Sweetsmoke
by David Fuller

List Price: $24.95
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781401323318
Publisher: Hyperion

A Note from the Author


I am used to the experience of movies, where my words can only be experienced through the prism of the big screen --- but only after having gotten notes from studio executives, after the brilliant ideas of the producers (who seem to have checked in with their girlfriends, drinking buddies and pets), after the whims of the four rewriters who were hired to fix my work, followed by the applied ‘Vision’ of the director and the myriad acting styles of the movie stars. But I still get to sit in the theater, on the first weekend of release, and listen to the audience’s response, to find out if they laughed at my favorite joke or went silent during moments of intimacy and drama.

This does not happen when writing prose. While you’re writing, you alone live in that moment of intimacy or drama or humor. You can only anticipate a reader’s response, hoping he or she will be as excited as you were when you wrote that scene of action, as moved as you were when you wrote that dramatic climax, as touched and teary as you became when you wrote that scene of personal tragedy. But you cannot be with the reader at those moments. Even if you were sitting over their shoulder and turning the pages, your very presence would ruin it. The only chance you have of being a part of the reader’s experience is during a book group. Because this is what happens in book groups: During the discussion of your book, a collective memory of the experience of reading a particular moment in the novel inevitably comes forth, a few readers get animated and enthusiastic, and that’s when you know you’ve touched them. I can’t tell you how much I treasure those moments. That is why I love book groups.

I had the pleasure of attending a dual book group for Sweetsmoke --- two different groups that met on the same night --- and it was great fun and a rousing success. The discussion was lively indeed. I had worried that people might curb their more difficult questions because I was there, but that was not the case at all. In fact, I enjoyed speaking to people’s questions concerning things in the book about which they had questions or disagreements. I can’t tell you how much I learned about my own book.

I received a letter yesterday, after doing a phone-in to a book group in Falls Church, Virginia. I hope you will indulge me as I quote from it:

Dear Dave,

First of all I want to thank you for your wonderful “conference call” on 9/24. You were a great success with everyone. A couple of the men, who did not talk during the call, came up to me at the end of the evening and said how much they enjoyed the evening. Another person commented on what a wonderful voice you had.

I was surprised how the call seemed so natural and intimate. I went back to Sweetsmoke again to try and find the passages which described odors because I began to doubt my memory. I did find one on page 58, half-way down, beginning “He had grown up loving…” I thought that was a very powerful paragraph. (also page 276)

Continued “good luck” on Sweetsmoke.
Lynn