“Everyone wants to be invited.” Grandmother insisted in answer to my protests about inviting a kindergarten nemesis to my fifth birthday party. “Not everyone wants to come, but everyone wants to be invited.”
My responsibility is to invite everyone to participate in River Queens. My guest’s responsibility is to decide if the offer is right for them. Not everyone wants to read about two gay men bounding across the hinterlands in a fabulous vintage yacht.
Alexander Watson – 18 October 2018
The Back Flap
“Alexander Watson has turned the well-trod river epic on its ear. River Queens brings a surprise around every muddy bend: the dialogue is crisp and hilarious, the encounters genuine and honestly rendered, and there isn’t a shred of irony throughout. Two gay river captains on a journey through the heartland tells us more about America and its people than most of what we read today. In these divided times, River Queens is a lesson on civility and acceptance while learning to disengage and just be.”
—BRYAN MEALER, author of The New York Times bestseller, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, and other books
About the book
What is the book about?
River Queens is about unwittingly bumbling in where one doesn’t belong.
A fifty-year-old wooden motor yacht is no one’s first boat. A large cruiser is never practical. And homosexuality is not the norm in the backwaters of the American Heartland. Fortunately, my partner, Dale Harris, and I did not know all that.
The trials and setbacks that beleaguer any partnership dogged our progress; things got hairy. But we were in the company of kind and charitable people who passed us lovingly from hand to hand.
River Queens is about them.
When did you start writing the book?
The notes for the book were the emails we periodically sent to our landlubber friends back home and those we met on the way.
Some missives were as brief as “Me-oh! My-oh! We’re on the Ohio!” which went out in the tiniest window of connectivity at Smithland, Kentucky, the confluence of the Cumberland and Ohio Rivers. Others were much longer because the river is a foreign place requiring explanation of situations quite remote from an urbanite’s workaday world. I never planned to write a book.
How long did it take you to write it?
Dale and I spent five years trying to get a foothold in our new home. However, unlike those we met on the river, Cincinnatians do not take in strangers.
Finally an acquaintance blurted out, “Everyone we know thinks you are peculiar and that your behavior is weird.”
It was said to be mean and hateful, but it was liberation. Unfettered from social obligation or expectation, I was able to concentrate wholly on writing.
The draft took twelve months. Beta-readers were not enthusiastic.
“It’s good,” they said obligingly.
Two years with an editor followed.
Where did you get the idea from?
Recipients of our emails were the first to suggest a book. But committing to a book because one can write a good email is like opening a restaurant because one can throw a good dinner party.
However, the same acquaintance who said, “Everyone we know thinks you are peculiar…” also took me aside on previous occasion to urge most fervently, “You must write.”
Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?
The backstories.
Dale and my pasts shaped our perceptions of what was going on. The reader must know histories in order to understand choices. Those histories had to be focused, concise, on topic, and brutally honest. The slightest prevarication would compromise the credibility of the story. I learned brevity.
What came easily?
The dialog. I heard my characters, remembered how they spoke and what they said.
Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?
My characters are all real people—a blessing and a curse. A blessing because their own actions and attitudes drive the narrative. A curse because they cannot be bent or molded for convenience.
We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?
Melissa Fay Greene (Praying for Sheetrock, The Temple Bombing, The Underdogs) shows me how to position myself as a narrator in order to effectively comment on social issues—compassion for all sides is her secret.
Bryan Mealer teaches me that the minutiae, when organized carefully, are the sparkle in the jewel. His The Kings of Big Spring is as candid as Giant yet as meticulously plotted as The Forsyte Saga.
Thomas Hardy gives me permission to set an important and compelling story in the furthest reaches of civilization—today, Far from the Madding Crowd is where cellular coverage is non-existent.
Do you have a target reader?
No.
The problem with the draft was that I had written to target—a travel narrative for boaters. It was a string of post card captions: “We went here. We did this.” “We went there. We did that.”
Beta-readers’ initial invariably asked, “Who’s your audience?” which I interpreted as: “I don’t get a word of it, but somebody might.”
The story dd not emerge until John Baskin started editing. Mr. Baskin asked me to explain some aspect of what I had written then scribbled notes furiously saying, “Why isn’t that in here? Why isn’t that in here?” Mr. Baskin knows how to draw story out of author.
As a result of Mr. Baskin’s work, River Queens is a commentary as candid and unabashed as The Wizard of Oz, Alice and Wonderland, or Gulliver’s Travels, but a true story about a real place and real people which demands respect for and fidelity to its subject.
About Writing
Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?
My process is like that of an artist rendering the human figure. I have no set plans for the blank page, so I set down the major landmarks, the equivalents of the cant of the head and the tilt of the pelvis. Mostly I want to get something down that I can judge. The draftsman erases a lot. I delete a lot. Both of us are liable to throw away an hour’s, or even a day’s, work without much provocation; but the effort is not wasted. It paves the way for the eventual outcome.
I write long days. My work keeps me up at night and awakens me in the morning. Similarly, when I am not writing, I am not writing.
Process encompasses what I do when I am not writing. I am fortunate to live in a city that is convenient to both New York and Chicago. Each can bankroll expensive performance extravaganzas and sustain experimentation. Dayton and Columbus, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Louisville, Kentucky all throw themselves headlong into the edges of the envelope and are unencumbered by heady reputations. Exposure to how other craftsmen and artists practice and hone their respective talents is just as important to me as respecting my own.
Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?
I did not. A chronology seemed sufficient for River Queens, but that was a mistake.
Mr. Baskin’s editing prowess yielded layering. The backstories and the impressions which give River Queens its life and breath did not fall easily in place. A character sketch pasted in between the lines of dialog became too lugubrious and cumbersome. Details had to be salted in on a need-to-know basis which required extensive and judicious planning. I had to outline. Even then, the outline received just as much emendation as the text itself.
Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?
I have writer friends who journal and find great value in writing down whatever pops into their heads. Stopping is against the rules; editing is verboten. They swear by it.
I edit all the time. I edit less from self-doubt and more from gut choices. When I recognize that something has gone down wrong from the get-go, I delete it and go on. I don’t worry about it because I was on the model stand one afternoon when a drawing instructor walked over to her student’s easel and said, “Do you have a chamois, dear?”
The student eagerly produced a chamois only just taken from its wrapper.
The instructor deliberately and methodically wiped down the student’s work, obliterating it into the page.
Handing the now-soiled chamois to the student, the instructor said, “Don’t worry, dear. If you can draw the figure badly once, I’m sure you can do it just as poorly the second time.”
If I can write poorly once; I can write it just as poorly the second time.
Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?
Never. Dead silence.
About Publishing
Did you submit your work to Agents?
No. No one can have as much invested in the success of my work as I have.
What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?
Self-publishing is the most efficient path to the market. I retain all creative control. But the event that pushed me over the edge came while I was looking for an editor:
A friend of mine was Director of Music as St. James Episcopal, NYC. An editor for Random House sang in his choir. When my friend made inquiries on my behalf, the editor advised, “Get an agent. Sell the manuscript. The house will provide the editor.” In the same breath, he added, “But I gotta tell you. Self-publishing is eating our lunch.”
Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself?
Every book is judged by its cover. I used professional book designers to come up with the jacket cover for River Queens. It still took two tries. The first design was excellent but was too casual, too camp to accurately imply the sophistication and polish the Mr. Baskin had imparted to the narrative and the style.
The cover of River Queens conveys the quiet confidence that river folks have as they negotiate the myriad of hazards that await them on the water.
Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?
The marketing plan for River Queens consists of a belief, imparted to me at an early age by my grandmother, and an assumption held by her daughter, my mother.
“Everyone wants to be invited.” Grandmother insisted in answer to my protests about inviting a kindergarten nemesis to my fifth birthday party. “Not everyone wants to come, but everyone wants to be invited.”
My responsibility is to invite everyone to participate in River Queens. My guest’s responsibility is to decide if the offer is right for them. Not everyone wants to read about two gay men bounding across the hinterlands in a fabulous vintage yacht.
Similarly:
Mother, a gourmet, was planning the menu for my brother’s wedding. Her Dallas, Texas caterer would truck the rehearsal dinner to Lubbock, Texas and serve it on Mother’s Randolf-Macon Women’s College roommate’s china, crystal, and silver in the dining room where Mother herself, some thirty years prior, was the matron of honor at the self-same roommate’s wedding.
“You know, Vivian,” the caterer said. “Those steak-n-tater West Texas ranchers are not going to eat this haute cuisine.”
Mother raised her hand and said, “Mine is merely to provide.”
It is my job to promote my book in an efficient, creative, engaging manner. My prospects must decide if River Queens is valuable, applicable, and of service to them, their audience, their platforms.
In short, I let the customer say “no”.
Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?
OMG, we work hard for our money.
In exchange, we pursue a passion which most people only dream about.
Mr. Baskin and I were sitting at table needling about “Did the woman smell like meat loaf and potatoes?” or “Did the foil wrapped dinner by her side smell like meatloaf and potatoes?”
I watched as my editor wrestled with the common and persistent modifier problem, then I grabbed his hand and said, “You realize, of course, that we are doing what hundreds of thousands would give their eye teeth to do.”
My producing and promoting River Queens has been as rewarding as launching cross country in a vintage Chris-Craft motor yacht. The setbacks seem insurmountable, the odds decidedly against me; but the windfalls, the strokes of good luck, the kindnesses of perfect strangers are too amazing to turn away.
About You
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in modest bungalow in Dallas, Texas in the 1960s and 70s. I was the youngest of three sons to a single mother, a divorcee, who believed with her whole being that creating was imitation of the Divine, the highest pursuit, the penultimate luxury.
A favorite memory are Christmases when we had little to no money. The dining table was a Santa’s workshop. Mother spent the entire year dreaming up gifts my brothers and I could make with clumsy hands, bits of paper, glue, ribbon, stickers and sparklies. Our hand-made gifts were cherished into dilapidation and ruin.
Where do you live now?
Cincinnati, Ohio on a street that overlooks the Ohio River. Dale, a native of Wisconsin, agreed to the river journey only if we abandoned the South and relocated to a northern state. Ohio just barely is. The trees grow tall, the topography rolls, the summers are moderate, the fall burns, and winters are frosty. It is also as far north as covered slips go on the Ohio. A vintage Chris-Craft motor yacht named Betty Jane needs shelter.
What would you like readers to know about you?
My fears are the loss of wonder and joy; the deprecation of simple, found beauty; and ignorant people.
I believe chances must be taken and bets placed. If you don’t try new things, you stay stupid.
I do better when I have a dog.
Dale Harris is a wonderful thing.
What are you working on now?
I have been an artist’s model all of my life. The artist’s studio is like the river. Survival depends on integrity, willingness, and dedication. Artists toil for hours to capture the image of a naked person when there is a cameraphone in their pocket. Boaters work tirelessly to go out on water when dry land is more hospitable and convenient. Both groups share a drive for sanctuary, the story behind River Queens: Saucy boat, stout mates, spotted dog, America.
End of Interview:
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