Charles Salzberg has been a Visiting Professor at the S.I.
Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and has taught
writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Hunter College, the Writer's Voice, and the
New York Writers Workshop, where he is a Founding Member. His freelance work
has appeared in such publications as Esquire, New York Magazine, GQ,
Elle, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, The New York Times,
and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He's also the author of the Henry
Swann detective series: Swann Dives In; Swann's Last Song, which
was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel, and Swann's Lake
of Despair, and standalone thrillers like Man on the Run.
Salzberg's latest novel is as much a mystery about what we
think we know about ourselves, what we show and don't show to those who we hope
love us most. It's a wry portrait of an enduring friendship between two
middle-aged men, a tender depiction of the things they can and can't say to
each other, and the shape of the bond between them. As they piece together a map of the daughter's sightings
and Josh learns to manage his own internal sightings, the novel gathers
momentum, making this investigation part of a larger mystery that explores the
discovery of one's identity and its price.
Salzberg stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and research the book:
Writing the Paranormal
It began with a call from an agent. Would I be interested in working on a book proposal with a woman who claims she has visions of violent crimes, a psychic ability that eventually had her working alongside various police departments to solve murders or missing person cases.
At the time, I was making a living as a freelance magazine and nonfiction book writer, a profession teaches you to never say no, even if you know absolutely nothing about the subject. Case in point. The first book I was asked to collaborate on was a coffee table book on men’s fashion, written with a highly successful men’s clothing designer. I was, to say the least, an unlikely collaborator. I hadn’t worn (or owned) a suit since I was thirteen. I’ve worn a makeshift tuxedo twice (the jacket looked like it escaped from the ‘50s, the trousers a pair of black jeans). My fashion dilemmas usually run to which pair of jeans should I wear (answer: the one I don’t have to rescue from the clothes hamper) along with what color T-shirt (hey, I’m a New Yorker, so you can’t go wrong with black).
In college, I was an English major and for as long as I can remember it was my dream, inspired by Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer, to be a novelist. I began my first novel when I was 12, producing a few typed, single-spaced pages of a roman a clef about sleep-away camp (I recently found my only copy).
Though I loved reading magazines and newspapers, I turned my nose up when it came to writing for them. How tough is it to watch something happen or interview someone and then write about what you’ve seen or heard? Where was the creativity, the challenge in that?
But after graduating college and dropping out of law school after a year, I was smacked in the face with s grim reality: How was I going to make a living? So, when I heard about a job in the mailroom at New York magazine from a family friend, I figured I’d throw my hat in the ring.
The interview went well and I was hired. The pay was horrible: $125 a week (I was making that much a day as a substitute teacher). Fortunately, I had a very cheap rent and enough savings to keep me afloat for a while.
Back in the mid-1970s. the magazine world was an exciting world to be part of. And to work at New York, led by the legendary Clay Felker (who pretty much invented the city magazine), in the middle of what was being called New Journalism, was intoxicating. Writers like Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Nik Cohen, and Pete Hamill, all of whom wrote for the magazine, were celebrities who hung out at Elaine’s on the upper east side. I took seriously the promise that the mail room was the first step in eventually becoming a magazine editor. It wouldn’t take long to work his way up from the standing on my feet in the mail room to sitting at a desk in the huge, cavernous room—the only one who had an office was Clay, and he rarely used it. And there was no such thing as a cubicle. Everything was out in the open.
I sucked it up and took the job.
Within a week I knew the last thing I wanted to do with my life was spend my day in a stuffy office, under artificial light, working on other people’s stories. But it took three months to work up the courage to quit without a safety net. Fortunately, a couple of article ideas I pitched before announcing my “early retirement,” were picked up by New York and The Daily News Sunday Magazine. I was on my way.
Now, back to that phone call. But first, a disclaimer. I have no discernible psychic ability. I cannot see into the future. I have enough trouble remembering the past. I don’t talk to dead people. I can barely manage conversing with people who are alive. I don’t have a spirit guide. But like many of us, I’ve always been fascinated by the paranormal, and on the fence when it comes to being a true believer.
By this time, I’d sold a few dozen articles, and worked on a number of books either as a ghostwriter or collaborator, as well as a few of my own, like an oral history of the NBA called From Set Shot to Slam Dunk. I had nothing else on the table and this new project was too interesting to pass up.
I flew out to the West Coast to work on a book proposal with housewife turned psychic Pam Coronado. During out meeting, she described how as an adult, she began experiencing these visions. Eventually, she learned how to control this paranormal ability, to the point where she could actually interact in the scene playing out in her mind. She even learned how to navigate around in these visions, so she could see what was happening from different angles or directions.
Unfortunately, the book never sold, but the time I spent with Pam was far from wasted. I even wound up using the subject briefly in a few of my novels, going so far as to create a character based on magician The Amazing Randi (real name James Randi) who offered a million-dollar reward to anyone who came with “proof” that this ability to see into the past or future couldn’t be duplicated by using standard magician’s “tricks.” (Randi has passed away, but during his life he never had to pay that reward).
I’d just finished Man on the Run, and was casting about for an idea for my next novel.
Usually, the process begins either with a particular character or a what if question. I couldn’t stop thinking about my time with Pam, and I started to wonder what it would be like to have psychic ability. At first, it seemed kind of cool. But the more I thought about it the more I wondered if being able to look into the past or see the future could turn out to be a curse? What if you’re so embarrassed (and frightened) by this ability that you tell no one you have it. And what if you’re so unnerved by this strange, inexplicable psychic ability, that when one of these visions comes, you fight tooth and nail to ignore or even suppress it?
But what if one day, hanging with your best friend, your secret accidentally slips out? And what if years later this best friend, the only person in the world who knows your secret, comes to you and asks you to use this ability to help find his missing college-age daughter? What then?
In an attempt at answering this question, as well as to explore the paranormal world and how it works, I began The Beginning of Everything, in which the main character who has experienced visions since he was a young boy, has hidden this uncomfortable secret not only from others but also himself.
First, I had to set up rules or boundaries for this unfamiliar world. Josh Green (the protagonist, a freelance journalist—a world I do know a lot about) can’t see into the future. He can’t predict what’s going to happen and he can’t change the past or the future. What he can do is sometimes see things that have already happened that he was not a witness to. But unlike Pam, Josh has no idea how to control this psychic ability, and so he’s not even sure he can help his best friend.
To be honest, I never considered this book would fall into the paranormal category, which as it turned out was really only a minor part of the plot. I was using it as a personal struggle that threatens to complicate the life of my protagonist. And so, I was somewhat taken aback when a friend pointed out that one of the categories Amazon put the upcoming novel under was: Paranormal.
To me, The Beginning of Everything is and always will
be a crime/detective novel. And yet I have to admit that writing it did help me
sort out the mixed feelings I have about psychics. But most important, I hope
it adds to the complexity of the plot.
You can learn more about Charles
Salzberg via his website and follow him on Facebook and Instagram. The Beginning of Everything is now available from Regalo Press and
via all major booksellers.
