Charley Warady's Blog

I was fortunate recently to be able to sit down with myself and have an intense and off-the-cuff interview with me. At times it was uncomfortable, but as you’ll be able to see, it was well worth the effort. It exposed a side of me that only I could see and it took me to be able to uncover it for you. At times, I tried to avoid the in-depth questioning, but I was able to remain steadfast and not let me stray from the issues presented. At least I tried. Below is a portion of the interview. We hope you enjoy it.

Q: You have received a lot of publicity recently concerning your book, 5IVE SPEED and its sequel, MAKING GOD LAUGH. You were interviewed on Ray Hanania’s Sunday morning radio talk show in Chicago, and of course the famous Bill Leff’s radio talk show on WGN 720 AM that broadcasts to almost thirty states. Why do you need to interview yourself?

A: I’m very insecure.

Q: Do you think that comes out in your writing?

A: Probably not. So far it’s only happened in self-interviews.

Q: Are you uncomfortable being interviewed by me?

A: Come on. You’re the best interviewer in the world. I’d have to be an idiot not to be intimidated at least a little.

Q: Why do you write?

A: Because I have absolutely no musical talent.

Q: It’s not to release the devils and demons deep inside you?

A: Are you kidding? If I could write about devils and demons my book sales would be tripled. Particularly if they were all in high school.

Q: I guess the question that begs to be asked, and all of your readers want to know is…how much of your writing is autobiographical? In other words…are you Donald Roth?

A: I’m Charley Warady. As a matter of fact…so are you.

Q: I think you know what I mean.

A: If you ask any author, he or she will probably tell you the same thing. No matter how a character starts out in my mind, he or she quickly takes on a distinct personality of which I didn’t necessarily plan.

Q: That doesn’t sound normal.

A: Normal people don’t write novels. Normal people don’t do stand-up comedy. Normal people don’t interview themselves.

Q: How much of your novels are autobiographical?

A: Wow. You really are good, aren’t you.

Q: I’m nothing if not persistent.

A: Some of each novel contains experiences that actually happened in my life, or a variance thereof. Some of each character…well…I’m not so sure about that. Never mind.

Q: Are you Donald Roth?

A: Donald Roth is much cooler than I am.

Q: Would you like to be Donald Roth?

A: I’m pretty happy being me…and you.

I am reading the “Rabbit” series by John Updike. I read all the books years ago; I think when I was in high school, and I don’t remember them. Right now I’m on “Rabbit Is Rich”. The entire series is shear brilliance. It’s almost like reading poetry if I liked poetry even in the least bit. If the poem has nothing to do with Nantucket, I’m simply not interested. Nevertheless, the Rabbit books are captivating and they make me feel very small as a writer and author. And I think if those same books came out today…they wouldn’t sell. Not only wouldn’t they sell, but I don’t think Mr. Updike could find a literary agent to represent him.

The Rabbit books are completely character-driven. There are very few moments of tense suspense and there are no crimes to be solved. There is little shock and the chase scenes don’t last very long. There isn’t a werewolf or wizard in any of the volumes. John Updike concentrates on the characters and there is no one who can do it better. However, people don’t want that today.

When I finished writing “5ive Speed” I was asked to send the manuscript to several well known agents. I had high hopes of a large publishing house scooping it up and I’d be on my way. Mind you, “5ive Speed” was not the first book I had written; but it was the first book I truly loved and believed the public would love it as well.

The public has loved it. Read the reviews on the Amazon page. However, the agents felt differently. Don’t get me wrong. The agents loved it, also. One agent in particular told me that if I had submitted the same exact book twenty years ago, she would have no problem selling it in a minute. But the market isn’t there anymore. The market today wants thrillers, suspense, mysteries, and things they don’t have to pay attention to for more than three minutes at a time. Welcome to the MTV world. Even in the humor books, they need to have a background of intrigue and plot. There is no market for completely character driven books like the Donald Roth Series of “5ive Speed” and its sequel “Making God Laugh”.

I don’t believe the agents, so I went through Amazon Kindle’s self-publishing and I have proved them wrong. Readers love the characters of Donald Roth and his gang. The readers are the reason why I had to put aside what I was writing and write the sequel to “5ive Speed”. It was literally by popular demand. There is no mystery in the Donald Roth series. No crime scene investigations. And not one single character has translucent skin (although Emily is a bit pale).

The books are filled with dialog and interaction and funny situations. The reader will never know the pattern of the wallpaper on anyone’s kitchen walls. I believe the reader has an imagination. Let them decide how they want to decorate the novel.

I believe novels like those written by John Updike still have an incredible audience. It is to those people for whom I write. I thought about writing what the agents want, and then I didn’t want to write. You don’t need anything to blow up to captivate an audience. You need characters who you want to hang around with. That niche is not dead. It’s just been sleeping for a while.

My latest child has moved out. Okay, so I'm talking about my new novel. As anyone who has written anything with any conviction knows, once you're done and it's out there, there is a certain feeling of emptiness that follows. That's the way I'm feeling right now about MAKING GOD LAUGH. It's the sequel to my first novel, 5IVE SPEED, written because of the demand of the readers who read this first novel.

I'm very happy with the way the sequel turned out, and the characters are happy about it, also. Now they're spinning around in my head organizing the next book. I never planned on writing a series. I always pictured myself writing different books about different things; but Donald Roth and his gang won't leave me alone.

Now comes the toughest part of the whole process. The marketing and getting the word out there that there is a new Charley Warady novel for everyone in the world to buy. This takes time and energy and frustration and non-immediate results. Everything I hate. But it's an evil necessity, and since I am self-publishing, it's a responsibility I took on voluntarily.

Of course I want MAKING GOD LAUGH to be a huge success. And obviously I need everyone to help me get the word out about the book. I'm doing the Twitter thing, and the Facebook thing, and I'm writing this blog, but when it comes down to it, most of the book's success is out of my hands. A control freak such as myself hates that part. I have to rely on the readers to put reviews on the Amazon site. I have to rely on the readers to recommend it to their friends on Facebook and Twitter and every other social networking outlet. I have to rely on the readers to love Donald and Zara and Foster and Emily just as much as I do, and I have no control over any of that. So, just like when a kid leaves the house, sometimes you gotta let it go.

Tomorrow, I'm definitely going to try that.

I did it! I finished writing the sequel to my novel 5IVE SPEED. Thank you, thank you. It took a few months, but it was well worth it, and in time I think you'll all agree. But unfortunately, we're still not there.

Every book about writing that you read will tell you the same thing. Before writing the second draft, you should put the first draft aside for a while and get it out of your head. I've read the amount of time should be anywhere from two weeks to a couple months. The books will tell you to occupy yourself with something else in the meantime. Catch up on your reading; write some short stories; start on the next book.

Are you kiddin' me?!

This is the toughest part of the novel writing process. The wait between the drafts. I've been living with the characters every day for the past few months (besides most of them being the same people from the original 5IVE SPEED). Every day. They have become a part of my life. We've had our ups and downs, and at times they've given me both bitter anguish and extreme joy. They've told me where they want to go; what they want to do; and forced me to my keyboard oftentimes when I simply didn't want to. There have been moments I didn't want to do my daily writing and a voice from outside said, "Get crackin'. This is for US!" And I did.

I can't remember the name of the author who said something to the effect of "I like having written a novel." I'm the exact same way. The process can be excruciating, but then not doing it is just as bad.

Right now, in my head, the sequel I wrote is perfect and I don't need to change a word. You must also understand, I haven't re-read it. I know what it's like to do a second draft. It's not as glamorous as it's cracked up to be. There will be parts I'll have to cut out that will kill me, but I'll know they don't advance the story. There will be parts I'll have to add because sometimes what's in my head at the time didn't make it to the draft.

But that's not for a few days. I have to clear my head of my best friends so I can return to them fresh. Those of you who are authors who read this know what I'm talking about and I look forward to your comments because I sure could use some commiseration.

I hate gardening, so that's out. I don't think I'm the type to knit.

I suppose I could blog more.

I was at a gathering not long ago and I was listening to a conversation going on nearby. The conversation I was having wasn't very interesting so I kept talking while paying attention to the other people talking. I do that a lot. Some people call it ADD. I call it multi-tasking. Tomato tomahto.

Anyway, the young woman doing most of the talking was explaining her profession. She was an online marketing professional (as opposed to all of us online marketing amateurs), and part of her job was to make videos and such go "viral". I thought this was an interesting statement, and so did the person she was informing. When he asked her, "How does one make something go viral?" she simply said, "There are ways."

Really?

As many of you know, I've written a terrific and very funny novel called 5IVE SPEED and it's done relatively well in the Kindle edition at $0.99 and the reviews have been spectacular. I have put a lot of effort into online marketing, and yet…it hasn't gone viral.

The only way I know of anything going viral is by (1) a fluke or (2) a celebrity saw it and mentioned it somewhere. Now, I've tried to get Oprah to read 5IVE SPEED and I haven't been able to get hold of her. I even wrote a blog to her previously in this very space, to no avail. So, the celebrity option (so far) hasn't been fruitful.

That leaves me the 'fluke' road to viralness. Again, so far…no go. I just don't have the Justin Bieberness in me, I guess. And although my name is Charley, I have not bitten anybody's finger that would make three gazillion people want to see it on You Tube.

I'm guessing I'm going to have to depend on other bloggers, authors, and readers to tout 5IVE SPEED and get it the recognition it deserves the old fashioned way. So, I'm hoping that's what you'll do. Feel free to post this blog on your website, or mention it on Twitter, or post it on Facebook, or simply give me a little help with this. I sure could use it.

I'm very busy working on the sequel to 5IVE SPEED right now because of the amount of requests, and I will get that out as soon as possible. But until then…let's get this viral.

I got the idea for this blog from another writer. He's a suspense writer, but one of those with a great sense of humor. His name is Russell Blake and his blog is funny. And now I have just helped promote Russell Blake.

You see, he talks about "self-promotion" which can mean that you're doing this thing solo. But you can't. You need others to get the word out about whatever it is and they need to get the word out and on and on. He applies this to his self-published books, and from what he says, he's enjoying success at it.

As many of you…but not enough of you…know, I have a self-published novel called 5IVE SPEED. The book is self-published and sales are picking up quickly. There are a few things to be taken into account. The first being that it's a freakin' hilarious novel. Read the reviews on Amazon and you'll see. The second issue is that it is now priced at only $0.99 and I realized that seems too low, but my ego survives on volume of books sold and not on monetary gain. So, if you're looking for great reading entertainment on your Kindle then you must drop a buck and buy the book.

That's my part of self-promotion. That's about all I can do. Sure, I Tweet about it and I Facebook about it and I've blogged about it, but let's face it…that's still relatively narrow exposure. "Self"-promotion can only go so far. What I'm looking for now is public-promotion. I can't tell you how many people have told me personally that they read and loved the novel 5IVE SPEED on Kindle. So, I thanked them and asked them if they wrote a review on Amazon yet? More often than not, the answer is no. I mean, after all…that would take a good three minutes, and who's got that kind of time when you have to take a picture of your lunch so you could get it up on Facebook for chrissakes (sorry…I'm just sooo sick of seeing pictures of food on Facebook). But you get my point. If people who read the book posted a small review on Amazon for me, that would be huge. That would be public-promotion!

Another question I ask these big fans of my book is if they've re-posted my blogs about it; or Tweeted about it with a link to the Amazon Kindle buying page, or mentioned it on Facebook with the same link. I think you know where I'm going with this. This would mean a huge burst for my sales and it takes the individual about a minute to do it for me. Where is the love, gang?!

No one can make it on self-promotion. I certainly can't. And the question you may ask is, "Charley…do you do it for anyone else?" And the answer is, "Of course I do! I just did it for Russell Blake! Weren't you reading?!

So please take it upon yourselves…all of you…to be my public-promotion machine. Self-promotion, like some other things that are done by yourself, could lead to blindness. At least that's what my mother always told me.

If you believe in forever

Then life is just a one-night stand

If there's a rock and roll heaven

Well you know they've got a hell of a band

-The Righteous Brothers

It was 1974 when the Righteous Brothers sang about rock and roll stars that were taken from us too soon. Clarence Clemons was added to the list last week. He was sixty-nine years old.

In 1974 if you were to ask me about someone dying when they were sixty-nine years old I would have shrugged my shoulders and said they lived a full life! Now that my rock icons are at that age, it's all of a sudden 'cut down in the prime of life'. Clarence Clemons died of a stroke. Old people die of strokes. Are my rock and roll idols old people?

Sure, Bob Dylan has passed seventy…and he just played concerts in Europe and Israel.

I guess what bothers me even more than my rock legends getting old, is that many of them are trying to deny it through the wonders of the plastic surgeon. You didn't see it with Clarence. You don't see it with Dylan. The majority of the greats are getting old and they're pretty much okay with it. But I watched the finale of American Idol and I saw Tom Jones and wanted to shovel dirt on him myself because he was already embalmed. Smokey Robinson? How many years has it been since he's blinked? Even the rumors of The Boss himself makes me wonder.

Something inside me wants to believe that had Janis Joplin lived, she would not have gone through the surgeries Cher has endured. I want to think she'd look the same but old, still rasping out beauty, and wouldn't give a damn what she looked like. Jim Morrison would rejoice in his baldness and paunch belly, but could still make you shudder with certain notes. And Elvis? Well, some things even I can't imagine.

In the Golden Age of Rock, when the music was what it was all about we didn't care what the singer looked like. Take a look at Flo and Eddie of The Turtles, for chrissakes! It was the music. Just because we're getting old doesn't mean the music is dying. They should leave their looks alone. We don't care about it.

In my novel, 5IVE SPEED, Donald Roth has to come face to face with his middle age and whether or not he's ready to roll over and play dead. He grew up in that same rock era of Clarence Clemons, and Steely Dan, and The Beatles, and he realizes that maybe it's not over yet. He's older. But he's not done.

That's why 5IVE SPEED has made all age groups laugh out loud. No matter what your age…you don't want to give up. The thing that made Clarence Clemons get out of a wheelchair to perform on stage with Lady Gaga is the same thing that makes Donald Roth give himself a second chance at life.

But for those of us in that era of what they now term "Classic Rock", 5IVE SPEED holds a place close to our hearts. Because in this era where looks are everything and you gotta lift and tighten and tweak and botox, there are still some of us, both famous and ordinary, who are going to keep moving forward and show what we've been through just by the looks of us. That's one of the reasons I lowered the Kindle and eReader price of 5IVE SPEED to $0.99

Because when it comes down to it, it's about getting the message out to as many people as you can and who wouldn't pay a buck to laugh a lot. I didn't learn that from any business course.

That's what rock and roll is all about.

I've decided to retire on the royalties I've made on my novel 5IVE SPEED. Okay, so retirement involves living in a refrigerator box. but fortunately in my neighborhood people are constantly doing renovations and I have found some very nice refrigerator boxes. It can't be that bad, and at least that way when people ask, I can honestly say I write novels for a living. When a writer comes up with a statement like that, the listener always assumes financial success is attached to the declaration. Guilt by omission has never bothered me when it comes to people thinking more of me than I deserve.

I love my humorous novel, and so far I've only heard good things about it from people who have read it. Some who have praised it are not even family and friends. When you write a humor novel and people tell you they laughed out loud, it's high praise indeed. Admittedly, a humor novel should make you laugh out loud, but seriously…how often has that happened to you? Christopher Moore makes me laugh out loud. David Foster Wallace has made me laugh out loud. If Charley Warady can make you laugh out loud with a novel like 5IVE SPEED, then I will certainly enjoy the company I keep.

Social media has not helped me in quest to increase sales volume for 5IVE SPEED. Recently I asked over 740 followers of mine on Twitter to retweet a plug for the book, and two people did so. Whoever said social media is a great marketing tool has never tried to independently sell a humor novel. You would think the Kindle edition would at least sell, but it has lagged also. I love my Kindle and I don't understand why everyone doesn't have a copy of the best humor novel around on it. Or any ebook for that matter. Hell, it even comes in paperback so knock yourself out.

I'm going to stick to my guns because I know and believe the right famous person is going to read it and it's going to take off. In the meantime, I've decided to use two refrigerator boxes.

I've always wanted to live in a split-level.

I just watched Obama's major address on television concerning the Middle East. I did it for one simple and intricate reason: I wanted to know what the hell everybody was talking about on Twitter.

Distancing myself from politics has seemed to work out well for me lately. No one has mentioned to me that I have been missed from the political spectrum, and I have found that my answer to political questions is the same and works for both political questions and sports related questions. The answer is, "I don't know…what do YOU think?" In both politics and sports, everyone is simply waiting for me to get around to asking that question anyway, so why not just cut to the chase and save me a lot of effort and wasted research.

Even when I had an opinion on politics and sports, it never changed the broad picture of either and there was no satisfaction. Thankfully, I have enough aggravating things happening in my life that I don't need artificial agendas to snap my synapses into gear.

But I watched Obama's speech and wondered what he wanted me to do about what he was saying. There was no call-to-action for my part, and he wasn't even trying to convince me to vote a certain way. So, while the Twitterverse was alive with activity on reactions, upbraiding, outrages, kudos, baiting, and misinterpretation, I walked away thinking that he should have at least worn a less boring tie.

I read fiction almost all the time. I write fiction. No one will call my novel 5IVE SPEED a work of political magnitude. Thinking about it, I don't think I mention politics at all in the whole book. And yet, everyone who has read the book has loved it. It doesn't support any political party, nor does it even endorse any particular sports team. It's enjoyable in a world that gets all worked up about things they can do nothing about.

Don't get me wrong; 5IVE SPEED has it's share of controversy. It gets people to think, and it might change some people's way of thinking, but these are things that people can actually do something about! But Obama was talking about all these things that are happening in the Middle East and I found myself thinking, "SO WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO ABOUT IT?!"

Now let's talk about religion…

I have to be honest with you. The sales of my spectacular novel, 5IVE SPEED, have been less than spectacular. It surprises me slightly, because everyone who reads it loves it and I haven't heard a discouraging word. And considering the ebook price is $2.99 nobody has mentioned having to save up for it or dipping into the kid's college fund. But what the heck. That's showbiz.

I figured it might be time to sweeten the pot. I'm going to be giving away Kindles. The only thing you have to do is buy 5IVE SPEED. If you make a couple reviews and comments, it increases your chances of getting a Kindle. I know you may already have a Kindle, but they make terrific Bar Mitzvah presents. To find out the details you just have to go to the Kindle Giveaway page on my website and it's all pretty straightforward and simple.

Hopefully I'll be giving away a bunch of them which wouldn't bother me in the least. It's really an "everybody wins" type situation. Oh…and I'd appreciate you all getting the word out about this as much as possible; whether it's on Facebook or Twitter or your blog or whatever. This is the kind of thing that needs to get around by word of mouth. I'm not expecting "viral" or anything, although that would be sweet, too.

They told me that self-publishing was going to be tough, and I'm seeing it now. But they also told me that if it's a great book it will do well and eventually sell itself. I'm ready for that to happen, but until this little baby gets legs of its own I'm going to need all the help I can get and I'm depending on you.

Oprah hasn't read it yet. Obviously, this is one of the problems. But until someone solves that and gets it into her reading hands, we're going to have to do it without Oprah's help.

Keep in touch with me as far as the help you're extending and I will personally thank you. I'm pretty good about those things. Let's see this little gem of mine take off.

And you might wind up with a free Kindle. Yay.