Tag: The Breakfast Club

Love on the Big Screen Podcast: My Novel is Now Available as a 2nd Edition

Love on the Big Screen is my first novel, and it tells the story of a college freshman whose understanding of love has been shaped by eighties romantic comedies. The protagonist Zuke is obsessed with movies such as Sixteen Candles, Say Anything, When Harry Met Sally, and The Breakfast Club. Love on the Big Screen is a novel of friendship, the dangers of romanticized love, the complexities of faith and real life, and what happens to one young man as he finds out that life is nothing like the movies he loves.

  • Click here to link to Amazon where you can purchase the eBook or paperback.
cover design by Izzy Torgerson

As someone who grew up in the decade of the eighties and graduated from high school in 1989, the novel was inspired by my own experiences attending college at Olivet Nazarene University and playing on the basketball team.

Click below to listen to the Torg Stories Podcast episode where my sister Anne took over hosting duties and led a discussion about the book:

Discussed on this episode:

  • What necessitated the 2nd edition?
  • What inspired the story?
  • How does real life inspire fiction?
  • What’s the process of self publishing a second edition?
  • What makes for an effective book cover? My daughter Izzy designed this one for the second edition!
  • Why is the price the price of an eBook or paperback?
  • Shonda Rimes and other requests by studios and production companies for the book.
  • Writing the screenplay and winning the Grand Prize of the Rhode Island International Film Festival Screenplay Competition.
  • Memories from college.

Facts of my life that made it into the novel:

  1. I really was a member of a group called The Brothers in Pursuit that met weekly on Sunday nights. We dressed in matching boxer shorts, wore helmets, and reported back to each other on the four pursuits.
  2. I did like a girl who told me that she was going to break up with her boyfriend but she came back from the meeting engaged. She did not date one of my teammates.
  3. People did wear t-shirts at our games that spelled my name T-O-R-G and sometimes there was a “!” at the end.
  4. A professor did take me and a small group of English students to a performance of MacBeth which began with naked witches.

Just a few examples of how details from life can become fiction:

  1. One of the Brothers in Pursuit was named Chad Zaucha and my buddies and I called him Zuke. I used his name for my main character even though that character is based more on myself than anyone else.
  2. In the book, Zuke likes Abby and her boyfriend is nicknamed Cheese, and he’s the star of the college team. Cheese is also a name I took from someone I know. Cheese was a teammate and when he set the record for assists at Olivet Nazarene where I played, the fans really did throw cheese slices on the floor. However, Cheese didn’t date someone I liked, and Cheese was a great teammate. The character in the book is sometimes a less than ideal teammate who has no connection to the guy I knew.
  3. Zuke’s high school girl friend is named Colleen. I got that name from when a 3rd grader passed me a note to ask if I wanted to be her boyfriend and I freaked out. So I didn’t go to high school with a girl named Colleen.

College Memory Section

Here are some of the memories I share with Anne on the podcast:

  1. What we did in forming the Brothers in Pursuit.
  2. Riding rented scooters in Hawaii when the team went the first time.
  3. Complaining Sessions With Teammates. We called them something else but we would gather in a room and complain for an hour and then when that was up there was no more complaining for the week.
  4. My friend Zuke threw a bunch of CDs out the window because he thought music was consuming his life. Zuke also did not roll down the windows on his new car.
  5. TECMO football leagues. Status pro basketball with Cowboy.

Just a few of the people that influenced me at Olivet Nazarene:

  1. Joe Bentz. The first person I ever met who was working on a book. I wrote an essay The Royal Castle and he told me that was what I should be writing.
  2. Ruth Cook: I took a Shakespeare Class from her. She made it really fun. She told me I was a good writer. She was the one who took us to MacBeth with the naked witches.
  3. Judy Whitis: head of the English Department. I asked her for a recommendation letter to get into a creative writing program, and she suggested I might want to teach at Olivet instead. She planted the seed that I could teach at a college.
  4. Shirley McGuire. I had her for a few classes, and she was the sponsor for the English Honor Society. The Prof Moore character is based on her mannerisms. I think it’s better for the narrative to take Prof Cook’s taking us to MacBeth and just giving that to Moore.

Thanks for checking out this episode and learning more about the novel Love on the Big Screen!

If you do purchase the novel, it would be a big boost to the project if you would share it with friends and write a review on Amazon. Thank you!

How Would You Define “Retro” and “Indie”?

My questions for Lori  Hettler, author of The Next Big Book Blog:

I see you say you are interested all things, “retro.”  What do you mean?

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, and 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, and The Cure.  Movies like The Goonies, Labyrinth, Say Anything, The Breakfast Club, Stand By Me – they are untouchable, they stand the test of time.

Retro according to TNBBC: Stand by Me

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. Reading books like the ones I’ve just named gives me that “home-coming” feeling, you know?

What does the word “indie” mean to you and why is it important?

In the traditional sense, I believe Indie was coined for independent publishers, small press, and the authors who sign with them. Some indie publishers, like Graywolf Press, are non-profit. Most, like Two Dollar Radio, were (and still are) small start-up operations that have created a niche for themselves. A growing number, like Tiny TOE Press, Artistically Declined, and Curbside Splendor, are being brought to life by the authors themselves – authors who, due to personal choice or lack of interest from already existing publishers, decided to stand behind their work and present it to the masses on their own terms. I think, because of this increase of author-turned-publisher, the lines between indie and self published have blurred. Many self published authors are now referring to themselves as indie authors. And in a certain light, I suppose they can be. They are independent of contracts, and restrictions. They own the rights to their work. They can tour and promote as they wish. But I would say that only applies if they created their own company by which to publish their work.

Indie Press: Cherokee McGhee, publisher of William Torgerson's "Love on the Big Screen"

Indie can also be looked at as a way of life. It’s staying true to yourself, and your writing. It’s hanging in for the long haul. It’s not selling out. Indie publishers and authors are extremely important to the literary community. Because they are not caught under the umbrella of larger corporations and conglomerates, they have full control over which books they publish. They push the limits, they challenge their readers, they can afford to take chances on experimental, edgy fiction. They can offer their authors one-on-one attention. They throw wild and crazy events, and they rely heavily on word of mouth – The indie publishers and authors I have worked with are extremely receptive and welcoming of the support the blogging community gives them. Some of the best novels I have ever read were written by indie authors and published by indie publishers.

Support Indie Bookstores and Publishers: Click here

What was the impulse to start The Next Best Book Club Blog?

I started The Next Best Book Club blog when I realized that my Goodreads group (of the same name) had gotten too large, and my voice within the group had become too small. I needed a larger space, a space of my own – one that I didn’t have to share – to discuss my love of independent literature. I wanted to be able to showcase and highlight not only the books I read, but also the people behind those books, the authors and publishers. I wanted to introduce the world to what they were missing, to the great stories I felt they were overlooking. The blog and Goodreads group overlap by design, but it’s nice to have something that is just me, just my voice, sometimes.

Lori Hettler The Next Best Book Club
Lori Hettler writes The Next Best Book Club Blog

Click Here to Link up with Lori Hettler and the Next Best Book Blog Club

A Love “Poem” for my Wife: Shall I Compare Thee to a John Hughes Movie?

If you click on the title above, the Facebook “share” button will appear at the end of this post.  Thanks for taking a look at the poem!


Shall I compare thee to a John Hughes movie?

Thou art Pretty in Pink and sexier than Kelly LeBrock’s lips.

I recall no Weird Science to the chemistry of our first date,

But only your Bueller charm, Farmer Ted wit,

and Some Kind of Wonderful beauty.

You are no Chet, no Principal Richard Vernon on detention duty,

But so thoughtful that you would never forget my birthday

like in Sixteen Candles. Life with you is a Vacation:

more hopeful than Sparky’s family-truckster ride,

racier than Christy Brinkley in that red Ferrari,

richer than the floppy-disk payoff for Samantha Baker’s underwear,

and as magical as Gary and Wyatt’s Barbie Doll ceremony.

While you may not know “If You Leave” was sung by OMD,

Be sure to know that I love you and your love gives life to me.


Thanks to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 for getting me started.

A DRAFT (get it?) of my poem, “Love Is Like a Fart”

The Breakfast Club does their thing

Some of you have asked a fair enough question:  why am I working on a poem about gas?  Today, I was in touch with a man named Jerry Finley who promotes a great eighties cover band called “The Breakfast Club.” In fact, my wife Megan and I had our second ever date, on New Year’s Eve, listening to the band at Amos’s in Charlotte.  Jerry and I discussed the possibility of me opening up for the band on a couple of their concert dates in the spring.   It is a little intimidating to think about opening up for a band with a book in hand rather than a guitar.

I wrote another draft of this, long gone, back in college when my love life wasn’t as blissfully happy (thank you Megan) as it is now.

If you think any part of this structure is genius, credit Langston Hughes.  I have closely followed the structure of his “Dreams Deferred.”  That’s a poem I love and read with many middle school students back when I taught in Charlotte.  Thank you to that poet’s work who helped me tap into some laughs when I wasn’t feeling so spirited.

Love is Like a Fart

What happens to love passed?

Does it stink up

Like a port-o-let in the heat?

Or stain your shorts

With a big brown streak?

Does it ribbit-ribbit like a frog?

Or cloud the future—

Like a dangerous fog?

Maybe it just cuts

Like a big fat lie.

Or does it just die?