Tony Brasunas

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.

Do you know me well? Do you know me from Adam? (Sandler? Clayton? Baldwin?)

Either way, you can help me.

I have relatively little sense of marketing, and no training as a professional photographer, and I need to select a decent author’s portrait. Whether my book is picked up by a major publishing house, picked up by a boutique house, or the burgeoning 2.0 self-publishing option becomes the optimal path, I want to present a great image for my book now, and part of doing so is the author’s photo.

What photo would draw you in? Imagine an Eat, Pray, Love meets Into the Wild type of journey. What look would be fitting, credible, and intriguing? What might say, perhaps, ‘intelligent,’ ‘adventurous,’ or ‘engaging’?

Vote below. To vote for your favorite, just click on it. To vote for more than one, tick the boxes and click ‘Vote.’

[[POLL]]

Also, please leave a comment below to share why you voted the way you did.

If you don’t think any of them are any good, and I should hire a photographer, do tell me that.

The selected photo will eventually grace the back cover of the book as well as the top of this blog.

Last thing: I might change the picture on the About Me page, too. Thoughts?

Birth. Death. Sex. Your first taste of ice cream. Your first slow dance.

A handful of moments create us as human beings.

The first time someone signs on to Facebook does not quite rise to this level, and yet… It should be added, here early in the second decade of this young century, as a moment that amazes human hearts, that sends chills down spines, that reworks minds.

I just did it — joined on for the first time with the behemoth that goes by the initials FB — and when I clicked on its “friend suggestions,” lo and behold, arrayed before me were pictures and names of people I hadn’t heard from or even talked about in years. The girl I had a crush on in 8th grade. The guy who picked on me in 7th grade. My best friend from 6th grade.

It would be easy to call this the “Facebook moment.” But that would be inaccurate.

Any virtual network, to say nothing of a real, live event, could jolt this social electricity through the veins. More precise is to call this a synaptic event when the mental fog from living in a scattered society — this world of rapid travel and disjointed cities and long-distance families — vanishes, drops away, suddenly replaced by a forgotten closeness. In an instant, the vast fabric of superfluous strangers is gone, and now everyone matters, and the world again is what we evolved to understand: a community with about 150 people in it, all of whom we recognize.

That happened to me, yesterday. I still have only 9 actual friends, but I see dozens more “requests” and “suggestions” coming in, and I’m about to accept them all.

Please be one of them. Find me: Tony Brasunas. It’s easy, as you probably already know.

I’m also creating a page for my book, Double Happiness, so it too can find its social community, its friends and fans — so it too can feel the vast world drop away and its community telescope into intimacy. Probably Double Happiness will attract people who like to read, who like travel and China and humor and adventure and romance and spiritual awakening in a faraway land. Follow, fan, friend Double Happiness!

Well, enough from me. What do you think about Facebook? Much ado about nothing? A miracle in white, blue, and verdana? Are you too a holdout?

(And after you answer: I just added a ‘+’ button right below these words. So, um, share this to your FB!)

A journey of ten thousand miles begins with a single step.

So goes a fine Chinese proverb.*

The thing is, after that first step, you still have a bit more than 9,999 miles. More than a hop, skip, and a dozen jumps.

Journeying through China broke me open as a teacher, as a visitor, as a human being; it nearly killed me; it was the most profound experience of my young life.

Now, writing this book might be the most profound experience of my not-as-young life. After striding boldly the first, let’s say, 7,000 miles of this journey — writing the manuscript, enlisting all kinds of people’s help, revising it seven times — still, several thousand miles remained: The many-stepped path to publication.

It’s not China, but the publishing world too is a strange, foreign place with its own languages, customs, foods, and family values. Whereas my writing journey was originally a solitary pursuit consisting of: 1. channeling my inspiration and memories, 2. spending insanely long hours of joy and tension with my favorite word processor, and 3. developing to their potential the story itself and the underlying themes on a universal level so that those who cannot journey themselves for a year through a faraway land still can comprehend the essence of what can unfold. Now it’s: 1. writing and rewriting a series of proposals and pitches to literary agents and their generally overworked assistants.

The illuminating work of self-examination and creative expression ended at some now-distant shore; today I’m in above my shoulders in industry lingo, editors’ legacy connections to F. Scott Fitzgerald, publishing conferences puddled in acronyms, bottom lines, pitch lines, punch lines, queue lines for a few open-minded agents, online lunches, offline schmoozes, iPad anxieties, “aiming at Amazon,” and crafting harrowing cold calls that go by the name Query Letter.

So, how far am I on this new journey? Feels like, roughly, milepost 9,424. The end is in view, friends, the book will be published very soon!

In April and May I sent out nearly 100 of these Query Letters.

(What exactly is this beast, the dreaded Query Letter? It’s a rigorously-formatted, meticulously-sculpted, one-page prose cold call addressed to a literary personage. Literary personages are invariably looking for The Next Big Thing. The Query Letter serves as a literary headshot.)

The month of June was good, tortuous and torturous. One, then two, then three, then fourteen literary agents asked to see the manuscript after inspecting my Query Letter. Ideally, hopefully, fingers-crossed, four-leaf-clover-behind-my-ear, one of them will choose to take my project on, represent me, and sell the manuscript (tentatively called Double Happiness: One Man’s Tale of Love, Loss, and Wonder on the Long Roads of China) to one of them big almighty publishing houses.

And if not: The funny thing is that the earth has shifted under their big almighty feet. A barbaric yawp has sounded! I’ve heard it and declared my freedom. The new possibilities of e-publishing have so amazed me during my research over the past two months, that, if it comes to it, I will gladly publish the new way.

Over the weekend I spent time on Lulu.com, an outfit that has staked out substantial space in the new publishing landscape, and although I’m not likely to publish with them, I tried my hand at designing a cover, poured the manuscript into their custom text editor and generator, and voila, for $11.38 they’re sending me a full color galley of my completed book!

The pros and cons to both the new and old publishing models are many. They are a topic for a future entry.

For now, what do you think: How long should I wait to see if an agent and conventional publisher pick up my manuscript and run with it? I’ll hear back from them sometime between five minutes ago and 2012 — in short, whenever they feel like it.

What say you, dear esteemed reader?

—
* Many more of which, as epigraphs, grace the chapters of Double Happiness.

Welcome to this new room on the Internet, a place for talking about my forthcoming book, Double Happiness: One Man’s Tale of Love, Loss, and Wonder on the Long Roads of China.

Come here for backstory and frontstory, prologue and epilogue, before, after, and during your journey reading the book – and my journey publishing it.

The new journeys start now!

The truth is that I already appreciate you. For being here, for being curious, for being open to the two happinesses. I’d like to hear from you. I hope you will both read and participate: leave comments, send me thoughts. There will be opportunities here to do fun, special, helpful things, like opine on the book’s many epigraphs, choose my best author’s portrait (do you like the one atop this page?), vote on the book’s subtitle, and perhaps help me select art for the book’s cover.

What do you think about the design of this blog? Have any suggestions? Let me know.

Join me on a journey towards Double Happiness.