Criminal by Smith & Lady – foto by Smith
Last month I finished a serious rewrite our memoir of my life–Criminal by Smith & Lady–and laid it aside so I could come back to it with a fresh eye and see what was there.
I picked it up a few days ago and was disappointed — I’d read a few pages and put it down underwhelmed. This happened three times, but finally the book picked up and started working. Relieved, I went back and re-rewrote the first 15 pages and now it all moves along quite nicely and I have faith in the validity and value of my own life story again.
I followed Stephen King’s advice: he says each rewrite should cut 10% from the book. King said this knowledge came to him hard because he tended to add 10% with each rewrite. I’ve got the book down to 325 pages, or 103,000 words.
The foto of the book above is a private copy we had printed to see how it looked and worked as a book–and once we saw it, we started massive rewriting. My recent rewrite was the 22nd edit of the book since Lady gathered everything together and created it during our three months in Croatia in 2006-7. That the book exists at all is due to Lady K’s vision and determination. Its eventual sale will be due to mine.
One of the flaws in recent memoirs is the number of bogus false lying made-up life stories. We don’t have that problem because a lot of my life can be documented via police reports, newspaper articles, friends, witnesses, and my private journals from 1968-1993.
We’re looking for a literary agent, and a publisher. We’d like millions of dollars up front of course, but we’re willing to start off with a measly few hundred thousand.
Here are the title, contents and prologue.
CRIMINAL
A True Story Of
Armed Robbery, Stolen Cars, Alternative Art, Mainstream Poetry,
Underground Publishing, Robbing The Cradle, And Leaving The Country
by Smith & Lady
~ ~ ~
ONE
Paradise Prairie — 13
Bone — 19
The Bridge — 23
Car Thief — 27
High School — 33
The Misfits and the House of Mavericks — 39
Memphis — 43
Prep School — 47
Naval Academy — 51
TWO
Kicked Out — 59
Calvert Street — 65
Robin — 73
Journal Entries — 77
Ray — 89
Journal Entries — 93
My First Armed Robbery — 99
Journal Entries — 103
My Second Armed Robbery — 107
Mind Fuck — 109
Prison Journal — 115
Charles Street — 131
Nulvoid — 143
Journal Entries — 149
THREE
Michigan — 168
Another Man’s Wife — 177
White Trash High Rise — 183
Regional Art Terrorist — 187
Wilcox — 195
Celibacy — 199
Violations — 205
Smith vs. the Lizard Police — 211
Art — 213
Poetry — 217
Daniel Thompson — 229
ArtCrimes — 233
Dead Cat — 239
FOUR
Running from the Cops — 245
Mother Dwarf — 249
Serial Suicide — 253
There Are No Monsters — 259
Wrong Address — 265
Freedom — 269
Programmer — 277
First Freefall — 281
Lab Rats — 283
Ash to Ash After — 293
The Flow — 299
The Church of Not Quite So Much Pain & Suffering — 303
Cancer — 309
Create Your Own Reality — 313
Why Not — 317
Selected Press — 321
~ ~ ~
P R O L O G U E
Smith 2010
1950s
farm boy cow milker chicken/rabbit/hog waste remover
hod carrier
1960s
paper boy
car thief
house wrecker
sailor
electronics technician
poet
USNA midshipman
artist
hippie
life insurance salesman
husband
1970s
chemist
armed robber
prison cook
bankrupt
graphic arts salesman
Bethlehem Steel extra man
snow cone flavor delivery man
college graduate
newspaper film/music critic
milkman
avant-garde theater manager
women’s shoe salesman
divorced
computer operator
drug dealer
carnival laborer
adulterer
church janitor
1980s
programmer analyst
drunk
condo owner
publisher/editor
celibate
1990s
near dead
sober
european traveler
2000s
unemployed
cancer
remarried
expat
rare foto of smiling Smith – foto by Smith
Great cover!
It’s fortunate you have the provenance (police reports, newspaper articles, etc.) ’cause you have lived such a wondrous life! I’m sure there’s times even you find it hard to believe. A life worth livin’ is a life worth tellin’ & Smith’s is truly both.
ditto…..