New Life For Old Characters

For a writer there is no better feeling than when your book arrives on the doorstep.

All of that work. All of that preparation. All of those hoops that had to be jumped through. Years in the making. And now, finally, I can hold it in my hands.

Yes, I’m tooting my own horn. I can’t help it. I’m proud of this book and I want to spread the word about it.

“Connecticut Characters: Profiles of Rascals and Renegades” will be published June 1 by Globe Pequot. (They also published my first book, “The Legendary Toad’s Place: Stories From New Haven’s Famed Music Venue,” which I co-wrote with Brian Phelps.)

I had envisioned putting together this compilation in a book for many years. When I departed from the New Haven Register in 2020 (in order to have time to pursue projects such as those two books), I began the Herculean task of going through all my Register columns, extending back to 1980.

We didn’t talk digital way back then. There is no online archive of those early columns. But not to worry; I am a pack rat. I clipped every single column and put them in my old peach box. And then, as the years went by, in other boxes, all arranged chronologically. There was method to this madness!

After I convinced the editors at Globe Pequot that a book of my favorite columns of Connecticut characters would be marketable, I began to weed through hundreds (thousands?) of clippings. My goal: selecting 101 of the most compelling profiles.

After making many painful decisions (I couldn’t include my column on my own father after his death because he never lived in Connecticut), I settled on those 101. I carefully proofread them and met my deadline of Aug. 1 last year, delivering the whole gang to my publisher.

In addition to the text, I retrieved most of the photos that had accompanied the columns. My guardian angel in this challenge was Angel Diggs, the long-serving librarian at the New Haven Register. She worked her magic to exhume dozens of photos, some going back to the 1980s. Those portraits are fabulously evocative, most of them shot by Register photographers.

Then there was a setback, as always happens with a book project. The Globe Pequot editor I had worked with on both books left the company. And three months ago her replacement informed me that I had violated my contract by submitting material that was about 25,000 words too long! This would have forced the publisher to put out a 400-page book that would have had to sell for about $30, unacceptable for booksellers. And so I was told I must cut out 30 of my characters!

What could I do? I sat down and eliminated those I felt were not quite as strong as the other 71. It hurt! But the result is you will be able to buy this 242-page paperback for $21.95.

What, you might ask, motivated me to create this book? Quoting from the book’s introduction: “There’s nothing more fulfilling than finding a unique, interesting and unknown person, interviewing him or her and bringing that personality out of the shadows and into the public eye.”

I noted that some of the characters were not unknown (and some were only visiting Connecticut for a public appearance). These included the writers Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thompson, the musician “Little Richard” and the famed Boston Red Sox pitcher “Smoky Joe” Wood.

In my introduction I also recalled that in the early days of my column some of my co-workers, laughing at the eccentrics I was unearthing, dubbed the column “Creep of the Week.” I told them this: “They’re not ‘creeps.’ They have great dignity. Their stories deserve to be told.”

I must have been doing something right — near the end of my introduction, I wrote: “My columns drew an enthusiastic response from the Register’s readers. It was clear they enjoyed hearing about the people I was bringing into their homes. And so I kept going.”

My closing paragraph of that introduction: “It’s gratifying to know that these characters — many of them now deceased — will again have their moment in the sun.”

I look at the faces on the book’s cover and I remember Margaret Holloway, “the Shakespeare Lady,” who recited the Bard’s work in the streets of New Haven; Fred Parris, who wrote “In the Still of the Night” for his group the Five Satins and recorded it with them in the basement of a church in New Haven; Jimmy Weil, who oversaw the Sicilian puppets at the Stony Creek Puppet House; and Elizabeth Tashjian, “The Nut Lady,” who gave wildly enthusiastic tours of her nut museum in Old Lyme.

All of them are gone now. But I want them to be remembered.

My book is not yet available in Connecticut bookstores but is listed for sale at barnesandnoble.com as well as booktopia and bookdepository. Of course Amazon has it too but you probably know I’m not a fan of a corporation that has driven too many booksellers out of business.

For those of you who can make the drive (or walk), I invite you to my book launch party— Thursday, June 8 at 7 p.m. at Best Video in Hamden. It’ll be a fun night!