Derek Gentry's Blog

From the beginning, the experience of having Here Comes Your Man published in Turkey has remained stubbornly abstract for me. Since I've never been to Turkey or met any of the other people involved, my whole journey has comprised a collection of e-mail messages and an artist's rendering of the book cover.

BUT...that all changed this week when I received a package from Istanbul. Beneath its brown paper, which bore the tatters of its 5,000 mile journey to Auburndale, were six gorgeous copies of Senin Erkeğin Benim, one of whom you can see above, getting to know his American cousin. (And for those of you who recognize the swanky photo shoot location: Why yes, we did get new placemats! Aren't they lovely?)

I just can't express how pleased I am with the way Senin Erkeğin Benim came out, and how grateful I am to my new friends at Arunas, who did such a wonderful job with the book. I've been carrying a copy around with me ever since they arrived, convinced that if I stare at its pages hard enough, that I'll eventually begin to understand Turkish.

Until that happens, I guess I'll just focus on the few words that I do recognize. As it turns out, Ding Dongs, Double-Stufs, and Froot Loops are the same in every language.

Okay, are you ready for this?

No, probably not, but it's coming anyway...

It's the Turkish edition of Here Comes Your Man...available in November from Arunas Yayıncılık in Istanbul!

As it turns out, the phrase "Here Comes Your Man" doesn't make much sense in Turkish, so the publisher has aptly retitled the book Senin Erkeğin Benim or "I'm Your Man." If you're familiar with the Leonard Cohen song of the same name, I think you'll agree that it describes our hero Garrett pretty well.

It feels a little strange to have my book translated into a language that I myself can't read, but I'm excited about it nevertheless. I'm so excited, in fact, that I'm thinking of hiring someone to translate the Turkish edition back into English, just so I can see what it's all about. (Based on the cover, it seems like it might be 25-30% sexier in Turkish, no? I'll let you know!)

And for any of you who are still convinced that I'm making all of this up, you can now view my book's official listing on the publisher's website. Believe me now?!?!

I'd like to send warm thank-yous across the Atlantic to Gökhan Fırat, Sevgi Çevik, Alevcan Kol and everyone else at Arunas Yayıncılık who worked to make this a reality. As a teenager, I dreamt of writing something that would be read in other parts of the world, but I never really expected it to happen. (And now if I can just convince Sting to hire me as his sax player, maybe my teenage self will finally stop sulking!)

I do a lot of writing on my phone, so when I finally traded my gusty old Vlackberry foe an iPhone earlier this year, I was worded about how the loss of the phasic keyboard might affect my productivity. A friend put my mind a ease by explaining that, yes, you'll prbababy male more mistakes typing on a touchscreen phone, but the key is to just keep moving and Lerner the iPhone's autocorrect system clean up the mess behind you.

And giddamnjt, he was right—it's amazing how well it works! For example, in tha last sentence, I originally typed "amazng," but autocorrect jumped in and fixed it for me. And then—this is my favorite part—when I backspaced toward the corrected word, the system politely offered my orioknal spelling back to me as if to say, "Oh I'm sorry, would you prefer to look like an idiot? Please, be my guest..."

(Note: In my head, autocorrect speaks in the voice of Academy Award winning actress Emma Thompson. The voices in your head may vary.)

Of course there are times when autocorrext can Ben too aggressive, like someone trying to foodie your sentences but always guessing wrong. This came up recently when my wife and I visited a tapas restaurant and I tried to use my phone to make analyst of the dishes we were ordering. The names were in Spanish, but autocorrect fixed that for us, magically transforming our "Queso de Cabra Montanes" into "Wheel de Caber Monotones." (Alas, monotones were out of season so we had the Armadillos de Pollo instead.)

Most of thr time autocorrect works flawlessly though—so well in fact that i'm becming a sloppier and more imparient typist. Ive gotten so reliant on autocorrext's omniscience that I find myself becoming enraged when it fails to recognize some glob of gibberish I've typed. What?!?! You seriously cant see that "fefiningely" is supposed to be definitely!?!? Are you ducking stipple? Give me a rickety break!

But all in all, I've been delights with my switch to the iPhone. Sure, I might inadvertently ask a friend if they're "untreated" when I mean "interested," or tell them that "I undress" when I mean to say that "I understand," but thabksukky, I havent done both in thr same message yet. And even if I lose a few extra minutes at the supermarket hunting for "Chicano" yogurt instead of "Chobani," I still come out way ahead when you add up all of the frixkignn hours I wasted with my old Blackberry unsuccessfully trying to visit websites or use Facebook or listen to music or rake a decent photograph or, say, accidentally driving to New Jersey.

And really, who needs to write when I can play Angry Nirds whenever I want?

sent from my iPhone

(original photo by dmboyer)
When I got the first e-mail from Istanbul, I assumed it was a mistake.

Call it a case of self-publisher's self-doubt, but I had trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that, after seventeen years of rejection in my own country, an editor on the other side of the world wanted to translate my novel into Turkish.  

He probably meant to e-mail some other author, I thought.

So I reread the e-mail another 15-20 times.
It's probably just a hoax, I told myself. Maybe all of those Nigerian princes have started masquerading as Turkish publishers?

So I checked the publisher's website.
Wow...that's a really convincing website for a hoax. Beautiful, even. Of course I don't understand any of the Turkish, but...

So I checked with my friend Steven Savile, a British author who lives in Sweden. Steve has been published all over the world, and I figured this would give him a laugh.
His verdict: Looks genuine to me, mate. (Unrelated confession: I love it when Steve calls me "mate.")

And I think that's when it finally started to sink in:  
Holy crap. They really want to publish my book in Turkey.

That was three months ago, and while I still haven't been able to rule out the possibility that I'm actually in a coma having an incredibly long and intricate dream, I'm just gonna go with it.

So here it is:
I'm excited to announce that Arunas Publishing in Istanbul will release a Turkish edition of Here Comes Your Man this November!

(Woo-hooo!!!!!)

Several people have already asked if I'll be embarking on a Turkish book tour, and I think the answer to that question really depends on whether any of this is actually happening in the first place. I promise you this much though: if this is all just a crazy coma-dream, then I’ll definitely be touring Turkey this fall, accompanied by Oprah, Lady Gaga, and Lord Voldemort. Oh, and I'll be naked too. (So let's all keep our fingers crossed for that possibility, shall we?)

So anyway...what does this mean for you, my English-speaking blog visitors? The way I see it, you've got two choices:
Take a leave of absence from work and/or your family and enter a full-time language immersion program so you can read the Turkish translation of Here Comes Your Man when it lands this fall.Buy a copy of the English e-book of Here Comes Your Man for 99 cents today.It's totally up to you—I will support you 100%, whichever path you choose. But on the off-chance that you opt for #2, I've prepared a handy collection of buying links below.

For a limited time, you can download the original, untranslated, English e-book of Here Comes Your Man to your Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, or Android device for just 99 cents! (Or something similarly affordable in your local currency!)

Amazon US - $0.99Apple US - $0.99Amazon UK - £0.99Apple UK - £0.99Amazon DE - EUR 0,99Apple CA - $0.99BN.com US - $0.99Apple AU - $0.99
Definitely let me know if you end up learning Turkish though—we'd love to have you on the book tour. Voldemort claims to speak the language, but for some reason I just don't trust that dude.

*None of these were exactly what I was searching for, but now I can't stop thinking about the last one.

I recently spent some time in close proximity to an MRI machine, and despite my hopes that a freak electromagnic mishap might transform me into a some kind of superhero—MRI Guy? Refrigerator Magnet Man?—I seem to have emerged from the encounter as the same old Derek Gentry that I’ve always been.

However...the experience did prompt me to contemplate the super-abilities that I would enjoy possessing if my life were more like a comic book. And so, in no particular order, I would gladly accept any/all of the following:

Cookie Monster's Bottomless Belly
The ability to eat as much dessert as I want without ever feeling sick or increasing my cholesterol score. (And yes, I do realize that Cookie Monster just makes a big mess without actually ingesting anything, but that's his problem, not mine.)

Julia Child's Time-Lapse Oven Magic
The power to imagine any kind of food and then open the nearest oven to discover a fresh serving of said deliciousness that someone else had conveniently "prepared earlier." (This would pair nicely with the Cookie Monster ability above.)

Bob Vila Reclino-vation
The ability to gut-renovate a house in 16 tidy episodes, all without separating my backside from the couch.

Doggie Doodar
The ability to locate and dispose of piles of dog-doo in the dark without having to step in them first (which is my current technique).

Babel-vision
The ability to look at something written in any language and just, like, understand it. (I recognize that this is really just a skill that one could acquire through years of study, but please keep in mind: I'm lazy and impatient.)

Twitter-vision
The ability to look at Twitter and and just, like, understand it.

Tofu No-Fu
The power to resist ordering tofu dishes in restaurants where they obviously have no idea how to prepare tofu, probably because the cook is such a devoted carnivore that he/she believes that it's actually impossible to make tofu taste good in the first place.

Neil Finn's Voice
The ability to sing along with Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over" without my voice cracking and warbling like twelve-year-old. (Honestly, if forced to choose just one super-power from this whole list, I'd pick this one. Sad but true.)

Suitcase ESP
When packing for a trip, the ability to foresee exactly what I will and will not need so I can stop hauling around those shorts that it will never be warm enough to wear, or the jeans it will be way too hot for.

Traffic Clairavoidance
I'd love to know intuitively how to avoid all traffic, but failing that, I would settle for knowing exactly what caused the traffic I'm already stuck in and the name and e-mail address of the person(s) to blame.

1990 Mind
The ability to achieve pre-Internet levels of focus and concentration. (And let's face it—this is the most far-fetched item on my list.)

What about you? What super-abilities would you design for yourself?

Things which I have personally observed to induce temporary psychosis and/or a flagrant disregard for traffic laws in 41.6% of Massachusetts residents:
yard salesDunkin Donuts locationsSymptoms include: uncontrollable vehicular swerving, braking, and U-turning. May cause pedestrians to dash willy-nilly across busy, multi-lane roadways.

NOTE: Preliminary research indicates that Starbucks locations exert entirely different behavioral effects on their devotees, compelling them to purchase books and music collections that help simulate the experience of being at Starbucks when they are (tragically) forced to be elsewhere.

FURTHER NOTE: The "yard sale effect" appears to increase exponentially with the number of families participating and the volume of broken, worthless crap they have to sell. In case of emergency, please refer to this handy color-coded scale:

conditionresponsesingle-family yard salechaostwo-family yard salebedlamthree-family yard salepandemoniummulti-family yard sale in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot*anarchy & mass hysteria
*Theoretical scenario only; never tested outside a laboratory environment. (Thank God.)

photo by Joey RozierI'm not normally a germophobe, but now that we've entered the season in which everyone seems to be feverish, phlegmy, or recovering from some Unspeakable Gastric Event, I've definitely become sensitized to all the ways germs can be transmitted from person to person and (inevitably) to me.

I actually have fond memories of childhood colds, missing a day or two of school, stretched out on the couch watching reruns of “Alice” and “Diff'rent Strokes.” But as it has with everything else, adulthood has sucked all the fun out of illness. Now if I'm under the weather and I want to stay home, I have to take a vacation day. And really, is there anything worse than being sick on vacation?

My anti-germ strategy is as simple as it is ineffective: don't touch anything that a sick person might've touched in the last 72 hours, including: door knobs and handles, drawer pulls, light switches, and elevator buttons; other peoples' computer keyboards, mice, and cell phones; toilet handles, faucet handles, and paper-towel dispensers; shopping carts, self-checkout touchscreens, gas pump payment keys, all of the world's credit card signing pens, and anything in an ATM vestibule; and, naturally, the steering wheel and shifter of the loaner car I had to drive while my car was in the shop the other day.

Yes, this can be a challenging way to live, especially when you start counting the sheer number of doors you pass through on a daily basis. But this is why someone invented elbows, sleeves, and hand sanitizer, right?

I was bowling with my family recently when it struck me what a fantastic germ distribution apparatus the ball return system is. You grab a ball, rub your germy hands all over it, and then roll it off down the lane. The machine shoots the ball right back and somebody else grabs it—perhaps even someone from the next lane over—and adds their own personal microbial mélange to its surface before passing it along again. This happens over and over again…pretty much forever! Yum!

[Note: I love bowling so much that none of the above deters me in the slightest, so if you're ever in the mood to roll a few strings—something I recognize will now be even less likely—give me a call. I'll bring the Purell.]

Anyway, despite my efforts, I awoke one morning a few weeks back with a jagged lump in my throat that just wouldn't go away, and all I could think was, Where did I go wrong? What did I touch that I shouldn't have touched? And most importantly, Whose fault is this!?!?

If I had to put money on it, I'd blame the FedEx guy. He ambushed me with a package at work, popping out of nowhere and demanding a signature on his little electronic clipboard. Seeing no escape, I reluctantly signed using that plague-ridden plastic stylus he'd been dragging from delivery to delivery for his entire career.

But as I was signing, I wondered, Why is this even helpful? You can't read my signature...I could scribble anybody's name there. Couldn't he just snap a photo of me holding the package? That would be infinitely more sanitary, probably more useful, and way more fun. Just imagine the scrapbook he would've amassed by the end of the year! Like your picture? Send it to Facebook! Order Christmas cards! Or a framed 8 x 10!

Once I actually get sick though, it's almost a relief because I've got no choice but to look on the bright side. There's a passage from Douglas Coupland's novel The Gum Thief that I think of often in this regard:

“Well, it turns out that being sick is actually good for you. Colds and flus are like these constant refresher courses that teach your body how to combat cancers when they first occur. Some people think that the moment you get your diagnosis you should run out to the children's coloured plastic ball pit at IKEA and coat your body with kiddy germs and get as sick as you can. While you're in the process of fighting colds and flus, the cancer gets taken out with the trash.”

This quotation is from a character named Bethany who, even within the book's fictional world, is just a Gothed-out Staples employee with no medical training, but I find it reassuring nonetheless. I'm planning to have it engraved on a wall plaque for when I finally open my own bowling alley.

photo by Joey RozierI'm not normally a germophobe, but now that we've entered the season in which everyone seems to be feverish, phlegmy, or recovering from some Unspeakable Gastric Event, I've definitely become sensitized to all the ways germs can be transmitted from person to person and (inevitably) to me.

I actually have fond memories of childhood colds, missing a day or two of school, stretched out on the couch watching reruns of "Alice" and "Diff'rent Strokes." But as it has with everything else, adulthood has sucked all the fun out of illness. Now if I'm under the weather and I want to stay home, I have to take a vacation day. And really, is there anything worse than being sick on vacation?

My anti-germ strategy is as simple as it is ineffective: don't touch anything that a sick person might've touched in the last 72 hours, including: door knobs and handles, drawer pulls, light switches, and elevator buttons; other peoples' computer keyboards, mice, and cell phones; toilet handles, faucet handles, and paper-towel dispensers; shopping carts, self-checkout touchscreens, gas pump payment keys, all of the world's credit card signing pens, and anything in an ATM vestibule; and, naturally, the steering wheel and shifter of the loaner car I had to drive while my car was in the shop the other day.

Yes, this can be a challenging way to live, especially when you start counting the sheer number of doors you pass through on a daily basis. But this is why someone invented elbows, sleeves, and hand sanitizer, right?

I was bowling with my family recently when it struck me what a fantastic germ distribution apparatus the ball return system is. You grab a ball, rub your germy hands all over it, and then roll it off down the lane. The machine shoots the ball right back and somebody else grabs it—perhaps even someone from the next lane over—and adds their own personal microbial mélange to its surface before passing it along again. This happens over and over again…pretty much forever! Yum!

[Note: I love bowling so much that none of the above deters me in the slightest, so if you're ever in the mood to roll a few strings—something I recognize will now be even less likely—give me a call. I'll bring the Purell.]

Anyway, despite my efforts, I awoke one morning a few weeks back with a jagged lump in my throat that just wouldn't go away, and all I could think was, Where did I go wrong? What did I touch that I shouldn't have touched? And most importantly, Whose fault is this!?!?

If I had to put money on it, I'd blame the FedEx guy. He ambushed me with a package at work, popping out of nowhere and demanding a signature on his little electronic clipboard. Seeing no escape, I reluctantly signed using that plague-ridden plastic stylus he'd been dragging from delivery to delivery for his entire career.

But as I was signing, I wondered, Why is this even helpful? You can't read my signature...I could scribble anybody's name there. Couldn't he just snap a photo of me holding the package? That would be infinitely more sanitary, probably more useful, and way more fun. Just imagine the scrapbook he would've amassed by the end of the year! Like your picture? Send it to Facebook! Order Christmas cards! Or a framed 8 x 10!

Once I actually get sick though, it's almost a relief because I've got no choice but to look on the bright side. There's a passage from Douglas Coupland's novel The Gum Thief that I think of often in this regard:

"Well, it turns out that being sick is actually good for you. Colds and flus are like these constant refresher courses that teach your body how to combat cancers when they first occur. Some people think that the moment you get your diagnosis you should run out to the children's coloured plastic ball pit at IKEA and coat your body with kiddy germs and get as sick as you can. While you're in the process of fighting colds and flus, the cancer gets taken out with the trash."

This quotation is from a character named Bethany who, even within the book's fictional world, is just a Gothed-out Staples employee with no medical training, but I find it reassuring nonetheless. I'm planning to have it engraved on a wall plaque for when I finally open my own bowling alley.

Have you ever been reading on the couch late at night perhaps even just starting to nod off when in the dim periphery of your vision you glimpse movement something creeping across the armrest toward you something that as you snap to startled alertness resolves into the shape of a large-ish spider with striped legs and an athletic build BUT even as freaked-out as you are you don’t actually want to kill this spider because you know that they eat all of the other bugs you like even less so you grab a glass and you attempt to catch the spider in the glass but this spider moves so fast that it actually seems able to teleport itself six inches in any direction so every time you think you’re bringing the glass down over the spider it’s already somewhere else and you’re becoming just a little concerned that maybe the next time you bring the glass down the spider will be on your face but finally you trap it YESSS! and you cover the open end of the glass with a catalog and carry the whole silly contraption out the door across the front porch and down the walk chuckling uneasily as the spider hurls itself against the glass until you reach the sidewalk where you release it which is to say that you use the glass to fling the now furious spider as far from you as possible WHEW! and then heading back into the house just as you’re re-crossing the porch a teensy-weensy little moth that had been idly circling the porch light now flies right into your ear and disappears like RIGHT DIRECTLY INTO YOUR EAR CANAL and for a second or two you don’t hear anything at all and you’re wondering

Wait…did that really happen?

and then as if reading your mind which it might actually be able to do from its current vantage the moth starts flapping madly inside your ear or trying to flap anyway but there isn’t nearly enough room in there so it’s just like fltfltfltfltfltflt in your ear and you’re thinking oh crap oh crap oh crap it’s facing the wrong way it’s just going to push itself deeper and then

Oh wait…is it gone?

but then fltfltfltfltfltflt and now you’re digging at your ear and stumbling into the house oh crap oh crap oh crap and it’s flapping madly and then it stops and it’s flapping and then it stops and you’re trying to jam your finger in there but you don’t feel anything and you’re wondering How far can it go? How far is my ear drum? Will it stop at my ear drum or can it keep going and get totally stuck somewhere up against my brain? Can I somehow get tweezers in there and pull it out? and it just keeps flapping and flapping and CRAP! I’m going to end up at the hospital to get this fricking thing removed and in front of the bathroom mirror now you get a flashlight and point it into your ear not because you hope to see anything but because you remember some Saturday-morning cartoon PSA about how holding a light up to your ear will lure a bug out and fltfltfltfltfltflt and how could this possibly happen often enough to warrant a PSA? and anyway it’s not even working because the idiot moth is stuck facing the wrong fricking direction fltfltfltfltfltflt and you don’t want to jam anything in there because then you might have a dead squished moth stuck in your ear and THEN how would you get it out? and fltfltfltfltfltflt you’re digging and starting to imagine fltfltfltfltfltflt how you’ll describe this to the nurse and wondering whether fltfltfltfltfltflt you could actually even wait in the emergency room with this thing flapping without tearing your ear off or at least without losing your mind which you may’ve already done anyway fltfltfltfltfltflt and you’re jamming your finger in there and fltfltfltfltfltflt becoming more and more hopeless fltfltfltfltfltflt when

Oh…

There it goes…

      the moth arcing away toward the ceiling
      as if nothing happened

I should probably kill it now, but…

you can't concern yourself with that now because you’re already rummaging for the Q-tips so you can clean that ear LIKE IT HAS NEVER BEEN CLEANED BEFORE and what’s more you are NEVER AGAIN going outside at night without ear protection or maybe you’ll just wear your iPod ear buds 24/7 NO POD JUST BUDS WHATEVER IT TAKES SO THAT THIS NEVER, EVER HAPPENS AGAIN!

Has that ever happened to you?

Yeah, me neither.