The average person on the street may very well be more familiar with the Trojan Man of the Trojan (wiki) brand of condoms rather than the character of Sea Haven police officer John Ceepak… but the former is just a footnote to the resume of acclaimed mystery and supernatural thriller writer Chris Grabenstein.
“I worked on the Miller Lite (wiki) beer account back when they had the ‘Tastes great, less filling ads,’ and I created the Trojan Man radio commercials for Trojan Man condoms,” said Grabenstein, a former executive vice president at advertising agency Young and Rubicam (wiki).
Grabenstein appeared at the Metuchen library this past Thursday to speak to an audience of more than 60 adults and children. But the topic wasn’t just his life story as a former improvisational comedian and professional ad-man – he also offered advice and encouragement for the aspiring writers in the room, young and old, who hope to see their work published one day.
Like so many others, Grabenstein said that he started writing as a child.
“I started writing at 10 or 11 because I was terrible at sports. My dad wanted me to be a football player, but I was terrible at anything athletic. I did a lot of writing and reading.”
Demonstrating his versatility as a writer, Grabenstein writes for two different audiences: murder mystery thrillers for adults and ghost story novels for young readers. The Hanging Hill, his ninth book in four years, was recently released by publisher Random House. In this sequel to The Crossroads, which is being optioned by a Hollywood producer to become a movie, the hero is a boy who can see ghosts no one else can see.
Though he used to live in Metuchen for six years, Grabenstein now calls New York his home. He said that a typical day means spending hours writing in his home office.
“On a typical day, I get up in the morning and start thinking about what I’m going to write about while taking care of other things,” he said. “I carry around note cards on which I write ideas for scenes. I write 2,000 words a day, which can take anywhere from three to as much as five or six hours. The next day I’ll read through the 2,000 words I wrote the day before and will make minor corrections. Then I do the next 2,000 words, and go back and forth like this. For a Ceepak novel, I may write 90,000 words for a 70,000 word story. So you over-write it first.”
John Ceepak is the protagonist in Grabenstein’s series of fictional murder mystery novels for adults. In the series, Ceepak works as a police officer in Sea Haven, New Jersey and lives by a strong moral code. The books in the series include Tilt a Whirl, Mad Mouse, Whack a Mole, Hell Hole, and Mindscrambler. Each is named after an amusement park ride that uniquely fits that book’s plot.
“If you want to be a writer, write what you like to read,” Grabenstein said. “I read a lot about bitter divorced cops who have no code but their own… with a partner who died in a horrible shoot-out and they don’t know if they’re ever gong to get over that. But interestingly, I’ve written books about a guy who’s just the opposite of that, as Ceepak is a 6′2″ tower of power who lives by the West Point code of honor – he will not lie, cheat, or steal, and he will not tolerate those who do. Instead of going out for a beer with the guys, a fun night for him is watching Forensic Files on TV. It’s a re-run, but there were some things he didn’t catch the first time,” he said, and was met with laughter from the room.
But Grabenstein said that the real secret to good writing is the re-write.
“I kind of make up the plot as I go… what happens is the character grows as you write, and you may not even know who your character is until you get to the end of the book. Then you go back and re-write it to refine it.”
Grabenstein recommended two books for aspiring writers. One is by author Stephen King called On Writing, (wiki), which also tells King’s life story. The other book is Self-Editing for [Fiction] Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King.
“In the Stephen King book, King says that if you’re building a room in the house, you put a brick down, and make sure it is level, firm, and square, before putting down the next brick,” Grabenstein said. “Then you do a wall, and then another wall, which leads to a room, and then another room. So it is with writing.”
Grabenstein said that there is a structure to every successful novel.
“Think of your favorite book and read that book three times until you figure out how it was constructed,” Grabenstein said. “You know how a kid may tear apart a machine like a lawn mower engine to see how it was constructed? Do the same with a book. For example, an author may have three separate things happen in the first three chapters. Read the book a second or third time and figure out what the underlying structure is, as there is structure to everything we do.”
Grabenstein said that the process of getting published is a long one, but that it all starts with landing an agent. To do this, he advised joining a writing group that focus on a writer’s specific genre.
“It’s great once you get that agent,” he said. “But to get one, join a group for whatever your genre is, like Mystery Writers of America or Romance Writers of America. Start going to conferences and… meet these agents over cocktails. Agents and editors come knowing they will be accosted by writers. If you can meet someone face to face, then you can at least get the first 10 pages of your stuff read. I prefer to have an agent because I hate selling my own stuff.”
“Then when you get an agent, he or she pitches your work to an editor of a publishing house, who then also reads it,” Grabenstein said. “If the editor falls in love with it, he pitches it at a committee meeting with all the other editors in the publishing house, telling the committee how they found this great manuscript they should acquire for such and such money. I got that far at Time Warner with The Prayer Circle, but it got gonged at that point.”
The Prayer Circle was the first book Grabenstein wrote, but it was never published and is not publicly available. A thriller, the plot revolved around a minister who recently becomes the pastor to a wealthy upstate New York congregation that mysteriously gets everything it prays for. Slowly, the thought comes to the new pastor’s mind – exactly who, or what, was his congregation praying to?
Grabenstein said that he originally wanted to be an actor, not a writer, and moved to New York in 1979 to take up acting. His first apartment was within shouting distance of Broadway.
“In 1979, I got my Actors Equity Card and found an apartment on 51st and 8th Avenue. The rent was $300 a month, and I could open my window at night and hear them singing lines from Annie.”
“I then started doing improvisational comedy,” he said. “I auditioned with a group called the First Amendment in Greenwich Village. Kathy Kinney, who played Mimi in The Drew Carey Show, was in my group. Back then we made like $10 a show.”
Superstar actor Bruce Willis was another. But Grabenstein moved on from acting and worked as an officer at a bank for five years, before deciding that he needed to do something that would allow him to be creative.
“I was 29, which was ancient in the creative field,” he said. “But one day I found an ad in the newspaper. ‘Write if you want work,’ (PDF), it said. It was an aptitude test by ad agency J. Walter Thompson that had eight simple questions. One question asked how I would go about selling a telephone to a Trappist monk.”
“I basically dashed the thing out over the weekend. But what was really cool about that was that the test was written by James Patterson. Back then he was writing Burger King commercials with me, but he would come in to work at 5 a.m. every day to work on his books. Now, I think every tenth book sold in America is written by him.”
Grabenstein is close. In 2007, one of every fifteen novels sold in the U.S. was a James Patterson book, which equals an estimated 16 million books. Many of his books are also named after popular nursery rhymes, which is where Grabenstein got the idea for writing a series of books named after amusement park rides.
“I then moved to another agency and worked on the Miller Lite beer account, with a boss who wrote the ‘It’s Miller Time’ ads. I then went to work for Young and Rubicam, where I did 17 years.”
At that point, Grabenstein decided that he wanted to give writing professionally a try, beginning with screenplays before moving on to books.
“I was living in Metuchen for six years, and we got a lot of great support here as my late first wife got oral cancer. It was brought on by cigarettes, and it came back four times. That was an awakening because I was 42 or 43 when she passed away, so when they say that life is short, they ain’t kidding.”
At the time, Grabenstein was writing commercials for Crystal Light and Jell-O.
“But it was not as much fun as it was the first time around,” he said. “Then I was lucky enough to find love a second time,” he said, pointing at his wife, J.J., who was sitting in the first row of the audience. “I told her, ‘Honey, I’m tired of advertising and I want to quit.’ She said ‘OK.’
Nine published books later, there’s no doubt that his decision was the right one.
