By John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com

When I first met Kurt Muse about eight years ago, and he told me the story of his clandestine efforts to topple Manuel Noriega, and of his subsequent arrest and escape at the hands of Delta Force, I confess that I didn’t believe him. The story was too spectacular—too big—not to have been written about already. But it all checked out.

After Kurt and his wife, Annie, met with my wife, Joy, and me at the always-wonderful Café Renaissance in Vienna, Virginia, we shook hands and a pact was made. Together, we would write a book about courage and patriotism; about success over outrageous odds. It would be a story of public servants who truly serve the public, about people who risk everything for strangers with no expectations of recognition or thanks.

No one would touch it.

First, we were told, the Central American setting is the death knell for any book. Americans don’t care about the other Americas. One editor declared that he’d be delighted to buy it if we’d be willing to re-set it in Eastern Europe. It’s non-fiction, I told him. But books set in Eastern Europe sell, he replied.

The advice from everyone in the proposal stage was for me to forget the project and move on to something else.

I refused. It was a good story—it was an important story—and on the heels of 9-11, I thought it was the kind of story that people craved. At every turn, I was told I was wrong. Everybody loses in war, and no one believes in that patriotic stuff anymore. But it really happened, I’d say. What’s not to believe?

Rejection after rejection kept piling up until one day it occurred to me that Steve Zacharias over at Kensington Publishing is not only a fan of my work, but the kind of guy to whom a story like this may well resonate. Bingo. We had a publisher, albeit one with still relatively low expectations.

Finally, five years after the saga to publish this story had begun, Six Minutes to Freedom arrived in bookstores, and it outstripped everyone’s expectations. It went into a second printing, and then a third. Meanwhile, all the non-patriotic, we’re-the-bad-guy movies of the past few years all tanked at the box office. When Kurt signed books, military people and firefighters and police officers—the kinds of public servants who might not understand what sells, but do understand what it means to put their lives on the line for the benefit of others—stood in long lines for his signature.

When we visited Delta Force headquarters on Fort Bragg, members of the Unit bought books five and six and ten copies at a time. They wanted their friends and families to know that they were not the caricatures painted by embittered Hollywood directors, but rather peace-loving men and women whose job requires violence. I lost track of the number of times I heard people tell Kurt about how they had studied his exploits in various military training classes.

And the presses kept printing books. On November 6—the day after we elected President Obama into office—Six Minutes to Freedom was listed on amazon.com as the number one book on political activism. I have no idea why, and it has since dropped away, but that’s still kinda cool when it happens two and a half years after it was first released.

Now I’m pleased to report that we have optioned the movie rights for SixMin to an independent producer who seems to really get it. He’s committed to telling the kind of story that honors its subjects. And best of all, I’m attached as the screenwriter.

So at least for the first draft, the screenplay will stay true to these remarkable people.

Really, truly, sometimes the good guys do win.

John Ramsey Miller

I missed the Obama inauguration because I was writing something, and I honestly just forgot it was on. By the time I tuned in I’d missed the swearing in, but I read his address online. Although I had my reservations, I think if he can bring about real change in Washington it will be good, if that change makes life better for Americans it will be very good, and if he can fix the economy, it will be a miracle, but one I approve of. If the economy gets better, maybe they’ll work on the fundamentals to help it stay that way. I’ll be watching as his term progresses, and I’ll be hollering at the TV a lot. I’m a TV talker and it drives my wife crazy. My grandmother talked to the TV, answering any questions the actors asked with personal comments. Once I heard her address James Arness, Matt Dillon, tersely when he asked Miss Kitty a question, “mind your own business! You don’t know me that well.” She wasn’t in control of her faculties, but she had a good time in Lu-Lu Land and it entertained us kids. I tend to be sarcastic and abusive when something on the TV touches a nerve. When Justice Roberts flubbed the oath because he didn’t have crib notes, if I’d been Obama I would have said, “Check the damned script, your honor!” I also suspect that Chief Justice Roberts used the Hussein part of the President’s and messed up the text on purpose because Obama opposed his nomination to be the Court cheese. I think he thought it would make Obama look silly, if he knew the oath and said it correctly. Imagine just one of them had practiced over and over in front of his Blair House mirror the night before.

The publishing and book-selling industry is no doubt getting a lot of business from the spate of Obama books that have shot from the presses like stomped shrimp, but it won’t inspire anybody to start reading other books, the way Harry Potter did. So (in a way) President Obama is helping the economy and he didn’t have to give the publishers billions of dollars of tax money. However, that said, books are one of the few our country actually still produces from raw material to finished product. Well, that and cheese. And books are as necessary as weapons for our armed forces. The sharing of knowledge is paramount to maintaining our country’s greatness, and literacy is a national treasure. The best thing about Obama being elected is that inner city youths can see the value of education and how simple knowledge can get you ahead in life more surely than a trick shot on the basketball court, or throwing or catching a pass accurately under pressure. I hope this spurs an interest in reading, and that everybody benefits from it, which they’d have to. Stupidity is forever, but ignorance is fixable.

I found it astounding that out of two million visitors to Washington on Tuesday, there was not one arrest related to the people attending the inauguration ceremonies. They did make one hell of a mess. The Mall looked like Woodstock after that event. Astounding. Woodstock, in comparison, even given the love-and-peace theme, didn’t even come close since a lot of the music worshipers were arrested, beaten, overdosed on that brown acid and stuff like that. Seriously, I have never seen so many smiles and people who’d, in a lot of cases, given up a lot to get to DC and went to a lot of trouble to be in attendance. I find that amazing, awing, heartwarming and hopeful. If this man can bring so many different kinds of people together in such a joyous manner then there is hope. The President is just a figurehead really. He can do a lot officially like start wars, and earmark stimulus money, and raise hell on TV, but it’s just a shame that he’s going to be working with the same old people who are corrupt and shortsighted and nearsighted and greedy for mo power.

I like to think there is hope and that reading will become popular once more with young people as it was with my generation. People are still reading, buying books, When I was fourteen my mother enlisted me in The Book of the Month Club, and I chose my books and I waited for them to come the way kids wait anxiously for a new video game. If Obama can do just that––just bring back a sense of awe for books by his example, I’ll be in awe of him. That’s the kind of change I’m looking for. Have at it, Mr. President, and best of luck.

By John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com/

Perhaps the future is not as bleak as we fear it to be.

According to the January 19, 2009, edition of Publishers Weekly, the National Endowment for the Arts reported last week that the population of fiction readers in the United States has increased by 16.6 million since 2002, “creating the largest audience in the history of the NEA survey.” No one knows why, exactly, but there’s general agreement that this is a good thing.

I have to tell you that the news doesn’t surprise me. For years—even during the days of the booming economy—I’ve listened to publishers and frightened authors complaining that no one ever reads anymore; yet when I walk into a B&N or Borders anywhere in the country, the aisles are fairly packed with people, and I have to wait in line before I can check out. Who are these people if not readers?

More recently, we’ve heard about the “collapse” of the publishing industry, with the concomitant panic response of layoffs and such, but then we hear of net sales declines of less than one percent. I understand that negative growth is never good in business, but a gnat’s whisker from break even—on the heels of five years of record growth—is hardly a “collapse.”

Years ago, when I was a junior officer in the fire service, a veteran captain gave me one of the great antidotes to panic: a good old fashioned deep breath. When you roll up on a working fire in the middle of the night, where people may or may not be trapped, and there’s a fleet of additional fire trucks on their way, and you have to make a thousand relatively irreversible decisions in just a few seconds, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. The captain’s specific advice was to sit in the cab of the fire truck for five seconds, and allow myself a couple of cleansing breaths before I say anything to anyone. It always worked.

I think the CEOs of the major publishing houses need to take a breath. I think authors need to take a breath, too. There seems to be this snowballing of doom that is augmented by rumors of more doom. This despite the fact that bookstores are still crowded, and more people than ever are reading. More books than ever are being published. Writers make the Times List for the first time every year. The Internet is an unexplored new frontier.

There are a lot of positive things happening. Sure, there are negatives, too, but I choose not to concentrate on those.

For the time being, I get to write books and get paid for it. No, really. Think about it. I get to write books and get paid for it! The publishers and their distribution networks will find their balance, and good times will return; but even when they do, I’m still going to have to work just as hard as I do now. In fact, no matter how good the business becomes in the future, this business of living one’s dream will never be easy.

As writers, we face far greater challenge than any of the suits in the publishing houses: We have to stay relevant.

I think of that great line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” Nowhere is the statement truer than in the entertainment business–our business. The reading public is building everyday. They’re building new tastes in new media. They’re seeking new inspiration, and they’re facing new fears. They’re telling us all as clearly as they know how what they’re looking for.

But will we come? Will we be the ones to satisfy their needs, or will that honor fall to others who spend less time looking behind, and more time thinking like entrepreneurs? They’re the customers, after all. We are merely the supply chain.