What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I began writing WE ARE ALL TOGETHER immediately after the publication of my first novel THERE IS NO END TO THIS SLOPE in March 2014. However, I went on a two-year hiatus from 2016-2018 when I wrote a screenplay, a children’s book, an essay, and a one-act play. I submitted the final draft to my publisher, Wampus Multimedia, on February 1, 2022. I’m looking forward to its publication on October 25.
Click on the below link to view an Wampus Multimedia’s interview on Richard Fulco about his debut novel THERE IS NO END TO THIS SLOPE.
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? I wrote at my desk overlooking the parking lot of my former one-bedroom apartment in Montclair, New Jersey. Occasionally, I had to contend with the new age music coming from my neighbor’s apartment below.
I also wrote in the study of my new home where I look out on Gregory Avenue in West Orange. Or on my couch hunched over a rather low coffee table. I don’t recommend this for anyone who suffers from back pain.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I drank coffee and water while I wrote. Lots of both. I took some notes in a moleskin, but the bulk of my writing was done on my laptop. I wrote every morning from 4:30-6:00 am before leaving for my day job as a high school English teacher.
In the evening, I periodically edited what I had written earlier that morning. On the weekends I had the luxury of writing for several hours in the morning, the evening or whenever I pleased.
WE ARE ALL TOGETHER takes place during the Summer of 1967, so I played a bunch of records from the time period. There was a whole array of music, but the records below were in heavy rotation:
Piper At the Gates of Dawn, Pink Floyd
In Rainbows, Radiohead
Muswell Hillbillies, The Kinks
Pure Comedy, Father John Misty
Mental Illness, Aimee Mann
Together At Last, Jeff Tweedy
Waiting on a Song, Dan Auerbach
Lotta Sea Lice, Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile
Wildflowers, Tom Petty
American Beauty, Grateful Dead
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. (I’ve attached the first chapter below.)
PART ONE
ONE
Back in 1963, I hung out in a dive bar, the only club in Topeka that didn’t card me. On the night President Kennedy was assassinated, I spotted Dylan John – though back then he was still Arthur Devane – standing with his back against a brick wall in the far end of the room, glaring at the tenor saxophone player. He didn’t have a drink in his hand, so I figured he was probably there for the music, unlike me who enjoyed the cheap drinks and chit-chat with the regulars – drunken middle-aged women straddling their bar stools near the jukebox. Arthur’s hands were plunged into the back pockets of his tight dungarees that were carelessly tucked into a pair of untied high-top black Converse. His collar was turned up on the black leather motorcycle jacket he had worn the previous day at our high school’s annual talent contest. Arthur, who was only fifteen, really tore up the auditorium with an original song about the Birmingham church bombing that had taken place a couple months earlier. The tune sounded like Woody Guthrie meets Chuck Berry, and he would have won if the three judges, who were also teachers, hadn’t been personally offended by the song’s subject matter.
I was making my way across the dance floor to ask Arthur if he wanted to jam with the group that I had put together when he barked at the saxophone player: “John Fucking Kennedy didn’t die so you could play like you’re dead up there.”The burly musician dropped his horn, jumped off the flimsy stage, and started pummeling lanky Arthur. I stepped between them and took a shot to the head before the drummer and the bass player broke it up. I held out my sweaty hand to Arthur, but he pushed it aside and picked himself up. He had a deep gash in his forehead, just above his left eye. Blood trickled down his cheek, but he made no effort to wipe his face. I bought us a couple rum and cokes, and we slid into an inconspicuous booth that was kind of detached from the rest of the dive. Arthur perched himself on top of the torn red leather seat, a bloody James Dean, while he surveyed the bar like he was casing the joint: “I used to really dig dark corners, thinking there was so much freedom in being unseen. But now I want…now I need–.” He trailed off mid-sentence. When he turned back, he ran his long fingers through his scruffy black hair and looked right through me: “That band was utter shit, man. I mean if you’re gonna play fuckin’ jazz then you better play fuckin’ jazz. You know what I mean?” The saxophone player didn’t blow like Charlie Parker, but I thought the rhythm section was pretty tight. I didn’t share my opinions with Arthur though. His mind was made up.
– Who the hell are you anyway, man?
– Stephen Cane. I’m a senior at Topeka High.
– Thanks for sticking your neck out for me back there, Stephen Cane. I’m Arthur Devane. You got a little shiner underneath your eye.
– You’re a sophomore, right?
– I was a sophomore. I dropped out.
– You dropped out? You’re kidding.
– A school that doesn’t appreciate talent doesn’t deserve me.
– You really smoked the talent show, Arthur.
– I should have won.
– That song was killer.
– Too bad the judges didn’t dig it. You interested in civil rights, Stevie?
– I haven’t really thought about it.
– Well, start thinking, man.
Blood was still trickling down his cheek, and I figured he might even need a stitch or two. I offered him a napkin, but he pushed my hand away: “Don’t sweat it, man!” I chugged my rum and coke and noticed the ice in Arthur’s glass had all but melted. I didn’t have enough money for another drink, so I was hoping he would offer me his since he hadn’t touched it. I stared at his sweaty glass as he went on about how difficult it was gonna be for Congress to pass the Civil Rights Bill now that Kennedy had been murdered. I was so eager to play with Arthur that I cut him off, “Hey, I was thinking Arthur. What do you say about jamming with my band tomorrow night?” Arthur didn’t say a word, just locked eyes with mine, while he chugged his rum and coke. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and slammed the empty glass down on the table: “I do my own thing. I don’t join nobody else’s. Ya dig, compadre?” At that moment, I quit the group I had formed and for the next two years, me and Arthur were inseparable. My mother didn’t like it one bit.
Some mothers inspire their children to aspire to greatness, to reach for the stars, like Arthur’s mother. But my mother, who was kind of musical in her own way, singing in the church choir and all, encouraged me to play it safe. My mother was a junior high school Math teacher, who also taught Sunday school, and the word “dream” just wasn’t in her vocabulary. I dropped out of high school a couple weeks after Arthur did so I could fully devote myself to playing what my mother called the “devil’s music.” “Rock and roll is a bunch of malarkey,” she scoffed, “It will never last.” She urged me to have a back-up plan for when I’d eventually wipe out, called me a “naïve little boy” and said, “You’re making a grave mistake, Stephen. The devil’s music will only lead to a life of alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, and dead ends. You’ll end up a failure, my boy.”
On the same day I dropped out, my old man lost his battle with the bottle. Washburn University had canned him, a tenured history professor, for canceling too many undergraduate classes in favor of tossing back pints at the campus pub with his students. From that day forward, my old man –miserable drunk that he was – could never get back on his feet. Stephen Cane, Senior, who wasn’t in any position to lecture me on how to live a healthy, productive life, was nevertheless more than willing to impart his worldly wisdom, or rather drill it into my impressionable brain, especially after he had just tied one on. Whereas Stephen, Senior’s wife of twenty years, Joyce Cane, was interested in my education and my moral fiber, he was only interested in me earning a buck.
My old man had been instructing me ever since I was a little boy that whenever money was involved, I should seize the opportunity, no matter who gets shredded in the process, even if that person ultimately turns out to be me, a skinny blond-headed boy with a fierce love of rock and roll: “Don’t listen to a single god damn word your foolish mother is spewing, Stephen. You hitch your wagon to any star you can find in that big, black hurricane of a sky. Never deny yourself a shot at making a dollar, even if it means playing jungle bunny music with that flaky Devane twerp.”
We were used to my father tossing around racial slurs, but this time I thought my mother was gonna have a heart attack right then and there. Her red face crumpled. She broke into a sweat, pulled a yellow handkerchief from her back pocket, and patted her forehead with it, while she called my father a “tedious old blowhard,” instructed him to take a cold shower, and then demanded that he confess his sins to Father Charles. My father took off his black belt with the wide silver buckle and sent me off to my bedroom. My mother was fearless and didn’t back down, unlike me who was petrified of my father, especially when he was crocked, and his eyes got really small. I locked the door and turned the volume up on my Victrola to drown out my mother’s shrieks and cries, but I still heard her begging my father to stop, so I crawled into my closet underneath a pile of pillows and blankets, but nothing I did could silence the unspeakable horror that went on downstairs. When it was finally over, I packed my guitar and tip-toed past my mother who was on her knees praying at the bottom of the stairs, while my father sat in his recliner with his head hung low. I closed the door and headed over to Arthur’s house to rehearse.
Click on the below link to read The Prairies Book Review on WE ARE ALL TOGETER.
https://theprairiesbookreview.com/?p=14225
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? I wrote this short chapter first, so it has been with me for many years. I’m still not sure if it should be the first chapter or preface.
Anyway, on the evening of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, at a fictional club in Topeka, Kansas my protagonist Stephen Cane meets his best friend and collaborator Arthur Devane who later changes his name to Dylan John. While Arthur is there for the cheap drinks and to mingle with drunken middle-aged women straddling their bar stools by the jukebox, Arthur is there for the music. He’s a musician’s musician.
I have tried to pack as much exposition as I can into the chapter, so there are plenty of references to the Civil Rights Movement of the early 60s. Arthur has even written a song about the Birmingham Church bombing.
Perhaps the most moving thing in the chapter is the scene where Stephen’s father beats up Stephen’s mother. Feeling defenseless, Stephen retreats to his room where he tries to drown out his mother’s sobbing with a record he spins on his Victrola.
It was a difficult scene to write and a difficult one to live with.
Click on the below link to visit Richard Fulco’s website.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. I don’t have any marked-up drafts, though my editor David Henry Sterry most likely has. Although that was last year, so he has probably used it for kindling by now.
Click on the below link to visit David Henry Sterry’s website
Most of the INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links can be found at the very end of the below feature:
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html