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.
In his new novel,
The Beginning of Everything, Salzberg has eschewed the private
investigators for two middle-aged friends frantic to solve the disappearance of
a college-age daughter. Josh has a secret, both disturbing and slightly
embarrassing, and the only person who knows is Tony, his best friend,
who, as cynical as he is, is perfectly glad to skip over it. As Josh observes,
men don't share secrets to keep their friendships. So, when he gets the one a.m. call from Tony and a request to
meet him for breakfast, Josh is there. Before the eggs are delivered, Tony
invokes the secret: could Josh use his psychic ability to help Tony
figure out what has happened to his brilliant but troubled stepdaughter?
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.
