...Wadorf to Your Astoria is done. Through. Finished.

This will be the final post here.

But fear not! If you go over to my brand-spankin' new website, billkonigsberg.com, you will see that I am still blogging over there. And on that site, powered by the fine folks at wordpress, you may comment using your Facebook account.

Sorry, Blogger. We liked you, but we needed more. We needed actual comments!

So thanks to those of you who perused this blog regularly.

Come join us over at billkonigsberg.com!

Just four more days in 2012... Hard to believe how quickly --

Who the hell am I kidding?

This was the slowest year in the history of man. I don't mean that in a bad way. It just went slowly. To me, last December seems like years ago.

It was a great, slow year:

1. My agent sold my next book, Openly Straight, to Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic).
2. I got involved in a very cool project at ASU, to be explained/described in due time.
3. I have been hard at work on a new book that is going to change my life. Hopefully a few other lives, as well.
4. Chuck and I have perhaps doubled our circle here in Arizona. We have new friends we feel extremely grateful for, and we have old (not in age, necessarily) friends whom we love dearly.
5. I have spent my days with an increasingly spectacular puppy named Mabel.
6. I got to play softball again for the first time in many years, and while that injury-plagued debacle ended poorly, I had a great time while doing it.
7. The great work-for-my-brother experiment ended amicably. I did good work for him, he treated me well, and we agreed that remaining plugged in and connected while working remotely was too difficult. We remain members in good standing in our own mutual admiration society.
7. I have good health, enough money, a comfortable place to lay my head at night, people I love, people who love me, wonderful family, and an avenue for self-expression that actually makes me money.

What more could I want?

Thank you to each and every one of you who sent a kind thought my way this year. Thanks to everyone who made me laugh. Sincerest appreciation to those who shared new ideas and experiences with me.

Here is to a great, slow 2013!

People often ask me: Bill, how did you find the perfect man?

Chuck and Bill when they are A) Younger and B) Chunkier

Okay, no one outside of my head has ever asked me that. While people do often say nice stuff about Chuck, about him being handsome and funny and kind, I have found that people rarely ask questions:

A) Like the aforementioned outside of bad movies and trashy novels
B) Of me in general in which advice of any kind is sought.

So while this has not been asked of me, I do feel as though I have some expertise on the subject. Chuck and  I went on our first date nine years ago this coming Monday, and it is my belief that he is, basically, perfect. For me, of course. For others, he might be a little tall. I don't know.

Anyhow, here are a few rules that I might offer about finding that perfect person, as well as some ways to tell if your person is perfect for you, should you already have them.

1) Become friends first. Truly. I know this is the age of hookups and I personally don't have a problem with that. And those of you who know me know that I am NOT EXACTLY a prude... but in my experience, the only relationship I've ever had that lasted was the one where we were good friends first. Chuck and I met in June of 2003, and our first date was Christmas Eve of that year. Did it take away some of the excitement? Yes. But it also solidified the fact that we LIKED each other as people. I cannot stress this enough. Find someone you LIKE as a person, and date them.

2) Listen to them tell a funny story before you buy. So important. Pay attention to whether you laugh or not. Do the same things make you laugh? Is his sense of humor creative? Is it mean? Does it meander when you like to get to the point quickly, or does it get to the point too fast and you like a bit more of a journey? I have a friend who cannot tell a story without telling you every piece of minutia that occurs to him along the way. I have to limit our social engagements because of this, and if I were married to him, I would be constantly checking his net worth and new and creative ways to kill him.

3) Look for the ones with a little extra meat on their bones. I personally like a little extra cushion, but even if I didn't, this is a terrific strategy. For one thing, it means you will be focusing on the important stuff, like what's in their heart. But as a bonus, it reminds us that people's bodies change. Especially weight. If you decide that slender (or fat, by the way) is a top priority, what will happen when that person gains (or loses) weight? I was not terribly focused on that, so when Chuck decided to lose more than 70 pounds, it was just an interesting perk rather than a game changer.

Here, by the way, are a few ways to ascertain that you've already netted the perfect guy for you:

1) You know exactly what they're going to say before they say it, and you don't want to beat them with a broom handle for saying it.

2) They sing loudly while listening to music with earphones while cleaning, and you smile because you think it's sweet.

3) You find the same amount of joy in laughing at the same stupid things.

Case in point on Number 3 is the reason I am writing this today. Last night, we were at a choir concert at a cathedral. On the left side of the stage there was a small balcony jutting out with a red curtain. I noticed this and pointed it out to Chuck. I said, "Wouldn't it be awesome if Waldorf and Statler from the Muppets appeared and made comments throughout the show?"


He cracked up. We then spent the next 10 minutes coming up with exactly what they would say:

Waldorf: I heard these guys were called "The Bach Choir" at one point.
Statler: The Bach Choir. I say send this choir bach!
Both: Ahh hah hah hah hah!

I knew that through the whole concert, he was feeling giddy about that stupid joke, and I'm pretty sure he knew that I was thinking of other things the two Muppet curmudgeons would say. And we didn't have to say anything; we could just grab each other's hand and squeeze once in a while, and it was communicated. It was perfect.

We put it on Facebook and here's the kicker: Almost NO ONE ELSE thought this was funny. That's fine. It just proves my point. Find the one person on earth who thinks you're hilarious even when you're totally predictable and not particularly laughworthy to the rest of the world. Marry that person. You will be so glad you did.

About four months ago, I took a home test and found that my blood sugar was in the "pre-diabetes" range.

Tomorrow is the first day of NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month. Every November, all sorts of writers take on the challenge of trying to write a draft of a novel in a month. Note that I say "Draft," because very, very few novels are finished in one draft, and while some writers might be able to draft and then revise a novel in a month, I don't think that's a very realistic goal.

For me, especially.

And it's too bad, because if anyone should try to finish a novel in the next month, it's me. All the stars are lining up for me. I have a new book coming out next year, I have an ever-expanding audience of interested readers which will certainly grow in the next 12 months, and I have a wonderful editor who is interested in seeing what I write next. So yes, I should endeavor to finish my current work-in-progress within the next 30 days.

And I may try to do that. But just as likely, I will fail.

Great attitude, huh?

I actually think that it's not so much a matter of attitude as it is a matter of acceptance. Acceptance of my own process as a writer.

It takes me a while to birth a novel. I know one successful author who can write a draft of a novel in 15 days and it's relatively clean. In 15 days, I'm generally spelunking through a creative cave, bumping into walls, opening doors that lead to ... nowhere special. Forget 15 days; with this current book, I'm still spelunking even though I started this process four months ago.

I have written about 75 pages, but I feel as though the heart of the novel is still not yet pulsing. I thought I knew my main character(s), but every day that I attempt to write, I find that I am further and further from truly embodying them. They change. They adjust. They battle me at every step as I try to define them.

"Don't stereotype me!" they yell. "Stop using me as a vehicle to explore your ideas."

I honestly don't know what to do, but one thing that might help would be to stop fighting. This is that thing where I "should" myself to death. I should be a different kind of writer. I should be able to change my process.

Openly Straight was an extremely challenging birth. It's easy for me to forget that now that I've seen it in book form, but it's a miracle that I got through that book. I remember sitting at my computer in Montana, certain I'd never figure out what this puzzle was all about. I hadn't yet discovered the camera, or the History of Rafe (you'll have to read the book next year to know what I mean). And then, one day, it began to pour from me.

I have to have faith, as writing is a spiritual practice. I must believe that Duffy and Aisha (from Best of Bipolar Disorder) will start to speak to me if I just keep trying and stop telling myself what "should" happen today.

Chuck just reminded me about F. Scott Fitzgerald, who once came back from a day of writing and reported that he'd had a terrific writing day. He'd written one word. But it was the right word!

So I will try NaNoWriMo, but I will accept failure if that's what is supposed to happen. If I continue to put in my best effort every day, failure isn't a possibility. It'll all happen when it's s'posed to happen.

What would happen at an all-boys boarding school in Massachusetts if an athlete came out as gay?

This is NOT the subject of my upcoming novel, Openly Straight. In fact, it is the setting for that novel, but it is the plot of my first novel, Out of the Pocket.

I mention it because of a comment I received last week from a former student at a school I visited three years ago. I spoke in the chapel at Belmont Hill School during its "Diversity Week." It remains one of the most interesting school visits I've ever had. It's also the only all-boys boarding school at which I spoke, and I used that experience to create "The Natick School," the setting for Openly Straight.

Here is the comment, which was posted to my blog. I took out a couple sentences because I did not have an email address for the boy who wrote it and I wanted to keep certain information out of this to keep it anonymous. 
------------
I was a senior at Belmont Hill when you came and spoke during the chapel meeting and felt that your "musings" were, by far, the most constructive component of the school's diversity week that year. I especially appreciated your notion that it may take a "Jackie Robinson" type figure to first break this barrier.

When you first made that comparison, my initial reaction was shame, that I was a part of an establishment in which excellence had become the only means of outside-the-box progress, but in the 4 years since that thought first entered my mind, I've taken a bit of a different stance. Like Major League Baseball in the pre-integration era, Belmont Hill has established itself as an institution, set in its ways, built on a foundation that has a genuinely positive effect on those who pass through it. I've come to understand how impossible it may seem for a student to disrupt the pre-existing "box" Belmont Hill creates, because frankly, that box typically releases men well-adjusted to succeed in the collegiate and professional world. After enduring numerous chants of "Brokeback Hill," (it was more relevant at the time, I promise), from opposing fans, I can't wait for the day that an openly gay student has the chance to storm into the end zone to the tune of these chants, then promptly turn, hand the ball to a referee, and return to his sideline.

That may not seem like a particularly complicated scenario considering that our culture has witnessed similar events, particularly those completed by the likes of the aforementioned Mr. Robinson, but its just not the same. What I am talking about, what you spoke about, what we actually are all thinking about, is not a man to do this, but a boy. We are hoping that a BOY, privy to the social stigma that may come with his decision, to walk into his locker room, look his teammates in the eyes (an achievement worth noting in its own) and tell each and every one of them that he is different from them. That he is different in an aspect of life that has no bearing whatsoever on his ability to swing a bat, make a tackle, or run a mile, but different in a sense that none of his teammates have ever even considered. The first openly gay student at Belmont Hill will not be lucky enough to be "judged" by a group of well-educated, mature adults, but rather a group of boys. In no way am I discounting the importance of anything done by Jackie Robinson (or Moses Walker, among others, for those of you that know your baseball history), but for this Belmont Hill student, there will be no "test-run." 

At some point, I hope that I'll be able to say that I share the alma mater of a man who, as a boy, had the courage and support to make a decision as momentous as this, not because I'll have shared the alma mater of the boy who did it, but because I will have graduated from a school that educates boys to support those around them and recognize merit wherever found.
---------

When I spoke at Belmont Hill, I mentioned my theory that the first openly gay male athlete to play in one of the four major American sports (baseball, football, hockey, basketball) will likely be someone who came out in high school. He'll be out in high school, he'll be out going into college, and when he is drafted or signed, he will already be out. His talent will be such that his sexuality will simply be part of the package, much like his ethnic background or personality. "The Gay Jackie Robinson," I believe I called him.

It's interesting to hear about what has happened on that front in the last three years. Clearly Belmont Hill has done a great job of paving the way for TGJR. The school has made it clear that it would support an athlete who decides to be "out." This is so important; schools really can make a difference by showing that a gay student/athlete would receive support. 

Yet it hasn't happened to this point.

Is that because there are no gay kids playing sports? No.

We know that to be false. The numbers simply don't back that up. At any school where there might be anywhere between 50 and 300 boys playing on athletic teams, the idea that none are gay is absurd. We know that sexual orientation does not correlate to athletic ability. The growing number of out Olympic athletes and athletes coming out after their careers make that clear. 

So what keeps male athletes in the closet at a school that has shown a willingness to support an out kid?

The answer, it seems to me, is "The Power of the Pack." By "Pack," I refer to packs of male teen athletes.

There are schools where these boys are no longer at the top of the social scale. I am currently teaching one class a week at such a school in Phoenix. But in a majority of schools across the country, I think male jocks remain high in the pecking order. 

I don't think individual thinking is strongly encouraged in such groups. For the most part, in my experience, what matters to packs of boys is loyalty and adherence to certain rules. What must happen before the floodgates open and many male teen jocks feel comfortable coming out is that the hearts and minds of these "Packs" must be changed.

It's a tough thing to change; while I think it is true that teens in general are more open to change than adults are, packs of boys are notoriously conservative, and these changes happen slowly.

I believe that the thing that needs to change to make this happen is "more of what's been happening" the last few years. Pro athletes coming out as straight allies (like Chris Kluwe, the Minnesota Vikings punter). More of this. More pro and college athletes that are willing to say that you can't catch "gay," that you can still be a masculine, straight male, and also support those whose sexual orientation is different than yours.

Until the message permeates our society so strongly that "Packs" of athletic teen boys start saying to each other that it's okay to be gay, being an out jock in high school will continue to be very, very difficult. It's a scary option. I know, because I've received many emails from closeted high school athletes. I'm not saying it can't be done; I'm saying it will remain a steep uphill battle until the hearts of "Packs of boys" are reached.

And when that happens, I believe it will happen in a big way. Boys are strong believers in justice and rules. This is a stereotype, but I believe it to be true. Fair play matters greatly to a majority of males. So when those hearts begin to open up to the idea that gay is different -- not worse, just different -- than straight, I expect we will get a flood of stories about high school athletes coming out.

And it will likely be one of these kids who will be the gay Jackie Robinson. 

Here it is, boys and girls! The cover of my forthcoming novel "Openly Straight."


Like it? I love it!

I love that it is a visual representation of the story. Given a choice of all the labels my main character, Seamus Rafael Goldberg, can choose, he chooses the most innocuous one. He just wants to be a "normal kid."

I had no idea, when I wrote this, about how much I was writing about myself. That's how clueless I can be about myself. I think this happens to writers sometimes; we get so caught up in a story we're creating that we don't see the obvious parallels.

I came out in high school. I was out in college. Then, I made some choices (some in my early 20s and some in my later 20s) that were surprising for an openly gay guy. I decided to go to ESPN, where there were no openly gay men. I decided that I wanted the career of a sports writer so badly that I would just be a "normal guy" and not disclose my sexuality.

As you'll see in the book, this doesn't always work out so well. How do you "be you" while simultaneously masking a part of yourself? There is no neutral; it would be nice to think we live in a world where you can just be without making a big deal about who you are attracted to, but that isn't this world. As people get to know you, the lies begin to mount. How do you foster friendships when that's going on?

The other part of the book that mirrors my life is that Rafe, as he likes to be called, moves from his home in Boulder, Colorado, to an all-boys' boarding school in Natick, Massachusetts. That's when he decides to be "Openly Straight."

I moved to Bristol, Connecticut in 1999. To ESPN, which was (especially at that time) basically a frat house. From? Denver, Colorado.

How dense am I not to have noticed that parallel?

Anyhow, the book comes out in June from Arthur A. Levine (Scholastic). Early reviews are (extremely) encouraging. I think you're going to like this one.

Today I've decided to be one of those helpful authors and let you know what happens when you attempt to use copywritten song lyrics in your novel. So if you are not a regular reader of this blog, I'm guessing you found me because you just used those lyrics to Rapture by Blondie in your novel, and then you thought, "Wait. Can I do this?"

The answer is: yes and no.

I love using lyrics. I love all sorts of music (especially pop, rock, R&B, alternative, folk), and I find lyrics totally evocative of mood. So in many of my novels, lyrics are peppered in liberally.

That was the case in "Openly Straight," which comes out next June. My editor mentioned early on in the process that we'd need to get permission, and that it would cost us. What I didn't understand (and this is embarrassing, given that I'm not a first-time author), was that it would cost ME.

I do not want to name names, so I will be slightly evasive about artists here. But I will use actual dollar figures so you get a sense of what using lyrics might actually cost you.

I used a Hawaiian song made popular in the 1950s to evoke setting in a "mountain luau" scene. I also used a popular song from the 2000s by a megapopular female artist. That one was just me funnin' around with misheard lyrics.

We received permission to use the Hawaiian song. It will cost me $250 to do so. The publishing house (Scholastic, in this case) had its permission people send out a letter with information about the novel, what the song was used for, even a PDF of the actual page where it is used. This process took about 3-4 weeks, and in the front of the novel, it states that I have permission to use those lyrics.

We were turned down, however, by the female artist. I was so annoyed at first, but in the end this saved me a lot of money. I immediately re-wrote the scene with another misheard lyric, this one from a rock group. It is actually one of the most-played songs in radio history, if that interests you. They came back and granted permission, but the cost was $650 for the four lines I used.

By the way, this is not unusual from what I hear. Lyrics are expensive!

So I was faced with a choice: pay $900 to use two songs, $250 to use one, or nothing and re-write two scenes.

I chose the second option. I can afford the $250, and the song does in fact add to the mood of that important scene. The misheard lyrics joke, however, seemed way too pricey for this writer! Not that I am blaming the copywrite holder; they are totally in their right to charge what they will. But think about it from my perspective. How many books would I need to sell to pay for those lyrics? The answer is something in the neighborhood of 400 books.

Nah. Not at this point in my career.

Lastly, why, you might ask, would an artist deny permission to use lyrics? It's hard to know. No reason was given in this case. Perhaps she and her people didn't want people focusing on the absurd misheard lyric? Perhaps she and her people generally don't grant such permissions? I'll never know. I will say that unfortunately, it has colored my opinion of the artist a little bit. I had always liked her, but being denied use of a lyric, even for an exorbitant amount of money, left a bitter taste in my mouth.

So that's the deal with using lyrics in songs. My suggestion is to avoid it. Use the song title; it's free! Describe the music or the lyrical content. Otherwise, if you're going to use lyrics, make sure they are in the public domain (hint: old songs written not in this country generally are).

We are back from our first full-fledged vacation in about three years!