“Breakthrough” novel: An I-knew-him-when story
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- August
- 24
The winner of the “2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award” is a local guy. Sort of.
James King, author of the upcoming Bill Warrington’s Last Chance lives in Wilton, Conn., but he wrote much of the novel while enrolled in the graduate writing program at Manhattanville College in Purchase.
Full disclosure here: I know Jim. I attended the Manhattanville program, too, and Jim and I took the non-fiction class together. A 54-year-old freelance corporate communications writer, he’s a well-liked, low-key guy. And the non-fiction pieces he wrote were highlights of the class.
In fact, there’s more. I voted for King’s book in the contest, which is run by Amazon.com and which gets the winning book published. And I can say that I cast the vote fairly. I read a few pages from his book and from each of the other two finalists and felt that King’s was the best.
A few days ago, I talked to him about winning the contest, and about his book. It’s about a man who obviously is suffering from some unnamed form of dementia, probably Alzheimer’s disease, and is trying to reconnect with his children. He decides the best way to do this is to kidnap his granddaughter.
I caught up with King as he was making final line edits on the book for Penguin Books.
He said the title character is based on a neighbor, a “crusty, old New England type of peronality. A real character.”
The neighbor is not suffering from dementia, but King took notice when the guy’s house “which he had built with his own hands, started to fall apart around him.”
When the novel hits bookshelves a year from now — it takes a lot longer than he expected — it will be the first novel King will have published. But it’s not the first he’s written. Three more sit in a drawer. He said he’s come close to getting published in the past, “if you can say that getting a very detailed…rejection” is coming close.
Anyone who tries to publish fiction knows the frustration and disappointment it can bring. King kept trying.
“I guess I’m just a stubborn Irishman,” King said. “I wouldn’t give up.”
He enrolled in the Manhattanville program to work on Bill Harrington’s Last Chance, and he wrote the bulk of it in a novel-writing class given by instructor John Herman, which King took twice. But he benefited from a variety of classes at in the program, he said.
“You study lots of different forms and you learn the importance of word choice, all the critical components,” he said. “Getting that from several different perspectives, I think, was valuable for me.”
As for the three novels he wrote previously:
“The other completed novels, I think, will remain in the drawer,” he said.
This entry was posted
on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 3:56 pm by Ken Valenti.
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I feel compelled to correct something in Ken’s very nice post. His pieces, not mine, were the highlights of the class we took together.
Jim, congratulations! I read, enjoyed and voted for your piece on Amazon. I also attended Manhattanville’s writing program, which is where I met Ken. I’m only sorry I wasn’t in the non-fiction class with the two of you. It sounds as if it was very inspiring!
Thank you for your note, Christine—and your vote! Hope to meet you at a Mville gathering.