KING INK STROLLS INTO TOWN: MY LIFE IN LETTERS

A HYPOTHETICAL THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

Assuming, dear reader, that you are inclined to engage in a small thought experiment. Allow me to present a hypothetical situation to which your response would be taken with great consideration.

Let us presume that you happen to be a blogger of the garden variety of sorts, with a comparatively small, but regular readership.

Let us also assume that, generally speaking, you have few demands on your time – no career, no job, but do have obligations & commitments that cannot be manipulated or otherwise managed at your will.

And now to the situation.

Let us say that one fine morning you happen to open your email and contained therein is a missive from a small, but venerable publishing house imprint expressing a tentative interest in perhaps talking to you about, maybe, engaging you as a writer for a book based upon a concept introduced on your blog.

A qualifier: The maybe, potential interest is not based on FIRE or Early Retirement, but about your misguided, storied youth and past in music. The tale of a real “Rock & Roll Zero.”

What is your reaction? What did you do and why did you do it?

Before I share my response, and to paraphrase Nick Cave, let me tell you about a boy…

THE STORY OF KING INK

I am keenly aware that anyone reading this knows me exclusively from Fates On Fire, and, as such, this is who I am and what I do. I am proud of Fates and exceedingly grateful for the consistent and incremental growth in readership (or, frankly, any interest at all). That anyone would invest precious moments of their life to read my articles, leave comments, and continuously support my endeavor, still stupefies me. It is, truly, one of the greatest gifts of my life.

It has been tremendously enjoyable and I look forward to continuing, but while Fates On Fire is my most recent foray into writing, it is, by no means, my first.

As most of y’all know, I got myself immersed into music at a rather young age and then proceeded to carve out a somewhat respectable, um, ‘career’ in said field. However, I offer you yet another secret revealed. Far before bringing the rock to an unsuspecting world, before the Klieg lights and the sound of grease paint and the smell of the crowd, there was an aspiring teenage writer named, Jeffrey.

To this day, I distinctly recall coming home from school to open my mailbox and seeing a very thin letter from England addressed to me. After opening it, I pulled out a coffee-stained, crinkled, off-white piece of paper upon which laid some barely discernible chicken-scratch brand of hand writing. It read:

“WRITE IT, SEND IT, 150 POUNDS”

And that is the story of how I became a “professional writer.”

So, as per the direction of my editor – I wrote it and sent it.

For those who may be curious, it was an article on the brilliant Dublin post-punk band, the Virgin Prunes, and was printed in a national UK music magazine. I had pitched the idea 8 months previously via a postcard, having zero writing experience, yet an overabundance of confidence. Nothing other than passion, hubris and King Kong cajones.

To my utter astonishment, it was printed as a feature. The editor soon after sent me a few copies which, sadly, seem to be missing from my archives. Almost a year after the magazines came, a check arrived. That man will forever live in my heart. The check was late due to insolvency issues (which I did not learn of until my late-20s), but the editor still wrote some dumb-ass kid in the U.S. a check for 150 pounds for a feature article, even after losing a national business. Now that’s credibility.

So, while I was still honing my musical chops, I was, frankly, now a bit emboldened. This writing thing was kinda cool. I mentally fashioned myself a feature music writer for the highest caliber of UK music magazines. I was now a kind of self-styled, “King Ink.”

So, it was then I decided to press my luck and offer my services (such as they were) here in the U.S. – the very place where some deluded dweeb, with no legitimate writing skills, might make a name for himself writing truth from the trenches deep within the bowels of the crazily intense Los Angeles alternative rock scene.

In those days, music was about life and how to live it. And I considered all of this a very serious business.

SOME KIND OF HERO

With lightning now having struck twice, it only took two pitches before I was ‘hired’ by a niche, but national U.S. music magazine. I was a ‘scene reporter’ for California which entailed eye-witnessing and documenting all the bands, shows, sordid shenanigans and whatnot. Since they were headquartered in Chicago, they always sent tickets to shows and events, invitations to interviews and after-parties, which was nice as it spared my already barren coffers. It was a pretty cool gig – amazing snaps, hang time with cool kids, advance recordings to review and all that rot.

I was, however, never paid. In money, that is. Looking back, I was paid in jubilant memories.

It was a snap-flash before everyone locally was aware of my ‘reporter duties’ and word spread. FAST! It wasn’t long before my mailbox overflowed with demos, pleading letters and the like in the hopes of getting reviewed or even mentioned in the national music press. It was a good ride, but honestly got tedious after a couple of exciting years. Perhaps it was both coincidence and fortune, but at the same time as my 1^st real band began to get off the ground so did the magazine’s readership start to falter. It was a great ride and I remain appreciative, but, at the time, I needed to play, not write. The magazine folded and I soldiered on.

MYSTERIOUS MISSIVES FROM EUROPE

After the magazine collapsed, I still had a few contacts and intermittently published some, admittedly, crap articles in a few regional rock rags because I felt I had to keep writing. “King Ink” was tired and needed to slumber as he’d got fat and bewildered on years of tender prey and peanut butter & banana sandwiches.

Totally out of the blue, way after my feature article and a few after the U.S. music mag gig terminus, I was contacted by a small press book publisher in Switzerland. They were putting together a very exclusive book on the Virgin Prunes with the bands’ consent and wanted my input and printed contribution, which I gave. “King Ink” rose again to give these beautiful Dublin weirdos their due. Upon it’s printing, all the boys in the band signed it and sent it to me. It remains the one of the most important and treasured artifacts of my life.

I had actually been published in a commercial book! Damn, I figured – I’d made it!

Close to two years later, I was contacted by yet another small publisher in the Netherlands putting together a book on the oddities and peculiar personalities within the Dublin music scene and asked for a piece to contribute.

Published in 2 ‘real’ books in almost as many years…

“King Ink” basked in glory. Until he fell asleep again.

LIVING IN THE 80S

Flash forward over a half a decade where I was now, cutting my teeth as a Fortune 500 executive, while also playing regularly with my ‘Big Band’ and attending graduate school at night. Needless to say, there were tremendous demands on my time.

To this day, I’m not sure who sent the idea to whom, but me and my buddy somehow decided we were going to write the ultimate 80s music book. After 6 years of slumber, “King Ink” had exploded into existence once again. In any event, we wrote incessantly for over a year and ended with a manuscript in excess of 300 pages. We believed it was a true masterwork. I was, unquestionably, certain that with my so-called “publishing history and serious writing cred,” it would be a cinch to get the book on the shelves. It had always been so effortless previously, I reckoned.

Until we tried to get it published.

The rejection letters came fast and furious. From publishing houses big and small, no one was even remotely interested in it. We were more than a bit crestfallen at the time, but we did give it our all. After the last of the rejections came in, we simply shelved the manuscript which exists now as nothing more than electrons bouncing about in our respective Google drives & iClouds.

And…

It was 13 years before I ever wrote again.

In retrospect (and to the credit of the wary publishers), our book was 10 years too early. At least. Nowadays, there exist many similar, if not, identical books – a few being far superior to our effort. But the larger point I’m attempting to convey is that I know precisely how much time, effort, intellectual exertion, and stress is involved in writing a book. It was fun, but it was also a staggering level of work, even shared with a co-author.

THE BEAUTY OF BINDING

By way of the past we now, cautiously, approach the present and get ourselves seated into the crux of the matter.

The question that remains is this: Is “King Ink” truly dead?

Well, to be fair, he quietly, and most honorably, arose a few months back when the UK’s Big Issue magazine published a part of my article in tribute to and honor of my fuzzy friend, Street Cat Bob. Of all the above-mentioned words of mine that curiously found their way into print, this one will always mean the most.

After pondering this knotty issue for a couple of months, I can tell you, with all honesty, that I really have no idea. There are so many unfulfilled, unrealized artistic commitments currently on my table, that one more, would seem to collapse them all.

Particularly one of this magnitude – so fragile, so loaded with promise, self-expectation, and many, many months of dedication. Fantastically exhausting, remarkably rewarding.

Aside from all this artistic blather, I still have domestic commitments. While both seductive & alluring, unlike prestigious folks like Neil Gaiman, I do not have the luxury of holing up in a quaint cottage on the Isle of Skye (or even a seedy motel room in Reno for that matter) for half a year. I have a handful of loved ones that depend on my daily presence.

In an attempt to force the answer to this question, I commissioned the Working Muse Project, my most recent experiment, to see if it would even be possible to attempt what would be the largest writing challenge of my life. Could there be a chance, even a remote one, for me to find the time and space to pull this off? Do I even want to?

Fortunately, interested parties remain both interested and, gratefully, patient though likely, for only a brief period. I have assured them that the story is alive, well and kicking against the pricks. Chained, seething and desperate, it only needs to be written.

Most nights now, I just lay in the dark asking myself, “What kind of witless fool, high on some perverse cocktail of adolescent arrogance and chutzpah, queries a publisher without a manuscript? Who even does that sort of thing?”

And then a tall, lanky shadow briefly flutters before quietly diffusing in my mind, but the answer is always heard in a clear, resonant voice. And it always says the same thing:

“’King Ink. That’s who…’”

IT’S YOUR TURN

I’ve received thoughts and sage counsel from a number of actual writers on this topic, all of which are consistent. However, now it’s your turn to weigh in on the conclusion of this thought experiment. What did you do and why did you do it? As always, your feedback is invaluable.