Pump Up Your Book Chats with John Ames

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John Ames has a master’s degree in English from the University of Florida, where he was a Ford Fellow. After graduation, he built a rustic house and lived for several years on the edge of a spiritual community located near Gainesville, Florida. John’s search for enlightenment ended when he decided that he was too far from a movie theater. He moved inside the Gainesville city limits and taught English and film for thirty years at Santa Fe College.

He has produced and acted in numerous short films and videos, including the cable TV series the “Tub Interviews,” wherein all the interviewees were required to be in a bathtub. For ten years he reviewed movies for PBS radio station WUFT. He has appeared as a standup comedian and has designed and marketed Florida-themed lamps. He coauthored Second Serve: The Renée Richards Story (Stein and Day, 1983) and its sequel No Way Renée: The Second Half of My Notorious Life (Simon & Schuster, 2007), and Speaking of Florida (University Presses of Florida, 1993).

His recent book is a coming-of-age novel titled Adventures in Nowhere.

You can visit his website at www.johnamesauthor.com.

Q: Thank you for this interview, John. Can you tell us why you wrote your book?

For years, I have been entertaining my friends with stories of my childhood. Many times I was told that I should write a book on the subject, but all I had for material were anecdotes about the people I knew and descriptions of the places I frequented. A couple of years ago, I met someone new, a fresh audience for my stories. She pretty much insisted that I write something, so I accepted the challenge and set out to pull together as many of the details, large and small, as I could from my childhood and fashion a story that gave its ten-year-old hero a triumph that I never enjoyed. When I think of Danny Ryan, my protagonist, I picture myself.

Q: Which part of the book was the hardest to write?

Constructing a climax that brings the boy to a greater understanding of his world but does not go beyond what a reader could accept. Adventures in Nowhere is not strictly realistic, but the boy’s thoughts and reactions are true to the mind of a ten-year-old. He is an extremely thoughtful youngster, but he can only be enlightened to an appropriate extent.

Q: Does your book have an underlying message that readers should know about?

I don’t think of the book as having an underlying message. Any message it has is on top. The book demonstrates how the mind of a child attempts to grapple with large issues, including threats over which he has little control. One of my earliest readers was a psychologist who has done a great deal of work with abused children. He says that Danny Ryan’s thought processes are in line with what he has observed in many kids. In that way, Adventures in Nowhere is revealing because most people don’t think of children as having such complex reactions.

Q: Do you remember when the writing bug hit?

The nun who taught me in the third grade decided to have every student write a little about his or her life outside school. All of them were to be collected on a mimeographed sheet and distributed to the class. Like the protagonist in my novel, I was very secretive about my home situation, which was not good. So, I wrote about living near a patch of forest with a creek running through it where I often played with one of the family’s collies. I also mentioned that the river was not far away and that I fished there. It was only a few lines, but the nun liked it well enough to choose mine as one of the ones she illustrated, in my case with some stick trees representing the forest. I was surprised and gratified, but I was more surprised when many of my fellow third-graders expressed their envy of my situation. I was flabbergasted because I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to be in my place. That incident gave me a sense of the power of writing and how a situation can be portrayed any way you like depending on the details you choose.

Q: Besides books, what else do you write? Do you write for publications?

The novels are about it these days, but the burst of activity associated with the publication of Adventures in Nowhere has pretty much limited me to emails.

Q: Do you have a writing tip you’d like to share?

Something I have to watch out for is over-explaining. Let’s say a character is in a car chase, and he makes an excellent driving move. I’m inclined to explain why he is such a good driver by including an anecdote about how his uncle, a moonshine runner, used to take him along on his deliveries and let him drive on country roads when he was twelve. And if I don’t watch myself, I will insert this anecdote right into the middle of the car chase. I think at that point the reader is pretty much focused on the progression of the car chase and background anecdotes that interrupt are likely to cause him to throw down the book in disgust. I have to remember what really counts with most readers.

Q: Would you like to tell us about your home life? Where you live? Family? Pets?

I have lived in Gainesville, Florida since I graduated from the University of Florida. I have a long-time girlfriend. We keep separate houses, which has worked out nicely. She is very active while I am more of a stay-at-home. She tells me that the ladies in her family used to comment about how sad it was that she wasn’t married. As they got older, they began to envy her because she doesn’t have a man underfoot all the time, but she has one standing by for when he is needed. I have a small circle of close friends, including my sister, that I see on a regular basis. I’ve never been married, and I have no children.

Q: Can you tell us a little about your childhood?

I was raised in an atmosphere very like the one experienced by my novel’s main character. Some of the details are different, but the emotional tone of Adventures in Nowhere is quite similar.

John, age 10

Q: Where’s your favorite place to write at home?

I have a desk in the corner of my bedroom where I do all of my writing. Sleep specialists say that you should not do anything except sleep in your bedroom. I ignore that warning. I could easily forget the rest of the house and get along with just my bedroom, bath and kitchen. Actually, I did have that setup when I lived in my little house in the woods. When I am working on a project, I get up, make the bed, grab a cup of coffee, and start writing. After an hour or so, I have some breakfast and then get back to writing for another two or three hours.

Q: What do you do go to get away from it all?

I have a very hard time getting away from it all because I tend to carry it all with me. I am afflicted with the nagging feeling that whatever I’m doing, I should be doing something else more important. The time I spend writing comes closest to fulfilling my need to be doing something important. I used to pack up my desktop computer and take it to the beach with me, much to the amazement of my friends. I have stopped doing that. Once a year, I go over to Saint Augustine and stay for a week. I think that is about as close as I get to getting away from it all.

Q: What was the first thing you did as far as promoting your book?

I built my website: johnamesauthor.com. People seem to like it. I have used an unusual approach. In addition to the conventional items like my biography and an excerpt from the book, the site gives a lot of information about the setting of the novel, which is crucial to the plot and interesting in its own right. Adventures in Nowhere is set on the Hillsborough River near Tampa and in the little community of Sulphur Springs, which started out in glorious fashion and then had a great fall. When I knew the river and the springs in the 1950s, the river was undeveloped past a certain point and Sulphur Springs was still interesting though definitely on a downward spiral. Most of the town was bulldozed in the early 1980s to make room for a dog track parking lot. The big spring that fed the swimming area is now polluted from storm water runoff and is unfit for bathing. I wanted to chronicle the place as I knew it before it is lost to living memory. My site helps readers understand what the novel is about by exploring the real Nowhere.

Sulpher Springs

Q: Are you familiar with the social networks and do you actively participate?

I have recently set up a personal Facebook page and a Facebook fan page for Adventures in Nowhere, but I am not very adept at using them. I am an introvert, and it seems to me that the social networks are most attractive to extroverts. I thought about setting up a website for introverts, but none would ever come. I have a Twitter account, but I may be the worst tweeter in history.

Q: How do you think book promotion has changed over the years?

The big houses used to send authors on promotional tours, but now such tours cost more than they bring in. In general, authors have to do much more in their own behalf than ever before. I must confess that before I signed up for this blog tour, I didn’t know anything about them, but I hope my tour will help me reach some people who might like my novel. Maybe it will help offset my ineptness with the social media. Remind me to tweet after this interview.

Q: What is the most frustrating part of being an author?

Marketing my work.

Q: What is the most rewarding?

Having someone read my work and be affected.

Q: How do you think book publishing has changed over the years?

In times past, editors recognized promise in new writers, took them under their wings, encouraged, and instructed them. As far as I know, this no longer exists. If your manuscript isn’t in just the right vein, it is rejected. Nobody bothers to give guidance. I understand their point of view. The investment is great, and the public’s main appetite is for fiction that follows a familiar pattern, so publishers seldom take a chance on anything that is not precisely in the well-established groove.

Q: If you had one wish, what would that be?

To be content.

Q: If you could be anywhere in the world other than where you are right now, where would that place be?

I like to be in control of my environment as much as I can be, and when I am in a different place, I lose a lot of that control. My backyard is quite nice.

Q: Your book has just been awarded a Pulitzer. Who would you thank?

I always liked the speech that Ben Johnson gave when he accepted his Oscar. “What I’m about to say will start a controversy around the world: This couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow.” The problem with thanking a list of people is that you always leave out one or more who should be thanked, which leads to hurt feelings. Whatever I said would be brief. Maybe I’d thank my eleventh-grade English teacher. I liked her a lot.

Q: Thank you so much for this interview, John. Do you have any final words?

Keep reading. It’s good for you.

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Question of the Day

How do you make sales happen for you?

A lot of hard work! I sponsor a lot of on line parties, festivals and contests. Book sales don’t magically happen, believe me. An author has to work hard to earn her readers. And then she has to work hard to keep them by giving them something they’ll enjoy reading. I try hard to make my books worth a reader’s time.

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