Charlie, a machine-learning engineer, spent five years writing and self-publishing his novel Charlie Walks. He hand-signed and numbered the first 150 copies, placed them in bookstores as a "reverse heist," and distributed them to libraries across multiple countries. He went from a C-grade English student to holding his finished book in his hands.
Chapters
Dear Paulie, it happened. Go to charliewalks.com and you can buy my beautiful book anywhere in the world. We talked about this for years. That book I was writing? All done. Out in the wild. You can hold it, flip the pages. 4, 5 years from the first line. I started typing the first draft, then moved to pen and paper. Slower, but the rhythm feels better. The same feeling as when I first learned to write as a child. The curiosity of the blank page teasing me forward. 6 or 7 notepads by the end. Then I typed them up and retyped the words 4, 5, 6, 7 different times. Every couple of months going to the printer and printing the next version. The printing clerk got to know me. "You're back," they'd say. "I am." Getting up earlier and earlier each morning. My tools: sometimes coffee, sometimes tea, always walks, always other writers. Looking out the window, looking at the wall, wondering where I'll go today. Where I'll go when my pen comes off the page, when I pause, when I sit back from my screen. I care with an increasing amount how things look. Beauty of the highest standard, even with words on a page. It sounds silly with writing. How can words on a page look good? Easy. Compare a legal terms sheet and my new book. I decorated my whiteboard with edits, ticking off one chapter at a time. Some too long, cutting them in two, in three. My high school teacher gave me a C in English. Deserved. I wouldn't read that mud either. But this, Charlie Walks, I did it, Paulie. Ho ho, I did it. I wrote a book I'd like to read. I think you will too. You're in it after all. Those stories we talked about? The man on the boat, Skydiver Rick, the women, the friends, the enemies, Raj— oh, Raj! All these characters you helped create. You'll love the COVID too. Charlie's a funambulist. Do you know what that word means? Well, "funus" means "rope" and "ambulo" means "walk" in Latin. So a funambulist is a rope walker. Or better, a tightrope walker. Charlie the Funambulist, Charlie the tightrope walker.
Why?
No spoilers now, come on, there's the blurb for that. But I prefer Funambulist. A fun walker. I designed the COVID with that in mind. Drew a man walking between city and nature, a modern dichotomy. Many artists submitted their interpretations. I went through them all and picked the one you see. Perhaps I should have gotten my computer to make one. Used one of those new generative artificial intelligence models. Charlie, me, the main character, is a machine learning engineer after all. Next time. The digital version came out on my birthday last year, but it's not the same. You can't hold it, can't smell it, can't feel the tactile satisfaction of flipping pages. And most important, Can't show it off on your bookshelf. I lost a bet, Paulie. I bet Dave it would come out 3 years ago. $500. A reasonable sum. I better sell some copies. He said not to worry about it, but I have more self-respect than that. It's here, Dave, and don't you worry, my friend, you'll get your money soon. When the first printed copies arrived, I almost cried. My book, Paulie! The book I'd like to read! The book I'd like to write! I picked one up and kissed it. All those days walking past bookstores and public libraries, holding the works of my gods and imagining one day my name being amongst theirs. Ruby helped me unpack them, and I got to work signing and numbering each one. The first 150 copies. I gave one each to friends and family far and near, handwriting letters to put inside just like this one. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Enjoy my book. It's the best thing I've ever made. I being the accumulation of a lifetime of people and stories around me. I as in me, Charlie, only took the time to put them down on paper. Hand wrapping the first editions on the floor, sweating because of the summer heat, because of the fire under my feet. One to India, Italy, Melbourne, Canada, New Zealand. This one's going all the way to Italy. Alessandro. Enjoy, my friend. We've got a shiny copy here going to Melbourne. Enjoy, Sophie. Leaving them outside for the delivery person to collect. One of them even got caught in a local flooding event. Into public libraries. A Charlie Walks hit list. Someone converted an old red phone booth into one. Out the front of homes, old sheds, old fridges, saying hello to the caretakers. This is a custom book.
And them saying, I've got a book for your library. Oh good, check it in there. If you see something, take it out. Beautiful.
This one's a custom one.
Okay.
Oh, I like the look of that. Number 4. Thank you. Number 5.
Beautiful tap of this one.
We'll have to read the book to find out.
André Agassi.
My goodness, that's quite the provocative book to have at a children's center.
But now we've got this character with a mohawk at the front.
Number 6.
Number 6.
Number 6. Losing count.
Lucky number 7, which is 109. Chapter 7. First page I opened to— another day downtown. Sarah decided to move overseas. Germany. I'd read writers go to France. The two are close. Where do writers who are technology nerds go? It's the movie! Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Meet Charlie Walks.
I don't even have a DVD player.
Number 10. Number 11. 22. Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx. Oh, it's a bit packed.
My goodness, just going to have to—
It's number 17.
Will anyone find them?
Wait, wait, wait.
Don't answer that. The fun is in not knowing. Like the feeling of watching birds fly behind the clouds. The Japanese call it yugen. The enchanting mysticism of the unknown. And the reverse heist. What a laugh. I'll show you a video next time I see you. We're about to perform a reverse heist. So when you go into a place and steal something, you don't ask, you just steal it. So we're doing the reverse of that. There's a bookstore in there, shopping center. I'm going to take a few books in there and I'm not going to ask anyone. I'm just going to put them on the shelf. So it's like a heist, but in reverse.
Plant these on the shelf and walk out. See what happens. Looks good, man.
I heard later the manager wasn't happy. They wanted to sue me. Oh goodness, Polly, what have I done? Wrong to leave the books? Perhaps. But forgive me for assuming the lightheartedness of a bookstore owner towards a new author. Next time I'll just ask, "Excuse me, would you like my book?" I tried it. One bookstore said yes. Another said no. It turns out It's that easy. You just ask. I held a makeshift bookstore of my own near the water. The local cafe owner, Andrew, offered a good deal. Anyone who buys a book gets a free coffee, he said.
What more do you need?
I printed signs: Buy a book, get a coffee. People loved it. One of my primary school teachers even bought a copy. It's incredible how supportive the world seems to become when you support yourself first. I'll let you in on a little secret, Paulie. I'm my own biggest fan. I stood by my book and said, "Hello, this is what I've made." Many people said they'd always wanted to write a book. Some even had drafts waiting to be finished. Now they'd seen me, seen my novel, felt it in their hands. It gave them a healthy dose of, well, if he can do it.
I've fallen in love with writing, and if you told me a while ago I was going to be writing or starting to write a book or trying to do a book in a month, I would have said, "You're insane," and I would have been scared because that sounds like a ridiculously big project for me.
I sold out, Paulie. And I could order more copies for myself to sell locally, but what about my readers elsewhere? I asked a publisher to help, and they said they'd never done fiction before, but there's a first for everything. Wow! Again, it surprised me what you can achieve by just asking. They helped me with the formatting, made it look even better than I could on my own. "We'll get our special printer to print the next copies," they said. "You'll love the quality." And I do, I do, I do! The pages, like a real novel. The feel, thick and solid. The typeset, easy on the eyes. Plenty of white space to let the reading mind wander. The story! Oh, you'll love the story. Science fiction, but not too much. Coming of age. Love. Loss. Enough song and dance for the romantics. Enough technology for the nerds. I've gone on for far too long. But I can't help it. I'm sure you can tell how excited I am to finally let these words go and become yours. I did it, Paulie. I wrote a beautiful book. A book that's now available to buy worldwide. A book I'd like to read, and I'm sure you will too. Love always, Charlie.
