Series Shocker: I'm not telling!

Don't look at this if you haven't seen Planet of the Apes

If you’ve managed to live your life without going to a movie theatre, watching a DVD, downloading a flick, or buying a book, read no further. I want to warn you right away that today’s post involves an extremely sensitive topic that may cause you to blurt out, “I can’t believe Darth Vadar is Luke Skywalker’s father!”

I’m talking about spoilers. Cinematic history is littered with ‘em. An old girlfriend of mine once bragged how, upon exiting the movie The Crying Game, she shouted to the people on line: “The chick’s got a —- !” It’s true. She is a he in that movie. And Bruce Willis was dead, all along, in The Sixth Sense. Rosebud was his sled, in Citizen Kane. Then there’s the famous line of dialogue, “Soylent Green is people!”

Though spoiling can be a cruel sport, I know most people won’t get mad at me for revealing these endings. They’re imprinted in the consciousness of people. Everyone knows, upon seeing the half-sunken Statue of Liberty, that Planet of the Apes is set in a future earth.

All of this is a long, long way of saying that the four-part series I’ve posted these past three weeks – extracting sections of my forthcoming novel and converting them into real-life cliffhangers – is formally over. For now, at least.

Unlike the movies I listed above, my darkly comedic novel, The Opposite of Everything, is not imprinted in anyone’s memory. It’s not even printed yet. When it comes out on March 11, my novel will start fresh, a babe on the bookshelf. All of which is a way of saying I hereby decline to spoil it. The four episodes I posted – about my humorous journey as a cancer survivor to find love in this crazy world — represent a small part of my 250-page book. I’d like to keep it that way.

My posts differed in crucial ways from the contents of my novel. First, my book is fiction, not fact. I dramatized my real life, gave everyone different names, made them do wacky things that their real-life counterparts wouldn’t dream of doing. As I say in my book acknowledgment, any resemblance between my novel and real life is coincidental to my goals as a novelist to create a fully realized dramatic story.

Still, the events depicted in recent posts are structurally similar. Devoted readers of The Ruminator learned a lot about my quirky pursuit of the woman who would become my future wife –a tough Colombian doctor who’d been through a battery of personal problems that rivaled my own. This storyline also runs through the novel.

My post on Monday of last week – the final episode in the series — ended on a pivotal moment. I invite Ingrid, for our first date, to hear me read publicly from my memoir-in-progress, in which I reveal details of my cancer and checkered emotional past. I’m afraid she’ll reject me, thinking I’m a head case. So after I finish reading, I delicately approach her.

“What did you think of what I read?” I asked.

Her fingertips circled the glass brim of her beer. “Was your story fact or fiction?”

“Fact,” I mumbled.

Ingrid started looking around, fidgeting.  “Where are you … going?” I asked.

“I drove for two hours to get here, and I just drank two cups of coffee.” She smiled with embarrassment. “Do you know where the ladies room is?”

And that’s where things end – with the implication that Ingrid, despite or because of everything she’s been through herself – is cool with my meshugas.

And yet, several questions still dangle. Will my pernicious disease behave itself? Will we marry and have a child? Will we stumble across a half-buried Statue of Liberty and discover that our lives are actually set on a future earth?

Well, I’m not telling! At least for now. I leave myself the option of resuming this series, mining my novel for more material. I walk a fine line between spoiling the book and my impulse to write stories about my life in new ways that capture your attention.

David Kalish is the author of the novel, The Opposite of Everything, which will be published on March 11.

In memoriam to my oncologist, whom I outlived

Dr. Steven Grunberg
1950 - 2013

Five years ago, I enrolled in a cancer clinical trial at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Vermont. The oncologist running the drug trial was Dr. Steven Grunberg, who took me under his wing. At the time my cancer was spreading — years of traditional chemotherapy had done little but make me feel sick. But Dr. Grunberg reassured me with quiet confidence. We’re going to help you stick around, he said.

Today, thanks to Dr. Grunberg and his staff, I’m still here. But Dr. Grunberg isn’t. He died of lung cancer in September. It’s a painful irony I’m still sorting through.

Since my diagnosis in 1994 of a rare, incurable condition – Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma — I’ve been searching for an effective treatment. The cancer spread to my lungs in 2000, and despite several operations and years of chemotherapy that battered my body, continued to spread. In my mid forties, with many things yet to accomplish in life, I researched experimental treatments and exchanged information with other sufferers of my rare disease through the Thyroid Cancer Survivors’ Association.

One day I clicked to the clinical trials page of the National Institutes of Health, and learned of a novel drug being tested against my specific condition. Made by AstraZeneca, the drug, then called Zactima, was known as a tyrosine kinase inhibitor. Basically it worked to block proteins that tell tumors to grow.

Vermont’s Fletcher Allen Health Care was among the study sites. One weekday morning I drove three hours from my Clifton Park, N.Y., home to Burlington, Vt., to meet Dr. Grunberg and get the ball rolling. Though untested drugs can be risky, he quickly earned my trust. A thick haired man who spoke in quiet intelligent bursts, he’d keep a close eye on me, monitoring my status through bloodwork and scans. He spoke frankly of possible side effects, which included skin and intestinal problems. There was another concern. Two-thirds of study participants were supplied with the drug – but one-third received a placebo. Neither doctor nor patient knew which one patients had. I could be left without a life preserver.

But by my next appointment, three months later, my levels of Calcitonin – a hormone stimulated by my cancer – crashed to 10,000 from over 100,000 before the trial. It was apparent I was among the lucky two-thirds of patients. The drug was working! Dr. Grunberg wasn’t one to show a lot of emotion with me, but he shared an enthusiastic  smile when he told me the good news. I immediately called my wife to tell her, and drove back to New York that afternoon, my heart singing with hope for my future.

Over the next five years I visited Fletcher Allen every three months. I came to refill my prescription of once-a-day Zactima pills, undergo CT Scans and bloodwork — and to feel supported by Dr. Grunberg and his staff of nurses and researchers. I remember pricking my ears to catch every morsel of what Dr. Grunberg was saying. He was a steadfast presence, and when he examined my neck and chest for recurrence, I was in sure hands.

But he was more than a doctor to me. As a theater buff, he took an active interest in my writing, and spoke to me of his daughter’s creative pursuits. I emailed him several of my short stories, and he always took time to send me a complimentary email back. I considered him a friend.

The drug kept my condition at bay, and as a result of the trial was approved by the federal government, with the brand name Caprelsa, for use against my cancer. Today thousands of patients like me can now benefit from work by Dr. Grunberg and other study researchers.

The last time I saw Dr. Grunberg was this past spring. I noticed no difference in his manner toward me. He seemed healthy, energetic – his hair as thick and dark as ever. He gave zero hint he had cancer – let alone terminal cancer — even as he treated mine. He betrayed nothing. But when I visited Fletcher Allen again in summer I received the odd news he’d taken a leave. I asked for elaboration but the staff was oddly quiet.

It wasn’t until I visited again this fall when his staff told me Dr. Grunberg had died of lung cancer.

I was stunned. But he didn’t seem sick, I insisted. He kept working right up until the end. That’s when it hit me: he didn’t want his patients to know their doctor was dying of the same condition they hoped to beat. Dr. Grunberg didn’t want them to lose hope, even as his own situation grew hopeless. My sense of betrayal at not being told sooner melted away into gratitude. His silence was admirably selfless. The world – my world — is poorer without him.

When I revisit Fletcher Allen for my next appointment in January, I’ll see another oncologist who has replaced Dr. Grunberg on the trial I’d entered. Dr. Claire Verschaegen is a smart caring doctor originally from Belgium. I recognize signs of selflessness in her as well. Because I now have a standard against which to measure people’s worth. Because Dr. Grunberg gave me a new lease on life – even as his own lease expired.

David Kalish is a cancer survivor and author whose novel, The Opposite of Everything, will be published this coming March. If you’d like to make a contribution in Dr. Grunberg’s memory, his family asks you make one to: www.feedingamerica.org.

An interview about my writing journey

Good morning friends. I'm so grateful to my fellow blogger and social media guru Crystal Otto for posting an interview today about my writing journey. Here 'tis: 

http://muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com/

For convenience, I'm copying and pasting here:

Interview with David Kalish, Novelist and Playright

Posted by Crystal Otto at 12:02 AM

Good morning, Muffin readers! I am super excited about today's post: an interview with David Kalish, Novelist, Playright and Friend who will be releasing his debut novel The Opposite of Everything, on March 11, 2014.

David Kalish is a novelist, blogger, and playwright with an MFA from Bennington College. His short fiction appears in many literary journals, his nonfiction in The Writer’s Chronicle, and a film of his won honors in festivals in the states and abroad. Before Bennington, he was a journalist at The Associated Press. He lives in upstate New York and is at work on a second novel, Stoner Hero, and a Latin-themed comedic musical, The Gringo Who Stole Christmas.

WOW: David, the main character in your book The Opposite of Everything is Brooklyn journalist Daniel Plotnick. I'm curious how you chose the name and the main character's occupation. Please give us a bit of back story if you would.

David: Before he was Daniel Plotnick, my main character had my name. That’s because my book started as a first-person memoir about my struggles with cancer and divorce. But over years of revision I decided the book worked better as a third-person comedic novel. So I chose a name for the protagonist that sounded Jewish, like mine, and a bit hapless, as I imagine myself. One of my roommates in college had the last name Plotnick, so I stole it. Because the character is based on me, he’s also a journalist – I used to work as a reporter and editor with The Associated Press in the 1990s.

WOW: David, I have a feeling that same thing happens more often than we may realize. I'm sure your roommate is flattered!

I know this book came about after your own personal battle with cancer and your painful divorce. Did you start journaling for therapeutic reasons, or what made you decide to put the pen to paper and when did you decide it was something you wanted to publish?

David: I’ve always written fiction, from the time I wrote my first poem in kindergarten, but my diagnosis of cancer in 1994 -- and the collapse of my first marriage it triggered -- gave me lots of material to mine. So my creative writing began to reflect those experiences. Sure, it was therapeutic in a sense. I think as a writer I try to make sense of painful situations by dramatizing them, giving them a narrative arc, a beginning, middle and end. It’s all about making lemonade from lemons, putting things in perspective. From the moment I began writing my book more than a decade ago, I’ve wanted to publish it. With each revision I sent the book out to agents and small publishers, and with each rejection revised it a little more. It wasn’t until early this year that it was accepted by a small but traditional publisher, WiDo. It’s been a long long journey.

WOW: So I guess I'm not being too terribly optimistic thinking my 5 and 6 year old might become writers since they do so well with poems and short stories. I'm sorry it took the collapse of your marriage to bring you back to creative writing, but I'm sure glad you're writing!

David, who has been your biggest supporter through the publishing process and what are some ways they have supported and encouraged your journey?

David: I would have to say my wife and daughter, in part because the characters based on them figure so prominently in the novel. They’ve been my second readers as I strived to create credible characters with three-dimensional lives and personalities. They’ve also been incredibly tolerant of the fact I need oceans of time to write, because I’m a perfectionist, to a fault. 

WOW: This definitely sounds like a family affair and labor of love! So... what's next for you? You seem like the type of person who is always busy and I have a feeling your next published works is likely already waiting in the wings - can you tell us more?

David: I’m revising my second novel now, and hope to complete it in the spring and send it out once my first one is published in March. Problem is, I’ve been so busy laying the groundwork to promote my first novel I have hardly any time to work on my second. But novel is called Stoner Hero. It’s a satirical comedy about an underground society that uses time management techniques, team building and sweat lodge retreats to help stoners lead more productive lives through weed.  I’m also a playwright. I’m collaborating with Alex Torres, the Latin musician and composer, on a musical comedy I wrote, called The Gringo Who Stole Christmas.

WOW: David, I'm so glad you're doing so much promotion since that is what brought us together. I cannot wait until your WOW! Blog Tour next spring!

Other than your upcoming blog tour and writing, what sorts of activities do you enjoy? Give us a peek into your personal life and what makes David Kalish tick.

David: I’m an early riser, and after a few hours of writing from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. I drive to a nearby forest with our two dogs. The three of us roam briskly between the trees for an hour. It clears my head and I often work out problems in my writing, and plan my day. I consider a good day when I also get in a walk in the afternoon. I guess I’m always writing, except when I’m cooking dinner, paying the bills, taking out the garbage, and spending downtime with my wife and daughter.

WOW: Now I understand why you are so happily married - not only do you take out the garbage, you cook dinner too? I love it! Thank you so much for sharing with us today. Readers - be sure to leave comments and ask questions as David will be checking in to chat with us today!

Interview by Crystal J. Casavant-Otto

The Opposite of Everything

When Brooklyn journalist Daniel Plotnick learns he has cancer, his fortunes

fall faster than you can say “Ten Plagues of Egypt.” His wife can’t cope, his

marriage ends in a showdown with police, and his father accidentally pushes

him off the George Washington Bridge.

Daniel miraculously survives his terrifying plunge, and comes up with a zany

plan to turn his life around: by doing the opposite of everything he did before.

Inspired by his own brush with cancer and divorce, novelist David Kalish

makes comedy out of his painful past to create a startling and surprisingly

philosophical story.

Paperback: 250Pages

Publisher: WiDo Publishing

ISBN-10: 1937178439

CONNECT WITH DAVID:

Web site: www.davidkalishwriter.com

Blog: http://blog.timesunion.com/davidkalish/

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/dekalish

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dekalish

Amazon: http://amzn.to/IEvXtn

David plans on touring in April 2014. To view all our touring authors, check out our Events Calendar. Keep up with blog stops and giveaways in real time by following us on Twitter @WOWBlogTour.

G

Catching up with the rest of life

Hi Everyone,

Never thought I'd do two blogs at once. Sure, I'm a novelist, and my debut book The Opposite of Everything will be published March 11, but I figured one blog was exhausting enough. And yet, I've decided to reactivate this Blogger site after abandoning it two months ago. I'd set it aside because I needed to focus on my Times Union blog, which features twice-weekly wry personal essays on a range of topics, which may or may not relate to my writing journey.

And yet, my novel's coming out in the spring, and there's so much I need to say about the journey to the bookshelf. And so this will be a place for sharing news with supporters of my curious journey from scribbled notes to bound book. It’s a mashup of tidbits on writing, authors in the news, my Times Union blog posts, and updates on The Opposite of Everything, and my musical comedic play, The Gringo Who Stole Christmas. It chronicles the artistic collaboration process – how creating a play, for instance, differs so very much from a novel – and the pitfalls and benefits of spreading the word through social media, such as this group.

I'll also post special deals on my book.

So much is going on, and this blog allows me to casually mention things instead of shaping them into careful essays. I'm planning my book tour for the spring, and the dates are still in flux. Here's how things are shaping up:

 -- Book publication date: March 11
--  a launch event in late March at a bookstore in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
-- launch event in early April at a bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn
-- April 10, an hour-long event at Saratoga Library
-- Early May, I'll be holding a panel at the Grubstreet Writer's conference in Boston
-- May, event at Newtonville Books in Boston
-- May 22, book event at Golden Notebook books in Woodstock, N.Y.

Many gaps need to be filled here. But writing about it helps me to stay organized. I'll let you know more as soon as I do.

Until the next post,

Dave K.

Requiem for a Clamshell

Photo credit: Sophie Kalish

I was stirring pasta the other evening when for like the hundredth time – closer to the thousandth, actually – my old clamshell phone slipped from my clutzy hand and crashed to the hard floor, skittering across the tiles. Just then the phone rang, confirming it still worked. I bent down and picked up. My wife was asking what’s for dinner. 

After hanging up, and before returning to the pasta, I took a moment to gaze fondly at the burrs in my Samsung’s battered plastic casing. The scratched and cramped screen. I felt gratitude. Sadness. My little Samsung never failed me. It stood by me for a million or so minutes. 

And now I’m about to clam it shut. Forever.

Next week, with a heavy heart, I plan to buy an iPhone. I can no longer live the life that’s been assigned to me without mobile access to email, the Web, and a decent camera. I’m traveling to New York City to read from my forthcoming novel in Greenwich Village on September 30th. I’ll need to text people for appointments, update my Facebook page. Take nice photos of old friends to post.

My simple Samsung won’t cut it.

For a while I thought of starting a Lonely Clamshell Club, for Luddites like me who own phones like mine. Phones that don’t respond to the name Siri. With cameras barely better than what my daughter constructed in sixth grade from a metal can with a pin hole.

Perhaps we’ll have a requiem. I’ll corral my wife and two dogs and twelve-year daughter, who has experience burying several goldfish and canaries in our backyard. We will dig a small hole and lower the phone into the grave. At the last minute, I’ll snap my fingers and run inside and grab an external floppy adapter I used years ago to back up a long-gone laptop. Gently I’ll place it in the dirt, next to the clamshell, much as Egyptian royalty buried their mummified dead with jewelry and pets. 

Somberly we’ll stand around the small pit, dogs disappointed we’re not burying a canary. Delivering the eulogy, I’d tell how my phone anchored me to the basics even as the world whirled around me, a mess of iPads and Tweets and Emoticons. I purposefully clung to it, not wanting to be distracted by a fancy screen during a hike through the woods. Not wanting to obsessively text, thus ruining my enjoyment of the sad sweet melody of Fur Elise, played by my daughter on the piano.

 We toss spoonfuls of dirt atop bygone technology. We play a cassette tape of “As Time Goes By” on an outdated recorder, as background music for my Samsung’s requiem. It's sung, appropriately, by Sam, the piano player on Casablanca. Then we toss the cassette in the grave too.

And so technology, and time, goes by. May you rest in peace, every obsolete part of you.

No-Tell Motel for My Muse

Early mornings, without fail, I slip out from under the bed sheets in darkness, softly so as not to wake my wife, and wake the dogs instead. But the other day, as I fumbled for my clothes, a voice startled me.

“Have fun with your mistress,” my wife said.

Without another word she rolled purposefully over in bed, as if that settled it. I knew, of course, she couldn’t mean what she said. But as I stood frozen to the floor, a truth rose in me. I felt the stirrings of guilt – as a husband with a mistress might feel.

A creative writing teacher once told my class that writing ideally should be better than, ahem, sex. That the experience of playing with words and bringing ideas to life on the page is sensual, like foreplay. Discovering a world veiled, at first, by gloom – then clarified, revealing nuances – is a climactic moment writers live for.

If this is true – and I’m not sure it is -- the forest would be the no-tell motel for my muse. Early mornings, no matter what the weather or time of year, I pull into the trailhead at Kinns Road Park, about a mile away from my home, with my dogs and a notebook and pen.

Now the cool September air greets me as I step out of the car into the pre-dawn and unleash my silky terrier and toy poodle. As I follow their bouncing tails down the dimly lit trail, thumbs of trees twirl past. Unseen insects shriek. Then: an unfolding of light. Splotches appear across tree trunks, like paint balls, and in the dawning day I grow visual, scenes unfurling in my mind just like the green canvas before me. I pull out a notepad, even as I walk. The scramble of squirrels makes me jot: Scritch! Scratch! Themes sprout. I think of my next blog topic. I work out a challenge in my novel.

The air warms. My pulse quickens. The forest counsels patience, trees not budging from their assigned places, ruminating in mulch. The counsel calms me as I think of events that have swamped my life, upsetting my meticulous order.

Sometimes, as on a recent gray morning, impulsiveness works better than patience. The sky opens up and vents its wrath, banging cold drops against my skin and notebook pages, smudging ink. I cannot write a word. The drenched dogs turn longingly toward the parking lot. I linger, hoping the sky will clear, but after a few minutes realize it won’t and return home.

My wife hands me a fresh coffee when I return sodden, dripping on the carpet. No need to feel jealous of my time away, I reassure her. Accept you’re co-habiting with an artist. She looks at my soggy notepad, and her arched eyebrows appear unconvinced.

“Why don’t you come with me one day?” I ask.

Too buggy, too rainy, too early, she says. But one morning she does. It’s darker now, deeper into September, breath of change in the air. She grabs my hand on the path as we set out, but I feel awkward, like I’m cheating on the trees.

“Where is she?” she asks, but I sense her black encircling arms. There’s an unfolding as sun cracks through the trees. One moment we are sparring in the shadows, the next, encased by light, we dance to birdsong, maneuvering for space on the path. I hold my wife’s hand for ballast.

My Book Goes Live on Amazon!

Hard to believe, but my novel THE OPPOSITE OF EVERYTHING is now live on Amazon! Yes it’s true – you can actually pre-order the book a full six months before its publication on March 11. I am surprised as you are. This is starting to feel scarily real. Something about Amazon confers reality on a book. Here’s the link. 

First a book cover design, then pre-sales on Amazon. What’s next? Seeing my book on a book shelf?