Ted Heller
Hello, Reader.
I am the author of three—no, make that FOUR—novels. They are, in order of appearance: Slab Rat, Funnymen, Pocket Kings, and West of Babylon.
Slab Rat was a dark novel about office politics in the magazine business and how one man (the book's narrator) would sink to any level to succeed. The Washington Post named it one of the year's 10 best books.
Funnymen was a slightly less dark, fictitious "oral biography" about a Martin-and-Lewis-type comedy team. It followed them from cradle to grave. If there's a better novel out there about comedians, I don't know about it.
Pocket Kings, which came out in 2012, was a very, very dark novel about a failed writer who achieves playing online poker the success and glory he sought in the literary world. Thought he makes hundreds of thousands of dollars playing, he still manages to lose everything else.
And now comes West of Babylon. It's not really that dark at all but, compared to Pocket Kings, neither is a black room with no windows, doors, light and air. West of Babylon is about a Long Island-based rock band that's been together for almost forty years. Although their heyday is long gone, they still record and play. They now face their most serious crisis ever, though, as one of the band members is seriously ill.
My agent and I sent out West of Babylon on the heels of the rave reviews for Pocket Kings, but publishers passed on it. I thought that this book was too good to not publish so I am publishing it myself, in electronic format only. There was no way I was going to let this story and these characters die.
I had a lot of fun writing and researching West of Babylon. I listened to music I hadn't listened to for a while and read books about the Rolling Stones, the Band, the Allman Brothers, etc.
I hope you read West of Babylon and really like it.
Thanks
“I have to write in order to keep from playing. It's a simple formula. If I play I lose even if I win. If I write I win even if I lose.”
“The more I wrote, the less I needed to play. Once I got started I couldn't stop. This was my salvation. Writing was a better, healthier, and more enjoyable addiction than gambling, even though gambling was a hell of a lot more lucrative. Playing poker, the gratification isn't delayed. Writing, you sometimes have to wait years for the full punishment.”
“I didn't sob, I didn't wail, I didn't whimper... because those are all things that dead people cannot do.”
“The table there was boisterous, people were winning and laughing, but they weren't truly interacting, not like they did online. In that world you see the same people over and over again, every day, but these people gathered around the table, I knew, would never see each other again. It was too transitory and was ultimately meaningless, the difference between an empty one-night stand and an actual relationship, and I didn't want any part of it.”
“He had a hint of a British accent; either he was American and had been educated in England or was English and had been living in America too long. (Or he just could have been an asshole.)”
“I wondered if all the people I'd been spending so much time with lately online were sad, unfulfilled, lonely, and more than just a bit strange and if it was this and not cards, good luck, bad luck, and winning and losing that bound us so closely together. Were we all in it for the collective insanity and not the money?”
“The problem isn't that I've hit rock bottom. The problem is that I haven't.”
“It is a cold and harrowing morning in the life of a man the day he wakes up, looks at himself in the mirror, and finally realizes that he is not, never has been, nor will ever be George Clooney.”