Heyday Books, the Great Valley Books Writers' Conference and Lords: Part One - By N.L. Belardes

Recently I received an email asking me to help promote a really cool literary event: the Great Valley Books Writers' Conference being held in Merced on Saturday, April 15th. I think this literary event sounds like a perfect opportunity for disheveled writers like me to network. I’m there! Only, there’s an interesting twist. The email asking me to help promote came from Heyday Books, one of the premiere publishing companies out of California, and also the only company my literary agent approached with Lords: Part One before his tragic car accident in a Nevadan desert.

I remember Don Ackland had been courting Heyday. He called them often and was a longstanding friend with the publisher. As a result of his courting Heyday, I received a brief letter from their publisher, Malcolm Margolin. He sent complimentary books that included a pictorial view of the valley, and two must-have California and Latino literary anthologies.

I hadn’t heard from Heyday since receiving those books in the mail, yet Heyday found nlbelardes.com, a viable grassroots media source and leading author website in the Southern San Joaquin Valley. Heyday’s finding of nlbelardes.com is a testament to not me, but to the success of the website nlbelardes.com, and the strategies that have helped increase page rankings in these areas: Bakersfield music, Bakersfield books, Bakersfield writers, Bakersfield literature, Central Valley literature, California literature and more. Just type ‘California literature’ into Google or Yahoo and you will find nlbelardes.com in the top 15 on Google, and depending on the day, the top 20-100 on yahoo.com. Either way, that’s right in the mix with Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, Heyday Books, University of California Press, and a whole lot more…

That’s Internet power in part inspired in part by Ackland’s death, a rejection by Heyday, and the need to get my name into the public eye.

And that doesn’t mean I’m a successful writer yet. But it does mean I created a website and many blogs that have literally captured Internet rankings through tough strategies. I thank the Bakersfield Music Scene, Bakersfield theatre folks, art folks, Buck City Podcast listeners for the Internet support and all my readers across the country and internationally for helping. Just yesterday I had 1,289 readers on just nlbelardes.com alone.

With that said, I still think it’s funny that Heyday rejected Lords: Part One.



I remember the day I arrived at work and listened to a hilarious message from Don Ackland. He was irate that Heyday had a reader who bashed Lords as a book that had alienated characters.

That wasn’t news to me. Lords: Part One is a story of alienated people, and even has an alien ‘close encounter’ Hollywood-style theme as Bakersfield is indeed Hollywood’s Backyard with its strange closeness and yet foggy distance to the movie industry. There is no lovable protagonist, only the dark alienating story of the Lords of Bakersfield written as a consciousness-raising satire of such horrors.

Maybe it wasn’t the alienating theme after all. Perhaps the novel was just too dark and too controversial for Heyday Books. Who knows, there’s always Lords: Part Two. That’s chance enough for Heyday to take the dare into the dark literary side of the Great Central Valley.

In the meantime, here’s the actual transcribed phone call from Don Ackland on my rejection by Heyday Books. I know Don will look down and have a good laugh and not mind my having transcribed...

“Hey Nick, Don Ackland calling it’s 1:30 on Friday. I’m here in Berkeley. Yeah, I saw Malcolm this morning, and his reader, oh god, well I had a nice meeting with Malcolm on some other stuff, but you know the more I meet with Malcolm, he really has a small press non-profit mentality; very good guy and good stuff, but you know, anyway, so he had one of his idiot little English literature graduate students who works there in the office; I mean they’re, they’re refugees from some English literature department at some friggin schools. You know how these young types are in publishing. I’ve dealt with them for years, they’re friggin bores. I used to fire these people by the handfuls for being idiots. Because the more they studied, the more idiotic they got… Anyway, she had a negative report on Lords because the characters were too alienating. What in the fuck? Give me a break! This is pissing me off. So you will have a more aggressive representative on your behalf. I have dealt like this for me too. When I had a couple of companies I had a couple of editors who were afraid of their own shadows. So I would just say, ‘No we’re going to do it goddam it’ and we would be a success anyway despite these goddam English BA candidates. The other part is goddam it let’s have the Bruins play well against the trees tomorrow. We didn’t count much on Heyday anyway. Heyday was just kind of a test run. But now I’m fired up! (laughter) I hope nobody hears this message but you. But I’m going to be out most of the day… We’ll catch up anyway. Ok take care, bye bye.”

See you on April 15th…

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Friday, March 17, 2006. You can leave your response.