Image 3My first conversation with the publisher’s marketing director for Wandering West was a little awkward to say the least.  She asked me to give her my elevator speech.  Believe me, I know all about elevator speeches.  I give them all the time, where my financial advising business is concerned.  If you want to know about a stock I like, my view on the markets, the economy, etc., I can spit something out by the time we move from the parking garage to the seventh floor.  After nearly thirty years in The Bizz, I’ve been around the block a time or two.  That doesn’t mean I necessarily have the answers.  It just means I understand some of the questions, and to some of those, I may think I have at least a part of the solution.

But this is about my elevator speech for Wandering West.  When the young woman from Lulu Publishing, in her sweet voice, asked me to explain what Wandering West is about–and to do it in thirty seconds–well, I stuttered and stammered my half minute into–finally–an admission that I wasn’t quite sure how to do that.  I mean, heck, it took me 100,000 words–300+ pages–to tell the story, riveting yet poignant as it surely is.  As I’ve explained in previous posts, I don’t enjoy being put on the spot about my writing, nor about much of anything else, for that matter.  Who does?  Moreover, my writing starts from a mood, a feeling if you will.  I have to get my sea legs under me, my narrative voice at just the right pitch.  From there, the characters are developed, and the storyline takes off like a Virgin Galactic flight into outer space.  Hopefully, the flights will take off like my story does, for the passengers’ sakes.

So, what is my elevator speech, now that I’ve spat it out for the upteenth time?  As they say, practice makes perfect, or in my case, almost functional.  Close your eyes and pretend–no, don’t close your eyes. You can’t read the rest of this text if you do that. Pretend we’re in an elevator, soothing elevator music (naturally) playing softly from the speakers overhead.  You have just asked–with great interest, mind you–what Wandering West is about.

And I clear my raspy throat to say: Wandering West is a contemporary, literary novel set in South Texas, in the rugged, desolate, rather inhospitable terrain, not far from the Mexican border.  It’s about an older fellow, by the name of Jack Stiler, who has lost his beloved wife to cancer and his Wall Street career to a humiliating scandal.  Jack returns home in a desperate attempt to save the family ranch from financial ruin–from the invasion of smugglers of people, guns, and drugs–in the midst of a drought of historic porportions–and, while battling to hold on to those he loves, he struggles also to save himself from the demons that torment him.

My elevator speech doesn’t really do justice to Wandering West, I don’t think.  You’ll just have to click onto the book section of my website and order the book itself.  I think you’ll be enthralled if you give it a good read.  I tend to write better than I give speeches, in an elevator or otherwise.