In writing the story of how Jill and I bought a wrecked frat house and tried to bring it back to its original Victorian splendor and keep our then-early love alive at the same, I had a hell of a hard time. That book, From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story, is out today from Academy Chicago Publishers.


Why was it so hard to write this book? Because life is messy, messy, messy. In any snippet taken from my life or yours, there is never only one story. There are many strands of many stories running through everything we do — the story of your working life, the story of your dreaming life, the story of your love life, the story of your domestic life, and so on. The story of my work on the condemened property that had, for ten years, been Baltimore’s most notorious fraternity was just one of many strands I had to keep straight. As it happened, Jill and I had been dating for only a few months when I bought the house, hoping that Jill would move in with me and that we’d fix up the house in no time and then live happily ever after. Here’s the video trailer that gives you an overview of that situation: From Animal House to Our house video trailer


I am much more comfortable writing fiction than nonfiction. In fiction, if I don’t like the way things are going, I simply change it and try out another possibility. That’s what makes writing fiction fun: anything can happen. In nonfiction, however, only one thing can happen: the story as it unfolded in your life. Nonfiction is inconvenient in ways fiction will never be. You can’t change time or place or chronology. You can’t combine two or three people into one character in order to make the telling more convenient. If you think you can, then you should be writing fiction.

I am surprised and a little disturbed when I hear memoir writers say that they have altered some chronology and combined some people in their nonfiction in order to make the story more manageable. They defend these choices by insisting that they have been “true” to the story and have left untouched all the important details. This rationalization changes the essence of the “non” in “nonfiction,” doesn’t it? Granted, it’s understood that writers of nonfiction reconstruct dialogue to the best of their recollection and describe events as well as they can remember. The memoir is, at bottom, a form of testimony, as if to say, “This is what I heard, saw, and felt as best as I can recount it.” But this is not a license to make things up. Life is messy enough without the writer fudging the details and hiding the fact that, say, “Uncle Tim” is actually a conmbination of Uncle Timothy, Uncle Simon, and Aunt Clara.

Had I written FROM ANIMAL HOUSE TO OUR HOUSE as fiction, I would have

1) made the roof cave in (only three ceilings were falling in),
2) made the contractors more bizarre than they were (the beer-drinking roofers, one of whom nearly died, were the worst we had to deal with)
3) made my family’s first, too-early Christmas visit even more disastrous than it was (I would have made someone fall through the floor, for instance, and added even more extended family to make it more chaotic),
4) created at least one thoroughly eccentric neighbor, to add some local color
5) brought back some frat boys (only one returned and I nearly attacked him when he did),
6) and made the fights between Jill and me even more volatile (we had plenty of arguments but we never separated).

As it happened, just as Jill and I began working on that old, wrecked frat house, my life at work was imploding. In the original draft of From Animal House to Our House, I tried to connect my travails at work with my travails at home. But, really, there was little or no connection to be made. And, honestly, the story of my working life wasn’t that interesting, even though it was complicated and often ugly. The result was that the story I had to tell — about Jill and me in a wrecked frat house — got muddled. That’s why, in the first round of submissions, no publisher would take the book. They didn’t want to deal with that mess.

So I had a choice: change the story or leave some of it out. Since I was writing non-fiction, I chose to do the latter and simply left out the story of my working life. All writers understand the need to be selective: you can’t tell everything. Now, when you read From Animal House to Our House (as I hope you will), you’ll find a fast read that focuses on a newly romanced couple taking on an impossible task: why they survive it? If so, how?

I left out other things too, like the details of my second marriage, some of which were so disturbing they would have distracted the reader. That’s the challenge of writing non-fiction: you have to keep the reader focused. Just because it happened in your life doesn’t mean you are obliged to tell about it. When in doubt, leave it out.


Although I think I’m getting more comfortable writing nonfiction, it continues to bedevil me because nothing is messier than real life. Sorting through that mess to make sense of one or two things will always be a daunting task, it seems. But then I remind myself, Who would want a life that’s so simple, there’s nothing to sort through?

For more before/after pics of the house, click here.

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The last time I had a problem with my web host, my blog had disappeared. Completely disappeared. That’s 160+ entires that cover my weekly blogging for the last four years. Was I freaking out? Yes, I was freaking out. When I called tech support, I found myself talking to somebody in Eastern Europe. Sarajevo, I imagined. Eastern European tech support is more or less competent. I mean, they get the job done most of the time if the problem isn’t a big one. But this was a big problem and I didn’t have much confidence in this too long-distance help, especially when the tech I was talking to asked me three times for the name of my domain: he couldn’t quite spell it. As I was in no mood to fool around, I said: “I’ll give you one more chance to get it right.” Then he got it.


By law, you are allowed to speak to American tech help on American soil if you request to do so. Just say, “I want to speak to somebody in America,” and they will have to transfer you. No kidding.


But let me say this: I could never learn Croatian or Polish or Russian as well as Eastern European tech support have learned English. No way. Still, when I’m freaking out about my vanished website, I’m not happy about having to talk to somebody who isn’t a native speaker of English. I fear that something really important is NOT going to get through the translation. By the way, this was the third time that my website had disappeared. I was convinced that my web host had fallen on hard times and had resorted to cheap off-shore labor. Such is the diminished quality of life we Americans must suffer etc. etc.


I raised hell with my Eastern European tech help, blaming my web host for incompetence and reminding them that I have seven websites on the web host’s servers. Seven. And, no, I would not buy the file back-up service they tried to sell me because my files are missing. “Don’t you DARE,” I said. “Just find my files!”


They did find my files and, as a courtesy, restored them for free. And I got my blog back. I felt vindicated. I felt like one tough cookie. We Americans know how to get what we want, don’t we? I sent a long email to tech support (that is, the Americans who run the company), asking my web host to take my concerns seriously. I said I didn’t want to talk to Eastern European tech team any more.


Just last night, my blog disappeared again. But this time, the disappearance gave me pause because I had been working on my site — I had been the last one to touch the thing and I saw that the last file I transferred was there but everything else was gone. Then it dawned on me that, oh my god, the file transfer program I had been using was the culprit. Yes, my Filezilla FTP program has a way of erasing my entire site. Maybe yours too. I’m not sure what goes wrong but I think the program stalls and then, if you click some more to get it to respond, it misunderstands the commands and then a request comes up: “Delete current file?” Which the program may read as “Delete current files?” And then because I always move too fast and never read the fine print, I click YES. And then, boom!, everything is gone, even though the program (because it’s slow and buggy) doesn’t show that everything is gone.



So it’s not my web host, it’s me. I’m the problem. I’ve been the problem all along because the problem started just after I started using this file transfer program. So I’ve been sending angry emails to my web host, perhaps causing some tech manager grief, and demanding satisfaction from the Eastern European tech team and all along they weren’t to blame! I feel badly about this. Incidents like this make me realize that sometimes the incompetence we fear is, at bottom, our own.


When I called tech support this time, an American answered. I guess my web host had indeed listened to my emails after all! This made me feel worse because, really, i was expecting the Eastern European tech team again and I was planning on being very nice to them. I was very nice to Phillip, my American tech support. I explained that my blog had “disappeared” and that this wasn’t the first time it had happened. Notice that I didn’t blame them this time . . . but I didn’t blame myself either. You must pay — $75 — to have your mistakenly erased files restored. In fact, Phillip told me this.


I said, “Phillip, can you find my files?”
He said, “You have to pay for that.”
I said, “Just humor me and see if you can find them.”
It took a while but he found them.
Then he said, “You can sign up for the $12.95 per year back-up plan and restore the files yourself.”
I said, “Let’s do it.”


He signed me up. I restored my files. And that’s why you’re reading this blog right now from a much humbler man — with apologies to my web host and its ever-patient Eastern European tech team.

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I received another speeding ticket yesterday — my third this month. These are tickets issued by the city’s new robo speed-trap cameras, strategically placed along roads you’d never think would have speed traps. The offending speeds are 38 MPH in a 20 MPH zone or 41 in a 30 MPH zone. Miniscule speeds on roads you’d swear were 35 MPH zones at least.

If I have pulled in 3 tickets in a month — and I’m no drag-racer — you can bet that just about every driver in the city is getting a ticket once a month, if not every week. You’d think everybody would be up in arms but the city is smart about it: the speeding violations cost a flat $40 and don’t go on your record (i.e., you don’t get “points”). As a result, most speeders won’t protest the violation. They’ll pay the fine and shrug it off as a nusiance.


I’m happy the city’s getting rich suddenly, though I’m not convinced any of the money will be put to good use because it seems city governments are doomed by their own bureaucracy and scattered incompetence. Certainly, this doesn’t help relations between citizens and their government. Buying a bunch of robo-radar traps is like buying into slot machines. It’s a dirty business that generates little good will. There are plenty of reported abuses, like the case of the guy who was fined at random because the photo in the ticket was too dark to read so, apparently, somebody took a wild guess about the identity of the speeder. It took the alleged speeder 7 months to get the violation cleared (if you don’t pay your fine, you can’t renew your license). After that ordeal, he said he would register his car in another state.

Incerasingly, our world is monitored by cameras but it’s not because of the new fear of terrorism. The proliferation of automated cameras is the product, mostly, of budget cut-backs. The age-old fear of the robot has come to pass in the most mundane way: state and local governments simply don’t have the money to hire and train people to do the jobs that have been given over to robotic cameras. For example, there are some toll roads you can’t drive without a prepaid toll-pass that automatically feeds your fee to the camera toll-reader. The end result of this automation is that we get fees, fines, and tickets at every turn but there’s no way to get a refund if there’s a mistake. It’s just too much of a hassle. And good luck trying to get anybody on the phone.

Sad to say, this is about the diminishing quality of life in America. As our nation becomes a poorer one, our governments are getting less generous and less tolerant. And, because we don’t have the resources to come up with better solutions, we are resorting to short-cuts and easy answers that sloppily address the questions of the day. How can your township make more money? Up its surveillance of daily traffic! This might make more money for local government but now, when you or I drive a quiet city street, we may do so ill at ease and a little irritated, wary of being watched and worried that tomorrow or the next day we’ll get an unwelcome notice in the mail.

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Today I made a mistake I’ve never made in my 21 years of teaching. Before I tell you how it went, let me give you some background. These past few years, I’ve been worried about what seems to be a new breed of students. Demographers call them the “millennials.” Generally, they’re characterized as thoroughly pampered, underprepared, and naively over-confident, a combination that guarantees their disappointment in the real world and, more to my point, makes them difficult to teach. They seem to need a lot more care and cultivation than their predecessors. Apparently, they’ve been encouraged to think that they are wonderful no matter what they do or don’t do; and this often comes crashing in on their heads in college, where teachers are less inclined to lie and pamper. The height of irony is that the baby boomers, the most iconoclastic generation, has produced this generation of most conformist and coddled children. Still, I love them and love to teach them.


That’s why, this year I decided to redouble my effort at fine-tuning my teaching to address these students’ needs. Does that mean I want to coddle them? No, I do not. But I can’t teach them if I can’t reach them. So I’m making time for more one-on-one conferences and, like a high school teacher, I review the syllabus every class — something I vowed I’d never do. And I repeat, again and again, the aims and objectives of every class. And I appeal to their self-interest in more pointed ways, viz.: you want power, don’t you? If you write well, you gain power: you influence people, you make things happen. Oh, and one more thing: I ask all of my students to write me a letter about themselves, which they email to me a couple of days before the semester starts. This pulls them in more quickly and perhaps makes them more receptive to teaching.

Generally, it’s more work keeping the fires stoked in the second semester. Our winter break is short and students return already a bit bruised and jaded. But this semester I was readier than ever: I’d done all my prep work and had had all of my material down. I’d spent most of the break writing an online text book for a new class I’m teaching, about publishing and editing. So today, the first day of spring classes, I was doing well. Walking to my last class of the day, in fact, I was congratulating myself on having started this semester with more good will and careful preparation than I had in many years.

My last class of the day, publishing and editing, is a lab class. I’ve been teaching in the university’s media lab for four years. No big deal. But today, as the hour neared, I was puzzled. Nobody was showing up. Then, right at class time, one student did. He introduced himself. i invited him to sit at the computer next to me. After he checked his email, he said, “Oh, no — have I made a mistake? Class was at 3:00.” It was now 4:35. I felt my face burn with the realization that, for the first time ever, I had missed a class. Missed it by a mile. Every department has a professor who does this routinely: the feckless, marginally competent oldster who miraculously has managed to keep his job despite his laughable reputation. But I’m NOT that guy. I’m Mr. Reliable. I’m the guy who gets things done, the guy who follows through. But not today. No, right here, right now, I was, I am, that Mr. Clueless.


Later, Jill tried to make me feel better by reminding me of other lapses I’ve made when overworked, like the time I showed up for a radio interview a day early (that’s more my style). Buy I’m NOT overworked. I’m not distracted. I wasn’t unprepared. And I didn’t forget. I just assumed that this lab class, like the six others I’d taught, was scheduled for 4:30 PM. Was that hubris? Ironically, it appears that my chair was trying to do me a favor by scheduling the class earlier in the day.


Years ago, a mistake like this would have freaked me out; I mean, I’d be due for a week of sleepless nights. I’ve learned that in making mistakes, there’s not much to be learned from dwelling on it or picking at it like a scab. I sent a note to the students. It was a funny note and an authoritative note — you can’t let something like this shake you. It’s like discovering your fly is down while you’re making a speech. Just zip it up and carry on. So I’m carrying on.


But here’s the rub. In order to teach well and exact as much work from students as possible, you can’t make a big mistake like this. Now, the advantage is theirs. Whether consciously or not, they know it and they will use it. In short: I OWE them. So I have to make the best of it and take what comes and hope that I teach so hard and so well that these gentle souls will forget all about this first day, when — unbeknownest to them –I was in my office eagerly prepping for a class I would not get to teach.

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You may recall that last spring I awoke with the realization that I needed to buy a Sprinter van, convert it into a camper, then tour the nation to promote my new book, From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story. The van is nearing completion. And my publisher and I are working feverishly to book a 66-city tour. That’s what you can do if you are barn-storming a book tour in a camper van: go anywhere and stop anywhere. There are limits, of course. I mean, I’ve got to get back home eventually because I do have a wife, a job, and responsibilities. As it is, I’ll be on the road for 4 months straight. It’s kind of daunting. And the set-up for this thing is mind-boggling. The publisher has given me a dedicated media liaison who does all of the groundwork. Her work and mine combined amount to 8 hours a day, every day. This will go on for months.

You might wonder why it’s so time-consuming. Here’s our strategy: 1) we target the best-bet indie book store in a particular town, then we query the local historic and preservaiton socieites in that town to co-sponsor the reading. The historic/preservation socieites have been really enthusiastic about my visit because, as a licensed home-inspector and a hard-core Do-it-yourselfer, I am offering a lot of value for free: workshops, talks, slide-shows about my experience restoring our big old house and other stuff relating to restoration etc. Jill and I have been building our expertise on YouTube through how-to videos. And we run the Houselove website, which has a national readership. In other words, the book represents a convergence of other efforts and interests, which now all come into play.

2) Once we enlist the partnership of the local historic/preservation society in a particular town, we tell the targeted book store that we have local support. You’d be surprised how many book stores don’t think this is enough. Some want to know if I have family or friends in that town and ask for even more guarantees. You’d think it’d be a no-brainer to book me — and my general-readership book — in a small store when we’re offering so much (see items that follow). We enlisted the partnership of TWO historic societies for a proposed reading at Powell’s in Portland, Oregon, and still Powell’s rejected us. They said we would not draw enough.

I know times are hard. But short of signing an affidavit swearing that we’ll bring a tour-bus load of supporters, what more can we do? And what are the skittish book stores doing on that particular night if they’re not bringing in, say, David Sedaris? All we’re asking is that they give us some space, put the event on their calendar, and send the word around. We’ll do the rest. In the case of Portland, we are going to create an event for the two historic societies and, chances are, we’ll get more press than we would for a book store reading. But my preference is to anchor these in indie book stores because I believe in indie book stores. We writers can help — or try to help — indie book stores, but the indie stores have to be willing to give us a chance.

3) Once we have the historic/preservation societies partnered with the book store, we go to the local press to see if we can get a book review. Then we go to local radio and TV to set up an interview the day-of or the day before. Believe it or not, getting on local morning TV talk shows is not difficult because they’re always scrambling for material, especially if the topic — like old house restoration — has local appeal. Next, we search out the local book clubs and see if we can get them interested.

4) Then we post the event in the local media outlets and calendars. All told, this booking/PR process takes at least a month to work through for each city. And this has to be done at least 3 months in advance for every city. And we’re doing 66 cities. It begs the question: who has time for this? The answer is simple: NOBODY! I certainly couldn’t do it without my dedicated media liaison. And this kind of effort really doesn’t make sense for every book. It will work best for the general-readership book. From Animal House to Our House is a good fit because it has a love story and an HGTV/TOH angle and a David Vs. Goliath inspirational angle and an Animal House angle. I don’t know that I’ll ever have another book that hits as many targets. And, frankly, that’s a relief because it makes my head swim to think of doing this again.

5) Other promotional gambits involve my writing articles for old house magazines like Victorian Homes, present at DIY shows, and give talks at preservation conferences. Further, it helps to get home-town press interestedin the story with interviews and photoshoots. We have a magazine photographer coming over tomorrow for an all-day shoot. Local interest has worked well in my case: look for articles in the Urbanite, Baltimore magazine, and maybe an excerpt in Style. Then an appearance on Dan Roderick’s mid-day talk show on Feb. 2 (from 1-2:00 PM). And more, I hope.

In sum, the idea is to bring all of these forces together so that word-of-mouth carries the name of your book far and wide. Notice that I haven’t mentioned book reviews? Book reviews are the wild card in this game. For an indie-press book, you can never tell who will consider it worth a review. And that’s the primary advantage of having a big-press book: the big magazines and newspapers are much more likey to pick it up.

As for the 66-city tour, mine may be the last of its kind. The world is transitioning to something else when it comes to book promotion, although none of us knows quite that that something might be. I’ve heard people tout the podcast or the video-cast or the guest blog as the way to go, but can any of these virtual efforts truly replace the power and gratification of a face-to-face meeting with readers in a town you’ve traveled to for the express purpose of making something good happen when a writer meeds curious strangers?

If you’re interested in camper van conversions, here’s a video link to my latest installment on that project.

If you want to see the shape of the 66-city tour thus far, click here.

If you still haven’t seen the FROM ANIMAL HOUSE TO OUR HOUSE video trailer, you really must.

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