Breaking Through Literary Boundaries

It’s understandable that when Simi Valley’s Ron McCamy approached Peter Lang Publishing with his manuscript “Out of a Kantian Chrysalis?” the literary folks there had questions.

For example, what is a Kantian chrysalis?

But instead, what representatives of the New York City academic publishing house wanted to know was: Who is Ron McCamy? And where in the world is Simi Valley?

The publisher’s response was hardly surprising.

Who are you and where are you are questions authors in Ventura County have come to expect when trying to attract the attention of the East Coast-centered literary community.

“I suppose if I lived in the East, it would cut out the first question or two and my trying to explain: ‘Oh, we’re the county sitting on the back of Los Angeles; UCLA is 40 minutes away,’ or something like that,” said McCamy, a Moorpark College philosophy instructor. “But things pretty well grind on as usual after that. They [ultimately] are interested in the content of your work.”

McCamy’s experience is similar to those of many of the area’s budding authors who acknowledge that, yes, living outside a major publishing hub often complicates things, but, no, it doesn’t mean they can’t achieve some level of literary success anyway.

Indeed, from novels to local historical texts, from how-to books to McCamy’s dissertation on 20th century Catholic philosophy of truth and tolerance, the writings of local authors can be found in bookstores inside and outside the county.

Among the more recent writings to be published, “Kantian Chrysalis?” discusses the philosophical beliefs that hold true to pure Catholic doctrine. It can be found in bookstores at Yale; Southern Methodist University in Dallas; USC and other college campuses. With an initial distribution of 1,500 copies, McCamy doesn’t have images of the best-seller lists dancing in his head. But that is fine with him.

“I don’t mind if it sells--I wasn’t thinking about that when I wrote it,” said McCamy, of the scholarly piece that developed out of his studies at Marquette University in Milwaukee. “I had a specific target audience in mind. I was just getting in on the academic discussion. But I hope it doesn’t die on the shelf.”

Former Boston Globe reporter R.J. Cohn would like his new novel, “Baker’s Gold” (Four Seasons Publishers of Titusville, Fla.), to live a long, healthy life as well. Though a former East Coaster, the Ventura resident is not concerned about his current West Coast residence.

“Stephen King lives in Bangor, Maine,” he said. “Maybe location was a big thing a long time ago, but it doesn’t matter anymore, with faxes and the Internet.”

Cohn said he has been encouraged by growing interest in his story of a search for missing gold, with its underlying message of a search for what is truly important in life.

“I don’t think living in New York City next to a literary agent is going to make a difference. It’s what you have to say and how you say it that will turn people’s ears on the East Coast. Maybe not living in New York, with its distractions, actually helps.”

Maybe, but Ed Elrod, co-owner of Ventura Bookstore in downtown Ventura and Table of Contents in Ojai, said local authors fight an uphill battle.

“Being in a place where you have access to authors and agents is always better, and I don’t think Ventura County is an entrance to that world,” Elrod said. “If a book is good, it might be found, but there’s the law of averages: For every published novel, there are 10,000 manuscripts floating around.”

That said, Elrod, as with other community bookstore owners, does his share to give local authors their due. He accepts just about anything local writers give him.

“When authors come in and ask, ‘Will you stock my book?’ I always take them to the back and show them the stacks and stacks and stacks of unsold local books,” Elrod said. “The only time I turn people away is when they bring in Xeroxed, stapled copies, because they don’t stay well on the shelves.”

Elrod said the community-based authors who contact him are an equal mix of writers with a dream of fame and those satisfied simply to see their work in print.

“There are people who realize they will never be a top-10 bestseller, and they are happy to settle for limited distribution of their own local book,” he said. “And there are the others who send out 30 copies of their 500-page manuscript and it keeps coming back stamped ‘rejected.’ They keep doing it because there’s still that big pie-in-the-sky diamond waiting to be found that keeps a lot of people writing the next ‘Bridges of Madison County.’ ”

Writer Dick Wimmer has spent time as an author on both coasts. He is glad he moved from his hometown of Greatneck, N.Y., to Agoura Hills 20 years ago.

The author of several novels and sports anthologies has long appreciated the geographic distance between his West Coast residence and the East Coast publishing world, particularly when he was getting started. “In New York, you’re immediately in the marketplace. You get the usual questions--’What are you doing? What are you writing?’ and then, quickly, ‘What have you published?’ ” said Wimmer, whose new novel “Boyne’s Lassie” (Zoland Books of Massachusetts) was well-received by the New York Times Book Review.

“In New York, for a beginning writer, that can be very daunting, to say the least. You’re always under pressure.”

The book jacket of “Boyne’s Lassie,” a follow-up to Wimmer’s 1989 novel, “Irish Wine,” identifies the author as living “outside of Los Angeles,” not specifically in Agoura Hills. Rather than being a hurdle to climb, Wimmer has tried to use his Southern California residence as an advantage when it comes to his career. Wimmer sees his novels as fodder for Hollywood filmmakers.

“That’s one of the pluses of being in Los Angeles,” said Wimmer, who wrote the screenplay for the TV movie “The Million Dollar Infield.”

“More and more we are straddling both worlds,” Wimmer said. “You’re considered, for reasons I don’t understand, on a higher plateau if you’ve published a novel than if you’re a screenwriter.”