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Commander Zero
A former Pender Harbour resident has written a novel that's making its debut in an innovative e-reader format-and it's a novel totally set on BC's Sunshine Coast.
Born and raised in Mission in the Fraser Valley, after graduating in English from UBC David Lee spent years in the Toronto art community, where he did everything from editing the jazz magazine Coda, to playing double bass and cello in avant-garde jazz groups in clubs and art galleries, to publishing books on tango music and Argentine cinema on the small press he and Maureen Cochrane founded, Nightwood Editions.
When he and Maureen returned west to live in Madeira Park from 1991 to 2002, they did a little bit of everything to support themselves and their two sons. David worked for Harbour Publishing and wrote for the Coast Independent; he packed prawns at the fish plant and deckhanded for a season on a prawn boat. He wrote a guide to Vancouver Island back roads and played upright bass with the Harbour Lights big band. He power-washed the government docks and fixed chainsaws at the lumberyard.
"We had family and good friends in Pender Harbour,"; Lee says, "and Maureen and I were active in music on the coast. But a book I'd written on jazz had just been published (Stopping Time: Paul Bley and the Transformation of Jazz, Véhicule Press, Montreal) and I thought I should try teaching in the community college world. I understood you needed a master's degree to do that.";
In the hopes of improving their fortunes, he and his family packed up their Francis Peninsula home and moved from Pender Harbour to Hamilton, Ontario. Lee finished his McMaster University program, and worked in a college bookstore while revising his MA thesis into another jazz book, The Battle of the Five Spot: Ornette Coleman and the New York Jazz Field (The Mercury Press, Toronto):
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-battle-of-the-five-spot-ornette-coleman-and-the-new-york-jazz-field/16611862?productTrackingContext=product_view/more_by_author/right/1
His experience fixing chainsaws at the Madeira Park lumberyard led him to research and write what became a non-fiction best-seller, Chainsaws: a History (Harbour Publishing):
http://harbourpublishing.com/title/Chainsaws
But all the time he had another book project on the go: a novel set in Pender Harbour, whose main character has lost his memory in an accident and is trying to reclaim the mysteries of his past. However, even though Lee was now living right outside of Toronto, he couldn't find an interested publisher in Canada's publishing capital.
"After all, Commander Zero is set among the working-class people of a rural west coast community-an environment totally alien to Toronto publishers. It's no surprise-I guess-that they pretty much all reacted to 'Zero' with an enormous shrug.";
Then early this year, Lee got a publishing offer from a completely unexpected source. The Governor-General's Award-winning Toronto artist John Oswald-
http://www.pfony.com
-had designed a new app, Watchbook, to be used on Apple smartphones. Oswald conceived Watchbook as "a new way of reading books"; in which rather than the traditional page layout, the book's text scrolls continuously at a speed controlled by the reader.
So purchasers could test-drive the app as soon as they bought it, Oswald was hoping to bundle Watchbook with a new, previously unread book. He was on a quest for a novel with "solid evocative writing, and an engaging plot"; and he had heard about Commander Zero.
"John seemed to think that 'Zero' was just what he was looking for,"; Lee says. Now Commander Zero can be read by anyone who for a modest fee, downloads Watchbook 1.0 from the Apple App Store.
From an author's point of view, is this as satisfactory as print publication? "It's fantastic,"; says David Lee. "A writer wants to get their book read. But at the same time, I miss the publisher-writer-reader relationship that can't be had through the Watchbook connection. You can't autograph an e-book. You can't sell them at readings. You can't haunt bookstores seeing if it's on the shelves.";
David will be able to do all that by next summer: a new Toronto publisher, Tightrope Books, has given "Zero"; a spring release date:
http://tightropebooks.com/
Meanwhile, is Commander Zero the great west coast novel that Lee hoped to write? It takes place entirely on the Sunshine Coast, mostly in Pender Harbour itself. In fact as the author describes Joey, the protagonist, "he's barely aware of any world outside of Pender Harbour. He has no memory of having been anyplace else, and he's developed his own notions of how the universe works, which include spiritual feelings about the mountains and the ocean and their roles in the human cycle of life and death. Among other things, he believes that after death, human beings go on to a very intense afterlife deep under the sea, so that although his relationships with other people are tentative and confused, his relationship to his environment is very passionate and engaged.
"My hope is that however west coast readers view Joey, and whatever they think of the book, they'll recognize some part of themselves in it: I hope that I've captured some aspect of the feeling of living on the coast.";
The new e-reader app Watchbook v1.0 is available from the Apple App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/watchbook/id450882541?mt=8
Born and raised in Mission in the Fraser Valley, after graduating in English from UBC David Lee spent years in the Toronto art community, where he did everything from editing the jazz magazine Coda, to playing double bass and cello in avant-garde jazz groups in clubs and art galleries, to publishing books on tango music and Argentine cinema on the small press he and Maureen Cochrane founded, Nightwood Editions.
When he and Maureen returned west to live in Madeira Park from 1991 to 2002, they did a little bit of everything to support themselves and their two sons. David worked for Harbour Publishing and wrote for the Coast Independent; he packed prawns at the fish plant and deckhanded for a season on a prawn boat. He wrote a guide to Vancouver Island back roads and played upright bass with the Harbour Lights big band. He power-washed the government docks and fixed chainsaws at the lumberyard.
"We had family and good friends in Pender Harbour,"; Lee says, "and Maureen and I were active in music on the coast. But a book I'd written on jazz had just been published (Stopping Time: Paul Bley and the Transformation of Jazz, Véhicule Press, Montreal) and I thought I should try teaching in the community college world. I understood you needed a master's degree to do that.";
In the hopes of improving their fortunes, he and his family packed up their Francis Peninsula home and moved from Pender Harbour to Hamilton, Ontario. Lee finished his McMaster University program, and worked in a college bookstore while revising his MA thesis into another jazz book, The Battle of the Five Spot: Ornette Coleman and the New York Jazz Field (The Mercury Press, Toronto):
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-battle-of-the-five-spot-ornette-coleman-and-the-new-york-jazz-field/16611862?productTrackingContext=product_view/more_by_author/right/1
His experience fixing chainsaws at the Madeira Park lumberyard led him to research and write what became a non-fiction best-seller, Chainsaws: a History (Harbour Publishing):
http://harbourpublishing.com/title/Chainsaws
But all the time he had another book project on the go: a novel set in Pender Harbour, whose main character has lost his memory in an accident and is trying to reclaim the mysteries of his past. However, even though Lee was now living right outside of Toronto, he couldn't find an interested publisher in Canada's publishing capital.
"After all, Commander Zero is set among the working-class people of a rural west coast community-an environment totally alien to Toronto publishers. It's no surprise-I guess-that they pretty much all reacted to 'Zero' with an enormous shrug.";
Then early this year, Lee got a publishing offer from a completely unexpected source. The Governor-General's Award-winning Toronto artist John Oswald-
http://www.pfony.com
-had designed a new app, Watchbook, to be used on Apple smartphones. Oswald conceived Watchbook as "a new way of reading books"; in which rather than the traditional page layout, the book's text scrolls continuously at a speed controlled by the reader.
So purchasers could test-drive the app as soon as they bought it, Oswald was hoping to bundle Watchbook with a new, previously unread book. He was on a quest for a novel with "solid evocative writing, and an engaging plot"; and he had heard about Commander Zero.
"John seemed to think that 'Zero' was just what he was looking for,"; Lee says. Now Commander Zero can be read by anyone who for a modest fee, downloads Watchbook 1.0 from the Apple App Store.
From an author's point of view, is this as satisfactory as print publication? "It's fantastic,"; says David Lee. "A writer wants to get their book read. But at the same time, I miss the publisher-writer-reader relationship that can't be had through the Watchbook connection. You can't autograph an e-book. You can't sell them at readings. You can't haunt bookstores seeing if it's on the shelves.";
David will be able to do all that by next summer: a new Toronto publisher, Tightrope Books, has given "Zero"; a spring release date:
http://tightropebooks.com/
Meanwhile, is Commander Zero the great west coast novel that Lee hoped to write? It takes place entirely on the Sunshine Coast, mostly in Pender Harbour itself. In fact as the author describes Joey, the protagonist, "he's barely aware of any world outside of Pender Harbour. He has no memory of having been anyplace else, and he's developed his own notions of how the universe works, which include spiritual feelings about the mountains and the ocean and their roles in the human cycle of life and death. Among other things, he believes that after death, human beings go on to a very intense afterlife deep under the sea, so that although his relationships with other people are tentative and confused, his relationship to his environment is very passionate and engaged.
"My hope is that however west coast readers view Joey, and whatever they think of the book, they'll recognize some part of themselves in it: I hope that I've captured some aspect of the feeling of living on the coast.";
The new e-reader app Watchbook v1.0 is available from the Apple App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/watchbook/id450882541?mt=8
Submitted on October 10, 2011 in By David.
