Twenty-one years ago, in September 2003, I received a mailer from the University of Chicago’s Graham School, inviting me to sign up for their Introduction to Creative Writing course. At the time I was traveling to Phoenix ten to fifteen days a month. I owned and managed with my brother-in-law and an engine remanufacturing company. I had been making that commute for fifteen years. We had survived many financial and operational challenges, but we were not prospering, and had already made the decision to wind the business down.
I signed up for the writing course on a whim. It was a wonderful change of pace from what I had been doing and I got just enough encouragement from the instructor to try another class. That first year I I took classes on flash fiction, poetry, short story, and introduction to the novel. One of the instructors suggested I attend the Iowa Writer’s Festival summer program – weeklong classes on a variety of writing topics. I loved the festival experience – it was like summer camp for adults. Over the next few years I participated in several writer workshops, including Tin House, Squaw Valley, Napa Valley, Skidmore, Norman Mailer, Sewanee, and Bread Loaf.
Soon after I returned from my first writer workshop in Iowa I joined the Zoetrope Writer’s Workshop which had been created by Francis Ford Coppola. On Zoetrope, writers could post a story and get feedback from other writers. To have your story reviewed, you first had to review five other stories. The opportunity to get honest, critical feedback was invaluable. And learning how to analyze stories and give constructive feedback made me a much better writer. Over the nine years I was active in Zoetrope I posted over fifty stories and reviewed over three hundred.
On June 23rd, 2005, my niece, asked me if I would write a story to be read at her wedding in September. I thought that was a bad idea and eventually she abandoned the notion, but not before I wrote a 1000-word story titled, “The Toast,” about a thrice-divorced salesman named Clayton who is asked to give a toast at his niece’s wedding. A year later that story had evolved into a 4000-word story titled, “Dancer Stonemason is Missing,” The same characters, but I added a father named Dancer. I have no idea where the name came from—it just popped into my head one day.
In the fall of 2006, I started a novel course. Each week we would workshop a new chapter in our novel. I used my Dancer Stonemason story as my first chapter. Eight weeks later I had a 20,000 word “novel.”
I worked on that novel for years. Workshopped chapters at Tin House and Squaw Valley and Sewanee and hired professional writer / editors to give me feedback. I rewrote it with a half dozen times. Finally, after I had officially given up on it in 2013, a small independent publisher accepted it for publication. After another major revision American Past Time was published in April 2014 – eight years and nine months after I wrote that short story.
1st Place Top Shelf Book Awards Fiction - General
Gold Medal Winner - Readers' Favorite Sports Fiction
Finalist - Beverly Hills Book Awards
September 1953...
Dancer Stonemason is three days from his major league debut. With his wife and son cheering him on, he pitches the greatest game of his life. And then loses everything.
Told against the backdrop of America's postwar challenges from Little Rock to the Bay of Pigs to Viet Nam, American Past Time is the story of what happens to a man and his family after the cheering stops.
"Darkly nostalgic story of an American family through good times and bad. A well-crafted novel that will appeal to sports and history aficionados." - Kirkus Review
I tried to write a sequel to American Past Time, but I couldn't make it work and after a year I gave up. I've always been interested in athletes and competitive sports and decided to write a story about someone who achieves their life’s ambition at an early age. I wanted to write about the life lived after the cheering stops. I was inspired by Springsteen's Glory Days and Better Days ballads.
Silver Medal Winner – Readers' Favorite
Finalist – Eric Hoffer Award
Finalist - National Indies Excellence Awards
When you achieve your life’s ambition at eighteen, what do you do with the rest of your life? For Darwin Burr, a cushy job working for his boyhood friend fits the bill.
Coasting through his grown-up years on the fading memory of a long-ago high school basketball championship, Darwin isn't looking for much. He's happy right where he is coaching high school basketball.
But when his friend vanishes trying to elude the FBI, Darwin's loyalty is tested beyond anything he could have imagined. Now, he must risk everything to save his friend.
"...an attention-grabbing crime story in which unexpected upheavals result in welcome second chances." - Foreword Reviews
I still wanted to write a sequel to American Past Time. I had created a lot of characters that I never had a chance to use. But instead of trying to write another multi-generation saga I decided to have the story take place on a single day in July 2003 – almost thirty years after American Past Time ended. I gave Missouri another river (that’s why I love fiction) and a devastating tornado. I started Everyone Dies Famous in September 2018 and it was published in August 2020.
1st Prize - Top Shelf Book Awards - Southern Fiction
Everyone dies famous is a story from the heartland about the uncommon lives of everyday people — the choices they make, how they live their lives, and how they die.
As a tornado threatens their town, a stubborn old man who has lost his son teams up with a troubled young soldier to deliver a jukebox to the wealthy developer having an affair with the soldier’s wife. It’s July 2003 and the small town of Maple Springs, Missouri is suffering through a month-long drought. Dancer Stonemason, a long-forgotten hometown hero still grieving over the death of his oldest son, is moving into town to live with his more dependable younger son. He hires Wayne Mesirow, an Iraq war veteran, to help him liquidate his late son’s business. The heat wave breaks and the skies darken. Dancer tries to settle an old score while Wayne discovers the true cost of his wife’s indifference and turns his thoughts to revenge. When the tornado hits Maple Springs, only one of the men will make it out alive.
“Len Joy’s Everyone Dies Famous is a clear-eyed examination of how we live in an uncertain world. — KEVIN WILSON, author of Nothing to See Here
I lived in Phoenix (on and off) for over fifteen years when I was running the engine company. Managing a company with over one hundred employees was an adventure – rewarding, challenging, and sometimes heartbreaking. I wouldn’t have traded that experience for anything. And I loved the area – running, hiking, and biking on the mountain trails, water skiing at Lake Pleasant, Mexican happy hours, trying to dance at the cowboy bars. I even liked the heat…most of the time. My next novel was inspired by a real-life incident that happened to the son of one of my employees. I started Dry Heat in July 2019 and it was published August 2022.
When a promising high school athlete is falsely accused of shooting a cop, he enlists the aid of a notorious gang leader to find the real shooter, unleashing a chain of events that alters the course of his life and that of the girl he loves.
“Dry Heat is a page turner with heart. A tale of star-crossed lovers…this smoothly written novel is full of friendship, family, and redemption.” — Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Godspeed
“A rousing suspenseful crime drama with memorable characters.” — Kirkus Reviews
"A moving coming-of-age piece." - BOOKLIFE
Covid disrupted everyone. There were no races to train for, but we kept training, knowing it would pass. I had a lot more time to write. I had never written about Chicago or my hometown of Skokie and Evanston. My favorite newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, was going through a wrenching transformation and many of the local columnists had left the paper. I decided to make my main character a columnist trying to hang on. I gave him a lot of challenges. I started the novel in January 2021 and it was published in October 2022.
"A compulsively readable novel that will be easy to devour in one marathon sitting." — Kirkus Reviews, Star Review
Jake Doyle used to be famous.
Twenty years ago, his Chicago political column was syndicated in two hundred papers, but he had an affair — and a son — with his intern, and lost it all. Now he writes a local column and drives for Uber to pay his bills. Jake is playing out the string when his tranquil world is turned upside down. His biracial son — an ambitious entrepreneur — is marked for death by a street gangster, his alcoholic daughter is pregnant and wants an abortion — which his ex-wife is determined to stop at any cost – and his boss, a wealthy publisher, wants Jake to give up his column to help him run for president. Jake believes in gun control, but he wants to protect his son. He believes in his daughter’s right to choose, but that belief looks different now that it’s personal. And he wants to keep writing his column without interference, but he also wants one more chance to be famous again.
I have often imagined my novels as films. My stories are heavy with dialogue and action and not a lot of character rumination. After Freedom was published, I spent six months writing a screenplay for Dry Heat. It was a challenging experience. The screenplay has made it to the semi-finals in a couple of small screenplay contests, which doesn’t mean a lot, but does give me encouragement to keep working on the craft. I returned to novel writing in June 2023. I had this revelation that since I had two novels about the Stonemason clan – stories separated by thirty years – there was an opportunity to fill in the gap and write the prequel to Everyone Dies Famous (or the sequel to American Past Time). American Jukebox, my latest novel will be published in October 2024.
Clayton Stonemason idolized his father, a hometown hero in their small Missouri town. But when his father’s life unravels, Clayton loses his way, too. He tries to escape his father’s legacy but discovers he can’t run from his destiny.
AMERICAN JUKEBOX, a story of small-town America in the last decades of the twentieth century, explores the many ways our relationships, hopes, and dreams can alter the course of our lives.
"Intriguing and thought-provoking…an interesting commentary on the social community of small-town America and a fascinating look into the psyche of a young man struggling to find his place in the world. Highly recommended!" — Grant Leishman – Readers’ Favorite
I can't believe I have been writing for two decades now. Looking forward to the next two. Still have lots of stories to share.
Comments