All the Audiences You’ll Find

On the reader/writer relationship, and what it feels like six months after pub day.

A shot from my launch event in the Bronx, back in March. Photo by the great son of the Bronx, Edwin J. Torres.

On Sunday, I took a break from being a dad to spend a couple of hours at the apartment of a woman who read my debut novel and reached out to me on Instagram. She invited me to attend an in-person meeting of her book club in Miami. It’s a modest club of a dozen women who have long been friends, and who have met religiously, every six weeks, for more than 20 years, to discuss books. All of these women just so happen to be about the same age as my mother, and have children who are about my age. 

When the request first came, I admit I was a bit hesitant. My weekends are usually quite busy entertaining my kids and running errands we can’t get to during the week, and stepping away for a few hours—especially when I’m not being paid for that time—isn’t always easy. But my wife believed it would be a good opportunity and was willing to hold down the fort while I was gone. I, too, was intrigued, if only because I’d never done an in-person book club thing before and was very curious how that would go—no less go in a room full of readers who are twice my age.

Earlier that morning, before I turned up at the woman’s apartment, my wife and I took our kids to Winn-Dixie, as we do every weekend for our mercado (our weekly grocery run). My kids bickered over what song to play in the car—“La Vaca Lechera” vs. “Happy Birthday”—and demanded food almost as soon as I pulled out of the parking lot of our apartment building. In the supermarket they fought over which cart to sit in—we usually get two, one for them to jump in, and one to actually hold (and protect) our food, because our Winn-Dixie, tragically, doesn’t have one of those grocery carts with the little steering wheels on it for kids. 

After we completed our trip and got our kids and our groceries back and tucked safely away in our apartment, I changed out of my dad outfit—cargo shorts and a t-shirt that was probably stained by something my kids had eaten that morning—and into my author (read: presentable) outfit, which, on this day, was just a pair of jeans and a short sleeve button down shirt. 

This change of clothes is physical, but there is also something mental happening, too. For in my mind, whenever I go to an event related to my novel, an event almost always bracketed by me doing normal ass dad shit, I am morphing from “dad mode” to “author mode.” These transitions, which have occurred for six months now, have become more seamless and less-jarring with time. Mostly because I’ve had some practice. Since my novel was published, I’ve done a dozen or so in-person events at bookstores, colleges, and book fairs, as well as a bunch of online interviews for podcasts or book clubs.

And yet, something about this transformation—the ability and, really, the opportunity, to shape shift from a regular dude to a public author person every now and then, almost like Superman—still feels novel, fun, and, what’s the word? Cool? Yeah. Fucking cool. 

With my book in hand, I made my way out to Downtown Miami, to a beautiful apartment on the 22nd floor of a modern building, with large windows overlooking the deep blue bay. I was met by six or seven women who are part of the book club, all of whom seemed excited that I would choose to come by and spend time with them, when in reality, I was still somewhat surprised, as I tend to be when I’m invited places for book related things, that they wanted me there in the first place. 

Quickly, I realized this was not a simple gathering. On the table before us was food aligned with my novel. There was delicious arroz con pollo, made by the host as an homage to my protagonist Javi’s (and my own) Puerto Rican background and the cooking of Javi’s mom that many readers have noted as being well-rendered on the page (and capable of making them hungry in the process). There were snacks present that were mentioned in the novel and even, in a touch that moved me deeply, a McDonald’s Happy Meal, which the host went and bought as a nod to a brief scene in the first chapter of the novel that I really enjoyed writing.  

Sitting and drinking in the living room, we spent two lovely hours chatting about my novel. I did my best to answer their excellent, probing questions. I listened as they deconstructed choices and plot points. I listened as they debated amongst each other who was their favorite character, debated over who was their least favorite, and even as some of them took to defending these least favorite characters and their actions. They undertook these arguments with fervor, as if these scenes and characters I spent ten years creating in my head and getting down on the page in the early morning light, were in fact real. I felt such pride at seeing what I’d done in a fictional realm creating such an impression here, in the physical world. 

Like other readers out there that I’ve had the great fortune to hear from and engage with online and IRL, these readers also pulled out beautiful metaphors and interpretations of the novel that I’ve never consciously thought of while writing. One woman, for example, connected the murder of Javi’s father by a rival drug-dealer in the midst of a party in the beginning of the novel to Javi’s eventual public fall from grace on live television at the end of the novel. She said she felt these two “public executions” were linked to her, and indicative of the path that Javi, hustling his trauma and his victimhood, shared with his father, who hustled other things before him. (I told her I would be stealing that one.)

The exchange reminded me of one of the true joys of having a novel out in the world, and having the honor of that novel being read and engaged with by an audience. Interestingly enough, before I showed up that day, I had already been thinking about some of this while answering questions that novelist

Charlee Dyroff

asked me for a wonderful interview series she has going about audiences’ relationship to a work of fiction, from an author’s perspective. In my responses to Charlee, I mentioned another reader at another book club event (this one online) who also stunned me with their interpretation of events in the novel and how they spoke to larger themes that, again, I was, at best, only half-conscious of while writing. 

Towards the end of the book club meeting on Sunday, I was asked by the women in the room if my life had changed since my novel was published six months ago today in March. I tried to give them the most honest answer that I could, which is to say that monetarily speaking, no my life hasn’t really changed. I still have a day job. I still shop at Winn-Dixie and hunt for sales with my unruly children in two carts. I still dream of upgrading my Honda CRV for a new three-row SUV with more space to store all of the shit that you accumulate when you have little kids. Craft-wise, as I’ve written, I can’t say that I feel like I’ve gotten that much better at writing a new novel either.

But six-months out, I can say, as I told the women in the book club on Sunday, that my life has changed in the sense that I am now blessed to periodically drop-in and be a part of spaces like the incredible one they created for me. It’s changed in the sense that, from time to time, I get to hear from people from all walks of life—people who I never imagined while writing this book all alone for years—tell me about how what I put down resonated with them and made them feel and think things and perhaps even inspired them to put down some of their own words.

That’s special. It’s beyond special, in fact. There is something magical about it. 

So yes, my life has changed over the past six months. I have gained a superpower. That’s about the greatest perk I can think of.

Peace,

Andrew