Volume 4, Issue 58: Jack Buck

"But before first pitch, we take a moment to hear from our sponsor, Busch beer. Head for the mountains of Busch."

Pre-order The Time Has Come, my novel that comes out May 16. I think you will like it. All pre-orders with proof of purchase enter the contest we unveiled last month. If you are not sure whether you are interested in this book, perhaps today’s newsletter will help you come to a decision.

I am such a sucker for the Frequently Asked Questions article format that Daniel, the main character of How Lucky, early on in the book stops the narrative dead in its tracks, grants the reader temporary sentience and busts into an FAQ about his disability. I find the format not just entertaining to read, but a perfect conduit to providing reliable information in a fun way—flexible enough to wander afield when desired and sturdy enough to provide a reliable foundation when it’s time to return. One of my favorite moments in a book ever is when, in Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, he begins a chapter with what seems to be a question-and-answer session with a producer of the ‘90s reality show “The Real World” that slowly dissolves into howls of grief and pain as he confronts his memory of seeing his mother in the casket at her funeral and you realize that this is not in fact an interview at all. I remember interviewing Michael Schur for New York right before “Parks and Recreation” came out and asking him why he was sticking with the “mockumentary” format he had used for “The Office.” “It’s just familiar and banal enough that you can play with it however you want it and it will always snap back into place,” he said. “The audience will go anywhere with you because you’re talking directly to them. I think it’s the best way to tell a story on television.” I feel this way about the FAQ. It’s a format that makes you feel like you’re an active participant in what you’re reading, even though you’re not.

This coming Tuesday, it will be 10 weeks until my new novel The Time Has Come is unleashed on an unsuspecting public. If you were here when How Lucky came out two years ago, you may remember we did a weekly countdown to launch day, in which I foisted unrequested factoids about the book on you every week until it came out. (I still wrote my weekly essay up top every week, don’t worry, please don’t unsubscribe, I’m nothing without you.) So we are going to kick off the 10 Week Countdown today with an FAQ about The Time Has Come. I will hopefully cover everything you might (or might not) want to know about the book, and when I am done, I hope that you will buy it. Then, in two years, the next novel will come out, and we will do the same thing, and we’ll keep on doing this until the earth crashes into the sun. If you are exhausted of this already, well:

a:) I am sorry.
b:) This free weekly newsletter only asks you to buy one thing every two years, which this free weekly newsletter might argue is a most reasonable price.
c:) Just 10 more weeks to go, friend.

So: Your The Time Has Come FAQ.

Hello.

Hi.

Thank you for giving me life. It is cold in the void.

You are welcome. I’m worried this gift is already beginning to feel like more of a curse.

So: You wrote another book. How many is this now?

This is six, if you can believe that.

Have any of these books been successful?

Well, that’s kind of a rude question right off the bat. “Success” is a difficult word to define, particularly in the context of the book world. My personal definition of success would probably be “sold well enough that they will let me do another one.” If you were to rank how well each of the five books I’ve written so far has sold, I would say the order would roughly be: How Lucky, God Save the Fan, Catch, Are We Winning?, Life as a Loser. To keep getting to make these, The Time Has Come probably needs to be, at a minimum, second on that list.

When did you start writing novels, anyway? Aren’t you a sports blogger?

To many: Yes, forever. Inspired by one of my son William’s closest friends, who has Spinal Muscular Atrophy, I wrote How Lucky (then called What Light) in secret over the span of about nine months; I didn’t even tell my agent I was working on anything, which wasn’t hard, considering I hadn’t written a book for him in 10 years. If you’ve been a subscriber to this newsletter for a long time, you may rememeber when I printed the whole thing out and just handed it to him at a dinner and told him I didn’t care how much money we got for it or who published it, as long as we could find someone who would. Eventually somebody did, Harper Books, which released How Lucky in May 2021. The book received praise from authors as varied as Stephen King, Richard Russo, Carl Hiassen, Chris Bohjalian and Kevin Wilson and was a Book of the Month Club selection and one of Amazon’s Best Books of the Year. The book sold well enough that Harper, and my editor Noah Eaker, signed me up to write two more books, released in May 2023 and May 2025, assuming we are all still alive in May 2025. The first of those two books is The Time Has Come.

What’s The Time Has Come About?

One of challenges with The Time Has Come is that it is a difficult book to do an elevator pitch for. How Lucky was simple: “Severely disabled man witnesses an abduction and tries to help.” The book is much more complex than that, but when I run into somebody at a party, and they ask me what my book is about, I can say “Severely disabled man witnesses an abduction and tries to help” and they can nod and understand.

The Time Has Come is harder, mainly because it’s nearly impossible to describe the plot in a few number of words without spoiling the whole book. I need to figure out how to do it, though, and fast. So let’s try right here: You’re my focus group.

[Deep breath]

A former elementary school teacher named Tina believes something nefarious is happening at a small-town pharmacy and decides she’s going to do something dramatic to stop it, on the night of June 24. We then follow six characters going about their lives throughout the day of June 24, with them all ending up at the pharmacy with Tina when she unleashes her drastic action.

Yeah, I don’t think that was very good. Too many words, and it’s so careful about not spoiling anything that it comes across as vague, even fuzzy. How about:

A woman holds a pharmacy hostage as her six captives attempt to navigate an impossible situation.

Shorter, but not really better. Also, that makes it sound like nothing happens in the book, like the whole book is just people sitting together in a pharmacy. (This is not what the book is.)

It’s Dog Day Afternoon meets Magnolia.

I understand why studio executives talk like this now. I think I need an ad man. Where’s Draper?

Yeah, that was terrible.

Hey, I write the books, I don’t sell them. How about we just go with the official Harper description?

Lindbergh’s Pharmacy is an Athens, Georgia, institution—the type of beloved mom and pop shop that once dotted every American town but has mostly disappeared. But Lindbergh’s has recently become the object of attention of a local fourth grade teacher Tina Lamm (“Ms. Lamm to my students”). Tina is certain something very, very bad is happening behind its famous black door and she intends to do something about it.

Her suspicions—and the drastic actions she plans—are the unlikely glue that will connect her to a group of six employees and customers inside the pharmacy one hot Georgia evening. They include Theo, the Lindbergh’s scion with a secret of his own; Daphne, a nurse and Army veteran struggling with her faith; Jason, a local contractor uncertain how to deal with his gifted teenage son; Karson, a young lawyer and activist wrestling with a job offer that makes him uncomfortable; David, an Athens music scene lifer whose sobriety has been sorely tested by isolation; and Dorothy, a widow just beginning to regain her bearings.

The fates of these individuals—and their fateful encounter with Tina Lamm—become intertwined in a story that is by turns funny, touching, and tense. As he did in How Lucky, Will Leitch illuminates how we live today through a story of human beings struggling to do their best.

Now, if I can only get that down to seven words.

So this takes place in Athens? Is it a sequel to How Lucky?

It is not a sequel to How Lucky—there are no appearances by Daniel, Marjani or Travis—but it does share a universe with How Lucky. Eagle-eyed readers of The Time Has Come will notice several references to events that occur in How Lucky, and, more to the point, there are two smaller characters in How Lucky who are larger characters in The Time Has Come. The events of How Lucky take place in September 2019. The events of The Time Has Come take place in June 2021.

Wait, this isn’t a pandemic book, is it?

It is not. Do not worry.

Is it scary? Funny? Sad? Tense?

It is hopefully all those things. I do not like to make—or, really, consume—books that are only one thing.

What genre is it?

Thriller? Sure, thriller. I guess I should just go ahead and give in to this. It’s very strange to me that books—which have tens of thousands of words, words that can be literally anything—need to be packaged in a way that makes it easy to put them on a certain supermarket shelf, like Produce or Dairy. I think the book is a whole bunch of things. But if people need a shelf—and I have learned that people need a shelf—let’s go with “thriller.”

There are seven major characters. That’s a lot of characters.

Short Cuts, the movie that directly inspired the book, has a whopping 22 actors’ names on its poster. Seven doesn’t seem like too many now, does it?

Still, this book has to be longer than How Lucky, no?

It is. The Time Has Come clocks in at 94,968 words. How Lucky ran 72,074. But it is still a very fast read, I promise.

Is the book told in the first person, like How Lucky?

Tina tells her story in the first person, in vignettes that are spliced in throughout the book. The other six characters have their stories told in the third-person omniscient. This contrast is stark, and intended to be, to the point that the audiobook, which I’m told is being recorded right now, features one actress doing the voice of Tina and a different actress narrating the rest of the book.

What would you say this book is about? Like, thematically?

I’d prefer that be the sort of thing the reader themselves draws their own conclusion about, but I will say this: The book shares many of the same themes as How Lucky and the rest of my work, in that it is about good-hearted everyday people who all have their own troubles and fears and flaws but, when called upon, will stand up and help out their fellow humans. The book is about connection, and loss, and grief, and hope, and parenthood, and cute stuffed turtles named Asa. It’s about people trying to do their best when they are very much not at their best. I hope it is funny and scary and a page-turning read, because I tried very hard to make sure it was funny and scary and a page-turning read.

That sounds ambitious.

It takes a long time to write a book. It would feel strange to spend all that time purposely making something small and inconsequential.

I’m not sure you’ve sold me on the book.

Great. Maybe Kevin Wilson, author of Now Is Not the Time To Panic, Nothing To See Here and The Family Fang will persuade you?

“Will Leitch has written another compelling and propulsive novel that I could not put down. What makes him such an amazing writer is his keen eye for what makes us human, all the seemingly invisible threads that connect us and those shocking moments when we’re pulled together and forced to reckon with the world. Leitch is as empathetic a writer as they come, and I trust him to guide me through any danger, any story, and know I’ll come out of it with something special.” — Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Now Is Not the Time to Panic

I need to get a copy of Now Is Not The Time To Panic.

You really do.

Do you like this book better than How Lucky?

It would be impossible for me to love any book more than How Lucky. But it would also be impossible for me to love any book more than The Time Has Come. I think this book is more technically accomplished, and I do think I learned some lessons from the first time around that I applied to this book. It is deeply felt and, like How Lucky, is as pure a representation of how I see the world, and what I want to put into that world, as I can create. I love every character in it so much and sometimes pick up a galley just to hang out with them a little more.

Is there any baseball in this book?

There is! There is a whole subplot about Little League Baseball. How Lucky didn’t have any baseball in it, and I wanted to correct that this time. I really like baseball.

Will there be a book tour?

There will! We have already booked stops in Athens, New York, Los Angeles and St. Louis, and there are more yet to be added. If your local bookstore would be interested in having me, email me at williamfleitch@yahoo.com and let me know. I like traveling places and meeting new people.

We’re not going to do one of these FAQs every week until the book comes out, are we?

Nope, it’s just this one time, I promise. We’ll have a special section in the newsletter for the next nine weeks until the book is released with updates and news items, but this is the last time the lead essay is about the book, I promise.

So, I guess … I guess we’re done here?

Yes. Please buy the book. You will not be disappointed. And also go Illini.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. Rocky Movies, Ranked, Vulture. Grierson and I ranked all of ‘em. This is the correct order.

2. I Drafted WBC Teams With Mike Petriello, MLB.com. I love the WBC.

3. The Ten Oldest Players in Baseball, MLB.com. My annual look at how old we’ve all gotten.

4. Your Big NL West Preview, MLB.com. Only two more of these left now: Getting close.

5. The New Pitch Clock Is Going to Be Fine, New York. Seriously, it’ll turn out all right, relax.

6. Boxing Has Never Been Less Relevant, Medium. The only time we think about boxing anymore is when a new Creed movie comes out.

7. People Still Read Books: Steven Hyden, Medium. An edited transcript of our conversation on the People Still Read Books podcast last week.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we discussed “Cocaine Bear,” “Skinamarink” and “Margin Call.”

Seeing Red, no show this week.

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, no show this week.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“Judy Blume Goes All the Way,” Amy Weiss-Meyer, The Atlantic. “The poet laureate of puberty” is a great line.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers!

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“One,” U2. I was back in Illinois this week, and because this was unquestionably the unofficial soundtrack song of my group of friends my senior high school, it always rolls around my head whenever I’m home. The buffalo video is the best one too, obviously.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

At the Southern Voices Book Festival in Alabama last weekend, I began my talk by saying, “it’s great to be here in the FORMER home of the two-time defending national champions.” It is pretty awesome to get wrestling-style boos from a crowd of quiet book lovers and librarians. Here I am, soaking in the love.

Have a great weekend, all.

Best,
Will