Belo Cipriani: Why did you feel the need to put together an audiobook?

Ashok Rajamani: For one simple reason: to make my book accessible to members of my family, i.e., the brain injury community and the blind/visually handicapped community.

These were my most important readers, and it broke my heart that they weren’t able to fully enjoy the book. Many of my blind and/or brain-injured readers were having difficulties accessing the story. Plus, I always think it’s a great experience for any reader to hear a memoir — a true, personal journey — told in the memoirist’s own voice.

BC: What was the process of producing the audiobook?

AR: To begin with, there was the issue of getting back my audio rights. Many authors, when they get their book contract, give their publisher audio rights. Do not do that! You end up with your publisher doing the parking garage scenario: Buying a car just to own it, but never actually driving it. They get your audio rights, and never do anything with it — and you end up missing out. You lose the possibility of taking your book to new creative lengths and bringing it to customers who cannot read print books. I’m delighted that I was able to regain my rights with the help of a good lawyer.

Next, after getting back those rights, I had to figure out how to get the audiobook made. At first I planned to go to ACX, Amazon’s audiobook wing that offers narrators and producers who can work for a fee, or free with royalty share. ACX used to have a great royalty program, which would award authors up to 90% of royalties. But now, it’s just 20% or 40% for exclusive distribution. This didn’t feel right to me, as I would be narrating the audiobook myself. Also, ACX gets your audiobook out digitally only, and, like I said, I wanted my book to have a physical release as well.

BC: Sounds like quite a major journey!

AR: That was just the beginning. Since I wanted to narrate it myself, I had to figure out where to record it. I couldn’t just use the mic on my computer. I had to find a professional studio, and finding the right studio takes time. Studios can cost insane amounts of money. Many narrators have their own home studios, so high cost isn’t an issue. But if you want to do it yourself, do the obvious: research, research, research. Do enough research and you can find a studio with the right price for you. That’s how I found mine.

BC: After finding a studio, what was the process of recording like, and did you have to do anything differently because of your disability?

AR: The studio was pretty glamorous, all sleek and shiny. There was an enclosed recording booth, facing the sound engineer and director. I had to sit on a stool and read my book from an iPad. This is an unabridged audiobook, which means I had to say EVERY word correctly. For example, if I said ‘a’ instead of ‘an,’ I had to say the sentence all over again! Due to my form of bisected blindness, I could barely see half the pages, so I made quite a few mistakes. Because of the brain injury, I would miss pages and have to re-read. And because of that damn director, I would have to re-pronounce the word ‘figure’ every time it was in the book. I say the word figure like ‘trigger,’ and he wanted me to say it like ‘fig-year.’ But I’m proud to say, I finished the whole recording, even though it was the hardest thing to do. I also foolishly chose a studio that was situated in the heart of Times Square. And this was recorded during the height of summer. So not only did I have to deal with the stress of recording, but I had to deal with trying to navigate through mobs and mobs of people in sweat-soaked New York City. For normal-sighted people, this means major trouble. For blinded and visually handicapped people, this is a downright nightmare! But after the 6 weeks of being in the studio, I finished. Busted, exhausted and torn up like a Vietnam vet.

BC: You got your rights back, decided how to produce it, and recorded it in the studio. What was the next step?

AR: Well, now that the whole shebang was done, I had to find the right distributor, one who could get my book out everywhere, in all versions. Again, that took research. I’m happy with the distributor I eventually chose.

BC: What was your family’s reaction to your audiobook?

AR: My folks had three reactions. The first one was expected: they found it hilarious and loved the comedy. The second reaction was expected too: they found it very difficult to hear me recount my pain. It was hard enough for them to read my book; the difficult health situations and hospital horrors hurt them deeply. Obviously, listening to one’s child recounting his/her pain is a tough thing for any parent to handle. The last reaction was expected too: they wanted to shoot me for the way I performed my father’s accent.

BC: Where can people buy your audiobook?

AR: People can buy it it through many retailers, with multiple options. It is available as a digital work, an actual physical CD and an MP3 CD, and it is also available for loan on some sites. Here are the stores where it is available for purchase — physical edition or digital edition:
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble.com and store
Audible
iTunes

Plus, audiobooks.com, Simply Audiobooks, Findaway World, Overdrive, spoken word, Midwest Tape, Downpour, Blackstone Audio, Ambling Books, eMusic, Baker & Taylor, Follett, LearnoutLoud, Midwest Tapes, Recorded Books

BC: What’s next for you?

AR: I’m excited to say that after releasing The Day My Brain Exploded through a traditional publisher, Algonquin Books, I’ve decided to abandon the old ways. The issues of dealing with a traditional publisher are really not worth it — life is too short. So I’ve now decided to go indie, enter the modern era, and release all my work electronically. As such, I formed my own entertainment production company called Spiral Mirror Entertainment. It is so named because the company intends to take on e-based projects that shake up society and offer a reflection that spirals the norm. The Day My Brain Exploded: The Audiobook is our first project. Coming up next is my second work, an e-book entitled If These Saris Could Talk, which reveals the lives of a group of subversive, transgressive Indian women, presenting a whole new definition of what femininity means. It will accompany a fabulous audiobook performed by a famous British Indian actress. Other upcoming projects include “Prose on Peace” — an e-collection of blog posts by a post-modern Catholic Peace Director, which will show entirely new ways true peace can be achieved spiritually.

BC: Ashok, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Making an audiobook on your own, especially for a person with disabilities, really does seem like a daunting mission. If you had a chance to do this all over again, would you?

AR: In a heartbeat.

To learn more about Ashok Rajamani, you can visit his website, AshokRajamani.com, and find him on Facebook.

Belo Cipriani: What is the title of your book?

Meg Day: The title of my first full-length collection of poems is Last Psalm at Sea Level and it will be published by Barrow Street Press on October 1, 2014.

BC: What is your book about?

MD: What a deceptively simple question! I began thinking through this book when I lived in California and completed it after a few years in Utah. Before moving to Utah, I had never lived away from a coast (and never far from an ocean); when I found myself landlocked for the first time, everything changed—not just my work, but my health, my sense of self, my cravings for happiness, my personal and romantic relationships, my professional aspirations, and my desire for family. Last Psalm at Sea Level is, for me, a farewell to the life I thought I knew, but also to California—it’s hard for me, as someone so invested in and affected by geography, to separate them out. I don’t mean to say that I won’t ever live in that great state again, but I think there’s an insular quality to California that comes with a particular fetishization of life there and bestows upon its residents, especially those raised there (like I was), a sense that nowhere else could be as great a place. In leaving California, I had a lot of mourning to do; and then, later, when I realized how foolishly I had discounted so many places in the country (and thus, so many kinds of lives I might’ve liked to live), I mourned what kind of possibilities I’d missed because of my coastal blinders. It’s a book about the in-between of all of that, about in-betweenity in general, I think—and the interrogation of geography as dictator, and of god, whoever or whatever that is, as something else entirely.

BC: How long did it take to write?

MD: There are a few poems in this collection that I began as early as 2006, and a handful in 2010 at Lambda, but the great majority of the book was written from winter 2011/2012 through winter 2012/2013. I’ve never produced that much work in such a short amount of time, but believe me when I say it was a long, long winter, even through the hottest parts of July.

BC: Where did you write the book? Did you have it workshopped?

MD: I wrote the book mostly in-residence in Salt Lake City, but some poems are, to me, very obviously written while traveling in coastal San Diego, in the hills of Los Angeles, or in a restored boomtown in Centennial Valley, Montana. A good number of them are written in airplanes, flying above much of the western United States, or as a passenger in cars, driving across it. I was lucky to have the editorial help of colleagues and faculty in my PhD here at University of Utah, but am also indebted to early comments from workshop participants and facilitators at Lambda, Squaw Valley, and Hedgebrook.

BC: Was there a part of the book that was particularly tough to write?

MD: Am I allowed to say all of it? There are many poems in this collection that deal with the difficulty of being alive, whether that’s through standing witness to illness or heartbreak or some other trial altogether. As the book started to take shape, so many people in my life were enduring some crisis or another—family trauma, transitions, sobriety, cancer, suicides, injuries or arrests during the height of the Occupy movement, displacement, divorce, hate crimes—and poetry became this mental space where everything was possible and everything finally stood still. I could breathe in poems, I could catch my breath, I could take a break from the incredible labor of living. It was difficult, though, to figure out how to best represent some of these stories without appropriating their experiences. I don’t mean to imply that every poem is non-fiction—far from it—but instead to sort of preserve my position as witness. Korean poet Myung Mi Kim talks about how it is that we can tell stories without being at the center of them: we stand next to them, we offer them support, we hold them up.

BC: What is your creative process like?

MD: I really like to think about things for a long time before trying to put them on the page. Nobody ever really likes that answer, mostly because some folks seem to be really invested in believing that there’s only one recipe for being a working writer and it involves sitting for a certain amount of time every day, churning out work. It’s just not how it happens for me. I definitely “work” every day, but because I’m invested in particular relationships and in spending a lot of my time teaching, sitting down to write for hours every day not only seems undoable, but totally unenjoyable. I remember trying it during undergrad (to no avail) and finding it felt a lot like trying to sleep when you’re not tired: ultimately, it dissuades you from lying down at all. So mostly I think a lot. And read a lot. Sometimes I write things down in a notebook or accidentally on the back of a student’s paper. Sometimes I listen to a song on repeat for too many days and the repetition makes something new happen in my brain. It’s exciting that it’s different every time. I like that there’s not one answer.

BC: Did you get to pick the cover and title?

MD: I’m really fortunate that Barrow Street offered me a lot of freedom in finding an image for the cover of this collection and even more grateful that Afaa Michael Weaver’s editorial notes didn’t require me to change the title. The title decision was a long time in coming and was the focus of a lot of my worry early on in submitting this manuscript to contests (it was a finalist at six other presses under a total of four different names!). Typically, contemporary publishers shy away from any kind of religious reference—one press wrote back and merely said that any book with the word “god” in it was going to be a hard sell. It’s not that I don’t believe them, it’s that I watched them become too distracted by the connotation to understand what was possible in language play. I don’t frequently find myself compelled by poems that address “God” in the traditional, conventional sense, in the same way I’m less interested in poems that address the “muse” as we saw it in the epics. I like different and deeper investigations. What about the divine self that exists but is untouchable, ineffable? What about a lord that is female and eternal and transgender? I’m interested in remaking god again and again through language. I’m interested in reclaiming the divine for poets who look upward when they write.

The image on the cover is by Sarah Treanor, a fine art photographer living south of Austin, Texas. I was struck by the incredible vibrancy of Treanor’s work and especially interested in the way that she captured on film the private pastoral interiority that carpets a lot of my poetic intention. Before I knew anything about her, I was certain that she was a photographer who had dealt with loss or grief, simply because her images are nuanced in a way that is altogether animated and also full of longing—they visually embody the elegy at its best, without losing that pastoral heritage. I’m really lucky that Treanor agreed to work with me and luckier still for the artistic collaborations that I think are possible between us moving forward.

BC: What are your thoughts on ebooks? Will there be an ebook version of your book
available for purchase?

MD: Ebooks are swell! They’re sometimes a little more affordable, they provide flexibility around sharing and traveling, and, perhaps most importantly, they improve access for folks who require screens or magnified text or voice-software in order to read. I don’t feel afraid of ebooks taking over print books, nor do I really think poetry suffers from the so-called limitations of screen or tablet sizes. Sure, I worry about my lineation being conveyed in the way that I intended it, but I worry about that in print, too. Some pages just aren’t wide enough or long enough for my lines; it comes with the territory, I guess. More frequently, however, I find that ebooks or web-based literary journals are better equipped to accommodate. I feel excited about what ebooks and electronic literature make possible. If it improves access, I’m for it. As for this particular collection, I don’t know that there’s an ebook currently planned—but here’s hoping!

BC: To whom did you dedicate your book and why?

MD: In early conversations with Barrow Street, I made the unpopular decision not to dedicate my book to anyone. It just seemed like such a loaded thing for me, a political thing, like who you invite to your birthday party and who you don’t: leaving folks out by having to choose a few for the dedication wasn’t appealing to me. Because this is the first book that I’ve published, but not the first chapbook or the first manuscript I’ve completed, even, it’s difficult to figure out how to best express gratitude to the folks who were crucial in this particular project’s fulfillment, without also including every single poet, teacher, partner, chosen kin, or classmate that helped me arrive here. I think folks expect the latter from first books, but this isn’t really my first book—it’s just the book that got picked up first. Should my very first manuscript ever become a published collection, the acknowledgments might, by then, appear to be some archive or cemetery of relationships gone by. Even then, I think I’d probably shy away from dedication. My book is for you, is for the reader, whoever you are.

BC: When and where will your book be available?

MD: Last Psalm at Sea Level is currently available through Amazon, Small Press Distribution, and through Barrow Street Press’ website. The book’s official date of publication was October 1, 2014, but I think everything’s a little backordered already. I’m really excited to be touring with the book this next academic year and would love to roll through as many schools, libraries, book groups, community centers, youth groups, or book festivals as is financially feasible. The best part of writing, hands down, is the community that builds up around it.

To learn more about Meg Day, visit her website at www.megday.com, find her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter @themegdaystory. You can also visit her author pages on Amazon and GoodReads.

Who is Belo Cipriani?

Belo Cipriani is the Writer-in-Residence at Holy Names University, a spokesperson for Guide Dogs for the Blind, the “Get to Work” columnist for SFGate.com, and the author of Blind: A Memoir and Midday Dreams. You are invited to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and  YouTube.

Image: Last Psalm at Sea Level book cover (Barrow Street Press, 2014)

I played my Amália Rodrigues CD so much that my high school friends would refuse to jump in my white jeep.
“I’d rather walk than have to listen to that sad music,” they said.

Even my Portuguese friends put my Amália CD down, saying it was the music of their grandparents. My love for Fado pushed me to travel to Lisbon, the Azores and the Madeira’s in my 20s. With my Brazilian Portuguese, I moseyed through colorful markets, jumping at every opportunity to listen to a live Fadista perform. And it was at one of these concerts where I shared a table with an old lady who beamed when I told her I was from San Francisco.

“I have a brother who moved there in the 70’s with his amigo,” she explained in Portuguese, “The day he left Sao Miguel was the last time we spoke though.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she left before the concert started. The woman’s reaction stayed with me for awhile. But like many memories, it was eventually buried.

Fifteen years later, I was now blind and a writer and was listening to Pandora when an Amália song started to play. For the first time in years, I thought of that woman and her brother. And as Amália sang her heart out, a story began to take shape in my mind.

Midday Dreams is not my attempt at piecing together the woman’s story. It’s a tale that was inspired by the stranger’s tears, but took on a life of its own as I re-kindled my admiration for the bluesy Portuguese music. As someone who writes memoir, it’s important for my readers to know that Midday Dreams is not based on anyone I know. It’s not my first work of fiction, but it is the first tale my readers will have access to that has nothing to do with me.

About Midday Dreams
Belo Cipriani (Blind: A Memoir) returns with a magical short story that whisks readers away to another time, another place. 

In the lyrical Midday Dreams, Cipriani takes his readers to a lush, tropical island that isn’t the paradise it might appear to be. There, the devout Izabel learns to open her heart to those who don’t live and believe as she does. 

Infused with prophetic dreams and magical realism, Midday Dreams will surely find its way into your heart.

Midday Dreams is available now at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iTunes and Kobo.

Who is Belo Cipriani?

Belo Cipriani is the Writer-in-Residence at Holy Names University, a spokesperson for Guide Dogs for the Blind, the “Get to Work” columnist for SFGate.com, and the author of Blind: A Memoir. You are invited to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and  YouTube.

Belo Cipriani: You have an MFA in creative writing and you are a chef. Do you split your time evenly between writing and cooking?

Christine Ha: I very much would like to, but it’s been quite difficult carving out the time to sit down and write seriously since completing my MFA last year. I have been working on a memoir, but nowadays, I seem to do a lot more food-related things. As an outlet, however, I think it’s important to keep a balance in life, which means a chef shouldn’t always be in the kitchen, but rather, he/she needs to find other hobbies that can renew the mind and soul and feed the creativity. I do make time to write my blog (www.theblindcook.com) weekly, so that keeps me a little sane.

BC: What was the process like for organizing the recipes in your cookbook?

CH: First, I thought about what sort of recipes I’d like to include, and immediately a theme emerged: comfort food. After collecting the recipes I’d had thus far, the editor and I played around with the recipes, trying to see how we could divide them into categories or sub-themes that made the most sense. Then we went back and rounded out the chapters so the numbers of recipes were relatively even throughout. For example, my “Something Sweet”/dessert chapter was minimal, because I’m not a baker nor much of a sweets person, so I had to think of what additional dishes I could include. Then came a lot of recipe testing and kitchen experimenting.

BC: Do you use any assistive technology for the blind to cook?

CH: I mostly depend on tactile stickers marking my burner knobs and appliances. When necessary, I use a digital talking scale, a talking thermometer, a liquid level indicator, and Braille labels (mostly on my spices). I also have many other devices like the iGrill, but they are not a part of my daily use.

BC: How does your family deal with your blindness?

CH: My husband is great. He doesn’t ever patronize me — in fact, we joke that he kind of gives me “tough love.” He is not the most careful sighted guide, but I think it encourages me to be more independent. The rest of my family is good, too. When I first lost my vision, they were unsure of what I needed, i.e. how much help vs. how little to give. They felt helpless and had never dealt with a visually impaired person before, so their gauge of assistance or how they treated me was polar. But now, they know my capabilities and also my needs, and they’re good.

BC: Do you have any plans for writing a novel?

CH: I have a novel, a collection of short stories, a one-act play, and some poetry. The novel and collection are quite incomplete, though the play and poems are more or less closer to their final drafts, if not already there. My memoir has been my focus.

BC: What’s your favorite cookbook?

CH: I actually don’t have one. I used to read them a lot more when I had my vision — a lot of the cookbook reading experience, I’ve found, lies in the visual stimulation of the food photos. I will, however, tell you what I’m currently listening to: Becoming A Chef, by Andrew Dornenburg (for the second time), and The Professional Chef, by the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). Just for kicks, here are other books I’m currently reading (I’m always reading a bunch at once): The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole (in Braille), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey (for the second time), The 4-Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferris, and The New Yorker and InStyle magazines.

BC: Any cooking advice for people who are newly blind and are still shy around the kitchen?

CH: Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Yes, play it safe at the beginning by having a sighted person around to help. But you only get stronger by making and learning from your mistakes. I still make mistakes all the time in the kitchen. Learn to laugh about it.

You can learn more about Christine Ha by visiting her website, TheBlindCook.com. She also invites you to connect with her on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter, at @theblindcook and @ChristineHHa.

Who is Belo Cipriani?

Belo Cipriani is the Writer-in-Residence at Holy Names University, a spokesperson for Guide Dogs for the Blind, the “Get to Work” columnist for SFGate.com, and the author of Blind: A Memoir. You are invited to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and  YouTube.

Photo: Mitch Mandel Rondale

Many talented writers and artists talk about isolating themselves in nature, and I myself have been fortunate to get writing residencies in some of the most beautiful regions of the world. It’s no wonder people think being out in the country is the purest way to inspire art. As a writer who is blind, I find that spending time in nature can be very constructive to writing: The sound of birds chirping, the scent of ancient trees, and the peaceful song of branches dancing in the wind always lead to inspiration.

But getting a writing residency is very competitive, and many writers can’t afford to leave their daily lives for weeks or months to focus on their craft. For any writer who feels stunted because they can’t escape to a natural place, I’d like to tell you about urban inspiration.

Tapping Into Every Sense
We’re often told to look up at the sky or to a lavish garden for inspiration. Being in nature forces people to use their senses to absorb instead of analyze. The smells, colors, and animals that serve as muses trigger memories and help us conjure up other worlds.

When I lost my sight, the doctor told me our brains receive 80 percent of information through our eyes. The rest is distributed among the other four senses. In other words, vision is distracting.

I often asked my friends and family members to decode unfamiliar noises or scents and soon realized most people don’t know the smells, sounds, or the feel of their own cities.

Great writers can bring every sense into their story. The books I love the most are those that leave me with distinct scents, flavors, and sensations on my skin. Learning to describe urban places is just as important as writing about a forest or a lake. Although you may not have noticed, your city has a story to tell just as much as nature does, and learning to use your senses in an urban environment can become a powerful writing tool.

Connecting to Your Environment
I’m sure by now you’re wondering how to deploy this urban inspiration technique. Here are some tips to help you open your senses:

1. Listen. Start by closing your eyes and learning the noises that make up the soundtrack on your street. Once you identify them, learn who or what makes them. If it’s a car, find out the make and model. Write the sound out in its onomatopoeic form, and start a list. You’ll be surprised how those sound words can come in handy when writing memoir or fiction. Researching something you hear can also lead you to a story.

2. Feel and Smell. Take a walk. Get to know the physical feelings and scents of your city. Find out what the bus stops feel like and what they are made from. Figure out the smells on busy streets. Go into coffee shops, restaurants, or markets and investigate what ingredients are calling your nose.

3. Notice Colors. Although I’m totally blind, I still notice colors. I have a machine that reads colors on objects in a robotic voice. I walk to places and scan things to get a reading. I get strangers on the street involved by asking for their feedback on a color. After asking three to five people the same question, I end up with a list of different ways to express the same shade of paint.

Sometimes, I ask people what color their neighbors’ houses are, and I’m never surprised when they don’t know. Learn the color palette of your street. Learn the different shades of blue that make up the sky above your house and pay attention to the time of day.

4. Get to Know People and Places. In researching my second book, I delved into my city for inspiration. I visited the car museum to get the feel for seats and steering wheels. I wanted to touch with my hands and see how cars have evolved in the past 100 years. I went to a Buddhist temple to get the sense of the energy during chanting and met with a perfume maker to learn the vernacular of fragrances.

Each place and person I experienced in my city helped inspire hours of writing. Your city has a wealth of people with different experiences and backgrounds, and many cities also have treasure troves of history and culture waiting to be discovered.

Nature works as a conduit for creativity because isolation helps people tap into all of their senses. Most people think the only way to produce art is by running away to some desolate place. The truth is that my inspiration comes from experiencing the world around me — whether I’m in the country or the city.

Opening your mind to experience the world in different ways is an integral part of writing. Until we fully learn to absorb and experience the world we live in, we’ll never be able to communicate or connect our readers to that world.

Who is Belo Cipriani?

Belo Cipriani is the Writer-in-Residence at Holy Names University, a spokesperson for Guide Dogs for the Blind, the “Get to Work” columnist for SFGate.com, and the author of Blind: A Memoir. You are invited to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.

Photo: “The Tenderloin, San Francisco, CA” by Tom Collins is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

The paratransit driver lurches to a stop outside the Tribune Towers in downtown Chicago, but I don’t hear the driver bark my name because I am deep in a book, as I have been ever since the two-hour site-seeing tour began. When I finally hear the driver barking my name, I immediately spring up, grab my cane, portfolio, and waltz down the bus steps onto pavement. From past experience, I know that the drivers drop me off at the entrance, plus I see masses of colorful blurs opening something ahead of me where a cool breeze tickles my skin. I follow the breeze until I am in the Chicago Tribune lobby, my portfolio ignorant of the opportunity I’m advocating for. If my resume hadn’t been so flashy, I never would have landed the job interview. If my letters of recommendation didn’t warble with the practiced fervor of a songster, the interviewer would not have considered me. I’m glad my old age of 24 doesn’t hold me back from epic chances to prove I have the chops to write without a bachelor’s degree.

As I take a step closer toward this different world, the world of big time news, I think to myself, “I know these older folks are wishing they had as wicked of a hairstyle as I do.” As I tap my way inside, leading a marching band that only I can see, I begin to wonder what my blindness will do for me. I saunter up to the handsome black security guard and wave my state ID at him like a baton. My cane pines for attention as well, as it decides to linger upright in my armpit. I want him to marry me. He looks dashing.

“Welcome sir. How can I help you?”

“I’m here for a job interview with Tracy.” There’s a pause where the guard contemplates how he will handle the fate of the future by letting me through to the waiting room.

“A job interview?” he asks, knowing my blindness better than I do.

“Yes, I’m here to see Tracy D for a 1:00 job interview.”

“Really?” he asks, able to predict how my blindness will be the death of the Chicago Tribune.

“Yes. Really. I even dressed up!” I say gleefully, silently thanking the gay gods for a gay friend who is darker than this man, cuter, and smarter about fashion than I am. The guard makes a few phone calls and when he, indeed, learns that I am here for a job interview, his voice drowns in apologies as he helps me to a chair in the lobby. I notice that there’s new paint and this becomes more apparent the longer I sit in the waiting room. People clip clop their way past me. A few editors are barking into their cell phones yelling at their writers about deadlines. Perfumes and colognes keep wafting past my nostrils every few minutes as I tap my cane on the wood floor, learning all the emergency exits and procedures and policies thanks to a repeating training video to my left. I wonder if it’s closed-captioned. The longer I sit there, because I’m early, the more astonished I am at how many different perfumes and colognes someone can drown in. I don’t smell the same fragrant twice. I think I’m going crazy. I’m nervous. I don’t know if I should be a blind guy and jam ear buds in my ears and continue reading Star Wars or if I should concentrate for different pairs of shoes. Surely, the hiring manager would have shoes that sound more elegant as they tap the wood.

I hoist my writing portfolio in my lap, wondering if I have too many letters of recommendation and not enough clippings. I wonder if I should have even brought paper clippings, because I sent links the other day when they gave a small email interview, because I have a stutter. I’m wondering if people are staring at my youth as they walk past, wafting every fragrance in the United States with each step.

I suddenly decide that I really want to finish this chapter, so I jam the ear buds into my BookSense, refusing to care about how stereotypical I look. Besides, I had another gay guy dress me up this morning, because I would have also stereotypically walked in with mismatched shirts and sweaters. I wonder why braille is so confusing. Who will I meet here? What kind of questions will they ask in the interview? Why did I skip the tea this morning despite Jamaal’s urgings? How can I get him to think of new racial jokes?

Just as the chapter finishes, and Luke gets captured, elegant sounding shoes step towards me with purpose and slight hesitation. I know this is the woman interviewing me because her perfume is the best I have smelled all day and it doesn’t want to make me write an editorial. She steps closer, thinning the visual thread, allowing me to see what she looks like. Her face makes me believe she smiles for a living.

“Robert Kingett?” she asks, wondering if I will be the downfall of the Chicago Tribune because of my lack of cologne.

“Yes,” I say, standing up and smiling wider than a final contraction before shaking her hand. I’m thankful my teeth are white. I’m also thankful I sent her links to my work and my resume the day before. My print portfolio feels heavier than it did a minute ago. “I can’t tell you how excited I am to be here!” I boast. Her smile competes with mine. We’re in a smiling contest. I will lose because she’s an expert and I’m an intermediate.

“I’m really excited to have you here, too! How do you want to do this? Do you want to grab my elbow or follow me?” I decide that the world can be safe from me bumping into things today and take her elbow. As we walk into a carpeted hallway, I excitedly listen to my possible future as we navigate various turns. Phones ring, air swooshes past me at random intervals, people are saying that the coffee needs more sugar even though it’s 1pm, people laugh at funny quotes, and  atmospheric and furniture smells trickle in and out of my nose as we race towards the finish line, with her explaining that we entered different parts of the newsroom. Doors halt our steady march for a few seconds but we continue onward talking as if we’re already in a clique. She tells me she really likes the articles that she’s been reading and sharing, and I manage to say much more clever things than “thank you” repeatedly.

We finally make it to the room that will decide my future and she and I sit in very comfy chairs that I want to steal so I can watch Netflix on them. A few more people come into the room, including a few more editors, an assistant, and laptops. Before long, the interview begins. She’s read about me online, so she has different questions for me than I expect.

“Your letters of recommendation were utterly glowing! You’re only 24?”

“Yes,” I say, not knowing if I should add to this. I add to this by saying, “I’m thankful they wrote so much about me! I’m also very happy about the work I’ve produced. I’m very passionate about my quality.”

“I know! Do you know how many times I’ve shared your articles and interviews? A lot! Now, you’ve said that you are still in school, yes? Community college, right?”

“Yes,” I say, wishing I had Denzel Washington there to stroke my hand and still my screaming heart. The stutter draws all of my answers out, as if I’m stretching vowels because I’m marveling at my own sentence structure. I want to go on a date soon. I wonder what question she will ask. Chairs produce noises of shifting bodies. I’m wondering if any of these African American men think I’m attractive. Should I say less, more? Should I stop imagining myself in the newsroom?

“You’re only a freshman, judging by your resume. How did you get to be published in so many venues?” I’m about to have a heart attack. I think my hair is utterly wonderful.

“I’m just a diligent person. When I set my sites on a goal, I do everything I can to achieve it, including learning from my past mistakes, such as with editing and the like. I just worked very hard and learned because I wanted to achieve my goal. I want to be a valuable reporter anywhere that I go.” My cerebral palsy is making me jerk slightly as I talk. I hear typing on keyboards, knowing that the other editors are taking notes on what pizza they want to have tonight. A few look my way as if I’m the chief reporter. Perhaps I will be. I imagine myself going out with one of them. I think I have said too much.

“Well, can I just say I am amazed at how calm you look? Usually college students are sweating bullets in here.” I smile.

“Thank you! I’ve learned that everything works epically with a collective noggin. Otherwise, pizza delivery guys would get lost.” There are a lot of genuine chuckles that dance around the table as if we’re doing a microphone test.

“I totally agree,” Tracy says, wondering why I am so young. “So did you learn AP style on your own?”

“Well, yes. I had to. I know that’s a style I will use, so why wait for someone to teach it to me? For example, I know that…” I forget what I’m going to say. “I know that with states, there’s a three letter abbreviation instead of the two letter abbreviation, among other things. AP style is a standard and I want to be the best I can be, so I just decided to learn it.”

“Interesting! How many times are you out in the field?” She means interviewing. Should I tell her about the BookSense I have? I think I will. I brandish it as I talk.

“I’m usually out in the field interviewing people rather than doing email and or phone interviews because I’ve had stories where, say, an email interview wouldn’t give me the information I needed for the story. When I write human interest stories, I want to tell their stories how they tell it, in their own voices. I record interviews on this BookSense. It’s a really cool player that will allow me to listen to books, recorded notes, and documents.” I show them the player, playing a Star Wars excerpt, knowing any professional journalist would never describe something as a cool device. I’m sure I won’t get the job. I imagine myself going on an assignment, telling someone I’m with the Tribune.

There’s a collective gasp around the table as if I’m doing brain surgery.

“Oh my god! I need one of these!” one of the editors says as I demonstrate the recording function.

A few minutes later, the serious questions start hitting home.

“Who do you read, as far as news outlets?” I have no idea how to answer this one.

“I read a lot of different articles from a lot of different publications, but I don’t religiously read the same publication. I’ve read a bunch of articles from a number of writers on a number of websites, including the Tribune, USA Today, The Herald, BBC, and a bunch of other stuff.” I conclude with a smile, my nerves straining to be rational.

“That’s great! Diversity is really great; it means that you have different angles to the same story.”

“I know,” I say before I can stop myself, but then I quickly add, “I just enjoy all kinds of news in all places. I like examining different perspectives.” There are smiles spreading throughout the editors like they are a tidal wave.

“That’s wonderful! With all this experience, have you ever been in a newsroom before?”

“No, I have not been in a newsroom before, at all,” I say, feeling the tension shift in the room. There’s a long pause, and then Tracy says, “A newsroom is very hectic. You have a lot of people running around and the like. Boy, I tell you, sometimes it’s difficult for ME to navigate around there.” I smile because I know I’m doomed, but I want to leave them with a quote, at least, that they will remember as they are hiring someone else. I imagine myself sitting in a newsroom and Tracy approaching me, giving me a medal that touts employee of the year on it. I don’t think I will get the job. I will be the best reporter at the Tribune.

“I can imagine. I’ve been in a newsroom for meetings and stuff, but the way I look at it is, if I can fill out a tax return than a newsroom shall be no match for me!” There’s a collective chuckle and this makes me feel good. She will tell me that I’m hired in a few days and then I will be a reporter here. I know this will happen, because I won’t order pizza tonight and everything will happen smoothly if I don’t order pizza. My heart threatens to rip out of my skin a few times before the interviewee goes,

“Do you have any questions for me?”

“No. I don’t. I do want to say that I enjoy the work that you guys do, though.” Everyone stands up and shakes my hand hard, marveling at my hair and choice of clothes. The interview lasted an hour, and I wonder what happens next in the Star Wars book.

A few days later, I receive an email from Tracy telling me that, even though I was stellar, they have chosen to go ahead and hire someone with more experience. I listen to the email several times, glad that I don’t have to worry or think about it anymore. It’s done. The stellar interview is over, and I’m still a freelancer who doesn’t wear cologne. I decide to order pizza that night, because pizza makes everything better. I order one with peperoni because I want to have cold pizza tomorrow. The Tribune didn’t hire me because I didn’t have epic cologne on during the job interview. Ah well, at least they got to hear a bit of Star Wars.

Robert Kingett is a disability journalist, covering every disability in every subcategory, even business. He is also a blogger and video game critic in Chicago, who reviews mainstream titles on the basis of accessibility for mainstream gaming publications. He’s also a motivational speaker and the creator of the Accessible Netflix Project, as well as an activist for various other campaigns for LGBT equality and disability advancements. You can find him on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Photo: Courtesy of Robert Kingett

When I decided to become a writer, I figured that my past experience as a recruiter coupled with a big dose of eagerness would make landing my first writing gig not as challenging. Unaware of the obstacles ahead, I retired from an eight year career in staffing and belly flopped into the competitive field of writing.

I’m now a freelance writer and I’m always looking for my next gig. Initially it was frustrating to hear undertones of fear or confusion in the voices of the hiring managers when I revealed my blind side to them over the phone or to get the novelty treatment while interviewing in person, which never lead to job offers. My luck began to change thanks to the help of a television commercial. A few years ago, Samsung was running an advertisement that featured a blind woman and her guide dog as she used her phone on the beach. Everyone mentioned the commercial to me and suggested I contact Samsung for a job; I even got the same phone she had as a gift.

Realizing the impact of demonstrating a blind person using a cell phone had on my circle of friends prompted me to carry my adaptive equipment with me to job interviews. I heard sighs of awe and admiration whenever I showed the people interviewing me my laptop and talking dictionary. I began to hear “When can you start?” instead of “We will be in touch.”

I believe that more employers would hire blind workers if movies, commercials, and print ads showed more blind people doing day to day mundane things. Currently, the media showcases people of all shades of skin and cultures; I look forward to the day more companies use disabled people in their marketing, as we also buy their products.

Who is Belo Cipriani?

Belo Cipriani is the Writer-in-Residence at Holy Names University, a spokesperson for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and the author of Blind: A Memoir. You are invited to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.

I am contributing this writing not in expertise, but in knowing that to become a writer you must write. There is a lot I don’t know, but the one thing I do know is how much I enjoy the craft of writing. Whether you write poetry, books or music, I think you’ll find a glimpse of understanding in these words.

Since I can remember, I have been a person fascinated by the art of conversation. Seeing my father work as a minister — crafting words to motivate a congregation — is where I was first exposed to the power of words. Yet, I knew I didn’t want to be a speaker. When I was young, some of my favorite things to read were the scriptures in Psalms; not because I was a pastor’s kid, but because of the musicality the phrases had.

I will never forget when words combined with music for me. It was a chilly Christmas in upstate New York. I unwrapped my last present under the tree that year: a piano. It seemed as though my passion for words and music made sense as I mumbled made up lyrics while sliding my fingers up and down the keys.

I began playing in church and eventually became confident enough to stand and sing my own created words. Add on some years and I found myself in a studio internship where I found out I could petrify my own songs through recording. I then became obsessed with the word and melody choice for each song I began, and it seemed impossible to have my mind and pen agree on anything. The first step to overcome this thought process was to let the song define itself. The process of writing for me is just as important as the product. So word by word, and countless vocal take by vocal take, my first recorded song, “Up and Away,” finally came to be. At this time, I had no idea what genre I was, or what my audience looked like, or much of anything, but I did know I felt closer to bliss when I was making music.

My song “Up and Away” was my first step in knowing I wanted to create a full recorded EP. The first line from this song is “Life is getting complicated, I’d rather stick with dreams” and I did just that with this EP. I dismissed my inexperience and simply created music that felt authentic to myself. Of course I didn’t know much about microphones or recording software, but I did know what sounded good and this is the very concept that I give to young writers and creatives: do what looks, sounds, or feels good; someone else is bound to agree with you.

My love for the swells of movie scores — blended with my obsession of soul music’s intention — birthed the rest of the EP. The struggle for me was to produce something that mirrored how I felt about the material. In my head and heart, I knew my songs were great, but on paper and through speakers I didn’t hear or see them as great. This began my editing process. I didn’t know when I was finished or what I should dismiss in certain parts of each song. The best thing for me during this process was to let the writing sit and let it grow on its own. Coming back to a song or lyric after a rest allowed me to hear with fresh ears and see with fresh eyes — almost allowing myself to be a new audience to the material.

Throughout the duration of writing this EP, I was studying English in school. I was writing poetry and studying creative greats. In my poetry class, I thought I would be able to write music lyrics and then use them for my songs, but this isn’t what happened. To me, music lyrics and poetry are very distant in concept.

Music lyrics have a different intention. Lyrics are meant to be heard in conjunction with music, therefore they are written to be heard with music. Of course lyrics should be strong and should stand alone, but the words have different platforms to operate on. They operate as a word, a melody, and they have the voice of the singer. They create a moment.

In poetry, the words perfect a moment. The writer writes in a way that the words speak on their own. There is no distraction for an author to manipulate words to match a musical chord; the words have to be their own chord. The words alone create a musicality, with no instrumentation. That is the beauty of poetry.

With this knowledge of lyric writing I continue to write, produce, and perform. Although I don’t know where my journey will take me, I know I will keep walking to get there. I do know my concentrated efforts for the future are in writing for other musicians. I believe I find my best voice when writing for others because of my fascination with emulating something other than what I know or am comfortable with. I am excited to pursue growth in whatever opportunity comes my way.

I hope you can join me on my journey by following my posted social media below, or even via email. You have the liberty to say anything, and I would love to hear from you.

You can learn more about Trent Park via his website, www.trentparkmusic.com. You can also find and follow Trent on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Photo: Courtesy of Trent Park

Belo Cipriani: You have a writing degree from Columbia University. Do you think a writing degree is necessary in order to get published?

Johnathan Wilber: No. If you have an MFA from one of the most well-known programs, like Iowa, you may get an agent or editor to look faster at your work than he or she might otherwise, but it’s ultimately about the work, and whether the publisher or agent thinks it fits into whatever the market’s doing at any given time and whatever vision they have for their “lists.” And it’s about luck.

MFA programs are often too divorced from the publishing world. There’s a certain art-for-arts-sake bent to many of these programs, and while that’s a good thing for the realm of art in general, it’s not a revenue-generating paradigm. It also tends to overlook the idea that a book is as much about what the writer’s writing as what the reader’s reading. If you’re not writing for an audience, why write? I’ve found it important to wedge myself between the MFA and the publishing worlds.

If you’re considering enrolling in an MFA, I recommend first that you do a few colonies, retreats, etc. This is a great way to get workshopped and meet other writers at a fraction of the expense. And it often has similar cachet to the MFA programs.

Belo: You’ve worked for a big publisher. How did you land that job and did that experience affect your writing?

Johnathan: I worked as an intern at the David Black Literary Agency during my MFA at Columbia. After I finished school, my boss at David Black put me in touch with a cookbooks editor at HarperCollins who needed an assistant. That’s how I got my first job. My work at Harper was largely on cookbooks and nonfiction—with some romance thrown in—so I wouldn’t say that had an outsize influence on my writing. Cookbooks are a very different sort of thing. After a few years, I moved on to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, where I worked on literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, and some translations.

At HMH, I learned a lot about the way editors think and talk about fiction, about what sells and what doesn’t, and a big part of my job was reading manuscripts and determining exactly what I did or didn’t like about a book. That kind of reading was useful. It was almost scientific. And when I approach my own writing now, I spend a lot more time thinking about concept, the market, the pitch, and the readership.

I think of publishing now more as a game, not a game I feel I’ve mastered necessarily—or one that can be definitively mastered by anyone—but it’s a game. There’s a lot of luck and a lot of networking involved. Working in publishing dispelled the notion for me that the business of books is any different than any other kind of market-driven enterprise. Or that there are special, transcendent “talents” out there, just waiting to be discovered. I do wonder what our canon would look like today if publishing was two hundred years ago what it is now.

By the time I left in 2012, working in publishing was a dispiriting experience. I wouldn’t give back those years, because I learned a lot, but I had to get out of the industry before my soul crumpled. There are so many important books out there that never see the light of day—both because editors are so overworked and because they’re expected to drive big numbers at all costs. I get a lot of grief for this opinion, but what Amazon has been doing with self-publishing is a huge boon to writers who don’t fit the marketing mold of the big publishers.

Belo: By publishing standards, you are a young writer. At what age did you decide you would write?

Johnathan: I’ve always spent a lot of my free time writing. When I was growing up, this didn’t take on any kind of digestible form. It was something like a mix of musings, poetry, stories, and vocabulary lists. In college, I intended to study theater, and I did for a bit, when I realized that I wanted more control over the artistic creation than acting would give me and that I was much too introverted to ever be an actor. I started playwrighting. And I did that until I realized I hated being limited to dialogue. I did my undergrad at Northwestern, which has a fabulous undergraduate writing program. I applied and was accepted, worked with some great mentors and fellow students, and that kinda sent me off into fiction writing.

Belo: What is your creative process like?

Johnathan: It’s been changing over the years. When I wrote my first novel, I just wrote whatever came into my head, without any kind of planning or forethought. That’s an exciting way to create, in many ways, but it’s also very frustrating when you get stuck. I ended up writing in fits and starts. I would not write for weeks and months and then my conscience would get the best of me and I’d binge-write. I was also doing my MFA when I wrote this book, so I did a lot of starting-and-stopping, a lot of midstream-revising. I wouldn’t do this again. I’m a believer now that you gotta plow through a novel and finish it before you revise.

With the novel I’m pitching now, I modeled the story after Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As I wrote, I went through the original novel, scene by scene, and rewrote things to fit my concept (1970s New York, just prior to the AIDS epidemic). This work was very steady and fast. I wrote one to two pages a day and I had a draft of the novel done in a year and a half. I’ve since revised it three or four times, and what I have now is a very different book than what Stoker wrote. A big part of this novel was doing research—on Zaire, on the 1970s, on Ebola, on AIDS, on New York. I originally dreaded the prospect of so much research, but I came to find that it was—to my great surprise—the most rewarding aspect of the project. It allowed me to write things I might not have invented purely of my own imagination.

I’m a kid of the 1980s, and I felt as if I was discovering a whole lost decade. I’ve been watching the TV my characters might have watched—The Bionic Woman and All in the Family—and listening to Fleetwood Mac on repeat. I’ve started wearing big glasses and growing my hair out. I’m the Daniel Day Lewis of writing. This is a really rewarding, three-dimensional way of learning history, and potentially confusing for employers.

Belo: Who are your all-time favorite authors?

Johnathan: David Foster Wallace was a big influence for me when I first started writing… The sheer ambition and the vocabulary. I still love him, but I had a phase where I was imitating and I had to get that out of my system. (I did.) Tony Kushner, especially Angels in America. Larry Kramer, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Harris, Donna Tartt, Randy Shilts, Donald Barthelme.

Belo: Who are you reading now?

Johnathan: I’ve been reading a lot more commercial fiction these days. I’m reading Micro by Michael Crichton, a novel finished by Richard Preston. I’m very interested in writing fiction that moves fast like commercial fiction, but features sophisticated language, characters, and historical texture.

Belo: What is your first book about and how did you come up with the story?

Johnathan: My first book, Out, Beelzebub!, is about a writer who becomes obsessed with The New Yorker’s latest darling. He begins stalking her and eventually plans an elaborate murder by clam chowder. This gets sidetracked when he’s thrown in prison. He begins a couture line of clothing for chihuahuas. As the story progresses, the successful writer starts to lose her wits. Eventually the two of them are thrown together in a kind of odd-couple Goonies-inspired ending that plays out in booby-trapped tunnels below Port Authority. It’s kind of A Confederacy of Dunces meets Harry Potter.

I don’t know where this came from. The main character is based to some extent on myself and based in large part on my frustration with the literary culture, The New Yorker culture, the way books and careers are made or broken. When I was finishing the novel, the “20 Writers under 40” list was a big deal. I was impressed with a few of these writers, but in large part I was bored. I was interested in why the literary world latches onto certain people and not others. I’ve mentioned that publishing is a game, and I think this novel was in many ways my working out my frustration with that game.

I was also reading a lot of surreal and satirical fiction at the time. Dave Eggers, John Kennedy Toole, Donald Barthelme, George Saunders—and that absurd aesthetic really appealed to me at the time.

Belo: What is your next book about?

Johnathan: The book I’m selling now is a retelling of Dracula set in the years 1976 and 1977, a historical fantasy that traces the HIV/AIDS epidemic before it became an epidemic. It follows a small group of gay men, a transgender woman, and several doctors, from Zaire to Provincetown to New York City. It explores the legacy of colonialism and the social metaphors of disease, mapping out the landscape of a world poised for an outbreak. It’s Joseph Conrad meets the wild 1970s and the dawn of AIDS.

Belo: When will people be able to buy it?

Johnathan: That’s a good question. I’m currently in the process of working with agents, a process that could take months. And then I imagine I’ll revise again before sending to publishers. I’d love to say 2015, or 2016, but it’s all up in the air right now. To stay abreast, you can follow me on Facebook. I post only important stuff.

Belo: Any words of wisdom for budding writers?

Johnathan: I was late to the game of making friends with other writers. I kinda kept to myself in college and grad school and have only recently begun to understand how important community is, especially among people who work in isolation. I don’t like “networking.” I never have, though I’ve only recently begun to understand why. Meeting kindred spirits is a different thing. There are lots of great workshops and retreats and colonies out there. I heartily recommend Lambda’s Emerging Gay Voices workshop that takes place at UCLA. I would take advantage of these, both to meet other writers you can exchange writing with, but also to exorcise the blues that come and go with every writing project.

Johnathan Wilber is a distinct voice in fiction. Learn more by visiting his Facebook page.

Who is Belo Cipriani?

Belo Cipriani is the Writer-in-Residence at Holy Names University, a spokesperson for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and the author of Blind: A Memoir. You are invited to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.

Photo credit: Michael Stokes

One of the fun aspects of being a writer is meeting other writers. This past August while at Lambda, I met Allison Moon whose novel Lunatic Fringe about lesbian werewolves is being released today, September 29th 2011. She read excerpts while at Lambda and I have been eager to read the book ever since. Growing up in San Jose, I never imagined I would be attending a release party for a book that combined two of my favorite topics – queer life and werewolves. It is so cool to know the writers behind all the new kinds of literature that is surfacing today.

***Belo Cipriani is a freelance writer, speaker, and the author of Blind: A Memoir. Learn more at belocipriani.com.
NOTE: This article is available for reprint in magazines, periodicals, newsletters, newspapers, eZINEs, on the Internet or on your own website. To obtain permission and details contact info@belocipriani.com