A Love Story (Love in the Age of Writing, Publishing and Grammarian Lust)

This won’t be sentimental as such. I’ve read enough sentiment to realize love stories are like love songs. They have a beginning and an end. Paul McCartney doesn’t like them to have an end, but he’s willing to admit his are “silly.” That’s probably why John Lennon said Paul “only wrote yesterday.”

My love story ends with an email last New Year’s Day. Kathryne sent it from New York saying, “Times Square was crowded and cold last night. I went into a Barnes and Noble and found your book. I read the dedication: To Kathryne.”

Let’s back up a bit, say, six years ago when we met online. She told me her husband came home one day and said, “I’m leaving you for my high school sweetheart.” She said, “I thought I was your high school sweetheart.”

That’s what twenty-eight years of marriage gets you, folks. A punchline.

We were both divorcees, both a little gobsmacked. Love songs end. We take the stylus off the record, we sign onto a dating site. I asked Kathryne why she did it so soon. “I wanted to prove someone could want me, too,” she said. The rhythm struck me as a song, maybe a lyric that needed a twist: “But what I really want is to cut out his heart and put it on a stick.”

So we dated, we discovered each other, she read my stories and the English teacher in her came out in grammatical ways. “I love this, but…” Grammarians take love to a whole new level. They make syntax sexy, they make a gerund something akin to learning Kama Sutra. Pretty soon you’re dazzled by acute sincerity combined with exacting punctuation.

I’m not a punctuation man. I knew I’d have to watch myself. When I told her I was writing a novel, she said, “What about?” I told her it concerned an old copywriter I’d met. I was doing contract work at an agency. One day I saw this gray-haired guy sitting in a corner office, smoking and take an occasional pull from a whiskey bottle. He didn’t care. He was waiting to be fired.

“Wow,” Kathryne said. “So what happened?”

“He died,” I said. “But I’m wondering what would’ve happened if he hadn’t?”

So it began, the writer and the grammarian. I’d send her my chapters each day, and she’d send her comments back. “I love this, but…”

One afternoon she called and said, “I’m mad at you.” It could have been anything, really. I was never much of a boyfriend. I asked her why, anyway. “You won’t give Muller a chance. He’s got a wonderful heart but all you do is treat him horribly.” He was a secondary character, I told her, not much more than an off-track son-in-law. “Still,” she said. “You’re mean. You don’t give people a chance.”

I went to bed thinking about that. You don’t give people a chance. Damned if my grammarian wasn’t turning into a muse. So I went back, I had a talk with Muller, and he grew on me. He grew on me like silly little loves songs make you hum, but you really wish you’d put on The Ramones.

When I sent what I thought was the last chapter, I said, “Am I done?” and she replied, “Yes, you’re done.” She drove two hours in traffic to bring me champagne. A year later, after a hundred and seventy-six rejections, she brought over another bottle of champagne. An agent finally said he’d represent me. “Whooee!” Kathryne shouted on the phone. “I’m on my way!”

Well, love stories have their highs and lows, don’t they? They can’t all be silly little love songs. My song became a bit of a literary dirge when my agent, Peter, sent me an email. Attached was a note an editor friend sent to him: “Peter, we’ve worked together a long time. Normally, I trust your judgment. But I don’t see it here. I don’t find this book particularly funny.”

“Why aren’t you crying?” Kathryne said when she read it. I told her there was no point. “But it is funny,” she said. I sent an email to Peter saying, “I don’t know what to do.” He responded with these words I’ve kept for posterity: “There’s no precipice here, Robert,” he wrote. “I still believe in your book.”

In the months ahead, Kathryne’s and my love story would end, much the way love songs end. We sent Christmas greetings and birthday wishes as the book went into distribution. It would be described as “funny but weird.” I’d found an audience, but the “funny and weird” don’t exactly populate the earth. As Peter would say, “People need to be spoon fed.”

A box arrived at my door. Eight hardcover copies, smelling like a bookstore shelf, all glossy and new. I autographed one, sending sweet sentiments to Kathryne in the form of “Thanks for all your kindness and hard work.”

She responded with “I’ll keep this for all time,” a promise I’m sure will be kept given the nature of hard cover books. You can’t give them away.

And so came the long months of waiting, watching the numbers, hoping the royalty check wouldn’t be a joke. My former boss’s book earned him exactly ten dollars. I earned a few thousand. I’d lost Kathryne to a portly doctor who got stuck in the hatch of his boat. Kathryne’s terrified of the water. Imagine her sitting at the tiller with the doctor saying, “You may have to take us in wing to wing.”

Then there was New Year’s, with Kathryne in New York, and me reading my second royalty statement. It said: “Royalties from sales: $11,429. Amount paid for returns: $11,429.” Books were coming back faster than they went out. My popularity was blossoming with the U.S. Postal Service. Not so much elsewhere.

The few reviews were good, friends and family called my novel “funny as hell.” Sales rose and fell and one bookstore employee called it the “wandering book.” That’s when a novel leaves the shelf and shows up somewhere else. People change their minds. I put it down to cost. There’s actually an online book seller in Britain offering my book for $108.99. Shipping is another $10.00.

In Calgary, the three copies of my novel are always checked out of the library. “We have a waiting list,” the librarian told me.

I don’t know whether Calgarians have a better sense of humor or think my book is about a horse. You never know. When oil prices get low, I guess Calgarians turn to fiction. They’ve got the time, so do authors. We start seeing the postal service as a worthy occupation, certainly more lucrative than what’s being pushed through the mail slot.

It’s a shin kick in either case.

We may be writer’s of fiction, but we’re not the big leagues. The best we can do is silly little love songs. Fate has the real stories all wrapped up. When somebody like Bill Maher says, “I’m not making this up, folks,” he ain’t kidding. We’re slow hands, dead-eyed novices walking into the breach.

That’s what fate allows. Even love stories and love songs. They’re all the same until a royalty check comes in. That’s fate, too. Not a common fate, but fate just the same. You just have to hope you’re one step ahead of the returns.

Let know what you think of fate, grammarians, silly little love songs and the publishing industry, at: rcormack@rogers.com

Robert Cormack is a novelist, freelance copywriter and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive) is available online and at most major bookstores. Check out Yucca Publishing or Skyhorse Press for more details.