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-- The harrowing true story of how an apparently sane man spent five years of his precious family's time on Earth -- dragging them into destitution along the way --in his mad quest to write and as if that wasn't enough, to publish -- an ontological thriller, technically sensuous, sensuously technical, an update of Orwell's nightmare -- and what happened when he published it.
With links to sites on Vannevar Bush, nanomachines, Gulf War Syndrome, self-publishing, etc.
By John F.X. Sundman
I wrote the first draft of Acts of the Apostles (then called "The Book of Matthew") in June, July and August, 1995, during which time my family and I were homeless on Martha's Vineyard. The oldest of our three children had just finished eighth grade and our youngest had just finished first grade.
During June we stayed in a tent in our friend Pam's backyard. Our dog Rosa, sometimes called Rosalita, protected us. Sometimes she overprotected us: at two midnights she barked rather loudly when skunks presented themselves at the screened entrance to our tent, and we were sprayed. My wife Betty worked at the Vineyard Haven Library, and our older daughter worked 40 or more hours a week scooping ice cream. My "unemployment" having run out, we lived on their wages. Unable to stop myself, I wrote my novel. The head librarian had allowed me to set up my computer in a corner and there I worked when the library was open; when the library was closed I went to a place in the woods and wrote longhand. I wrote between five and fifteen pages every day. The words poured out of me, and I was under the delusion that they were brilliant. My chief "worry" at the time was that somebody would figure out the real cause of Gulf War Syndrome, thus obsoleting my book's premise. Of course I would have been delighted if a definitive cause had been found and the veterans had found relief. Alas, that situation remains as dark and mysterious in 2001 as it did in 1995.
By the time July came around it was clear that we were encroaching too much on Pam's family's space. By a stroke of good fortune, our off-island friends Sue and Dave were going to be away for the month of July and said we could house-sit. So we packed up and went there. I set up my computer on their dining room table and wrote 8 hours a day. This arrangement was both good and bad--good because living in Sue and Dave's house was a big step up from living in a skunk-sprayed tent, but bad because Sue and Dave's house was directly across the street from the magnificent Tudor house that we had owned for nine years, before everything fell apart. Seeing that house every day only compounded our awareness of how far we had fallen.
When Sue and Dave came back from their vacation my family and I drove out to Indiana, where Betty's parents lived. We stayed in their basement. I set my computer on a card table in the furnace room and worked on my novel for 8 or 12 hours a day. This was not a very comfortable arrangement, inasmuch as my mother-in-law and father-in-law had once taken great pride in my promising career at Sun Microsystems and were dismayed at this new son-in-law, the unshaved penniless "writer" who disappeared into the furnace room and drank beer by the gallon, believing he was going to be the next Tom Clancy and George Orwell rolled into one. I "finished" the book in early September, just in time to drive back east for the start of the school year, and sent it off to a friend of a friend of a friend in Hollywood, whose job it was to option books for MGM Studios. I had dreams of a million-dollar deal for the movie rights. I told my wife and children that our hard times were over; that Daddy had saved the day. I had no idea that nearly four years of work--four more years of poverty, three more "Vineyard Shuffles"--awaited us. Had I known, I really might have killed myself.
Sometime during this period the last of our savings ran out, (our savings were not great: a few years earlier my wife's business had failed, taking most of our money with it). After our savings were gone we spent the advances that I had been given by O'Reilly and Associates to write a book on software process management and by Carol Baroudi and John Levine (authors of "The Internet for Dummies") to write "Linux for Dummies." I never wrote either book. Betty took various jobs, but one of our children has a chronic health problem, and thus Betty often had to stop working when this child was ill or hospitalized. Soon I was borrowing serious amounts of money from my friends, parents, brothers and sisters--and still my wife and children and I were sliding deeper and deeper in to poverty.
It is true that summer homelessness is a common condition of the working class on Martha's Vineyard. Those who own houses often subject themselves to summer vagabondage because they make more money being landlords to "summer folk" than they do from wages. And those who do not own houses and cannot afford the five-fold or ten-fold summer rent-hike are just out of luck until Labor Day, at least. So they make themselves invisible. We call this painful ritual "The Vineyard Shuffle." Thousands of families have danced this wretched and humiliating dance. Pam--she who had allowed us to pitch our tent in her backyard-- herself had done the shuffle as a single mother with three young daughters. The fact that so many others have endured what the Burton-Sundmans have endured makes it a little easier to admit that I know what it is like to be the father of a homeless family. Gentle reader, if you have not experienced this, take my word for it: you don't want to.
The obvious question presents itself: why did I put my family through this? Why didn't I just get a job? Why didn't I just write the books for which I had signed contracts and accepted advances? Why didn't we face reality and move off-island?
There is no good answer to these questions. My novel erupted from within me, like the monster erupting from the belly of the crewman in the first "Alien" movie. I was like the Richard Dryfuss guy in Close Encounters of the Third Kind--the guy who abandons a family he loves, compelled by circumstances he does not like or understand to address the meaning of his life. I now know what artists and writers have talked about through the ages: how their art controlled them, not the other way around. I am sure it all sounds like bullshit--it is bullshit--but it's the only answer I have. I was trying to do something meaningful that I and my family could be proud of, and at the same time I was trying to make a lot of money. But the simple fact is, it was impossible for me to stop. In the meantime my wife sold her jewelry--family heirlooms-- to put food on the table.
After fifteen years in the computer biz including nine years at Sun (eight in Massachusetts, one in California), I had reached a point of burnout that defies my attempts to describe. The meaninglessness of the work, the Machiavellian office politics. . . then, in the midst of this building burnout, I read the manuscript of Tom Athanasiou's Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor. It totally shook me up. Reading the manuscript of Tom's book (I call him by his first name because he's a friend; I had been his boss for years) was like something that I can only compare to Scrooge's experience of the ghosts. It was epochal.
I could no longer bury the memories of my time in the Peace Corps in drought-stricken Africa. I could no longer forget the promises I made to the children I saw die there that I would do something important with my life. I could no longer ignore my misgivings about the cult of technology--and my role in sustaining it. I could no longer ignore the example of my friend Steve Talbott, who had turned his own misgivings about technology worship into something useful: The Nature Institute and its NETFUTURE newsletter: Alienated, betrayed by a former boss and sidelined by an office power-grab into a meaningless job at which I stunk, I was ready for the proverbial kill. When I got laid off from Sun it was came as no surprise. We fled California for Martha's Vineyard--we had vacationed there ourselves--where the schools are good and life is slow. The plan was for me to become a freelance writer.
But, having arrived at Martha's Vineyard, having placed our children into good schools and having obtained a lease on a "winter rental," having secured contracts to write two books, I froze. I was obsessed with the fears that drive my novel. I could no more write a textbook on software process management than I could flap my wings and fly to Denver.
(Years later Bill Joy, coincidentally another Sun Microsystems boy, (like me and Athanasiou), wrote an article for Wired magazine called "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" that remarkably paralleled my thinking. Like Joy, I had read and studied Vannevar Bush's classic article. Like Joy, I had read and pondered the not-so-easy-to-dismiss "Unabomber Manifesto" ("Industrial Society and Its Future") My thoughts and Joy's are remarkably congruent. You can think of Acts of the Apostles as Bill Joy's Wired article with fewer photos, but more sex and car chases. )
SO anyway to get back to the chronology, the reader in Hollywood said "pass" on The Book of Matthew. But she did something else that may in the long rung turn out to be more valuable than any movie contract: she recommended me to Joe Regal, a literary agent at Russell & Volkenning, an agency in New York City. If I'm a hack, I'm a hack. But if I'm a writer, Joe made me one.
It was a while before I came to realize that not all agents and not all agencies are the same. Joe and R&V are the best. Joe led me, tortured me, bribed me, bullied me, cajoled me, tricked me and inspired me to transform The Book of Matthew, a sloppy first draft of a hackneyed thriller, into Acts of the Apostles, a book of which I am truly proud. Without ever having received a penny from me, he's not only been a mentor, but also has put his own reputation on the line by submitting my novel time and again to virtually every "quality" publisher in the English-speaking world. Nobody has bought it, obviously. But Joe and I do have a fabulously thick stack of rejection letters, and someday Joe's going to give me permission to put a "Bonehead Rejection Letter" museum on my website.
But if September 1995 marked the first step on the way to my becoming a "real" novelist, it was just one step closer to hell for my wife and children.
OK, maybe it wasn't hell. But close enough. It's hard to say what point was rock bottom. One Thanksgiving I wrote three checks to the local A&P--but all of them bounced, so the A&P filed a complaint. I made the checks good, but the A&P manager forgot to tell the judge. Six months later I found myself in handcuffs in the back of the squad car. . . I had been arrested in front of my wife's friends from the Tisbury School PTO. . . that mess was easy to straighten out (the part about the checks, not the part about my wife's humiliation), but other troubles had me before various judges several times. . . hospitals suing me, dentists suing me, endodontists suing me, landlords breaking leases to kick us out into the street to make room for summer people while our child is (again) in Children's Hospital, Boston. . . anybody who thinks that there's no such thing as debtor's prison in the United States of America has never been poor. . . Facing 30 days in the pokey for contempt of court -- having no car, I took the ferry then hitchhiked 2 hours to appear before the sneering judge-- for failing to pay a bill for a root canal on a tooth that is still lodged broken in my head because it snapped off for want of a crown that I could not afford-- that was a low point. There were lots of low points, and I hope someday I will forget them all. Frankly, it sucked. And it ain't over yet.
Somehow, in the middle of this process-- in the middle of the endless rewrites, the shuffles from house to house, the vagabondage, the poverty, the hospitalized child, the discrimination suit that we fought, and won, against our local school system--(the school was great for our two able-bodied children but not so great for our disabled child)-- in the middle of this chaos I somehow realized that had to get my drinking under control, and did. I also woke up to the reality that I needed to bring in some money, even as work on the book continued. And thus I took a series of jobs-- warehouseman, furniture mover, construction laborer on CMGI Billionaire David Wetherell's $10 million municipal-style trophy house(1). And finally, most importantly, I realized that I had to give up my dream that I was going to be the next Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton. I accepted that Joe wasn't going to be able to sell Acts of the Apostles. On that day, I guess, my five-year vacation from adulthood began to come to an end.
Out of stubbornness or faith or stupidity or determination, however, I decided to publish the book myself.
So, with my family on the verge of implosion, opportunity comes knocking in the form of the bemused president of a printing company who happens to have some idle time coming up in his 6-color press schedule and who likes my chutzpah. The printer agrees to do the job with no money down provided I give him the master immediately, while he has no paying customers. After four years of writing, I "rush" the book into print. I work a similar no-money-down deal with a local ISP/website developer. These ircumstances compel me to print the book without a final proof-reading. While the book is on-press, the website goes up, with the first 13 chapters online. Each morning before dawn and each evening after sunset I'm on the net trying to start a "Blair Witch" type buzz about my book. During the day I'm still a construction laborer; all the other laborers are illegal Brazilians. They call me "Rei do Lixo" (King of Trash) for my ability to toss loaded barrels of construction debris into 10' tall dumpsters.
October 1999 my book returns from the printer. Because my book is self-published, traditional book reviewers will have nothing to do with me. Webzines and people with their own personal book review sites, however, are much more open-minded. I send out dozens of review copies--one to any reviewer who accepts my email offer. The word begins to spread. My website gets 10 or 15 hits a day. A few people point out that the book has a few typos. In January I have a booksigning at the MIT COOP bookstore. In an effort to stir up interest, I dress in burlap and ashes (I'm an Apostle, get it?) and parade in front of MIT wearing a sandwich board, handing out fliers. The windchill is -30F. Nobody shows for the signing. Yet somehow I convince my wife to let me make a publicity push. Let me go to California, I plead. After that, I tell her, I'll get a real job, I promise. Somehow I borrow enough money for the family to survive for a month while I'm on the road.
I arrange a cross-country booksigning tour, of sorts. Basically it's a mad dash for the Silicon Valley, where I have 8 events lined up and big plans for getting press coverage. I buy a used car with no money down and leave for California with $150 dollars in my pocket. I plan to finance the trip with sales along the way. I figure that $50/day will keep me in gas and coffee; If I can sell $100/day I can stay in cheap motels instead of sleeping in my car (it's February). I have four stops lined up for the ride from east to west-- but my car breaks down and I miss two of my engagements before I can get it fixed. At a stopover at my brother Paul's house in Colorado, I call in to a radio interview. I have no money left, but manage to sell $100 worth of books--cash--to local bookstores. California here I come.
Late February 2000: I've driven across the USA, I've eaten at least twice a day, and I haven't slept in my car yet. In California, there are friends (including Tom Athanasiou, to whom I now owe money) who agree to put me up a few nights here, a few nights there. At Sun Microsystems I sell $600 worth of books in two days. At other signings I sell a dozen or so copies. At several signings I sell zero copies. I place books on consignment in about 15 stores; others stores buy books outright. Many bookstores will have nothing to do with me. At some bookstores (Keplers in Menlo Park; Stanford University Bookstore) the buyers laugh in my face. "You expect [Kepler's || Stanford] to stock your miserable little self-published novel? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO WE ARE? HAH HAH HAH!" So instead I hand out 25 or so free copies at the Stanford student union; several students refuse my offer. I hand out 25 free copies at San Jose State, come back to $50 parking ticket. Shit, I think, I can't even give this book away.
By begging and pleading and putting on a one-man skit I convince Bookpeople, a distributor in Oakland, to "pick up" my book. I go to offices of San Jose Mercury News four times, fail utterly to get anybody to talk to me. San Jose Metro, same story. Likewise 10 or 15 other mags and newspapers. The Palo Alto Daily interviews me for 1 hour, but no article ever appears. On a brilliant Sunday afternoon I'm hawking my novel front of Cody's Bookstore, in Berkeley, hanging out with the certifiable loonies. I've lowered the price to $5/copy (cover price is $15) In 6 hours I sell 5 copies. After two weeks in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, it's time to go home.
On the way home sales aren't so good. I spend two nights sleeping in the car. One month after having set out I drive onto the last ferry of the day, taking me home to Martha's Vineyard. I have $1.58 in my pocket. On the boat my battery dies, and the crew have to push my car off the boat. At home I check my e-mail. I've gotten many nice notes from readers. Some apologize before pointing out that the book has some typos.
Fan mail continues. People write from England, Sweden, Australia asking how to get copies. Strangers on Martha's Vineyard stop me in the street to say they loved my book. Amazon sells one or two copies a week. My website gets 20 or 30 hits a day. Checks come in the mail with orders for books. About a dozen favorable-to-very-favorable reviews have come out on webzines. Most reviews do not mention the typographical errors, but some do.
Keeping a promise to my family, I dust off my resume, trying to camouflage a gap of nearly 7 years, and commence a hunt for a "real" job.
Having met the organizers of Boston's Geek Pride Festival over the net, I volunteer to help in exchange for permission to hawk my book. Over the course of 36 sleepless hours I stack chairs, sweep floors, move boxes, and help set up dozens of UNIX systems. And I sell 66 copies of my book at $10. I also get the book into the hands of several reporters and random power geeks. The next day I'm called up by the producer of a radio show on "Geek Culture." I do another radio show--an hour-- on the best radio station of them all, KFJC.
I have my first "real" job interview since 1986. For the occasion my wife has given me a haircut, and my bother Pete has mailed me some clothes. The interview is at Curl Corporation, a company founded by Tim "Inventor of World Wide Web" Berners-Lee and Michael "MIT Media Lab" Dertouzos. The hiring manager is an old friend of mine from Sun. I get the job on the spot, at a higher salary than I've made in my life. Meanwhile, in order that the family have some money while I'm interviewing, we've gone on Transitional Assistance ("welfare"). When I report my new salary to the welfare office, their forms have no place to check it off. I'm getting about 50 hits a day on my website.
Ten days after I start my new job (May 2000), Slashdot posts a glowing review of my book. My Amazon ranking goes from 79,000 to 65. Two Slashdot posters mention that I want too much money for a book that has so many typos. But hey, that means they've already read it! Eventually visits to my website level off at 150-500/day. Over the summer more glowing reviews come out, at Newstrolls, Geek.com, . . . fan mail comes in from all over. . . Amazon, after an initial flurry of several hundred sales, settles in to a routine of 5-15 books sold per day. Orders come in from here and there. Old friends come out of the woodwork to write me how much they liked my book. If this keeps up, maybe I'll be able to finish paying back the money I still owe to the printer, to the ISP. . .
I find Acts of the Apostles being cited here and there on the net as an example of the new generation of web-savy self-publishers. It's news to me. Breaking even on the print/web costs would be nice, to say nothing of the four years spent writing the damn thing. Nevertheless I take a certain pride at being a self publisher. Although I sure would like to make a little money some day, nevertheless I'm proud that I haven't sold out to a megacorporate publishopoly. I begin correspondences among the self-publishing community (Jim Munroe at www.nomediakings.org, John Jurek at www.greatunpublished.com). I have dreams of being Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, James Joyce. . . self-publishers all. . .
In New York, my long-suffering agent Joe still tries to sell my book to a "real" publisher. The rejections pile up like snow. . .
Busy with my "real" job I have no time to market my book. . . sales fall off. . . Barnes and Noble and Borders still list my book in their "Christian Theology" section. . .
I've sold about 2500 copies, including those five copies sold on the Berkeley streetcorner . . .
And then, the fellow at Salon says he'll write about me and the book. . . what will happen this time?
Footnote (1)
Here's a the lead of a funny article from the Boston Globe about David Wetherell's haunted house. (You need to register to retreive the whole story.) I was Alex Beam's source (I take credit for the line: "The overall impression one gets, cresting the hill, is that one has somehow stumbled upon a very nicely shingled German bunker overlooking the cliffs of Omaha Beach.")
REMAINS OF THE DAY HAUNT A BILLIONAIRE
By Alex Beam, Globe Staff, Published on 10/01/1999.
For Internet billionaire David Wetherell, a funny thing happened on the way to building his personal high-tech Xanadu. Well, maybe not so funny from Wetherell's point of view. All Wetherell, whose net worth has been pegged at $3 billion, wanted to do was build a garden-variety, 7,400-square-foot palace on a 10-acre plot of land in Martha's Vineyard. The Squibnocket site is one of the most beautiful in the Commonwealth, with a commanding view of such Vineyard landmarks as Nomans Land island, the ...
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