After thirteen years teaching at the New School, Luis Jaramillo has helped his fair share of students get book deals. Now, with The Doctor’s Wife (Dzank), the Fort Greene, Brooklyn resident, who lives with his boyfriend of eleven years, has released his own. During an interview at his Greenwich Village office, Jaramillo, 37, explained why being in the heart of New York’s publishing community can sometimes be depressing.

JV: Has there been an advantage to being at the center the writing world with your job at the New School?

LJ: Going to publishing events always makes me really depressed because the way the editors talk about books is different than the way the writers talk about books. Editors and agents talk about books purely about how something can be sold. That’s the opposite of how many writers view books. To spend all your time writing something, you have to really like what you’re doing.

The poetic novel is set in the Pacific North-West.  Although it recently became a book of the week on Oprah’s Book Club, it’s not exactly John Grisham or Tom Clancy territory. How did you get it published?

When I first showed the book to my agent he said, “Sometimes writers write things that they only write for themselves.” Of course we want to sell the things we write but it’s hard to write a something that you’re not emotionally vested in. I put this book aside for year. Then my grandmother died and I thought, “Screw it, I’m just going to send this thing out. What’s the difference, who cares?” Basically I sent this book out as a manuscript for the Dzank literary contest in 2010 and totally forgot about it and got a call three months later from Dan Wicket, the editor of Dzank Books. I’d won and they wanted to publish my book. They are a small publisher from Ann Arbor, Michigan known for their experimental fiction.

You started off as a student at the New School and are now the Associate Chair of the writing program. Did you get free tuition?

In a way. While I was doing my MFA at the New School I started working as a receptionist. After the MFA I worked as a secretary and did some teaching. When the Creative Director of the writing program left, I was offered the job which was around 7 years ago.

Name some of the authors who have changed your life.

Abigail Thomas,  Mark Twain, Graham Greene, Tolstoy. Hilton Als and Abigail Thomas were great teachers. I got to know them well. Abi’s advice to me was “Everything can be used” which is a nice way of living in the world as a writer. Hilton’s advice was “write everyday.”

I heard you are also a yoga instructor?

Yes it’s something that runs alongside everything else I do. It helps you live in the world in a mindful way.

What’s your advice to aspiring writers?

Write a book. I teach a novel class and I meet lots of people who want to write a book and a lot of times they think that an idea is all that they need. You really have to put the time and effort into it and then, good luck. Persistence can never be under estimated. My advice is “keep on trying.”

Waclawiak, who was born in Poland but had been living in Los Angeles, decided she needed to “work out [her] issues in an immigrant novel.”

She began querying agents at the end of her MFA program, but after 25 unsuccessful queries, thought she might be going about it the wrong way.

The agents who did respond told her the protagonist of her novel, How to Get Into the Twin Palms, was “too unlikeable.”

“You have to do something to make this character likable,” they said. “Make it a murder mystery.” But Waclawiak was determined to find someone who would publish her book for what it was.

Waclawiak figured it was time to go straight to the publishers instead. She began looking at small presses, particularly those that published books she already loved. Waclawiak drew up what she considered a pretty good query letter and again began the waiting process.

Small, Ohio-based publishing house Two Dollar Radio finally reached out to Waclawiak — they wanted to publish her debut novel. Two Dollar Radio runs on an open manuscript submission process and you don’t need a literary agent to publish with them. Their motto is “Books Too Loud to Ignore.”

Emily Pullen, who works for Two Dollar Radio, said one thing they look for is writers with authority over the worlds they create. When working with writers on edits, Pullen said she’s more inclined to ask questions to get the author thinking than make suggestions. The whole process works a little bit like a drawn-out psychoanalysis session. Small presses tend to “do more interesting things,” according to Pullen and Waclawiak.

Once Two Dollar Radio decided to publish Waclawiak’s book, the agents began calling.

Waclawiak’s advice for other first-time novelists — or writers of any genre — can be distilled into a couple key points.

• If you’re in love with your book the way it is, consider bypassing the agent process. Agents can be helpful, but they also look for very specific things and may request changes you feel compromise the integrity and authenticity of your work.
• Be confident and creative about getting your manuscript out there. Look for small presses with open submission policies and contact publishers directly. Large publishers might not take unsolicited manuscripts, so look to small presses if you’re not getting anywhere with literary agents.
• Even if agents tear your book apart, that doesn’t mean it’s terrible. It’s still possible others will love it, and, furthermore, it’s still possible to be entertained by unlikeable characters. Think about your audience and realize it’s not going to be everyone. Don’t write for anyone specifically (other than yourself). 
• Have patience. The timeframe between acquiring a book and publishing for a small press can be up to two years, but the timeframe is even longer at a major publishing house.
• Consider your book cover carefully. Even if you think it’s too off-the-wall, for instance, it might be just the draw reviewers need to pick up your book and review it. (Even small publishers get great review attention.)
• Again, get creative. Reach out to sellers directly to extend your exposure. Use Twitter to your advantage, but be a person with an organic approach, and not a sleazy, self-promoting robot. Talk to authors, bookstores and bloggers. Develop relationships. Look to online communities of book-lovers, like Goodreads. Get involved with reading series and book clubs.
• Be a real person. Publishers recommend books when they have positive associations with the author, not just when they like the book.
• Self-publishing is an option, but publishers provide an often much-needed outside perspective. You may be too close to your own work and can get more with someone else’s expertise — from within the industry — or editorial eye.
• Small publishers don’t tend to feel betrayed when an author moves on — they know that’s the name of the game. Small presses have limitations. Small presses also come in all different shapes and sizes, with varying rates of distribution. Look to a resource like Poets & Writers to find publishers.
• Keep at it. Be open to suggestions. Kill your darlings, but don’t go too extreme. Know yourself and your limits. It’s okay to not be universally awesome, and sometimes it’s better to experience the love-hate extremes. According to Waclawiak, many of her MFA peers hated her manuscript. If you want it badly enough, you’ll figure it out.
• Keep your day job…for now.

—Alissa Fleck 

Notice I only gave you his first name. Other than relatives and a few close friends, hardly anyone knows Frankie’s last name. I know it, but only because he swore me to secrecy. So before I tell you, I have to swear you to secrecy. It’s Sassone. Frankie Sassone. You can’t tell anyone.

Know why he’s so tight-lipped about it? Because people shorten it to Frankie Sass.

“By itself, there’s nothing wrong with Frankie Sass,” he says. “But you get wise guys. They get tongue-tied on purpose, and Frankie Sass comes out ‘Frankie’s Ass.’ Like I’m supposed to think that’s funny. You know, cute.” Frankie’s an unusual guy: a proud man with low self-esteem.

Keep his birth name to yourself, but don’t worry about spilling his professional name. Any hungry man, woman or school kid walking through Midtown Manhattan already knows it. It’s Swanky Frankie.

Every morning, in the role of Frankie Sassone, he leaves his mother’s Brooklyn apartment, subways to Eleventh Avenue and West 48th Street and strolls into the Astor Garage where he stores his hot dog cart. By 11—looking like Planters’ Mr. Peanut minus his monocle—he’s transformed into Swanky Frankie, a living trademark steering his cart across town toward upscale Fifth Avenue.

Notice I said steering. A lot of people think he’s pushing his cart. Your modern-day cart runs about eight-and-a-half feet long. Fully loaded, it requires a small motor to move it. Sure, Frankie’s a big guy with muscle, but nobody, least of all the elegant Swanky Frankie, would be seen actually pushing a hot dog cart.

Tucked into his regular street corner, he raises his fringed umbrella, clips on his Swanky Frankie sign, tosses a dozen high-quality franks on the grill, and lays out the mustard, ketchup, chili and onions.

“I’m thinking of cutting out the onions,” he says. “It’s not that people don’t want onions; it’s my mother. I don’t like to see her chopping them up in our apartment. She sheds enough tears over my not being married. What? I’m gonna watch her cry over onions, too?” When it comes to family, Frankie has this sensitive side.

He’s also very sensitive about the image he presents. Working behind his grill, he relies on his stylish appearance to make himself look different from the other shirt-sleeved vendors strung along the avenue. “The look brings the customers in,” he says. “But it’s the franks that bring them back.”

He buys his franks from a Brooklyn butcher, an aging German who claims he’s the only guy in New York with an old-world recipe. Frankie has this knack for converting the old German’s franks into crisp, delicious hot dogs. You could be facing bankruptcy, but when he smiles and hands you one while he’s tricked up in his top hat, white tie and tails, he makes you think you’re dining at the Waldorf.

While waiting for the Brooklyn butcher to go to his eternal reward, I’m trying to convert Frankie to my premium franks. Notice I said premium. They’re made according to the highest Department of Agriculture standards. Sure they contain binders—cereal, for example. What frank doesn’t? Nitrates and sodium too, but today, everybody is so health-food conscious, we keep that stuff to a minimum.

Because Frankie is my biggest potential customer, I spend more time around his cart than I do around my regular customers. This morning, an hour or so before the lunch trade lines up, we’re sharing our usual street-food gossip when I see his eyes narrow under the brim of his top hat. He does not like what I’m telling him. A few blocks south, a competitor has set up a new hot dog cart. Nothing threatening in that; competitors come and go. But Frankie’s face darkens when I tell him this new rival has a fancy cart and is selling under a glamorous name, “The Umbrella Room.”

“What’s he wearing?’

I duck his question. “The sign says GRILLED GOURMET HOT DOGS.”

“What’s he wearing?”

Frankie’s repeated question carries a tension that tells me I’d be smart to keep cool. I slip under his umbrella so we’re both in the shade.

“A maitre d’ outfit. Kind of formal—like a tuxedo”

“Hey, I invented that image,” he says. “If he’s gonna do a Swanky Frankie knock-off, tell him he may get knocked off. Tell him to find some other gimmick.”

I’m wondering how I can say this to a customer—someone I depend on to meet my sales quota—when something dawns on me. My customer isn’t a him. It’s a her—a thirty-something gal who seems like a decent lady. She tells me she enjoys being her own boss. It allows her to leave a little later in the morning and get home a little earlier in the afternoon. She claims it means more time with her kids. But before I can explain to Frankie that his new competitor is a woman—and nice looking, too—he steamrolls me.

“Look,” he says. “My cousin Paulie works downtown at the Board of Health. Paulie knows all the inspectors. They find something wrong with your cart, they lay a big fine on you. Close you down, even. Know what I’m saying?”

A few days later, I drop by Frankie’s cart. Before I can tell him how upset I am, I spot his new sign: OUR HOT DOGS SERVED ONLY ON ROLLS MADE FROM THE UPPER CRUST. He doesn’t say it, but I know this is his answer to his new high-tone competitor.

I come right to the point. “Frankie, what’s going on? The Umbrella Room lady says the health department came by and fined her for failing to provide a customer with a receipt.”

“Umbrella Room lady? What do you mean, lady?” Frankie says. “You never told me she’s a lady.”

“You never gave me the chance,” I say. “You cut me off before…” But I don’t want to start an argument. So I smooth-talk him.

“Frankie, there are 3,000 food carts in this town and not one of them hands a customer a receipt. Sure, it’s a city law, but an inspector has to be really looking for trouble to pick up the Umbrella Room lady on a technicality like that. Now take your cousin Paulie, he wouldn’t be involved in this, would he?”

Before Frankie can answer, a little guy shoulders through the circle of customers and dips under Frankie’ s umbrella. He identifies himself as a health department inspector and starts machine-gunning questions.

“Where’s your license?” he asks, holding up a plastic ID the size of a credit card. Like a teacher talking to a first grader, he says, “You punch a hole here, thread a leather thong through it and hang it around your neck.” His message is clear: You got to have your license dangling before the people at all times.

Frankie looks embarrassed. He pats down his shirtfront. When he doesn’t find his license, he pulls out his wallet and flips through it like a wild man. Several customers, looking impatient, break away. Filled with suspicion, I duck out with them. Frankie’s been selling dogs for years. Why is this license business coming up now?

The next week—during some friendly talks with the Umbrella Room lady—I put the story together. Turns out, Frankie isn’t the only one who has connections in the health department. The Umbrella Room lady also has a few downtown relatives. This explains everything. The inspector didn’t just happen to stop by Frankie’s cart to check on his license. Someone put him up to it.

When I figure enough days have passed for Frankie to cool down from his no-license embarrassment, I swing by his cart for a pre-lunch talk. Right away, he rips the inspector who singled him out for a fine. “Everybody downtown knows I have a license,” he says. “That SOB caught me on a technicality.”

“So Frankie,” I ask, “are you seeing a linkup here?” He looks at me like I’m speaking Chinese.

“Well,” I say to him real slow and soft, “did you notice that right after The Umbrella Room lady gets fined on a technicality—no receipt—you get fined on a technicality: no license?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about rabbit hunting, Frankie. It looks like a safe, easy sport. But when the rabbit has a rifle, it’s not safe and easy anymore; it’s dangerous. Face it, the Umbrella Room lady has as much firepower downtown as you have.”

Frankie puts on his old narrow-eyed look below the brim of his top hat. He whispers so low, I can hardly hear him. “You shoulda told me it was a lady sooner.”

Later that day, I decide this hostility can’t continue. Someone has to declare a truce. If these two ruin each other, they’ll take me down, too. I fall short of my sales quota a few times and boom, there goes my retirement—which is not that far off—and with it my little cabin up in the Catskills. I got too much invested in this business to mess up now.

So I resolve to step in and get the warring parties together. First, I find out she parks her cart at the Knickerbocker garage, just a block south of the Astor garage. Next, I use all my persuasive powers to convince both of them to meet me halfway between the garages.

When the meeting day rolls around, I’m a little surprised to see them show up at the designated spot. Frankie looks startled when he hears the Umbrella Room lady has a real name: Carol. Not a hint of a smile passes between them.

We set off across 48th Street, their carts weaving through traffic. The street noise—blasting car horns and whistling traffic cops—makes for a very stressful trip. I feel silly walking between two foreign dignitary look-alikes, but that doesn’t stop me.

“You can’t get anywhere fighting,” I yell, urging peace. They respond with straight-ahead stares.

By the time we reach Fifth Avenue, all I have to show for my bellowing is more deadpan looks. At the end of the day, I’m filled with so much tension I hardly have the strength to go home and flop into bed. Next morning, I wake up convinced I need a vacation. Driving to the Catskills, I rack my brain: How can I put an end to this dog fight?

It takes a few days of fishing, but an idea finally hits me.

So first day back on the avenue, I lay my idea on Carol: Why not a merger? Big corporations do it every day. She looks skeptical, but when I mention the chance to hike her income, she perks up. “Well, I got kids. Money counts. But I don’t think he likes me.”

“We can overcome that. See, Frankie has this sensitive side about his family.”

“He’s got kids, too?” she asks, wrapping a hot dog in a napkin and packaging it with a cold soda for a customer.

“No kids, it’s his mom. The way to Frankie is through his mother.” I keep talking until I figure I’ve got her on my side. Then, I tell her exactly what to do.

After waiting a whole week, I drop by Frankie’s cart. I arrive well before lunch—a line of hungry customers can be a distraction. Before I can ask him what’s new, he greets me with a big smile. “Look,” he says, holding up a plastic bag filled with chopped onions.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask, wide-eyed, like I’m surprised.

“Carol. She came by while you were away. It was real awkward at first. But we got to talking family. You know—her kids, my mom. Since last week, she brings me a fresh bag every day.”

My plan is working, and I jump on it. “Looks like the surprise attacks from the health department are gone forever.”

“Yeah, I showed the onions to my mom. She says, ‘She chops so fine, Frankie, she gonna cook you some nice dinners.’”

I push my advantage. “Looks like you and Carol are getting along pretty well. What do you think of combining your talents? A merger, like. Sell your hot dogs under the same name.”

“Nah, What’s she gonna see in a guy like me?”

I ignore Frankie’s familiar self-esteem whining. “It’s easy. Carol hangs a Swanky Frankie sign above the Umbrella Room sign on her cart. You hang her Umbrella Room sign below the Swanky Frankie sign on your cart. This gives you two carts at different spots along the avenue—each one with the same name. I can see it in lights,” I tell him, “Swanky Frankie’s Umbrella Room.” Then I add the punch line, “Naturally, you’re each wearing the same Swanky Frankie get-up.”

Waiting for his answer, I lean over and notice something different on his grill. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. He’s cooking a completely unrecognizable kind of frank. “What happened to the old German’s franks?” I say, in a state of shock.

“Didn’t I tell you? He died while you were up in the Catskills.”

This is one hell of a bombshell. Sure, it’s what I’m waiting to hear. But now, after working so long, I can’t believe Frankie’s buying product other than mine.

“Frankie, how come you never called me?” I say. “My franks are my bread and butter.”

I can see by his silence he’s embarrassed. So I put on the old full-court press. “You’re about to become the first chain of hot dog carts on Fifth Avenue, Frankie. That means you got to serve the same franks at both locations. Take McDonald’s. They don’t serve one kind of burger uptown and another kind downtown. Be consistent. That’s the secret. Carol serves my franks and you should serve my franks, too.”

From here, it’s easy. I pull out my cell phone and announce, “I’m punching in an order for two gross of our best premium franks.”

“Two gross?”

“One for you and one for Carol. Same company, right? By the way, anything going on between you two?”

“Anything going on? What are you talking about?”

“You know. Like romantic?”

“Aw, c’mon. You’re just like my mother. Now that she doesn’t have to chop onions anymore, she thinks Carol is Martha Stewart and the Virgin Mary all in one. What’s Carol gonna see in me, anyway? I’m no Broadway star; it’s a business.”

“Just wondering, that’s all. Sometimes one kind of merger leads to another.”

Then I place the cell phone in front of him and say, “Punch here. That’ll confirm your order.”

–
Bob Natiello is a New York native, born and raised in Brooklyn. After a career as a Madison Avenue advertising and marketing executive, he retired to Sedona, Ariz., where he now writes award-winning fiction and non-fiction.

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