Writing a Book Isn’t Fun (or Lucrative). Here’s Why I Did It Anyway.

The first time I heard the story, two thoughts came to mind:

1. Holy shit.
2. Why doesn’t anybody know about this?

It was August 2019 and I was getting my feet wet at a small TV production company in St. Louis. One of the partners’ close friends, Stephanie Abbajay, stopped by our office to share a story she thought was HBO-worthy.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, but this one had real juice behind it. For starters, it was a true story — one she lived through as a kid. More importantly, the story involved the mob, drugs, sex, rock and roll, and a Grammy-winning song.

Now we’re talking.

Stephanie explained that her father, Duane, a Syrian construction manager, got roped into taking over his brother’s failing nightclub in Toledo — the Peppermint Club — in 1962. Somehow, this guy pulled America’s hottest musical acts like Jerry Lee Lewis and Frankie Valli into a Rust Belt bar caddy-cornered from a bus station.

Duane carved out a reputation as a rock and roll impresario, and with that came friendships with gangsters, contentious relationships with cops, and so much cash he had to stash it in his kitchen ceiling.

But after 14 years, the club’s novelty wore off, crowds dwindled, and Duane owed serious money to some “non-traditional lenders.”

With his back against the wall, a drunken epiphany spurred Duane to turn his dying rock club into Toledo’s first honkey tonk: the Country Palace. It was a dangerous bet that might not have paid off, had it not been for a country music superstar releasing a song inspired by the Country Palace, which hit #1 on Billboard, won a Grammy, and catapulted Duane (and his bar) into immortal fame.

This thing has HBO written all over it, we said to ourselves: crime, money, music — all wrapped in the whiskey-soaked, rhinestone-studded nostalgia of the 60s and 70s.

Not to burst your bubble if you’re trying to weasel your way into show biz, but this shit is damn near impossible — even with representation from a snazzy talent agency.

We spent a year pulling every string we could to get this story out of our heads and onto a screen. We had a call with a writer from The Sopranos. We tried clawing our way into a meeting with the guy who made Ozark. We met with Hollywood production companies.

All to no avail.

By the time we finished beating our heads against a wall, Covid was in full swing and we reshuffled our priorities. Most passion-fueled ideas fizzle out after enough time passes, but this one was different. At least for me.

Duane’s story festered in my mind like a parasite. I couldn’t shut up about it. And not just because of the flashy gangster stuff. It’s the true story of the American dream — not some sugar-coated PG-13 version, but a raw look at the compromises and steep costs that are inseparable from that elusive thing we call “success.”

Each of us wants to leave a legacy; few of us are willing to pay the price — with our reputation, with our money, with our safety. How much are you willing to put on the line? What got you here in the first place?

The vice and violence hook you. But seeing a reflection of yourself in this eccentric Syrian nightclub owner makes it impossible to look away. On top of that, I had access to a piece of history that only a handful of people on earth knew about.

I realized the only way to do Duane’s story justice would be writing a book, and if I didn’t start now I never would. Between Covid quarantines and a breakup, I had the most free time in my life since college.

On a lark, I called Stephanie and pitched her the idea of collaborating to tell the full story of her dad’s nightclub and how he (accidentally) inspired a Grammy-winning song. She was surprised, honored, but mostly excited to get started. Within a week we negotiated a deal that basically said neither of us would screw each other out of any money.

Then I started digging.

People like to fetishize writing as some stream-of-conscious activity where you pluck storylines out of thin air, perhaps at a Starbucks. But any writer who’s worth a damn knows you have to crack the code of the story before you start typing away on your precious MacBook — and the only way to do that is through compulsive research.

We’re talking about going way down the rabbit hole.

Over the next month, I spent dozens of hours conversing with Duane’s family members. I sifted through hundreds of pages of FBI records and archived newspaper articles. I interviewed crime historians, retired bartenders, and musicians. I chatted with people who said Duane was a gentleman and I chatted with people who said Duane was a sonofabitch. I watched six documentaries. I read dozens of books. I even joined a Facebook group for “fans of classic Toledo bars and bands” (I’m the youngest member by about 40 years).

When we came out the other end, the story was deeper, crazier, and more controversial than I or Stephanie ever knew. Turns out Duane took a lot of secrets to the grave in 2017.

In theory, I should have been champing at the bit to start writing. Instead, impostor syndrome kicked in. When the word count is zero and you’re staring at a blinking cursor, it’s easy to sabotage yourself:

Nobody cares.

You’re not ready to do this.

There are more lucrative ways to spend your time (that’s 100% true).

People have paid me to write their books for them, but putting my own name on the cover would demand a level of vulnerability that I wasn’t sure I was ready for. If, years down the road, I looked back and wasn’t proud of the book, I couldn’t just yank it off the internet.

I spoke to someone a lot smarter than me about the project. He put things into perspective with an interesting question: Which would feel worse, writing a ‘meh’ book or regretting not trying at all?

That was all I needed to hear.

I sat down to write on December 11, 2020. Like any good type-A, borderline-OCD person, I quickly settled into a routine. The bulk of my writing was done on weekdays between 6–8 a.m. and 6–8 p.m., the latter time slot paired with bourbon and Chet Baker. I sat in the same chair in the same spot. I find that eliminating decisions (What coffee shop should I go to? Can I squeeze in some writing around lunchtime?) eliminates distractions and excuses.

The internet is littered with advice about writing 500 words a day and then, voila, you’ll have a book before you know it. I guess it’s fine to have a plan. But as Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Some days I cranked out 1,000 words. Some days I rewrote the same 200-word paragraph over and over. Some days I wrote 2,000 words — then deleted all of it. It’s a painfully slow process and nobody is there to give you a pat on the back along the way. This is why “wanting” to write a book (or complete any creative project for that matter) isn’t enough to get through the gauntlet. You have to be obsessed with it.

George Orwell said that writing a book is “a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

Put simply, it’s hard fucking work. But as paragraphs evolve into pages and pages evolve into chapters, it’s immensely satisfying — relief from the mental congestion of ideas and information.

You might think months of self-inflicted torture would be justified by a handsome payout, but that’s rarely the case. Once you set aside the Stephen Kings and the Michelle Obamas of the world, the economics of publishing is pretty bleak.

Let’s say your publisher gives you a 15% royalty rate on a book that costs $20 per copy — that’s $3 per sale. Considering the average book sells roughly 500 copies, you can expect to earn a whopping $1,500 for a year’s work.

Yes, there might be indirect revenue streams like speaking gigs or even film rights. But if you expect book sales alone to pay for a loft in SoHo, you’re delusional.

Perhaps the number crunching is what weeds out so many would-be authors. There’s no justifiable reason to write hundreds of pages for pennies an hour when you can code, trade meme stocks, or just grind it out at your day job.

Unless you’re obsessed — unless you can’t not do it.

That’s what got me through A Bar in Toledo. I think it shows, and I hope you’ll take the time to find out.

A Bar in Toledo is available on Amazon or from The University of Toledo Press.