Tony Brasunas

It’s ironic that this blog began by calling the process of writing and publishing my book a journey, a march of 10,000 miles.

Certainly everything about my time in China, and about writing this book, now does seem to comprise a trek. But it’s been a strange, even cyclical one. I started the journey a decade ago, and now I’ve seemingly had another detour, or I’ve started over, or I’ve done the whole thing in reverse. I’ve literally relearned to walk.

I’m back on my feet after my November knee surgery, and how sweet it is. To be mobile again, to be up on my hind legs once again, like a homo sapiens. It’s difficult to describe. We take our bodily health, our mobility, our evolution, for granted at our mental and emotional peril.

Happily, I resume the journey where I left off, or perhaps even a few steps ahead. Things continue apace toward the publication of Double Happiness. I completed some revisions to the manuscript and the book proposal, and both items are now in the capable hands of my agent. She is now approaching publishers, carrying our shared dream of placing the book at a major house.

She’s at the helm, and I’m not needed in the process as much anymore, which has brought another interesting cocktail of feelings: a delightful relief that I’m part of a team working towards the birth of this book, mixed with a puzzling sensation of absence akin to what parents must feel when their children are with a babysitter. Wait, where’s my book?

Yes, I have less news to report to you these days, since I’m now less involved in the nitty gritty of the publication process. What would you like to know about writing and publishing a book? Or about traveling and living in China?

One exciting bit of news I do have to report is that I participated in the I Live Here: SF project. For my contribution, I wrote about my experiences coming to San Francisco and falling in love with the city. The creative mind and literate photographer behind the project, Julie Michelle, took a bunch of pictures of me so she could choose one to include in her gallery opening, which featured the writings and photographs of some two hundred San Francisco residents from all walks of life.

And voila, I have a collection of professional photos from which to choose the ideal author portrait! What do you think? The photos are here. How do you like the one I’ve tentatively selected for the inset? And what about the one on the author page? Are they better than the ones you voted on before in the portrait poll? I feel an almost guilty sense of vanity in asking you to look at all these pictures of me. But hey, I need an author photo for the book proposal and the cover of the book. So thank you. Click to “Leave a Comment” below. I’m not that vain. Right?

Or perhaps vanity is a temporary phase that occurs in any journey, somewhere around the 9,000th mile, somewhere between learning to walk and learning to run.

Exciting and tragic news to report. First, my apologies for the hiatus in my presence here. Things have taken unexpected turns, and who am I to argue with the fates?

If you thought “Re-entry was an Itch,” this takes it to another level.

First, the agency who contacted me prior to Burningman, who showed delightfully gratifying enthusiasm for Double Happiness, and who listened when I informed them I wasn’t open to making major revisions to the manuscript, only “minor changes” — did offer to represent me.

That was great, exciting news. But another agency contacted me in the interim, while the first agency was contemplating, and this second agency had a similarly high level of enthusiasm for my writing and seemed to get the entirety of Double Happiness — exactly as it was, on all the levels it is intended to work on. She instantly saw it as not only the story of a young man teaching and traveling abroad for the first time, nor only as a rugged first hand account from inside a changing China; she responded to the underlying, universal story of inner transformation and spiritual awakening that form the book’s essence and make the story relevant to people young and old and from all backgrounds.

She also was more timely and professional in getting back to me. After several good discussions by phone, we exchanged two-page legal documents by mail, and I signed with her!

That was a major step forward.

She had some suggestions for minor changes, and as I looked through the manuscript and considered her insights, I agreed with her suggestions. I began making the changes, and as I did I realized I wanted to complete a full additional polish of the entire manuscript.

And now that’s done too. That was a second major step forward.

Another night, intent on a different goal, out on a beloved local soccer field, I ran onto a fine pass from a Salvadoran lad on the right wing, touched the ball, and headed in for goal. I cut left to evade the goalkeeper, but my shoe stuck in the turf pointed right while my knee went left. The next thing I knew I was in the air, then flat on my back, howling in pain.

After several agonizing days and doctor’s visits, I learned I’d torn both the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and the medial meniscus in my right knee. Days turned to weeks, and I underwent surgery November 11. Now I’m largely immobile except for my visits to physical therapy, which will be many and challenging. It will be a long road of rehabilitation — another journey in this kaleidoscope of journeys called life.

That was a gigantic hobble backward.

Perhaps now all I need is patience. Perhaps in but a few weeks I will be walking again. Perhaps in but a few more weeks my new agent will place Double Happiness at a publisher. Perhaps.

Patience has never been easy for me.

But I discovered it in Songpan, deep in Sichuan Province, waiting for a bus that never came, listening to a whisper of intuition that came from deep inside me.

Hopefully I’ll find it again now, here in San Francisco. Any suggestions?

I’m back from the magical land of Burning Man. After wandering in that scintillating world for a week, I found it difficult to jump right back into my work on Double Happiness. But jump right back in I now have.

Two pieces of good news have lifted my spirits.

First, maps! The book is now map-ful, map-happy, map-alicious, with a large hand-drawn map of China ready for the frontmatter and sixteen smaller maps ready for the beginnings of eventful chapters. Working with an illustrator was a delight; the maps she created are sprinkled with illustrations that highlight events, people, places, and things in the story. A sneak peak at one map, just for you dear readers, is at right. (Click it to enlarge it.)

Second bit of news: An agency in New York has called several times and shown sustained interest and enthusiasm for both my writing in general and for Double Happiness in particular. Before I left for Burning Man, I discussed with them their interest. They were thrilled with my “beautiful style” and “phenomenal writing,” and they also envisioned some changes to the manuscript. After much thought and contemplation while wandering through the sculpture-laden, laser-festooned desert, while watching a number of splendid works of art burn, I reached clarity about Double Happiness: In its current shape, it is the book I was driven, inspired, possessed to write, it’s the story I needed to tell. In fact, it’s better — it’s more it than I even knew I could write when I began this marathon labor-of-love. And so upon my return I took a deep breath and shared this with them, that I’m done, that at least insofar as major rewrites go, I’m finished with this particular story. Minor changes are fine, of course. The question was then whether they were still interested in representing me and Double Happiness. And they are, they said. They are. Or… they may be. They asked to read the manuscript in its latest form to ensure they are “200 percent behind me.” So we’ll see. If they choose not to take me on, I will either approach other agencies or, more likely, proceed directly into the brave new world of Indie publishing.

As an aside, Indie publishing offers authors an increasing number of benefits, but going the traditional, conventional route — signing with an agent and selling the manuscript to a major house — still offers substantial advantages, including not having to deal with intellectual property issues that arise from the use of quotations. Double Happiness features small quotations called epigraphs opening many of its chapters; some of these are from ancient sources, such as the Tao Te Ching, but others are from more recent authors, like T.S. Eliot and Pearl S. Buck, and the use of these authors’ works is often in a dubious, weakly-defined area of the law called “Fair Use.” When one doesn’t explicitly have permission from an author to use his or her work, one is liable to be sued for copyright infringement. Not a lot of fun. Some of the authors I’ve approached have been very forthcoming in acceding that quoting a few dozen words from their work constitutes “Fair Use.” The people at Houghton Mifflin who control copyright to T.S. Eliot, on the other hand, informed me it would run $365 to use four lines of a 225-line poem.

Let’s call that an update. Double Happiness continues apace, on its hopeful way to your door. Click below to leave a comment.

PS: Yes, my Burning Man project, the Threshold of Heat and Light, lived in the desert and died peacefully in tongues of flame. It conjured into my life and the lives of those around me a wealth of unforeseen delights and challenges. I have photos; let me know if you’re interested; they richly feature a flamethrower.

The maps, the design, and the many elements of the manuscript of Double Happiness continue to absorb me.

The possibilities and potential of managing publication of the book on my own — complete self-publishing — continue to unfold.

There has also been interesting recent communication on the agent front, keeping conventional publication on the front burner.

I have much to think about. The route Double Happiness ultimately takes to publication will become clear, as clear as flames against a midnight sky. Soon. After some contemplation, after a brief hiatus, after Burning Man.

Yes, I’m off once again to a world I love: The playa, Black Rock City, the temporary city that rises in the desert dust, hosts an art, music, and sculpture extravaganza of some 50,000 people, and then vanishes again into dust. I wrote about my first visit to the magical city in 2003, as well as, a year later, my second visit in 2004. This year I’m creating and installing a sculpture myself, one that I will live in: The Threshold of Heat and Light.

At the end of the week, after the Man burns, the Threshold too will burn.

The Threshold of Heat and Light is a temple to transitions. Not coincidentally, my life and my book are in the moment of their transition and transformation. The walls of the Threshold of Heat and Light will ask visitors and passersby to write messages about where they’ve been and where their lives are going, about desired — or feared — change now transforming their lives. With its construction, consecration, and final immolation, the Threshold will ritualize and advance all the transitions written on its walls, propelling them into the future, into the sudden present.

In that moment, in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, as the Threshold burns against the midnight sky, Double Happiness will advance down its road towards publication, flying along its path from being a manuscript occupying my attention to becoming a book shared by the world.

In that light I will see how it is to be published.

That’s what I anticipate. The unpredictable universe and the gods of the harsh high desert may have plans of their own. But that is my intention. That is where I’ve been. That is where I’m going.

Images enrapture us with a speed words rarely match. Paintings and photographs, in particular, seize our attention with the specific focus and totality of their image.

Movies go further, animating images, colors, objects, and faces, bringing them to life with such power that sounds and words become secondary.

(How long after taking in the images above and at right, did you begin reading these words?)

Books have no images, no pictures, no colors.* Books are all about the words, and for good reason: The impact of words takes longer to penetrate the heart and mind but can ultimately go far deeper.

Novels, biographies, memoirs — these genres particularly feature almost no illustration. There are exceptions, and one of these exceptions, to me, for travel books like mine, adds the perfect palpable grounding to otherwise purely verbal narratives.

Maps. Maps illustrate the changing landscape behind a narrative to underscore the moments when the motion of the story accelerates or slows, changes direction, or launches into wholly new territory. Great maps not only illustrate this motion, but also serve the role they serve when one is off wandering oneself: They illustrate the possibility of endless new frontiers.

These are the maps I love and have loved all my life — those that push our journeys, whether armchair or actual, farther into the unfamiliar.

I’m ambitious and excited about the maps for Double Happiness. Maps will begin many of the chapters, and I’ve now begun working with a professional illustrator to create each one by hand. She’s reading the full manuscript, and she’s adding people, landmarks, and characters from the narrative to the maps themselves, so that they don’t simply demonstrate the direction of movement through the changing landscape of China, but also pull together diverse elements of the story. I love maps that do this — that subtly push the journey into the spatial awareness of the reader.

I think you’ll love the maps that she’s creating. A very rough first version of her work is above, at right.

Do you have a favorite book that featured a map or that included many maps? I would love to know, to look at other maps, to understand what works and what doesn’t. Do tell! Leave a comment below.

* Hundreds of excellent picture books and graphic novels are duly excepted, of course. And don’t get me wrong: The paucity of images in books is essential. Much of the fun of reading is using our own minds as readers to paint the mental picture — the mental movie — in the way we want to watch it, with the author’s descriptions as just the canvas and palette with which we paint. The best reading is a creative collaboration between the reader and the writer.

Thank You!
My sincere gratitude to everyone who participated in the election to choose an author photo. The polls are now closed, and you can see the results. 212 votes came in from 103 distinct people. Feel free to read some of the many thoughtful comments others had to offer.

The clear winner was the photo now atop this page, at right. Second place was “Hey, get a professional photographer,” which I may yet do. Three other photos tied for third, certainly attracting enthusiastic proponents.

When switching the photo out, I slightly redesigned the top of this blog of mine. What do you think? Cleaner? Dirtier? It used to look more like this.

Thank you. This is teamwork in book production. There will be more to come, and I hope you’ll participate again!

Sex, Backpack, English Teacher
Why did I write this book? I was driven, compelled to write Double Happiness for reasons I’m only now beginning to understand. Primarily it is to share with the wide world the wonder and lessons and insights I gained while traveling, with the earnest hope that perhaps others can do as well as — or better than — I have with them. To incorporate them into a daily life. I’m driven by the hope that my writing can shed light on the powerful tools of perception and wisdom we carry inside ourselves in every moment, and the freedom that use of these tools can grant.

I am using these tools now in this new adventure: publishing the manuscript.

If you follow your instincts and intuition and let them take you into wild unexpected places, and then let your ego go, walls drop magically around you, the world embraces you, and you see who you really are.

That’s the point. It was a challenge to say it in one paragraph.

Sex, Backpack, English Teacher, Monsoon, Mass Wedding, Drunken Soldiers, Singing, Solitude, Companionship, Secret Waterfalls, Mouthwatering Rabbit — it’s easier just to list some of the threads in the tale.

Writing embroiders the one into the other.

I’ll be posting a sample passage or two in the near future. Please tell me any threads you’d particularly like to see.