Tag: St. John’s University

A Conversation With a Bookblogger: From French Cuffed Z. Cavaricci’s to the Art of Indie

I never really connected to the whole blogging phenomena, not until I recently attended a Blogger Conference in conjunction with Book Expo America (BEA).  Following a full day of hanging out with the bloggers at the Javits Convention Center in NYC, I left impressed with the community, impressed at their passion for books and need to talk about them.  I found people who are actually more interested in promoting literacy than making money.  What?!!!

Lori Hettler is one of the bloggers I met.  She’s a fellow Say Anything obsessive who also likes Nick Hornby and talks of French-cuffed Z. Cavaricci’s.  Remember those?  I had a purple pair about the time I graduated from high school.

William Torgerson, Bill, Torg, Love on the Big Screen, The Next Best Book Blog, Bloggercon, Blogworld,
Lori Hettler, author of The Next Best Book Blog

It was Lori’s use of the words retro and indie that caught my attention and so I asked her if she’d be willing to talk to me about her little niche of the blogosphere.  She agreed and I plan to share our conversation over several posts.  First, I asked Lori to give an overview of the bookblogging world, to tell us what we might be missing out on if we don’t participate.  Here’s what she said:

There are so many levels to book blogging. As a blogger, you can choose to participate at any or all levels. For starters, it’s your own personal space to dish about books in any way, shape, or form you wish. There are no rules, no parameters, no boundaries – only those that you set for yourself. It’s also a community. There are bloggers out there for every genre and niche you can imagine. They are welcoming and supportive. They share ideas and join forces. Nothing makes me happier than seeing bloggers come together to support a cause. Twitter hashtags, book tours, you name it, and they can and will do it!

As a blogger, you can also begin to build relationships with authors and publishers. You can host giveaways, develop features or meme’s, conduct interviews, gain access to ARC’s (advance reading copies) for reviews. It’s all out there, and it’s all what you make of it. I think, most importantly, book bloggers spread literacy. They get the world talking about books!

William Torgerson, Bill, Lori Hettler, Cherokee McGhee, Love on the Big Screen, St. John's University, I am a product of my generation. I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s… my fondest memories include Cabbage Patch Kid dolls (and those god-awful but so cool Garbage Pail Kids stickers!), slinkys, Pogo-balls, French cuffed Z-cavaricci’s , teased out hair, cassette tapes, the Fraggles, Sea Monkeys, the Rubik’s Cube. Today’s music cannot touch the stuff that came out of the 80’s – I’m talking about bands like R.E.M., U2, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, New Order, The Cure. Movies like The Goonies, Labyrinth, Say Anything, The Breakfast Club, Stand By Me – they are untouchable, they stand the test of time. I love books that steep themselves in retro-ness – books like High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, Totally Killer by Greg Olear, Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis, Banned for Life by D.R. Haney.
Check out "The Next Best Book Blog"

Link to The Next Best Book Blog Here

Look for more conversation with Lori in future posts.  If you’ve got questions or thoughts connected to book blogging, I’d love to hear from you.

An Elevator Pitch for HORSESHOE

Love on the Big Screen Flannery O'Connor Milledgeville Georgia College and State University
The Theater Pictured on Cover is in Milledgeville, Georgia. Home to Georgia College and Flannery O'Connor

There’s a big difference between what I learned doing an MFA Degree in Creative Writing at a place like Georgia College and what I’ve learned being in New York, reading for a literary agency, and beginning to hang around literary business types here.  Both experiences (my MFA and living here) have worked together to teach me a lot of what I want and need to know.

What I needed right away for life in NYC was an elevator pitch.  In other words, I needed to be able to summarize in one sentence what my book was about.  For Love on the Big Screen, it didn’t take me so long to come up with this:  Love on the Big Screen tells the story of Zuke, a college freshman whose understanding of love has been shaped by late-eighties romantic comedies.  People usually responded to this line with a laugh and publishing and film reps usually requested to read more after hearing that one sentence.

Love on the Big Screen Flannery O'Connor Milledgeville Georgia College and State University Winamac, Indiana, Horseshoe
Horseshoe will be set in a fictionalized Winamac, Indiana

So here I go again with a new book and a new need for 1 sentence summaries and a short synopsis.  Here’s where I am at:

In the rural town of Horseshoe, where everyone knows everybody else’s business, the lives of its citizens intertwine for thirteen bizarre tales of faith, sin, guilt, and deliverance.  Think:  Flannery O’Connor’s “Misfit” Fiction Meets Pulp Fiction.

Any of that catch your attention?

And here’s the short synopsis:

The little town of Horseshoe becomes the protagonist in this unique novel-in-stories format that bucks against the boundaries of time and asks readers to make the connections to put the story together.  The book initiates in the local grocery store where a churchwoman named Pam Scott delivers judgment on a philandering butcher.  Pam returns home, a place where each night she faces what is either a figment of her imagination or an increasingly terrifying knocker.  In this little town where everyone knows everybody else’s business, the lives of its citizens intertwine for thirteen bizarre tales of faith, sin, guilt, and deliverance.

I wrote both the one-sentence summary and the short synopsis in conversation with the team at Cherokee McGhee.  As I say in class all the time, “Writing Floats on a Sea of Conversation.”  Without conversation, I don’t have much to say.  If you’ll look over there to the right of the page, you’ll find all the virtual places where we might chat up reading, writing, and teaching.

Cherokee McGhee, Love on the Big Screen, Horseshoe, William Torgerson, Tarantino, O'Connor, Pulp Fiction, 80s, Lloyd Dobler, Farmer Ted, John Hughes
Cherokee McGhee Press: publisher of Love on the Big Screen and Horseshoe

Why call a book HORSESHOE?

If you know my character “Zuke” from Love on the Big Screen, I wrote that he was from a small town called Horseshoe.  In my mind, Zuke’s hometown is a fictionalized version of Winamac, Indiana.  The word “horseshoe” as the title of my novel-in-stories comes from the way my small hometown of Winamac sits on a horseshoe bend of the Tippecanoe River in North-Central Indiana.   This geographical feature is something you can see for yourself on Google Maps:

William Torgerson, Bill, Torg, Love on the Big Screen, Horseshoe, St. John's University
From Google Maps: See the Horseshoe Bend in the Tippecanoe River?

Winamac is the town where my parents are from and their parents are from before that, and even though I wasn’t born there, it’s the place where I graduated from high school and the place I say I’m from if anyone ever asks.  When people in Winamac say the horseshoe,they mean the road that runs along the outer edge of the town park which is almost pinched into an island by a sharp-hook bend of the river.  I lived in two different houses when I lived in Winamac:  one right on the river where I could look across the water, see the road everyone called the horseshoe, and also the basketball courts.  I was a bad cross-country runner in high school, and practice was often held in the park where we ran in packs and did repeats of the three-quarter mile loop.  The second house I lived in is the house where I placed the character Matthew Walker’s family.  Pam Scott, a woman haunted by the sound of a knocker, lives in the house my grandmother lives in today.

William Torgerson, Bill, Torg, Love on the Big Screen, Horseshoe, St. John's University, winamac, Indiana
The Swinging Bridge in the Winamac Town Park

More news from the urinal:

As a teacher on campus, there’s always the possibility of coming across students I’m teaching or have taught in the restrooms.  This morning right before class, I made a pit stop at the urinals.  One of my students walked up and took his place a couple s places down.  I could tell he was looking my way, and so I looked to see if he was going to say anything.

“Morning Torg,” he said, sort of laughing.

“Am I the first professor with whom you chatted at the urinal?”

“Yes,” he said, looking thoughtful, as if he had more to say.   “I”m not quite sure how to say this.”

“Uh, huh.”

“I think you’re the first professor I’ve ever talked to.”

It might be that he meant outside of class, which would be bad enough, but I think he may have meant that he’d never talked with any of his profs anywhere.

The Real “Cheese” Behind the Fictional One: Covington High School Coach and Olivet Nazarene University grad, Kent Chezem

Looks like Hoosiers Jimmy Chitwood?

In my novel Love on the Big Screen, the protagonist Zuke has a sort of love rival named “Cheese.”  It’s a name I took from real life from my friend and former teammate, Kent Chezem.  I remember that one of the coaches at Olivet Nazarene University where we were teammates used to always call Kent by the name “Jimmy,” as in Jimmy Chitwood from Hoosiers.  Kent was an excellent basketball player, the all time leader at Olivet Nazarene University in assists, and now he’s the head basketball coach at Covington High School in Indiana.  Kent has been a head coach in Indiana for seventeen years and last season he recently won his 200th game.  I asked him the following question about an event that I once witnessed when we were teammates: 

When I was on the Olivet Nazarene University basketball team, you became the all-time leader for assists.  I remember that when you broke the record, lots of students threw cheese slices onto the floor.  Was that the first time the students did that?   

Bill Torgerson Kent Chezem Love on the Big Screen Covington High School St. John's University Frankfort, Indiana Jimmy Chitwood
Looks like a young Coach Chezem?

No, I guess it actually started my freshman year before you arrived at Olivet.  As an ONU grad, you know that the best and worst part of being a freshman is living in Chapman Hall.  As much as I hated living in that old run down dorm, some of my fondest college memories originate from there.  Some of my friends in Chapman decided it would be cool to start throwing cheese when I was introduced during starting line-ups.  They stole the idea from Cleveland State whose student section did the same thing for their starting point guard:  Kenny “Mouse” McFadden.  Mouse McFadden had become famous for leading Cleveland State in an upset win over Indiana University and Bobby Knight in the NCAA tournament back in the 80’s.

What started out as a nice and simple gesture by a group of my friends (about 25 Kraft singles) grew quickly into a campus-wide fad.  Within a few games, it seemed like everyone was bringing cheese to throw during introductions.  By the end of the season, each home game started out with a “delay” prior to tipoff so that Godam Sultan (Birchard custodian) could clear the floor of cheese.  As much as I enjoyed the attention, the mess on the floor was really starting to become a problem.  At the end of the season, the conference instituted a rule declaring that a technical foul would be called at all future games where fans threw objects on the floor before or during the game.  That was the last of the cheese to be thrown in Birchard, at least that’s what I thought.

Bill Torgerson Kent Chezem Love on the Big Screen Covington High School St. John's University Frankfort, Indiana Jimmy Chitwood
Celebratory Confetti or Dangerous Projectile?

My buddies did bring back the Kraft singles one last time my senior year.   They knew that I was very close to breaking the school’s career assist record, so they came to the game armed with a “Cheese-O-Meter” to countdown the assists, and a whole bunch of Kraft singles.  After my roommate Mike Carr missed 3 consecutive chances to give me the record, David Grasse finally hit a jumper to push me over the top.  The student section let ’em fly.  As  expected, the referees did call a technical foul, but luckily we were well enough ahead that it didn’t have any bearing on the game.  I still remember having a conversation with one of the opposing players during the technical free throws about why our students were throwing cheese onto the floor during a basketball game.

Olivet was a pretty conservative place.  Am I right to remember that you got in a lot of trouble for painting a speed bump to make it look like a candy cane? 

Bill Torgerson Kent Chezem Love on the Big Screen Covington High School St. John's University Frankfort, Indiana Jimmy Chitwood
Candy Cane Speed Bump Prank?

Painting candy stripes on a speed bump would have been a funny prank, but you are giving me credit for something I didn’t do.  I am guilty of setting off fireworks in the quad, dropping water balloons out of dorm rooms, and among other things…dressing up in a gorilla costume and stealing candy from the girls’ dorms at Halloween.  I even remember a night that started with a bunch of my buddies, a few dozen water balloons, and a pickup truck.  It ended up with us getting hauled in to jail and Grover Brooks (Dean of Students) picking us up from the police station at 4 am!  That fiasco got me kicked out of the honors dorm for the remainder of the semester, but it was one of the funniest nights of my life.  Luckily nobody got hurt and nobody was formally charged with a crime.