Today, Norm Goldman Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest, Alan H. Rolnick author of Landmark Status.

Good day, Alan, and thanks for participating in our interview.

Alan:

Thanks for the opportunity, Norm.

Norm:

How did you get started in writing? What keeps you going?

Alan: 

I’ve been writing since I was a kid, but never tackled a novel before Landmark Status.  I started out doing precocious, irritating social commentary in my school paper.  Many years later, after songwriting, journalism and law careers (and finally teaching myself to type properly), I decided to start writing the kind of stuff I’d always liked to read, from Kurt Vonnegut novels to Art Buchwald columns.  With my blog and the books (number two is half-done), I’ve happy to be finding my own voice as a (hopefully) cuddly curmudgeon.  What keeps me going is knowing there are stories worth telling around every corner.  The trick is finding the time to tell them without going broke.

Norm:

Please give our readers a brief synopsis of Landmark Status.

Alan:

In a parallel world, just north of downtown Miami, stands a seedy bar called the Century Club.  Once a legendary nightspot, it’s been slumbering for decades in subtropical decay by Biscayne Bay, which is not good if you’re a building in South Florida.  The climate alone will do you in, rusting your rebar, spalling your concrete, getting all sorts of mold and mildew up in your seams and cracks, even if the developers let you enjoy your retirement in peace.  Miami used to have but one five-star hotel, and I always wondered why they couldn’t get the main dining room to smell less like a subway station bathroom on the IRT.  But I digress. 

In Landmark Status, a regional outbreak of developer’s fever has finally rendered the Century Club valuable enough to bury it under a fabulous high-rise.  Chuck Steinberg, civic leader and would-be developer (most of the former here are also the latter), is obsessed with erecting a mixed-use condo/hotel/spa/monument to his ego called Miramonte del Sol.  He sends the beautiful and brilliant Delia Torres to make an offer that Club owner, Walter Marsh, can’t refuse.  But refuse he does, having already optioned the property to some out-of-towners.  So Chuck and Delia’s uncle Oscar, mayor of the mini-city where the Club is located, fund a shadowy community group’s effort to protect this “historic” building from the wrecking ball, hoping to drive away any other buyers.  Walter turns to his divorce lawyer, Benjy Bluestone, son of Bernard, Miami’s legendary zoning lawyer and deal maker.  With a trust fund that allows him to lead a life of quiet dissipation, Benjy wants no part of this action, but one look at Delia changes his mind and he gets drawn into the type of case he always swore he’d never take, finally following in his father’s footsteps and protecting a developer’s right to blight.  This gets him into a subtropical tangle of legal action, spirits, spells, cemeteries, skateboards, kung fu, car wrecks, football, phobias, fetishes, wooden flutes, pet rabbits and vintage aircraft, where all roads eventually lead to Opa-locka Airport and a violent confrontation threatens to blow up the deal for everyone.

Norm:

How did you develop the plot and characters in Landmark Status? Did you use any set formula?

Alan: 

I can’t say there was a formula, unless you count Miami’s strange brew of heroes and villains, which makes such stories the stuff of the daily news.  I think Carl Hiaasen or Dave Barry once said that the only thing you need for ideas down here is the Miami Herald’s Metro Section.  Practicing law for twenty years with such characters didn’t hurt, either.

Norm:

Do you still practice law and how has your law education and experience helped you write your book? As a follow up, has your environment and/or upbringing influenced your writing?

Alan: 

I’m still practicing law (and I’m told I have to keep practicing until I get it right!)  Whether lawyers like it or not, we write for a living, and the wacky stories of our clients’ deals and cases often stir up the impulse to write our own.  I’ve been devouring the world’s comedy and satire since I was a kid, and decided it was time to contribute some material for others to devour.

Norm:

Have you had anything published prior to your first novel? What has been your overall experience as a published author?

Alan: 

I’ve published magazine, newspaper and law journal pieces, but Landmark Status is my first published fiction.  I suppose my experience is somewhat atypical, because I got impatient with the process of courting agents (knowing that after running that gauntlet, there’d be another one to run with publishers), and decided to do this on my own (with help from my mentor Michael Levin, publicist Penny Sansevieri and website/graphic designer Jeniffer Thompson).  I got tired of waiting for the powers that be to discover me (or not), so I stopped collecting rejection letters at fifty (everyone said you need to get to a hundred before anything happens).  We don’t have to do that anymore.  We all have the means of production now, and I was inspired by the efforts of my wife, talent manager and film producer Sharon Lane – who recently produced the independent film “Canvas” – to seize the moment and do it myself.                                    

Norm:

How did you decide you were ready to write Landmark Status? As a follow up, how did you know when your book was finished?

Alan: 

I had a picture in my mind of Benjy literally running into Delia in the breakdown lane, and the phrase “beautiful survivor” from the Donald Fagen song “Trans-Island Skyway” (my writing is littered with pop-culture cues to songs, movies, comedy sketches and whatnot).  After a while, the places where Benjy and Delia were going (and why) started to come into focus, and I created a fairly detailed outline, with the bits of dialogue and text here and there.  It took a few months to get up the courage to start writing the thing, one word, one sentence, and one page at a time, but I got through the first draft quickly. 

I wanted it to hang together like a performance from one moment in time, and I was afraid to destroy any individuality it might possess with excessive manicuring.  This is probably the only thing I do where I don’t so much want to be a student of the game, because I don’t want to risk killing originality with craft.  I knew it was done when I blew everything up.  But months later, I realized it wasn’t done and wrote a new ending.

Norm:

How did you come up with the title Landmark Status?

Alan: 

I got the title early, while I was working on the outline.  I had a story about a dive that was suddenly valuable and some connivers who were trying to keep anyone else from getting their hands on it.  When I thought about the stunts Chuck and Oscar might pull, a fake landmark status campaign seemed perfect, especially since many of the book’s settings actually are landmarks (like the Dade County Courthouse and the Biltmore Hotel), and one of the book’s themes is the dislocation of Miami’s successive waves of immigrants, who’ve all made their livings selling and reselling the same dirt.

Norm:

What do you want your work to do? Amuse people? Provoke thinking?

Alan: 

Both, if possible.  It’s been gratifying to hear some suggest that Landmark Status succeeds in mixing mayhem and madcap adventure with more serious issues about the American Creed and what’s become of it lately.  How to build community while overcoming tribal roots and prejudices is an especially vivid issue for a new city like Miami, though it’s no less important anywhere else in the world. 

Norm:

Do you feel that writers, regardless of genre owe something to readers, if not, why not, if so, why and what would that be?

Alan: 

I wouldn’t presume to tell others what to do on this score, but I think I owe my best effort to answer readers’ questions and understand where they’re coming from, which is why I invite comments and questions on my website.  However, I do think giving away all the minutiae tends to shrink the scope of experiencing a work.  I once heard the phrase “intentional fallacy” used to describe focusing too much on what an artist thought he was doing when he did something.  It’s hard to not think of a pink elephant, so I don’t really give a damn who John Lennon was singing to when he wrote “Dear Prudence.”

Norm:

What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing? What tools do you feel are must-haves for writers?

Alan: 

Good writing for me requires pace and rhythm.  I like to hear it and feel it, something like music, whether I’m writing or reading.  I also think percussive surprise is important, which you can often get from an unexpected short sentence or fragment.  I’d suggest that learning to rip up a sentence and turn it inside out and upside down, to write the same thought many different ways is very important.  So is developing an ear for the way people really speak, so your dialogue doesn’t sound stilted and scripted.  That said, successful writing doesn’t require any of this if your name recognition is high enough.

Norm:

Are you working on any books/projects that you would like to share with us? (We would love to hear all about them!)

Alan:

As noted above, I’m working on a new novel that ties in with and features some of the same characters as Landmark Status.  I’m also blogging on the website and doing trenchant social commentary there and elsewhere, with further details to follow.

Norm:

Where can our readers find out more about you and is there anything else you wish to add that we have not covered?

Alan: 

Just dock your virtual skiff outside the Everglades Room (http://www.alanrolnick.com) and come in for a chat.

Norm:

Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.

Alan:  Thanks to you and Bookpleasures, Norm.

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