SoMa | Kemble Scott | Talks at Google

Thank you all for being here. So today we have Kemble Scott, who's the author of Soma. It's a novel about best selling novel about the south of Market neighborhood and stories of the people who live there around the turn of the millennium. And our guest today, Kemble Scott is a writer and editor in addition to being a novelist and at San Francisco's subculture easing Somaliterary Review, Somalit.com and in the nonfiction world of television news. He has been honored with three Emmy Awards and is an alumnus of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. And he's here today to talk about his novel Soma and do a little reading from it, I think. So please help me welcome Kemble Scott.

Thank you everyone and thanks for having me. Here at Google, I'm probably like a lot of people where I before this morning, before I came over, I decided I would Google Soma to see what I could find and what I got 2,200,000 results in 0.13 seconds. And almost all of them had to do with drugs. Soma is actually a somewhat popular street drug, usually illegally sold by Asian gangs. But that's not what my book is about. But I thought I'd tell you that to start off with Soma. As people here in the Bay Area know, Soma is actually a neighborhood south of Market in San Francisco and the book is set there. It's set there really just after the dot com collapse. How many people remember the dot com collapse? Only a few. And it's about basically kind of a group of 20 somethings who are kind of on the prowl for thrills there in south of Market. So I want to start today, what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk a little bit about the book, how it came to be, what it's about. I'm going to read a little bit from the book. I'm also going to explain how it is that Google actually had a role in Soma becoming a best seller. And it's a kind of unusual story about technology and books. And in the end, if you have some questions, I'll answer those as well. Basically, if you have any questions about the publishing process, if there are any aspiring writers in the audience, I'm happy to tell you what I know about that as well. But first I'm going to talk about Soma. As many of you know, South America is a part of San Francisco that's kind of a mix of everything in the city it's got. The technology companies are based there. You've got the big, beautiful ballpark, the Giants ballpark that's there. You've got the homeless shelters, you've got the bars and the nightlife, and you've got these really very expensive new condominiums that are built for really rich people. So it's kind of like where all the various parts of San Francisco kind of converge and clash just in one neighborhood. And it's got this reputation for being kind of the craziest part of town. Town because of that. And south of Market has kind of always been that way. I don't know if you know too much about the history of San Francisco, but it used to actually be called instead of Soma, it used to be called south of the Slot. And the slot referred to the slot, literally, the cable that ran. The cable cars that went down Market street were there. But even from the city's very beginnings, it was known as kind of the wild part of the city. And if you've been to south of Market, you should walk around and take notice of some of the names of the streets in the neighborhood. You have streets that are named Clementina, Harriet, Minna, Natoma. These are the little streets that kind of run through the neighborhood. And what those are, legend says, are the names of famous prostitutes from the 1800s. So literally, they named the streets after the sex business. And to a certain extent, the city still, that neighborhood still has kind of that raunchy reputation, that part of San Francisco. So 11 years ago, I moved to San Francisco, and this was before the dot com took off and when South America was still a pretty edgy part of the city. And I lived in Providence, Rhode Island. I worked as a news director at a TV station, basically. That means you basically run the local TV news. And I lived in Providence, Rhode Island. I lived in this nice antique house on the National Historic Register in this beautiful part of town right next to Brown University. And I came out to here for work. And when I got to San Francisco, I saw that it was a beautiful city with these lovely Victorians. And I said, you know, if I'm going to move from Providence, which is kind of a small city, to San Francisco, which is a big city, I want to feel like I'm in a city. I want something urban. I don't want to live in one of these nice little Victorians. I want to live in something that's a little bit more urban. And sure enough, south of Market was the place to be. And I moved into this great loft that was very swank, and it was single and it was a wonderful experience. But when I would tell people that I lived in Soma, they'd look at me and say, you, you live in Soma? When I came to town, I was like, had my L.L. bean jackets and my khaki pants. I didn't even wear jeans then. And here I am living in this part of the city that had this incredible reputation, which I knew nothing about because I just thought it was kind of cool to live in this funky loft. So what I found out was that it was a crazy part of the city. And because San Francisco was kind of an open city, it's one of a city where kind of anything goes. And what I learned very quickly was that everything was going on just outside the door to my apartment building. And I moved into this part of San Francisco that was really very wild. And I was not a wild guy. So I started taking note of the things that were happening just outside my front door. I'd always worked in journalism, so I'd always been a storyteller. And I still work in journalism doing consulting. My job at that time involved actually consulting to TV stations all across the United States. And what I would do is every Monday I would get on a plane and I would fly to various cities and work with them on their TV news broadcast. And then I would fly back to San Francisco. So one Friday night when I was coming home from a week long business trip, I flew in late, it was like 11 o' clock at night. And I get into San Francisco, SFO and I get on the shuttle bus, one of those little blue vans to bring me back to the city from the airport. And the bus is filled, this van is filled with all these people who have come in to spend their weekend in San Francisco. All these middle American, very nice middle aged people who were all going to tour the city. And as the van pulls up to my building to drop me off down the street, like 10 doors down the block, or actually probably three doors down the block, a guy walks out of this building, out of this warehouse, and he goes to get something out of his car and he's wearing these long leather boots that go all the way up to his knees and absolutely nothing else. So you have to see the comedy of the situation. This van is filled with these tourists in for the weekend. They're staring, gawking at this guy, looking at him walk out of the building, go over to his car, get whatever it was and walk back into the building. And then all on cue, they all turn and they look at me. So all Of a sudden, I'm like, well, this is my life now. This is where I live. And what is that guy doing? And what about those boots? And why is he walking around naked? And I decided that there were stories that were happening around me that I needed to take note of and I needed to write down because I had worked in journalism. I had, I guess, a natural affinity of writing down stories. And they were the stories that actually, frankly, appealed to me in a strange way. My work in journalism was always in the investigative part of journalism. So I was the guy who would help TV stations set up their IT units. So they do undercover things about people stealing goods from the Salvation army bins or politicians that were corrupt. So I always had an interest in telling stories that, frankly, certain people didn't want told. And so all of a sudden, when I saw the guy that night walking down the street with nothing but those leather boots, I knew that these were stories that were interesting to me. And I was hoping that if I wrote them down that maybe possibly they'd be interesting to other people. So I started writing short stories, and I wrote a lot of them while I was on airplanes and flying around the country. And the stories that. Well, I'll tell you some of the stories because some of the stories actually made it into the book. One story that I heard involved Craigslist, and it was how that people were using, or still are using actually, the room for rent ads in. In Craigslist as a way to hook up. So what they do is they'll put an ad in for a roommate share. Because in San Francisco, I'm sure many of you know it's an expensive city. So a lot of people who are adults live as roommates, which is a little unusual. The rest of the United States doesn't really live that way. But in San Francisco, you have complete grownups, complete strangers who roommate together. And so you see an ad on Craigslist, and it will be for one bedroom and a roommate share. And it will say something like, I have a one bedroom in my flat for rent, and I'm six foot two, I go to the gym five times a week. I have brown hair and blue eyes. You'd be like, well, why do I need to know that if it's a room for rent? So it's a way that people are using the room rental ads on Craigslist as a way to meet each other and to hook up. So I had heard about this, and somebody told me this story. So I decided to write it, and I brought it to My writers group and said, what do you think of this story? And some woman in the group said, well, I met my boyfriend that way. And a guy said that he had met a girl that way as well. So it turned out to be quite common that this was going on. But who knew? I didn't know, except somebody told me this. So these are the type of stories that I started writing down and started to form my work as a fiction writer. Another story that I worked on was one involving bart. Everyone knows BART is the Bay Area Rapid Transit. It's the train that goes from San Francisco to the suburbs, mostly to the East Bay, to Oakland and Berkeley in those areas. But what you might not know is that there's a group of people who actually meet on the BART trains, specifically on the last seats of the last cars of any number of trains to hook up on the train. And they do this while the train is in the Transbay Tunnel, you know, while it's going under the water between San Francisco and Oakland. The reason they do it there is that when they're in the tunnel, nobody from the outside can see what's going on on the inside. And it also, when they enter the tunnel, the windows become black because it's dark in the tunnel, and they're like mirrors. And all of a sudden, people can be checking each other out on this train by just looking into the mirrors, the mirrors of the glass, without looking at one another. So I thought this was an interesting story, and this is how the book actually developed that Somebody said, told me this story, a guy who commuted to Danville every day. I just totally didn't believe it. I'm like, that's not possible. I mean, nine, 11 security cameras. There's no way something like that could happen. He said. Sure enough, he said that it was happening, and it was happening all the time. So I wrote up the story and I brought it to my writers group, and I said, look at this, another weird story that I found about San Francisco. And they read it and they said they actually thought it was, you know, unbelievable that this was going on. And they were shocked and they thought it was funny and hilarious and all the rest of it. But they said that I really didn't have my details down, that they said that, in fact, when I wrote the story that BART didn't look like that. The seats were not that color. It didn't smell like that. They were arranged that way. That basically they caught me. They caught me in not doing my homework because, frankly, I had never ridden on bart. I just heard this story and thought, what a great story. I'll just write it down. And they said, no, you got to go to bart. You have to actually ride the train, take your notes so that you have the details of the story correct, but otherwise, it's a great story. So the very next day I got on Bart. It was like 3 o' clock in the afternoon, and I sat exactly where the guy told me to sit, in the very last seats of the very last car. And sure enough, I brought my notepad. And I'm noticing the color of the seats and what the fabric is like and the posters that are on the wall so I could have all of this stuff from my short story and what it looked like and what it smelled like and what it sounded like. And sure enough, on my very first trip on BART to the East Bay and back through the Transbay Tunnel, I witnessed firsthand exactly what my friend had told me about. So then I really had a lot to write down in my notebook. So these are the type of stories I collected. And I decided that after I had a certain number of them, that I would try to see if there was an audience for them, if people would be interested in these books and interested in hearing these stories. So I launched a website with a friend, and it's called SOMA Literary Review. And the first edition of the website was interesting. How do you launch a literary review with just one person? You don't really know anybody in the writing community. So the first edition, I published 10 stories, and they were all written by me, and they all used different pen names. So it literally looked like a real literary review where a bunch of writers from San Francisco, from this cool part of town called South America, put together these weird stories of tales of the city. And sure enough, after it was out for a week, you know how things happen to the web. Sometimes things just pick up and they can become viral. Within a week after I published that first edition, I had real writers from all over the Bay Area submitting short stories to me. So then once that happened and the website got a following, and it actually today gets about two and a half million page views per year. So that's pretty good for a literary website. I was contacted by somebody in publishing who said, you know what? You should turn these stories into a book. You should turn this into, you know, into a novel. And I thought, wow, that's a great idea. And I don't know, maybe I was looking for permission from somebody to say, hey, you can really do this. You can really write these stories. And these are interesting. So what I did was this guy who was an editor at a publishing house, I took my website and I printed out like 30 of the best stories that I thought were the best stories. And I put a big staple on it and I sent it to him. And a few days later I got a call from this guy and he said, you know, I didn't tell you to print out your website and mail it to me. I said, you should write a book. I said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, you know, a novel with characters and put it all together, figure out the greater meaning of what your work means. And sure enough, for the next few years, that's exactly what I did. It was a book. This was a book that was written in kind of a backwards way. I had the scenes, like the Bart scene, like the Room for Rent ads in Craigslist that I could write about, but I didn't really understand at that point what it really was all about. And I think that what it's really about are that this generation, the one that you're a part of or many of you are part of, that's coming into the world and coming into adulthood right now, lives a little bit differently than even people in my generation. I think that there's such a constant information sensory overload that you go through in your daily lives that I didn't experience when I was growing up, that there's a need to kind of push things further and further and further. Think about the scene I told you about with Bart, or the scene about the Craigslist ads. It's almost like meeting in a bar. It just isn't. That's not even cool enough. I gotta up the ante by finding some more intriguing way to meet a person. Think of it like lifestyle. When I was growing up, we would drink coffee. The latest generation likes to drink Red Bull. When I was growing up, we'd have maybe three TV stations or if you were lucky, cable when you were young. Now we have an 800 channel universe, and people don't just watch TV, they watch TV and they're on their laptops and they're text messaging their friends at the same time. So there's a need, it seems like, to push things further and further and further. So I had to think about what were the broader themes about. Why is it that south of Market in particular is a great example of people living this kind of life? So I collected these outrageous stories and they actually created the backbone for the work, for the novel. What I'm going to do now is just give an example of one of the scenes of the book and read a very short part of it. This is from the beginning of the book and it involves a character whose name is Rafe and he's a graduate of Brown University and he comes to San Francisco to South America to work in the big dot com boom that's happening. And the book is actually set after the dot com boom has busted. And so Rafe is one of these people. And I'm sure, you know, maybe some of these people you in the room were part of this, who came to the city to work in tech. And then when things kind of fell apart for Those years, like 2002, 2003, all of a sudden there were thousands of young people, thousands of young people in their 20s who were here who found themselves suddenly unemployed with no work and a lot of extra time on their hands. So Rafe worked at a dot com and he's been, he's part of the massive layoffs. And so what he's had to do is he had to go to work and find another job. So he ends up working in a no name mailbox shop. So this is not exactly ups. This is a type of place that's used as a mailing address for scam artists, the people who are doing things like identity theft and fake lotteries. Do you know what I'm talking about? So he works at this place as a desk clerk and he just, he needs the money. He has to do it. So he kind of puts a blind eye to all the scams that are going on and just kind of sorts mail in those stupid little boxes all day, trying to fight off the boredom. Until one day. Dr. Kaplan, sweet one, a voice said. Rafe stood up from his mailbox, sorting and turned. It was a young man, a teenager. There's no Dr. Kaplan here. I'm sorry, you have the wrong place. This is 225 Folsom street, isn't it? Yes. Well, Dr. Kaplan's office is at 225 Folsom, Suite 1. You're sure it's not here? Maybe on an upper floor? I really do need to see him. It's urgent. Rafe had been told how to handle these situations from his first day on the job. Just X stupid. Their customers paid for complete anonymity for their shams. If anyone came snooping, it was best to play ignorant. Besides, it would be a good defense if the police ever raided or if a scam victim decided to show up for revenge. The young man standing before him didn't look like the type Ray figured fell for rip offs like these. Just a kid. A college boy, maybe, or even high school. Ray thought he saw tears forming in the young man's blue eyes. I really need to see him. It wasn't Raife's job to feel sorry for anyone or teach a wayward teenager a lesson about life. He knew that. Still, there was something about this kid that just got to him. Maybe it was the innocence of the boy's youth, or the fact that Rafe was so bored he was curious to see how it would all turn out. Over there. Rafe pointed to the wall. What? The young man's face filled with hope. Raife gestured again and the kid walked across the room. He. He stared at the wall of mailboxes. I don't understand. Rafe walked over. Welcome to Suite One, he said, placing his hand on mailbox number one. No, that can't be right, the young man said now trying to act as if some perfectly reasonable mistake had been made. The address did not say P.O. box one. It said, sweet one. I'm obviously in the wrong building. Sorry I wasted your time. Rafe shook his head and touched the young man's shoulder. Did you send him money? No. Look, I just came by hoping I could see the doctor or at least get an appointment, that's all. Raife took the master key out of his pocket and opened the box. It was stuffed with letters. He fished one out and held it up to the young man's face. The words were unmistakable despite the messy cursive scrawl on the envelope. Dr. Kaplan, 225 Folsom St. Sweet one. The teen became ashen, his youthful color completely drained as if he'd just taken a punch to the gut. Unable to catch his breath without another word, he bolted from the shop. The kid's emotional scene made Rafe curious. What scam did this Dr. Kaplan have going? He looked down at the letter in his hands and inspected the back. One corner of the flap was all that held the envelope closed. It would take little effort to peel it flat and peek inside. He'd seal it all back up and no one would be the wiser. What could be the harm? He tore it open, creating a bit more of a sloppy edge than he intended. Inside, he found a newspaper clipping. It was a small advertisement, the type found in the classified section of a weekly paper, the cheap ink easily smudged onto his fingers. Don't be ashamed one day longer. The headline screamed add 1 to 3 inches with Dr. Kaplan's patented system. Order your initial consultation kit now. Also inside the envelope was a check made out to Dr. Kaplan for $29.99. Poor kid. Probably only 17 years old and he's already worried about his shortcomings. It was at about that age that Raife himself became aware that size mattered. He'd never given it much thought until he and his high school friend Judy ventured off to a nude beach. Rafe spent most of the day lying on his stomach, trying to hide how easily he was aroused by the sight of all the naked bodies. He would pay later for his inability to control his passions. The sunburn on his behind made it excruciating to sit for days. He's the king of the beach, Judy sighed as she pointed to an obese man standing in the surf. The man was surrounded by a gaggle of six perpetually giggling, attractive women. The fat one? Rafe asked, noticing how the man's back was so hairy it looked like a sweater. Yes. You know him? No. I can just tell. Rafe couldn't. At least not from the distance of their blankets set up against the dunes. When he was sure his excitement had been tamed for at least a few minutes, he headed down to the water to cool his already fiery backside. As he hit the waves, he saw why so many female admirers surrounded the portly man. It was the size of a baby's arm. Raife shuddered. He closed his eyes tight and squatted down into the cooling water. He reached down to examine himself for comparison. It was the first time Rafe realized there was a scale to such things, a pecking order of peckers. That day he learned the difference could be enormous. Now Rafe wondered just how small the teenager was to be so vexed. He would wake his way to 225 Folsom street. Not exactly a part of SOMA on the tourist trail in pursuit of the miraculous Dr. Kaplan and his mysterious cure. Rafe had seen the monstrosity on the man at the nude beach. The angst of the boy and Dr. Kaplan's scam made him wonder if there was another extreme one on the other end of the size spectrum. How bad could it be? Dr. Kaplan must have hit a nerve with a new marketing campaign. Over the next several weeks the the foot traffic into 225 Folsom increased dramatically. Several men stopped by each day asking for sweet one. Rafe soon wished he'd never opened that envelope to discover the secret of Dr. Kaplan. The job had always been tedious, but at least it wasn't. Didn't cause anxiety. Now each time the door opened, he found himself in an awkward moment. The incident with the teenager had opened his eyes to the subculture of inadequacy, and he couldn't get the condition out of his mind. The crisis hit each time a guy came in and asked for Sweet one. Raif could not prevent himself. He looked. Not that it was easy to tell. A casual glance didn't reveal very much, especially when pleated pants were involved. To get any sort of read on the situation took careful study. What might be a telltale bulge could actually be just a large set of keys sunk to the bottom of her front pocket. Was that an embarrassing little acorn of manhood or the bend of something pushed to the side? He thought blue jeans did the best job of exposing the truth, but even then he could not be completely sure. Trying to determine the length and width of a man's nature soon turned into an obsession. No matter how hard Ralph tried to keep his eyes focused down on a book or even look away in disinterest, his sight was automatically drawn to the crotch. Clothing made it too difficult to see the truth. So Race began searching for other clues. He'd heard that foot size directly corresponded, but there was no consistency to the length of the feet of the men who walked in and asked for Dr. Kaplan. He expected to see dainty little shoes like the type worn by little boys going to church. Instead, all the men had regular sized feet, with at least one sporting a size 12. Foot size meant nothing. It was just a worthless old wives tale. Bald men with less hair were said to have more testosterone. Conversely, Raife wondered if maybe men with lots of hair on their heads tended to be tiny down below. Over several weeks, he carefully noted the fullness of the manes of the men who came in to visit Suite one. It quickly became apparent there was no pattern this way either. Just as many had thinning hair as had bushy mops. Nothing worked to provide an answer. Rafe felt his frustration burn. Soon he began inspecting his own. Now concerned that he too came up too short. He then found himself checking out men outside of the shop. It was embarrassing, uncomfortable, and the guys inevitably felt the scrutiny of Rafe's glare. He had to stop. Rafe figured it could just be a matter of time before one of the men clocked him for taking such an obvious stare. This was San Francisco, but not everyone was open minded. An unhealthy seed was planted in his head that tore any semblance of self control. It was sick to obsess about such things. It reminded him of his friend Jeff's dog that impolitely and tenaciously sniffed the butt of everyone who visited. Soon people stopped coming. At first he wasn't sure how to rid himself of the obsession. He could quit working at 225 Folsom, of course, but he needed the money. He chirped with the idea of wearing sunglasses all day, so none of the men could be sure where his eyes inevitably wandered. No, Ralph agonized. Those are just bandages aimed at quelling the symptoms of his disease. One day, while sorting the mail, his mind presented him with perfect clarity on the matter. The contents of mailbox number one had doomed him to a constant guessing game. The puzzle had to be solved or he would fumble with the pieces forever. He would have to see firsthand what was tiny enough to cause such a big fuss. On Thursday, the next query came through the door. Can I help you? Ralph asked. I'm looking for Dr. Kaplan. Suite one. The man was tall, at least six foot two, and built like a runner. His face had boyish freckles, but a dark blue suit and polite mannerisms betrayed him as a product of the financial district. Probably a broker. It was two in the afternoon, the typical quitting time for people working in the west coast version of Wall Street. No one by that name here, rafe said, turning his face down into the pages of his book, forcing himself not to peek. The man in the suit looked over at the wall of mailboxes. Oh. The man's tone revealed he understood. Sorry for bothering you. No problem, mumbled Rafe. One more thing, the man asked. You don't by any chance have a restroom I can use? No, rafe said, continuing to avoid eye contact. We don't have one. Try the McDonald's down the street. The bathroom, Rafe thought. Of course. As soon as the man left, Rafe practically leaped over the counter. He slapped the back and five sign up, locked the door, and began the chase. And I'll end there. You can read the book to find out what happens when we lift the chase. So the real story just behind that scene is a friend of mine who again worked in tech and again lost his job, ended up working at one of these low rent PO box places. And sure enough, the Dr. Kaplan scam happens just like I described in the book to him. In real life, my friend Stephen, who now is a famous reporter with Bloomberg, he again opened the letter. He wanted to see what it was about. And just as I described, he learned that it was one of these bigger scams. And he became obsessed with it too. And he just found it so embarrassing. Every time a guy came in and asked for sweet one, he just couldn't deal with it. He just thought it was the most disturbing thing and he quit his job and went and did something else. But of course, that's not good enough for a book. For a book, something else has to happen. So I promised to explain to you how it is that Google helped make Soma a best seller. And this has to do with how books are published and how they get out into the public. One of the things about writing a book about like Soma, which takes you into kind of an edgy storyline, is that it's very difficult. First of all, it's very difficult for any novel to get the attention of the literary establishment, especially a novel by a newcomer like me, somebody who's never published anything before. That's number one. Number two, if you write a book that's kind of, kind of dirty, they're not going to review you. And I had done my homework ahead of time and realized that the New York Times Book Review just didn't review books like mine. They just didn't give them any attention. They tend to, I think, stereotype what these books are really saying or don't want to pay attention to them in any meaningful way. So I knew that my chances of getting into the mainstream literary establishment and getting, getting them to read my book and review my book and talk about my book was very unlikely. So I decided I needed to kind of take my pitch directly to the people. And of course, what could be more democratic or more effective way to do that than through the Internet? And so what I did was I actually, at the same time that the book came out, I produced a series of videos that ran on YouTube that actually took readers to the real life places that are the inspiration for the book. So if we can, we're going to look at one of those videos right now. Everyone thinks they know San Francisco, But there's another side of San Francisco. Selma. Here in San Francisco, not everything is as appears at first glance. Often there's something going on just beneath the surface. But that's certainly true in a neighborhood called Soma. And it's especially true at the Argent Hotel. It looks like just an ordinary hotel at first glance, but there's more to the story. The Arches is actually the favorite hotel for people who like to. Well, they like to show off their platinum in public. You can go to the Internet, to the hotel's website to see what it's all about. Don't you just love these 360 degree virtual gallery things? So I turn from the bed to the front of the room. And there's the window. But it's not just any window. The Arches has windows that go from the floor to the ceiling. That means that when gates open their curtains all the way, everything that goes on inside the room can be seen by anyone outside. And the hotel is right across the street from Burgo Bryant park, and from up here, the busy Metreon entertainment complex. So couples check into the arts and hotel, they open the curtains all the way and they put on their own form of education right in the windows. It's actually kind of hard to see during the day, but at night we'll take a look. It's like dozens of little screens lit up to watch. You never know what's going to be playing. In the novel Song, a woman is going to the Argent Hotel and she unwittingly puts on an embarrassing show for everyone out here to see. She didn't know the secret of the Argent Hotel. Soma is full of secrets, like these things that happen in plain sight, but you don't see them until someone tells you where to look. How do you know the secrets? What do you think? I'd like to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in. So the videos actually had a modest following. They'd probably be collectively viewed about 25,000 times, which is not. Doesn't make them viral. But in the world of literature, that's enough to get people talking about your book. And there were some weird things that happened as a result of doing these videos. First was it created some talk about the book and some buzz. And I was people to stories just basically based on the fact that I did this. Apparently I was the first author to try to launch a book in this way. And I had people liked writing about me. You guys heard of a blog called Valleywag? So Valleywag, they never have anything nice to say about anyone. And they had nothing nice to say about me either. But it didn't matter because actually what's funny about Valleywag is they outed me because I write fiction under a pen name. Because I still work in the world of journalism. I always had a church and state idea about that I'd write journalism under my given name. I use a pen name to write my fiction, so it's not a secret, by the way, it's even on Wikipedia. But that didn't stop Valleywag from outing me and exposing my true secret identity. But it was just funny because that again, created more buzz about the book and made more people buy the book. So the weird thing is, here I am a complete Unknown writing about this weird part of San Francisco, these weird little stories. And the first week that the book came out it made the best sellers list. And I have to think that that was because these videos came out at the same time. So thank you to Google for doing that and the Google YouTube universe because I think it got me some attention that otherwise, frankly, I wouldn't have received because of the nature of the book. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Did you have a question? Oh, I thought you raised your hand. Sorry. Microphone.

So how has the response been in places that aren't as gay friendly or as aware of the gay culture as San Francisco?

Well, actually it's interesting the book because it's set in San Francisco and because it involves most of the stories involve sexuality, sexual orientation and all of the various colors of the rainbow of sexuality are included in the book. So you would think that that would mean that, well, this must be a book that is only for San Francisco or the Bay Area where people are more open minded about those things. But it is fascinating. The weird thing about writing a book is that and it gets out there. Well, first of all, the weird thing about if you get on the bestsellers list, here's something I didn't know and now I know. Your book gets carried everywhere. They were selling it in airports in Singapore and I've had people see it everywhere because it made the best sellers list. Bookstores tend to buy what they think is going to be popular and once you make the list, all of a sudden you get stocked everywhere. So I get people find me through Facebook or MySpace or my website and send me emails all the time. I still get them. The book's been out since February 2007. It's still for sale everywhere at its, at its full cover price. It's not in the $1.99 bin yet. So it's still selling. And I still get notes from people in small town America. Some of them are heartfelt talking about how that it meant something to them in some their own personal journey. Others are just, well, I thought it was cool but it's really interesting to hear from people all over. Yes, I was curious what kind of field research you did inside the city. Well, I think I gave the example about the bart which was kind of almost unintended field research. There are certain parts of the book that, that I did actually go and experience for the sake of the book. I'll tell you one of the more embarrassing ones. Does anyone here know what a high colonic is it's not a soft drink. It turns out it's a procedure that's actually enormously popular in Europe and in Russia, where basically it's a cleansing thing for your digestive tract. I'll leave that to the rest of your imagination. And one of the characters in the book at one point becomes actually addicted to these things, which sounds a little weird, but actually it was based on something I saw. A couple of actors who were on the Tonight show were talking about how they were used high colonics in order to stay fit and trim all the time. So I thought, well, this sounds interesting and I'll try this. So I went to this clinic in Pacifica. It was very earthy, crunchy, and I had the music and the Zen and all this stuff going on. I went through this whole procedure and they stick you up to this machine and they basically clean you out. I don't know how to describe this except the way it's in the book. And it was very strange because they don't actually refer to any of the bodily functions the way we would. You don't actually. Basically they're taking your colon and they're. They're power washing it and taking everything out. Some people believe that you have like 10 pounds of dead meat in your colon and that this will get rid of it. So there's a lot of health thought about this. So I went to this place in Pacifica and it was very Zen and it had the music and the woman was referred to the whole letting go of your insides as vacations. Okay, this is a real term that she would use. So you're not going to the bathroom, you're having a vacation. And she had all these weird phrases that she would use. And those all went right into the book because it was such great stuff. And I have to say, just like the scene in the book was you have after the procedure, you feel completely like, you know, so mellow, almost a little like stoned. It was a really very nice experience and I tried to capture it as best I could in the book. So the book comes out and a friend of mine reads this. He says, well, that actually sounds like it would be a cool thing to do. And he said, there's a place here in the city that does it. Down in the Fillmore in Japantown. So we went, not at the same time. So it's run by Russians. Remember I said Russians are into this. Well, it was not Zen. Instead you go in this room and this middle aged matron like basically shoves a pipe up your butt and then pounds you in the stomach for 45 minutes. So we leave this place and my friend is like, you are such a liar. I can't believe that. But really, it was in the book. It really was like almost a religious experience the way they had it set up. Other things for the sake of the book, I would not do. And this actually goes into to how books are researched. One part of the book, this character that gets involved with crystal meth, which is, as you may or may not know, is a huge problem all across America. It's probably one of the number one problems this country faces. And I had never done crystal meth. And I wasn't interested in doing crystal meth for the sake of the book. So I interviewed people who do. And when I got the scenes that involve this to a certain state that I thought they were ready, I actually went and had it brought back to somebody who I knew was a crystal meth addict and had that person vet the section. And it was interesting that he said that I got the parts about the feeling of it. This was on the first draft that I got that down. He thought I really captured that, but that I actually did not get the mechanics of it correct as to how it is that people actually do crystal methods. And it turns out there are lots and lots of ways to do crystal meth. So needless to say, I picked the very strangest one ever to include in the book. And he, my friend, the crystal math addict, is responsible for me learning that. So some things you can do, you're comfortable doing. Other things, sometimes you're comfortable observing, and sometimes you just have to talk to other people. And, you know, getting a crystal meth addict to be on time for an appointment is a challenge in and of itself. So.

Okay.

All right. Well, thank you, everyone. Thank you for coming. I appreciate. And thank you to Google and authors at Google. Thank you for supporting writers.