In his earlier posts, Adam Langer set out to write a screenplay and wrote a book in two months. His newest novel, The Thieves of Manhattan, is now available. He has been blogging all week for the Jewish Book Council and MyJewishLearning’s Author Blog series.
Even though I finished writing
The Thieves of Manhattan
less than a year ago, the universe I describe in my novel is already beginning to seem to me like a quaint artifact of a bygone age. The exclusive society to which my hero Ian Minot gains entry—one of power lunches at Michael’s, meetings at the Century Club, and tony author wing-dings attended by the literati—seems as if it is being replaced by a far-more-competitive, faster-paced, and perhaps-more-egalitarian world in which authors must constantly work on reinventing themselves to be heard above the din. For, I’m no longer just an author—I’ve become a book video producer , a guest blogger, an essayist . I’m on Twitter now; I’ve hustled blurbs from famous writers and infamous ones. I corresponded about the book with writers who inspired me when I was growing up, while waiting vainly to hear back from this guy, this guy, this guy, and this guy, all of whom inspired me too.
I now post articles to Facebook. My publicist encourages me to do Q and A’s and write op-eds , a bunch of which have wound up on the cutting-room floor. Some authors might grouse about this rapidly-changing landscape, but I find myself kind of excited by it. In fact, it has given me some ideas for a sequel. But there’s no time to think about that right this minute. I’ve got to finish writing a script for a bookstore reading of Thieves, and then I have to work on editing my next novel, which I hope to finish in the next month or so. I don’t want to talk too much about that book, but I can say that it has epigrams from two of my favorite movies , that a lot of it is set in the town where I went to high school, and that, while I’ve been writing it, I’ve been listening to these songs a lot. Once I’m done with that, I might want to take another look at that screenplay I began writing two summers ago. My novel’s 272 pages long; 120 doesn’t seem like much.
Adam Langer’s most recent novel, The Thieves of Manhattan, is now available. Visit his official website here and check back all week for his posts on the Jewish Book Council and MyJewishLearning‘s Author Blog series.
