I’m at the keyboard trying to put a dent in my sixth or seventh book. This could be either one since I have the “memoir’ book and the photography book in motion simultaneously. When I say “in motion” I really mean moving at a snail’s pace. Heck turtles move faster on a hot summer’s day. Yet I digress…

The memoir book, aptly called “Behind the Mike: Mostly True Stories from the Media Guy”, has been a 10-year journey to tell my weird stories from the agency days where Mad Men were taken down a notch in the days before the short-lived #MeToo movement. I was inspired by the great Mary Lawrence and her book “A Big Life In Advertising”. I started writing it on the 24-hour hours of flights on my way to Malaysia in 2012 and now it has ballooned into 1,000 page of literary anarchy. Time to trim the fat off these pages for sure.

Typewriter inspiration for the Great American Novel can spring from many diverse birthplaces. It can spark from a pithy sentence spoken by a close friend, suddenly spurring on an analogy, and then question followed by a thought and then all of the sudden a book idea is birthed. It can come in the form of an overheard conversation in the peaceful spot of your local coffee cafe—remember when we could write our novels and screenplays at Starbucks?—a unique situation that supplies the creative for your protagonist. It can come from a walk in the supermarket, an afternoon at the movies, a night on the town, or even a particularly curious seatmate on plane. (Remember what it was like to sit next to someone interesting on a plane an actually understand what they are saying with a mask muffling all of the nuanced conversation into the vapor?)  

Whitby Abbey / “Dracula”

Typewriter inspiration can also come from a precise location around the world, serving as the seed where a novel can grow. Many of the classics we hold near and dear have roots in specific locales and even bridges and buildings.  Here’s a few…

Whitby Abbey, located in Yorkshire, England (no, not the infamous Transylvania and trust me, not worth the long drive from Bucharest to see Dracula’s Castle) is the locale that provided the muse for the classic novel “Dracula”. Bram Stoker was visiting Yorkshire in 1890 when he stumbled upon the decaying ruins of the 7th Century Christian Monastery and he found the Gothic architecture so haunting that it became the genesis for this classic tale. The structure still stands today and as the fog sets into the town looming below and the waves of the North Sea crash against the shore… well, one can see why he chose it.

This decaying farmhouse in West Yorkshire, England is said to have provided some inspiration for the novel Wuthering Heights. Although physically the farmhouse doesn’t bear much resemblance to the family home in Emily Bronte’s novel, there is a plaque affixed to the ruins indicating that the farmhouse bears an association with the book. This countryside is said to have worked its magic on many  writers including Bram Stoker.

McDougal’s Cave / “Tom Sawyer”

McDougal’s Cave
“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”

In 1876, “The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer” was published and put author Mark Twain in the literary map of the world. It was a novel that was so ahead of its time in that it was filled with meaning and symbolism, aside from being engaging and fun to read. It was a story about the titular mischievous young boy, who wittingly tricked his way to get everything he wanted.

In Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri sits a small cave that soon became McDougal’s Cave. Today the former McDowell Cave was renames to honor the great work of the renowned author.

“I want to write something new, something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.” 

– F. Scott Fitzgerald in a letter in 1922, as he began to write the novel which became “The Great Gatsby”

Sands Point, NY, a small village along the north shore of Long Island, provided the inspiration for Easter Egg in “The Great Gatsby” in the form of a French Normandy-style mansion, which was once owned by Fitzgerald’s friend Mary Harriman Rumsey.

 “Fitzgerald’s Latest A Dud” was The New York Times’ headline for the review of Gatsby in 1925. At the end of Fitzgerald’s life, at the age of just 44, his publisher still had many copies of the first edition gathering dust in a warehouse. “My God, I am a forgotten man,” Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda when The Great Gatsby ceased to be published by The Modern Library. It seemed everyone had neglected his work. 

“The Great Gadsby” Mansion

It was only when a massive initiative began during World War II to distribute over 110 million books to soldiers abroad that public opinion changed regarding the novel. The Great Gatsby was one of the novels chosen, printed in editions designed to fit in a soldier’s back pocket. Finally, in the hands of American soldiers, the work began to achieve the popularity it has enjoyed ever since. From humble beginnings to gigantic success, this Great American Novel tells a typically American story, one of success and tragedy, a story that echoes too well Fitzgerald’s own life.

Bath, England

Jane Austen resided in Bath, England from 1801 to 1806 and this town became the setting for her novel “Persuasion”. Not only was the town the center of fashion and nobility in the early 19th century, but it also became the location where her characters socialized, attended balls, and attempted to arrange marriages. Many of Bath’s addresses are included in the novel and Bath itself still pays homage Austen with events like the Jane Austen Ball and the Jane Austen Festival.

Stephen King’s stimulus for his haunting novel “The Shining” came in the form of a precarious hotel in Colorado’s Estes Park. King’s stimulus for his haunting novel “The Shining” came in the form of a precarious hotel in set below steep mountains. King and his wife Tabitha checked into The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, on October 30th, 1974. Having recently written Carrie and Salem’s Lot, two novels set in the writer’s home state of Maine, King needed a change of scenery to get his inspiration going. In another somewhat obscure fun fact, the hotel’s on-site pet cemetery served as inspiration for another successful King novel, “Pet Semetary”.

The ghostly hotel fueled King’s idea process and the pressure to perform had him on edge to create a masterpiece. He was under a self-imposed deadline due to the fact that he had to pay for his room each additional night in which he did not find the right idea. The fact is, that this combination of stress and inspirational atmosphere was the perfect concoction in order for him to create one of the most notable novels in history.”

(c) The Stanley Hotel

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Jack Kent Cooke (second from the left) at the Forum Groundbreaking.

Hockey meant more to me than a fan pulling for his team while time passed before my eyes over countless chill-inducing goals, bone crunching fights, and milk-curdling screams. Hockey was family, starting straight at the top of the organizational chart: Jack Kent Cooke.

Many of you might not know Jack Kent Cooke. Cooke was the visionary owner of the Los Angeles Lakers and starting on February 9, 1966, he was the owner of the Kings as well. Lucky me, my dad’s second wife worked for Cook’s Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, California. At some point, she imploded and gave back her title as “dad’s wife”, exchanging it for her new moniker as “Carina, the Mystic Psychic.” I’m not sure what others thought, but to me she was definitely more psychotic than psychic. Yet I digress..

As Stan Kroenke brings the Rams back to St. Louis with grand dreams of Inglewood, let is be known that Cooke was the original King of Inglewood. The Fabulous Forum was regarded as one of the best arena in the United States, a great place to watch a game before corporate suites, stadium sushi, and $35 parking took over the fan experience.

WARNING: Shameless self-promotion coming. In my forthcoming book (When? Don’t ask!), loosely titled “Behind The Mike: Mostly True Stories from the Media Guy” chronicles my time working for the great Jack Kent Cooke. (Did I mention before this is my fifth book in print? There I go digressing again!). Well, enough patting myself on the back because I think I’ve pocketed enough change from these four tomes to pay a month or two of car insurance premiums. Sounds good on paper, but unless you’re J.K. Rowling, George R. R. Martin, or E. L. James, don’t quit your day jobs boys and girls.

Perhaps I need to add some initials to my name. Maybe that’s the ticket.

Regardless, here’s an excerpt from the book:

Spending hours learning the intrinsic points of astrology with Carina night after night convinced me she was more psychotic than psychic. Nonetheless, she worked in the ticket office of the Fabulous Forum. What did this mean? It meant that tickets for any Los Angeles Lakers and Kings games or the best concerts in the Southland that weren’t sold out, would be ours for the asking. Although Inglewood is eyesore now, in the mid-seventies, the area had not yet been overrun with urban blight and crime. A five-year-old could still walk four blocks to save three cents on a gallon of fifty-three cent milk and attend professional hockey games, alone. 

And attend I did, to the tune of 200 Lakers and Kings games in three years. We could barely make rent, but I had seats just as good as Dyan Cannon and Jack Nicholson, and I knew more about offsides and rebounding than any six-year-old on Earth. But that wasn’t the best thing about Carina’s job.  

When there was a sold out event in town—something like the circus or the Harlem Globetrotters or Led Zeppelin—I earned my admission by working for a few days in her office. No adult in the office could touch my speed and accuracy stuffing season tickets into envelopes, matching them to the correct address label, affixing postage and getting the mail out by 4:00 P.M. Screw OSHA and whatever child labor laws existed back then, I was the king of direct mail (even at six years old). 

Can you imagine the late Dr. Jerry Buss entrusting a five- or seven-year-old with $5000-a-seat season tickets today? Yeah, I don’t think so. 

The immortal Jack Kent Cooke was a whole different story. 

The 1974 Lakers, Kings and Fabulous Forum were owned by the colorful and eccentric Cooke. He loved sports, also owning the Washington Redskins and a stable of race horses at one point. He was married five times with the last lady being a former Bolivian drug runner forty years younger than him.  

Cooke was the reason everything worked at the Fabulous Forum. He was more than an idea man. He was a doer. Everybody talks about you have to have an idea. Whenever one of his advisors would come to him with a bright idea, the first thing Cooke used to tell his advisors was: “IDEAS ARE OVER-RATED UNLESS YOU HAVE A GUY WHO CAN EXECUTE IT.” 

His people would always come up to him with these ideas. Getting the Beatles back together was brought up a few times while I was around. He would say you have to come up with an entertainment plan that you’re smart enough to execute it. And, he wouldn’t stop there.  

“You don’t have to be brilliant to come up with an idea,” he bellowed in his graveled, yet pitchy voice. “But you DO have to brilliant to come up with an idea and then execute it for fifteen years. There are a million people who open restaurants with great ideas. Sixty percent are closed in two years. So you have to be able to execute.” 

Then he would take a breath before instructing his idea people to “come back to me when you have a plan; not an idea.” 

Cooke was always nice to me. The ladies in his office loved it when he would talk to me and give life lessons. Essentially I was his puppy; a chick magnet if you will. He introduced me to F. Scott Fitzgerald saying that his life was “better than any of that guy’s crappy novel.” He let me turn on the arena lights a time or two. He showed me the preliminary artwork for media guides and the pocket schedules. Jack Kent Cooke gave me my first taste of the media. 

I loved this guy because he was a very hands-on owner; at least with the female staff. As a matter of fact, I can’t recall seeing anyone on his direct staff than was a man. Never saw a guy around him who wasn’t a reporter, player or public relations-type person. 

Controlling the message was key for Cooke; at the office, with reporters, around the media. He wasn’t about to be played by them. It was so important, that he once paid $176 million for the Los Angeles Daily News newspaper.

A couple of times he let me stuff those aforementioned envelopes in his office while being interviewed by the newspapers. He commanded the room with his humor. His colossal entrepreneurial acumen blended effortlessly with his no-nonsense business sense. Cooke handled everything his way. 

And, when the media was around, he owned them quite simply. In this respect, I wanted to be just like him. (I’m still working on that part.)

Excerpted from Behind The Mike: Mostly True Stories from the Media Guy by Michael Lloyd.

Copyright © 2016 by Michael Lloyd.

Excerpted by permission of me, Michael Lloyd. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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