her. Over two years, she shopped it to a number of publishers - including a really heart-wrenching push-me/pull-you with Harper Collins, who finally passed - but she was mostly pushing it as a romance novel. Which it isn't. And, to be quite honest, I don't think she ever read it through. I think she read my synopsis and the first fifty pages and took it to sell.

That was, what? 2003 by now. The book had gone through a second draft, but I wasn't happy with it - mostly because it wasn't selling, but also I had the feeling it was a little sluggish. So, I contacted an acquaintance from many years ago who had worked as an editor at St. Martin's Press. I asked if she knew of any independent editors out there in the world. She gave me the name of the best man she knew from her days at SMP - he had recently retired from the company and gone solo as an editor.

This is where luck comes in.

He read it, gave me his thoughts (including a gem that was worth the whole fee), then said that he liked the book. Really liked it. And would like to act as my agent.
So, after a discussion with my former agent, who agreed it would be best, I switched. Then my independent editor, now my agent, started shopping it. He began, of course, with his old friends at St. Martin's.

All of whom passed.

Here followed a year and a half of discouragement. If a veteran editor with 25 years of experience in one of the big houses couldn't sell this thing, then it wasn't going to sell. On my end, with his guidance, I did my best to streamline the thing, cutting over 100,000 words off of the second draft and really tightening the prose and the action.

Then, almost incidentally, he was having lunch with one of his old colleagues from SMP. (I picture the scene on some outdoor terrace, with both of them smoking - but I was in Rome when this happened, and it may be coloring my view) The SMP editor said, "Hey - is that Romeo & Juliet book still available? I can't get it out of my head."
That was July, 2005. We had a deal in November. Eighteen months after the SMP editor had first read it.

2006 was all editing. The first half of 2007 was all waiting and trying to drum up advance interest.

And now the book is in the stores.
And the sequel is with my editor…

Do you still experience self-doubts regarding your work?

About the work? No. About the publishing business, constantly. The book is quite good – I’m getting daily confirmation of that, which is lovely – but the doubts are about things like my ability to get it into people’s hands. I no longer worry if people will like my work – I’m worried that they’ll not ever know about it.

What mistakes have you made while seeking publication?

As I mentioned, I started with the wrong agent. I signed with the first one that said “Yes.” It was a mistake, because she had a misconception as to what the book was, and it kept her from submitting it to the right people.

What’s the best advice you’ve heard on writing/publication?

The aforementioned gem from my current agent: “David, you’ve confused what an author needs to know to write the book with what a reader needs to know to read it – which is much less.”

What’s the worst piece of writing advice you’ve heard?

I’m sure there’s been something, but I think I’ve blocked it out. Most of the bad advice, I gave myself – trying to mess with the manuscript just because it was finished and nothing was happening. My wife was instrumental in keeping me from making bad decisions – like starting from the end and doing it all as a flash-back. That was a terrible idea, and I’m glad she wrestled the keyboard away from me.

What’s something you wish you’d known earlier that might have saved you some time/frustration in the publishing business?

Just how much of my own marketing I would have to do. I’ve been doing quite a bit for the last nine months, but here we are a month after publication and I feel like I’m still playing catch-up. It’s in stores, has a great cover, great quotes, great reviews. It’s barely enough to garner interest. But this is a long race, and so far THE MASTER OF VERONA is running well.

Is there a particularly difficult set back that you’ve gone through in your writing career you are willing to share?

I remember when the Harper-Collins deal fell through. Jan and I were in Paris on our honeymoon, and I had a day of not wanting to leave the hotel. That was the lowest point – quivering on the brink of success then falling flat. However, it’s rather like my relationship with my wife – I knew her for years before anything romantic happened. I contend that had something happened early on, I couldn’t appreciate what we have now. I love my publisher, and my editor especially, and I’m sure I appreciate them all the more for the wait. It’s not simple gratitude – it’s an honest appreciation. They want my book to be the best it can be. That’s marvelous.

What are a few of your favorite books? (Not written by you.)

Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond and Niccolo books. Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. Bernard Cornwell’s three King Arthur books. And Colleen McCullough’s Master of Rome series. Oh, and anything by Susanna Clarke, Neil Gaiman, or Jonathan Carroll. My guilty pleasures are Robert B. Parker mysteries.

What piece of writing have you done that you’re particularly proud of and why?

I’ve got a play that’s sitting in a drawer that I pull out and work on from time to time. It’s a political piece, again based in Shakespeare. It’s the germ of something that I hope will grow over time. It’s not something I can force – it comes in jolts and starts. But I’m really enjoying it. A private little project.

Do you have a pet peeve having to do with this biz?

Delayed gratification. A friend once told me that publishing was a series of anti-climaxes. And, coming from theatre, that feels very true. On stage you get immediate response from your audience. Not so in writing. The waiting is the hardest part, and by the time you’re getting feedback on what’s in the stores, you’re two novels ahead, and can hardly recall writing that bit of dialogue people are talking about. The delay is going to take some getting used to.

Take us through your process of writing a novel briefly—from conception to revision.

Step one – The inspiration.

The initial inspirations have been, so far, in those flashes of connections between stories that exist, and ones that are untold. The origin of the Capulet-Montague feud was an untold story, and I had no care to write it until I discovered a line – a single line – that hinted at it. Montague’s line upon entering the tomb at the end of the show made no sense to me: “My liege, my wife is dead. Grief of our son’s exile hath stopped her breath.” Why was Lady Montague dead? And more, why did we care? She has three lines in the play, all in the first scene. We’re not invested in her at all – why does she get the final death?

I broke it down to parts – A death offstage, according to the rules of dramatic structure, is symbolic. The only thing that ends at that point is the feud – Capulet and Montague shake hands. So, I thought, Lady Montague’s death is symbolic of the end of the feud? That doesn’t make sense –
Unless she was the cause of the feud in the first place.
That was the initial inspiration. Something similar happened for the other series I’m planning.

Step two – Research, research, and more research. Everything you need is there – details, plot-points. Writer’s block has thus far been impossible for me, because whenever I’m stymied, I go back to the research and there’s an answer looking me in the face. So it’s an on-going process. The research never ends. God bless the internet and the Newberry Library.
Step three – The first draft. 5-8 hours a day, 2,000-8,000 words per day.
Step four – First cut. Trim away the excess, the over-phrasing.
Step five – The next draft. Fill in the narrative blanks.
Step six – repeat steps four and five until your editor tells you to stop.

Do you have a dream for the future of your writing, something you would love to accomplish?

Finish this series, of course. That, in itself, will be a major accomplishment. And there wife and I have written the pilot and a few episodes for a TV series that I’d very much like to see produced.

Was there ever a time in your writing career you thought of quitting?

When I was nineteen I wrote a novel that I then tried to sell. I was easily discouraged by the half dozen rejections I received, and I stopped trying to put it out there. But, honestly, somewhere in my gut I knew it was not a good enough book. It was a hodgepodge of other people’s ideas that had impacted my life somehow, and structurally and thematically it was a mess.

It was another, what, seven years before I tried writing a novel again. But that early one was a novel I had to write, if only to get out of my own way. There was quite a bit of “me” in there, thinly disguised as fiction. That isn’t true of THE MASTER OF VERONA. I was recently asked who I would play in the film version, and I said I’d like a cameo, but honestly there’s no character that’s based on me. Which is something I’m quite proud of. The story is the story – but I couldn’t have written it without that early expression of who I was behind me.

What is your favorite and least favorite part of being a writer?

The joy when a scene surprises you is the best. The worst is when what you’re writing bores you. That’s when you need to rethink where you’re headed.

How much marketing/publicity do you do? Any advice in this area?

More and more every day. My advice is get reviews and quotes from everyone you can think of. And don’t be afraid to give away copies.

Have you received a particularly memorable reader response?

Yeah. A friend called me halfway through to say how much he liked the story. Then a few days later he called again and left me a message. “No. F******. Way.” He was shocked at how the story turned out. That is the pithiest version of what I’ve been hearing again and again – how surprising the end is. Which, of course, delights me.

Parting words?

Support your local theatres and bookstores. Thank you, and good night.