Anthony De Sa and "Barnacle Love" - A Numbers Dream

"I had never written before."

Was I, were we, supposed to believe this from Anthony De Sa, 40, whose 1st book, a collection of short stories called Barnacle Love, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize last year (the American equivalent would probably be the Pulitzer)?

I was there along with a 17 other University College alumni (University of Toronto), for the monthly book club. The club is unique for having the author of the book also attend the meeting.

Here's the rest of his incredulous tale of numbers:

5 years ago, De Sa took a year off from teaching English to high school students, a sabbatical year. A teacher for 19 years, he loves it. At the time he had three small children: a 4, 3 , and a 1 and a half year old. His wife told De Sa that he had to do something with himself. "Get out of the house," she told him, adding, "Why don't you take a writing course?"

De Sa, 35, enrolled in his 1st creative writing workshop at Humber College in Toronto. This is when he uttered the fantastic-to-the-point-of-unbelievable admission: "I'd never written before."

(I think I actually laughed out loud here. And I didn't apologetically cover my mouth, either.)

When his turn came in class, he wrote his 1st short story called "Only a Boy". The reaction of his instructor and classmates was so positive ("Wow," was the sound bite that stuck with De Sa) that he stayed up until three in the morning sending his first story out to over 50 different literary journals.

He got 18 rejections. Danforth Review accepted it for $50. Canadian dollars. A couple of days later, 2 more publishers called to accept his story for publication. De Sa got to work and pumped out 2 more stories and had those published. His fourth story called "Shoeshine Boy", now the subject of his novel-in-progress, was sent only to Descant, a highly respected literary magazine out of the University of Toronto. He didn't hear from them.

2 months passed before he got a call from Emily Shorthouse who had read "Shoeshine Boy" as a Descant intern and now working at the highly respected Bukowski literary agency. The story, she said, "haunted her" and she could not forget it after all this time. Would he please send her a manuscript.

De Sa he had nothing and said yes anyway. Lies of this kind of entirely justified, as far as I and he was concerned, in the face of such glittering opportunity. For 3 weeks, he holed himself up in his cottage and wrote furiously, pumping out 240 pages.

3 more weeks of editing with his agent later, she asked him what his novel was about. He didn't have one. "Everyone's got a novel," she insisted impatiently, waving away his stunned expression. "Write me a 1 page summary of what your novel is about."

This synopsis combined with his 5 stories were sent out 8 publishing houses in Canada, including Doubleday. All but 1, wanted his manuscript, igniting a bidding war between the 7 largest publishers in Canada for Anthony De Sa's stories.

De Sa chose Doubleday for it's excellent editor. He wrote 7 more short stories and revised the collection through 17 drafts.

They ran an unprecedented 5000 hard cover copies of Barnacle Love, a number unheard of for a short story collection.

2 things to keep in mind: one, people in the publishing industry consider good a sale of 500 copies for a short story collection, and two, only 2 books, yes, 2 books, of short stories were published in Canada in 2008, one of which was Anthony De Sa's.

All the HCs are sold out and the book is now in trade paperback with publication set in the States, and incredible difficult country to crack into publication wise, and in many countries across Europe. (Wish I had the exact number here.)

Barnacle Love also became one of the 3 books that his publisher nominated for the Giller Prize. (Each publishing house is allowed three nominations from it's catalogue every year.) De Sa was eventually short listed for the Prize. Joseph Boyden's Through Black Spruce, a novel, won in the end.

De Sa recounted this memorable snapshot at the end of the prize giving night: the guests were directed into a lounge area, and he found himself sitting in the middle of a sofa surrounded by the top 3 names in Canadian literature--Margaret Atwood to his right, Michael Ondaatji to his left, and Alice Munro, with her feet on top of the coffee table, in front of him.

He hardly spoke a word. What did they talk about? "Everyday crap!" No, they don't talk about writing. And, no, De Sa never talks about his writing either.

I want to leave you with 3 salient facts I came away with at the end of the evening with De Sa:

One, if you're going to write a collection of short stories, make them linked short stories; it mimics the feel of a novel, which is what people prefer to read.

Two, if you are split between writing a novel and writing a collection of short stories, write a novel; you have a hell of a better chance of getting published.

Three, if a father of three small children with a wife and a full time career can write a book, well then . . . .