The DC Chronicles: Dave's Book and Broken Ankle Sagas

[Dave Cullen]

INTRO:
WHY THIS THREAD & HOW IT WILL WORK

T2 cracked me up, as he tends to do, with this post two weeks ago:

I caught this 'last week's' episode of "The DC Chronicles: Book and Broken Ankle Saga" but has there been a new episode/update? It looks like it should have 'aired' Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest...

It was so hopeful when in that episode they talked about the cast coming off, but then it ended with some ambiguity on that point with the slow healing sibling subplot...and of course the itching and and chaffing cliff hanger...can't wait for the season finale...I believe it has a happy ending with some hiking and a book tour.

Hahaha. We love him.

Now that the book is finally almost birthed, I figured it was time to put up a thread for anyone interested to follow along. It took me a couple weeks to figure out how to make the thread work, hence the delay. I wasn't quite sure, because I want anyone interested to participate, but also make it possible for people to find the various installments of each major development. It's so damn hard to find anything you want in a thread, right?

So here's what I've come up with:

Whenever I post a major new installment of some milestone or development, I will TRY to get my ass back to Post #2, right below this one, and add an entry to the Table of Contents, with a link.

That way, anyone who wants to can write as much or as little as they want on the thread, and hopefully people who want to join in late and catch up on the storyline can do it that way. If that's too cumbersome, maybe I can start a read-only thread where I'll put just the developments in one place. We'll see how it goes.

I'm going to start with a few catch-up posts to provide a little background and paste in the developments of the past month or two, which I posted in random other threads where I hang out.

---

Hey, if anyone is kind enough to link to me on their blog or LJ or whatever--either now, and/or just prior to pub--I'd like to ask two favors:

1. Link to this page: http://www.davecullen.com/columbine.htm

2. Use Columbine as the linked word (italics not necessary--with or without is fine).

Example: "Dave Culllen's new book Columbine is . . ."

The reason is google searches. Currently, if you google "Columbine," my Slate piece on the killers from 2004 is #2 (I'll never pass wikipedia, which is #1), and my book page--the one I'm asking you to link to above--is #16. It took years to work them up that high, but I'd really like to push my book page up into the top ten, so that more people who are out there searching on Columbine and in the market for my book will discover it.

It's part of google's sytem that the word used in the hyperlinks coming in are crucial in determining search matches.

Thanks.

[Dave Cullen]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Key Developments
(In chronological order. A few of the posts got out of order.)

1. The Columbine book: The first nine years
2. Breaking my ankle: September 2008
3. Typeset! October 2008
4. Ankle Update: Out of the cast (coming): October 2008
5. First appearance on Amazon: Nov 10, 2008
6. Ankle Update: Approved for walking down the hall: Nov 14, 2008
.
.
.

[Dave Cullen]

The Columbine book: The first nine years.

OK, if you're unfamiliar with our story . . .

I started covering Columbine for Salon the day it happened, April 20, 1999. I've written on lots of other things since then--and started this site and took a part-time day-job to stay afloat for awhile--but my primary occupation most of the time for the nine and a half years since then has been this book.

It's finally done. It's just going to be titled Columbine.

It will be published April 6, 2009--fourteen days prior to the tenth anniversary. My editor and publisher is Jon Karp, for Twelve, which does just one big book a month. Mine will be their April book. Twelve is part of Grand Central Publishing (formerly called Warner Books), which is part of Hachette Book Group (which was formed by the merger of Warner with Little, Brown).

I'm through all the writing and rewriting and editing now, and things are moving along swiftly this fall. I've got lots of developments to report below, and more on their way.

[Dave Cullen]

Typeset!

I've been waiting nearly ten years to see this:



It was cool to see it in print.

This is the title page: the first printed page on the inside, before the copyright page or Table of Contents. (The 12 is the logo for my publisher, Twelve.)

I don't know if it's clear at this size, but there are hash marks designating the edges of the page, and then marks for the printer and a footer in the margin.

I think my editor would kill me if I posted a scan of a page from a chapter, but this should be safe. That's the typeface it's in, and that thing that looks like an infinity symbol repeated a couple times appears on the first page of each chapter.

I actually got it a few weeks back (along with the other 359 pages, plus about 50 pages of bibliography and notes). I was going to post earlier, but was so damn busy doing the final fact-checking and marking up the proofs, I never found time to come here.

I FedExed off the last of the marked up pages a week ago, and then the Hachette managing editor worked with it last week, and had various questions. Last Friday, she called with final queries that the proofer had in her final pass. She gave me until 5 p.m. NY time to get back to her with final rewrites (of a line or two, on those items), and I did.

She ran it upstairs to production before the week closed. It's back to the compositor today to make the final typesetting changes for the plates to run the Advance Reader Copies (ARCs) that go to reviewers, media, etc.

As of 5 p.m. Friday, every word they're going to see is locked in.

So the content is DONE!

(I'd actually thought we'd reached that stage a few times, but there were more rounds of checking and rechecking, which is a good thing.)

What a relief.


Thanks to everyone here who has been supportive.

---

Now, on to the next phases.

The director of publicity is supposed to call this week to brainstorm the marketing plan. Woohoo. That will be fun. I love marketing and have been dreaming of this phase for years. I know most of it won't personally involve me, but that's fine. I can't wait to watch it unfold.

I have a ton of work to do on my website, and on expanded endnotes to be posted there, and all sorts of other things.

I can't wait to see the ARCs. They're do around December 1.

[Tonkatodd]

OK...after reading about the arduous, fascinating process/journey you have been involved in (and I have to say I can't believe all you have been through and are going through) then what do I do? Glibly ask you to "feed the beast" and...write...more! Welcome to your "busman's holiday/nightmare"!

I am, however, quite (sheepishly and humbly) glad that you have done this because I feel like we have got to come in to learn/observe all of this at the precise 'moment before momentous'!

Let me ask the most prosaic of questions, I know you say that 'content is done' but as a writer going to print do you live with nagging feelings of 'things left out' or 'thoughts not fully explored'? I just asked because I agonize over my stupid blog postings (this one included) for not fully expressing my self adequately but maybe it is different for the professionals...is that true? Why can't we just 'edit' forever?

You know what else is exciting? I can't wait for this all to spill over in to other parts of the forum..."Read any good books lately?" or "Most anticpated of TV or Film"...a bit ahead of oneself... so I will be happy with it's current home/incarnation in "Jake, Heath and Others we love".

[Dave Cullen]

Let me ask the most prosaic of questions, I know you say that 'content is done' but as a writer going to print do you live with nagging feelings of 'things left out' or 'thoughts not fully explored'?

Oh, there are a few little things that nag at me, but after years rewriting up to the full draft, and ten months of editing and rewriting after that, I've gotten all the big ones worked out.

My agent told me about a month ago that I needed to accept that a book is "a finite project." You can always make it better, but that's called an infinite project, and does not result in publication. If you actually want to create a book, you have to accept the finite part.

That was a great way of looking at it.

(And thanks, T2 for being first to jump in. Great opening question. I'm looking forward to lots more commentary and questions.)

I had one more round with it after that, but tried to restrain myself from mucking about too much.

I feel pretty good that it's very, very close to the way I would do it if it were infinite. But yeah, given the option, I'd go on forever.

I'd rather go on to write other things.

[CellarDweller115]

Hello Dave!

It's been quite a journey for you, and I thank you for sharing it with us!

Much success to you!

[Tonkatodd]

Dave, isn't it possible to get every book purchaser's address so you can continually and continuously send them corrections, additions, updates and epilogues to the book? (Now that was prosaic, you must admit.)

Here are my next questions...since you don't seem adverse to the ignorance...

With the Columbine story so much has come out little by little, over a good span of time, when did you sort of stop (if ever) gathering information and really begin writing the story? (I won't feel bad if your editor disallows your answer as too revealing.)

and this probably a terribly gauche thing to ask but, do you already know what the next project will be?

and gaucher still...do you exclusively write nonfiction?

[Dave Cullen]

Dave, isn't it possible to get every book purchaser's address so you can continually and continuously send them corrections, additions, updates and epilogues to the book? (Now that was prosaic, you must admit.)

Haha. That's what it would take. I will start collecting emails now.

With the Columbine story so much has come out little by little, over a good span of time, when did you sort of stop (if ever) gathering information and really begin writing the story? (I won't feel bad if your editor disallows your answer as too revealing.)

Very good questions.

Researching and writing was iterative. I tried an earlier version of the book for Random House as an ebook way back in 2000. I researched and wrote a whole draft, but wasn't satisfied, needed much more info on the killers, and meanwhile ebooks failed as an entity, so the closed down the imprint just after 9/11, so that was 2001. Good luck for me. It wasn't ready.

I went back to researching and sold the new conception of the book in 2004. I can't remember for sure, but I think I spent a year researching more before I sat down to write much, though I did some bits along the way. By early 2006, I was writing furiously, had 130 pages by February, but didn't like them and started over in March, and then again. But that also convinced me I didn't know some of my key characters well enough, so I went back for a big round of interviews that March. Then it was research, write, research, write, where I often did one chapter at a time; re-researching and then writing. Or sometimes more the other way around. I knew enough to start, would write what I could, see what I didn't know, and then go search it out. It was back and forth.

And then the killers' journals finally came out in 2006, I believe, and I spent months engrossed in them.

I finished the full draft just after New Years this year, so the bulk of the research and writing was done, but there were a few little holes, stuff I was unsatisfied with, and a massive list of things to fact-check and recheck.

So most of this year was rewriting and re-researching details to make sure I had them all straight, and settling contradictions and so forth, and checking things over with sources, seeing what they thought was contradictory or didn't fit, etc.

I didn't really ever stop gathering new info. After the pages were typeset, I reviewed quite a few with sources in person, who corrected little things and inevitably gave me new things--both recent developments and bits they had never mentioned before. I squeezed some of them in to my markups of the page proofs.

On the day those markups were due, I was still waiting for the Klebolds, who had agreed through their lawyer to verify a good deal of info. On the day after the due date, they came through, and I got those small fixes in, plus two quickie additions. (Thank God for email.)

I guess I've stopped now. Hopefully. I've definitely stopped searching, but the review copies will go out to a lot of people, and they may catch errors, if any are still in there. Hopefully just typos.

and this probably a terribly gauche thing to ask but, do you already know what the next project will be?

and gaucher still...do you exclusively write nonfiction?

I can answer those together. I have been aching to write fiction again, for years, and am so ready.

I spent a few years toying with several ideas for different novels and settled on the one I want about a year ago. One day I let myself spill out the first (three?) pages of it, and I think another day I put together a rough outline.

I was supposed to be focused like a laser on my current book, but thought it would be good to a) get something on paper while it was there, and b) set my mind to rest that I had a next project when this was done. It really did help. Once I did that, it let my mind let go of it for nearly a year and concentrate.

I need to go find those. I wanted to plunge back in this week, though organizing for this marriage protest Saturday has been consuming my week.

Sorry, I can't say what it is--probably not for a year or two. I need to mess around with it in isolation for awhile, see if it works out, or where it goes.

It will just feel great to work on something new.

I also have a reported magazine piece I really want to do for March. I need to get on that as well.

Thanks for asking.

[chapeaugris]

Dave, what I want to know is, when you are contacted by the media to comment on the latest school massacre, do they ever say "So what's the deal with this massive Brokeback Mountain forum we found when we Googled you?"

[Dave Cullen]

Dave, what I want to know is, when you are contacted by the media to comment on the latest school massacre, do they ever say "So what's the deal with this massive Brokeback Mountain forum we found when we Googled you?"

So far, they're very focused on the topic at hand in those situations. They almost never ask about any of my other work, including this site.

In those situations, they're on a deadline news story, though, where the focus is the current shooting, and I'm already one removed as an expert on another shooting, and/or shootings in general. So my other work is two removed. When I've spent longer--eg, on the TV documentaries, where they came out to my place for most of a day--we have longer to chat about other things, and it has come up, and they have found it interesting.

When the book comes out, though, if some people do some broader stories on me, I expect it will come up. I'm curious to see, too.

[Tonkatodd]

We will get you ready for the press tour...

The peek in to the process is so entirely fascinating to me...so mysterious because there seems to be no right (write) way to do it...very personal, individual and singular in it's approach. Any way anyone can get it done is right for them...now, I don't know if I could just throw out 130 pages of work...but it sounds as if that was necessary to go through (and purge)  before you could 'find' the right path, is that so?

How or what kept you fascinated about the topic (although it is not hard to see how the topic would be/stay fascinating) for 10 years?

I was in Denver...and Littleton...not long before columbine. (I helped opened the Park Meadows Mall for Liz Claiborne and did a couple of weeks of events there and throughout the Denver/Boulder area.) It was chilling to the bone after the shootings because, to me, it seemed to be the last place in the world to find such...rage.

But there is always that theory that the (outwardly) calm, benign and bucolic places are actually where to look for the disgruntled and disenfranchised "Holden Caulfield's" of the world. Phony, unreal places hiding the truth...to their diseased and cluttered minds.

[oceansbetween]

Has anything you’ve learned—about the events, the people, the writing process, yourself—frightened you?

When you’re writing, do you sometimes feel as if you’ve hit a “runner’s high,” where the words emerge more quickly than you can type?

In using an iterative approach, do you ever feel removed enough, by time or state of mind, to wonder, “Who wrote that really perceptive / obtuse / awkward sentence or passage?” Do you agonize over a single word, whether it’s the right one?

[Dave Cullen]

Has anything you’ve learned—about the events, the people, the writing process, yourself—frightened you?

Well it got to me many times, but usually more sadness and depression than fright. I went through two separate bouts of PTSD.

I'm thinking back, and I think the most frightening came the first week, seeing those 2,000 shellshocked students every day in Clement Park. That scared the shit out of me, wondering what would happen to them.

I think that memory was maybe the biggest driving force in me start to finish. It wasn't the murders themselves, it was watching and feeling what it did to all those people. That's completely changed my perception of tragic events.

When you’re writing, do you sometimes feel as if you’ve hit a “runner’s high,” where the words emerge more quickly than you can type?

Oh yeah, very frequently. It especially happens when I'm on walks (I'm not allowed to leave the house without paper and pen), and also sometimes when I wake up in the morning with a scene in my head, all written, and I have to get it down before it goes. Sometimes I've been dreaming about it and remember the dream. Other times I'm not sure. I must have been, but I don't remember the dream, I just know I have something. Sometimes I'm only aware that I have a line or two or some solution to a nagging problem, but I grab the pad (I keep a stack of them under the bed), and write it down and discover it's connected to another sentence and another . . .

I have stayed in bed two to three hours scribbling 15-20 pages, though those are the exceptions. It's usually half a page to 1.5.

And not all that copy makes it into the book. A fraction of it ever does. It's all about distilling it down. Some scenes I've rewritten 20-30 times or more. Some lines or paragraphs many more than that.

In using an iterative approach, do you ever feel removed enough, by time or state of mind, to wonder, “Who wrote that really perceptive / obtuse / awkward sentence or passage?” Do you agonize over a single word, whether it’s the right one?

No to the first question. Definitely to the second. What I  try to do and have learned to mostly do is just put something there and move on, because it comes to me later. (Sometimes hours later, sometimes it's been literally years later, many versions later. I still see that word and go, "damn!"

My technique I use most commonly is throw down several all the similar words I'm fumbling towards like this (saw/discovered/revealed/figured out/uncovered)--though I wouldn't actually fret over a verb that ordinary. I'll see if I can find an actual example. It's usually verbs I fret over, and also examples.

Warren Zevon (singer/songwriter) is one of my inspirations in economy of words and choosing just the right ones to convey a scene, a mood, an emotion. Check out the opening of "Carmelita":

I hear Mariachi static on my radio
And the tubes they glow in the dark

When I was teaching undergads, I played them just those few seconds, and handed out the two lines and asked them to describe the narrator and his situation: describe the him, the room, the house, how he was feeling, what had happened to him, what was going to happen to him . . .

To my great joy, virtually everyone had a vivid picture. They didn't have to stretch to come up with something; they were already picturing it, imagining it. (Try it before you read on.)

And none of them had heard the song, but they were perfectly in-synch with the chorus and next stanza, before they read or heard it:

Carmelita hold me tighter
I think I'm sinking down
And I'm all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town

Well, I'm sittin' here playing solitaire
With my pearl-handled deck
The county won't give me no more methadone
And they cut off your welfare check

They did have benefit of the music, though I think that was less significant than the words here. I should have tried it with just the text. See what you think.

For them, "the tubes they glow in the dark" was the most revealing. They pretty much all pictured some version of a guy lying on a couch, alone, staring blankly, doing nothing, listening to crappy music he doesn't like on a staticy station that won't come in, too depressed to sit up and fix it or change it or turn on the freaking lights after it got dark. He may well have been lying there since before the sun went down, and he can't get himself up. He's noticing the glowing tubes and that's the most interesting thing he can find in his pathetic life.

From there, it diverged a bit on how or why or what else was going on with him, but it was all pretty depressed and pathetic. It was their imaginations taking over from there, but Warren had set their imaginations on a particular course.

All that from two lines. Pretty impressive.

Also, read the first 2 pages, I think, from One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest. Everything Louise Fletcher did in the film (which won her the Best Actress Oscar, and deservedly) is there on the page in one brief, tight, opening scene.

[Dave Cullen]

This might be the moment. I was looking up a book for someone and ran into mine:



Woohoo! I'm on Amazon!

(Link here: we went with the simple title Columbine.)

I got the cover six or eight weeks ago, and I've been dying to share it, but they said it could still change, so I've had to sit quietly. (Not my inclination. Hehehe.)

It's a matte finish except for the title, which is glossy, raised letters, so on the physical version, it really pops. (If you run your hand over it, the paper feels like rough card stock rather than a glossy magazine, and the title feels like braile.)

They sent me jpg first, and I thought that looked pretty cool, but then they shipped me a physical version wrapped around a hardcover the next day, and this one works ten times better in person.)

You might notice my name is not on it. The artist thought it would be much more striking this way, and my editor agreed but gave me the option of adding it back. I went with it. My name is on the spine, and the title page, etc.

The pub date is officially April 6, 2009 (fifteen days before the tenth anniversary). They also raised the price from $25 to $26.99, so I'll make 30 cents more per copy than expected. (Amazon is discounting it 34%, to $17.81.) I didn't know those little details for sure until just now.

My Amazon rank is #1,336,122. Haha. OK, that's my baseline. I'm sure I can improve from there.

They don't have all the info there yet. They have some advance reviews, and a summary of me but no book description yet. I guess they'll use the flap copy, and that isn't finalized yet. (I approved catalog copy a couple months back, which was cool, but there are lots and lots of stages.)

BTW, Ron Rosenbaum wrote a really nice blurb, which got abbreviated there to the point it doesn't really make sense. It should read:

"Dave Cullen is the Dante of this high school hell. I came away from it thinking of Jack Nicholson hollering 'You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!' Read this quietly powerful account of Columbine and find out if you can."

I'm sure they can fix that before April.

Meanwhile, I really like it being there!

---

(FYI: I actually saw it earlier this week, but have been holding off until I got an answer from my editor, and I also wanted to avoid any more long posts on the first page of the thread from me. I wanted others to have a chance to chime in first, so I didn't give the impression it should all be coming from me. I wanted it to be inviting.)
---

Here's what I meant at the start of this post: This might be the moment. THE moment. It's funny, about twelve hours before I saw it, just before bed, I was talking to someone about when the book was going to feel real. Lots of my friends have gotten their first books before me, which is a blessing, because they've cleared the brush away every step to show me what's ahead. But everyone seems different on the singular moment the book feels real.

For some, it's the first actual hardcover, that you can crack open, hear the binding crackle open and smell. For others, the advance reader's copies (ARCs--formerly called bound galleys), or an advance copy of the cover, or the typeset pages to proof.

So far I've gotten as far as that last two. Nope and nope. (I posted about getting the page proofs. Cool moment, but not the big one.) I was thinking it would be the ARCs.

But then, it appeared on Amazon. And there it is. It's a book!

It's all pulled together, it's packaged and it's for sale. For me, I think that makes it real.

None of my friends mentioned this as the key moment, but I guess it's the marketer in me. As for the pages: I don't know, it always felt like I was writing a book. So they're typeset now--that was nice, but it didn't feel like a great leap. This does.