Michael Coffinio | The Similarities Between Coaching, Writing, and Life

The publishing for profit podcast is brought to you by Ghostwriters & Co Earn more money by publishing better content and learn how do we increase your thought leadership so you can build your brand. Head over to ghostwritersandco.com for more information. That’s ghostwritersandco.com. And now your host, Joel Mark Harris

Joel: Hello, and welcome to the publishing for profit podcast. This is your host, Joel Mark Harris. We’re on episode number 38 today. And we interview Michael who is and ghostwriter. He started his career co-writing a book with Joan Barns who is the founder of Gymboree, which is a multi-million dollar corporation.

There was a fascinating story which he talks about in the interview. He is also a former lawyer and basketball coach and he talks about both those former lives. It’s a great interview. We talk a lot about different subjects, about his writing, about what he learned, both as a coach and as a ghostwriter. So hopefully you enjoy this episode.

Michael. Thank you so much for being on the show. How are you today?

Michael: I’m wonderful. Thank you very much. How are you?

Joel: Awesome. I want to start because you were a successful lawyer, successful basketball coach, and then you made the transition into writing. Can you tell us a little bit about why you decided to make that pivot?

Michael: I mean, the short story is that writing was always important in the firm that I grew up with as a lawyer was renowned for their legal writing. I became a coach during my legal career and published various articles on law. I had a burning desire to be a professional writer someday.

It didn’t burn very bright at first, but over time as I got tired of practicing, I began to have ideas. And I eventually, I was doing that in parallel with my coaching career. So as a practical matter, even though ideas were percolating and I had some book ideas projects I wanted to do.

It wasn’t very practical to have three professions. It was just a bit too much. I was busy. I mean, just coaching and practicing while you can imagine. And so I as I approached 60, I had to find the courage to make the clean break. I wasn’t going to be able to juggle and at that time I had a fiction in my mind. And I also had started on a book on basketball, which I ultimately did write and publish later. But I got into a relationship with a woman, who, and you mentioned her in your email, John Barnes, who was the founder of Gymboree. And at the time I was with her in the beginning she was on the speaking circuit and she had a fascinating story. Just a powerful, powerful story. And she kept getting requests for where’s your book. And, I was at that point focused on one of my basketball, athletic books, and she asked me if I’d be willing to help her to basically co-write her memoir.  I thought about it and I thought, okay, that’ll be fun.

It’s quite a relationship. And her story was just mind-blowing. So, I decided to shelve the projects I had in mind, and I co-wrote that with her. And so that got me into the professional writing market, essentially. And the interesting thing about, of course, as I had never contemplated being a ghostwriter or a memoir writer, but that experience and really catapulted me.

It’s a place where felt this is fun. This is a storytelling of a different sort. And we had a good time doing it. We worked really hard. It was s a true collaboration.  John used to talk about the union voice LP develops in the narrative. And so that experience got me thinking about being a ghostwriter and I, and I don’t care.

I still had my other books. I wanted to write but the memoir started to becoming is now my sort of bread and butter in terms of my writing, in terms of there’s a monetization of my writing career is what I do now. I do well, I still add it. And I do all the things I mentioned earlier. Agent query, publisher query stuff, proposals, and a lot, but BMR writing is my staple right now.

Joel: Have you always has becoming a writer, something that you’ve always wanted to do since an early age, or is that something that you developed later in life?

Michael: Interesting question, because I don’t think I fancied myself as a professional writer but I always liked doing it. And, when I was in college and even little bit younger, I was fascinated with the Victorian books, particularly Charles Dickens and books of that nature. And I caught up a lot with the polysyllabic expressions. And so I built a huge vocabulary and when I wrote in college wrote I overrode as most college students do.

I had an English teacher in college who became a mentor to me who told me that he was going to save something. I wrote, show it to me in 30 years and I got the point at the time. I wish he had that now but I used to show off. It was sort of like a hobby that gave me personal satisfaction, but I never really dreamed of making it a career. It wasn’t until I started practicing law and it’s so much legal writing and so much editing and so much coaching of young attorneys and writing. And I began to write roasts for people to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays. They became very popular. And so I began to build momentum in my career to identify myself that way.

So I don’t think it was anything that I really didn’t have a life mission to do. And so later on, when I say, Oh, wow, this is, this is I do this. I can do this permanently.

Joel: So Joan Barnes is the founder of Gymboree. I have never actually heard of that brand, but doing some research, and it’s quite a big brand and there’s a lot of buzz around it. Could you tell us a little bit about that experience? And I guess you were thrown maybe into the deep end a little bit but it probably in the best way, in terms of how to write and publish a big book like that.

Michael: I knew of Gymboree of course, it was people in the United States at that time, new jewelry, and I think, I think our kids might’ve gone early with some sessions. The writing of the book was first of all, I didn’t know her story. And in a nutshell, as you may know, now she founded Gymboree essentially in a church basement and developed an international brand.

I had a big fall because she was, she had bulimia. She had an eating disorder and she basically had to leave the company and she was gone for treatment for a couple of years. She was, she was out of the company and then went public, and then came back to California and developed these yoga studios, which eventually she sold to yoga works, which is a national brand of yoga studios.

Well, what people didn’t really know about her journey and what I was most impressed with other than the fact that she obviously overcame these personal challenges was that essentially the original mompreneur. She found a Gymboree in the early seventies and she developed a business model through franchises that allowed women to own and operate their own businesses while also raising kids and what she did for women in that regard is, is really not talked about enough. And to me, the writing of the, that was the thing about the book I loved the most was obviously the journey was special and all that but what she did for that market that provides those opportunities for women that early on seventies and eighties, I thought was really remarkable.

The experience of writing the book was great because it happened to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Gymboree. Which meant it turned out that Gymboree financed our national book tour. So we got to go all over the country, the bookstores and other places, 92nd street in New York and put on panel discussions or book readings and that sort of thing.

Then in addition, Gymboree sold its Play division, the original, business model to a Singaporean company who then brought us to China. I mean, it was an amazing experience. So the combination of the launch with the book tour in the cruise to China was very special.

Joel: I guess that opened up a bunch of doors for you. You probably learned a lot about publishing and promotion that must’ve been a lot different from your life as a lawyer/coach. What did you learn along the way that helped you catapult your ghostwriting career?

Michael: That’s a really interesting question because I was completely naive about the workings of the literary industry.  One of the things I learned that writing the book is step one.

Joel: It’s the easiest step.

Michael: And marketing and promoting your book is an entirely different universe. And I have since that time obviously we want to go on about that. so that was, that was the biggest eye-opener. And it connects you with that was that it was a, a buyer’s market that the competition for agents, the competition for publishes was. So keen that you really had to be realistic about your chances.

And every time I have this conversation with all my memoir clients now because some of them what to become bestseller. I want to make some money and I don’t really discourage them heavily, but I basically keep it low key. Tell him what I think and try to encourage their passion.

The memoir experience sent me on a path to learn how to operate in the literary business, which is pretty complicated and not easy. The other thing is, I started to get memoir clients. I began to understand better the best way to approach the projects because every client is different.  Every client has their own sensibilities. And, you really have to be committed to the craft and to the client to do a good job.

One of the things that you would ask me in an email, I’ll just kind of segue to it. If you want is one of the great things about being a lawyer. And then a ghostwriter or a memoirist was that as a lawyer, I learned about client service and I was talking to someone that’s long ago about this, that I think ghostwriters sometimes forget that they’re in the service business.

We have a professional craft, then we’re good at it. And we love seeing our work appear on the page. But we servicing a client. And when I was young as a lawyer, I developed, a model, which was every client is the only client. And that, that arose from my experience in working at a big law firm that not only serve fortune 100 companies, but also small, smaller companies and individuals, and even did a lot of pro bono work.

And you could easily lose sight of the fact that every client is as valuable in terms of the quality of your service as every other one. So that was the other thing that I found important and becoming a ghostwriter is really accepting my client, where they stand and servicing them and not forgetting that I am really, they are the, they are the principal and I’m the agent and I’m serving them.

Joel: Yeah, no, I think that is definitely a good thing to keep in mind for sure. Can you tell us a little bit about your writing routine and how you like to write where you like to write and where you get your ideas from?

Michael: Actually two different questions.

Joel: Yeah. I kind of threw a lot at you.

Michael: I liked the question. I am a creature of habit. I’m going to have to admit and I do have a basic routine. I won’t say, first of all, that my routine doesn’t really respect. The boundaries of the days and nights and I mean, seriously, sometimes I say, Oh, it’s the weekend.

I don’t even realize this the weekend. but I do have a routine and that is I write early in the morning to begin. I want to get a couple hours in a B3 if I can, before nine o’clock or so Christine. I go into my exercise program. So I’ll exercise. I do a number of different things. In the mornings, generally speaking, now I’ll come back and I’ll work again.

And so four or five o’clock whether I work at night again, the third time after dinner, it depends on if I’m with my partner or I’m tired or what it is, but I will work at night too. And sometimes, deep into the night. I also, If I wake up and I do this a lot, I should point out at two o’clock in the morning, two 30 in the morning.

I used to be if I had an idea for a book, I would say, okay, I’ll remember in the morning. I don’t do that anymore. Yeah. I get up, I go to the computer and I put whatever idea I had on paper. And if I feel I got that’s kept me up, I’ll stay up. I’ll go back to bed, but I do, I do get a lot of thought during the middle of the night.

I did it this morning, it this morning. and I wrote it. So it was a little piece of legal writing, but again, we don’t want to ask your ass, answer your other questions. I love it is this is, this is so good. I get most of my ideas when I’m not writing. Again, most of the really insightful ideas, scenes, ways of ways of expressing stuff when I’m hiking, I am, or I hike regularly in addition to other things to exercise.

And I find that hiking opens me up to the creative realm. Habitually and I’ve got, for example, the title is still, my books have come to me on hikes. Obviously when you’re writing, you’re coming up with stuff, but I mean, in terms of outside the box, creative thoughts, I get them when my mind is the most relaxed. And that’s usually when I’m hiking.

Joel: So you’ve written a couple of books that draw inspiration from your career as a coach. Can you tell us a little bit why that part of your life is so important?

Michael: Yeah. I’ll tell you about a conversation I had with an athletic director when I was running my second of my three sports books. I was interviewing him for the book. He was really moved by what I was doing and he said. We coaches, we get into it for a lot of different reasons, but at the end of the day, it’s really important that we give back, to the coaching community, to the athletic community and whatever ways suitable for us.

I think that the coaching career, by the way, there was another thing I backed into. I’ve backed into, even going to law school. I back into that, it was, it was complete happenstance and I wasn’t I was coaching, middle school girls just out of school. And I got called a coach high school and I was thinking, okay, I was in the high school market.

I played basketball as a kid. So the coaching books, the athletic books are really an extension of my passion for the game. And for athletics. But, I wrote those books to contribute. I don’t pretend to say I’ve got the best things to say. I do a lot of storytelling and all my books, my books are very different from each other.

The one I’m most proud is the book on high school athletics. which is which actually I can say random one on Amazon for a couple of weeks for youth sports. I think is the most profound. And the important thing about that book is the value systems that, I argue, or prevalent in well-thought-out, athletic programs that serve kids at the high school and really at the college level, but at the high school level, in particular, in terms of preparing them for adulthood, Can I make the case?

I think in a powerful way, both the research, my own sort of experiences and storytelling that high school athletics, competitive athletics, the pair is student athletes for, for life in ways that the classroom traditional classroom does not and could not ever do. And so that particular book of I’m really proud of, because I think it, it really contributes to.

And it is particularly relevant now, given COVID, with, with all those programs sort of waylaid, I’m thinking about doing a second promotional that book because as soon as we turn the corner on this pandemic, but I just to answer your question, I think.

Values are inherent in the books I’ve written and in the instructive parts of it is sort of legacy-based from my standpoint and a contribution that I feel happy I’ve made. So that’s the most important thing about those books today?

Joel: So you mentioned that athletics teaches kids stuff that normal classroom don’t teach. Can you elaborate on that? Like, and how does athletics, prepare people for adulthood?

Michael: Well, it all obviously depends on the athletic program that they have. I mean, there are, there are athletic programs in their athletic programs, right? So. One of the things I advocate. I actually have a model mission statement in the book that I urge athletic directors to look at, but I advocate that athletic programs should be valued based that is they should reflect the values you want your athletes to acquire and nurture and embrace for forever, whether it’s empathy, whether it’s how to fit into a team concept.

So which, which applies to the employment world, how to embrace the world, how to support each other, learning how to effectively communicate, and, and giving an example. One of the research things I learned when writing that book was that if push came to shove between candidates, employers tended to favour.

And 20 candidates who had athletic backgrounds because they F athletes are taught to stay in the game to persevere, to not give up, to work within a team concept to understand their role and so on and so forth. So the book has several chapters, each of which is. Devoted to leadership, for example, empathy in character development, communication, things that community citizenship, for example, if you think about it, the most public presence of a high school.

Is its athletic program. Typically they’re out of the community. People come to see them play, they go on road trips, they’re out there. And so one of the things that a value-based program can do is teach kids good citizenship. I took one of my girls teams before I coach boys. I coach girls for several years in high school and I took, one of my girl’s teams to a client sleep-away tournament up North in Northern California.

And I got an email when I got back from the host school, telling me how impressed they were with how the girls, my girls behave, how polite they were, how conceived they were how easy they want to deal with. And of course, I read that to the girls and they were very proud because we were stressing the importance of going up there.

We are the ambassadors for our school. You are the ambassadors for your parents and your families. What we do reflects on us then in the larger community we represent. So these are the kinds of things that most of them are not found in the classroom. Some of them there’s some of the lab, some of them and then there’s the physical aspect.

I’ll get pushed back on that which is cool by the way. The Other Classroom, in the first chapter I respond to an Atlantic Magazine article that was very negative about high school athletics. And, I take them, I take that article on frontally and, and, as a, as an opening chapter. So there are other, there are detractors out there.

Well, every, there are programs out there that have failed that have lost their way that have had the wrong kind of values dominating your decision-making. But by and large high school, athletics is a fund of opportunity to help these kids develop. Hmm.

Joel: I see a parallel between athletics and writing. With athletics, you have discipline, you were talking about communication earlier about not giving up. And I think those are really valuable, attributes as a writer as well. Do you also see a parallel between the two? and if you do, can you comment on that?

Michael: Well, one thing I didn’t mention by the way, which skipped my head is probably the most important attribute that I used to stress.

Anyway, as a coach is self-advocacy, one of the problems we have today is. There’ve been books and articles written about their score, about parents and how they interfere with the athletic programs and how politicized the process can be. I mean, I’ve been through that in space.

Is the importance of kids advocating for themselves. I could tell you stories forever about that when you’re in a client relationship writing memoir, you have to, you have to find a way to get your client to sort of lead the way not knowing that they’re doing it and to embrace their history.

Embrace who they are and be bashed in their expression and be afraid to confront, whatever things in the past, because I’ve been in memoirs sessions with tears were shed off and it’s not an easy process. I had a client who was really close to the vest emotionally, and I just couldn’t get him to advocate for himself in terms of who he was.

We got there, but it was such a struggle. And so I think the thing about athletics and writing is, as you mentioned it earlier, as communication as a coach, and if you don’t get this as a coach, you’re not going to last long in the business, you have to understand the sensibilities of each of your athletes.

You could talk to some athletes one way, but not another, , you have to know how best to reach them. how to listen to them, especially for the teenage, the teenage level, same thing with clients. , one of the things that, and the legal business, my legal experience is helpful here too, is how do you ask a question?

When do you ask him a question? And when do you basically bury the question for maybe forever? dealing with parents, athletic directors, referees opposing coaches, athletes. You have to learn how to communicate with individual person, the classic, know your audience, right. And. Yeah, it’s not easy as a coach because you become single-minded sometimes in your quest for, competition excellence and that sort of thing.

And you can easily lose sight of the importance of treating each person that you deal with on their own terms. Not necessarily that you acquiesce when I would tell my players, look, I’m not, I mean, I agree with you. I mean, I basically give you what you want, but I’ll listen to you. I’ll hear you out and it’s hard at that level early hard to get teenagers to open up.

I mean, you think they’re listening to you, but then there basically yessing you to death. The ESCO Choco just goes in and they’re gone. You have to learn how to reach them. And I think that does apply to writing the memoir clients who. Are we all over the map emotionally and intellectually?

Joel: Advocates see something that you can learn or is it something that’s just ingrained in you as a person? And if it can be learned, what are some of the things you can do to flex that muscle?

Michael: That’s a big topic actually. Because first of all, the answer to your threshold question is absolute can be learned, but no question about it in my mind. I wouldn’t make it a sort of cornerstone of my coaching if I think that, but there are professionals like life coaches, in the life who, who, specialize in very questioning, you put how do you get people to put themselves first when they need to and not, basically kowtow and shrink into the into the shadows of life.

I think for me as a coach and then I’ll answer it as a memoirist is really understanding. That there are blockades between you and your players and the people you’re dealing with they come with a different agenda and you just have to find a way, to let them, you have to dig deep and find out what they need.

I think that’s where listening skills are used and I don’t think you could have if you have an important issue. I’ll give you a quick example of a second. You might have to go back to the, well, a couple of times on it to get them, to get them into the console, but you have to create an environment where there.

You have to create a volume where you really, they do feel you respect their point. I once got a phone call literally after 10 at night at home. From a, from a parent, of course, I was freaked out just to get a car wait. And he told me that his Dunaway coach was in a funk, which I knew because I saw how she had been playing the last couple of days.

She was our star player by the way. And he couldn’t figure it out. And, could I deal with it? And I said, well, you need to get her to come talk to me. This was the self-efficacy point. He goes, why can’t do that coach? I don’t want her to know. I called you said you put me between a rock and a hard place and said, you’ve got to figure that out.

You’re a dad. You figure out a way to get her to come see me and I’ll take it from there. And he did that and she did come to me eventually that week and we sat down and she talked and we got discussion. I just let her emo because I needed to figure out what was triggering her. Clearly, she had perceived something about my handling of her, which was completely wrong.

So she had been operating on a false assumption for a week and the more she thought about it, the worst she fell and so it took a while, but eventually it turned out that she, I thought you did this and that. And I said, no, that’s not what happened. Let me tell you why I do what I did. And I explained it all.

So it was a process of one getting her into the room to talk. Hmm, be courageous enough to advocate, inquire an end, to figure out a way to working with her, to figure out what was really going on with them, which we did. So in memoir writing, it’s not dissimilar. I mean, sometimes people just don’t want to go certain places and I think you have to figure out how hard do I push.

I mean, I’ve had clients say that’s enough, Michael. Okay. Okay. I’m backing off but that doesn’t mean it come back to it down the road, because part of the great thing about memoir writing is the trust you build between you and your client and the fact that they if you can establish them that you’re not judging them.

Once I decide to do a book, I’m not judging anything in your life. , this that’s not my job. My job is to give expression to this store. It might have been a major issue with Fiji. I won’t, I won’t take the job, , but once I’m in, I’m in. And so the process of working with the client requires ability.

I said earlier as to how to ask questions when they ask them, but also to make sure they understand you’re not judging them. They can, they can basically be transparent. One of the great things about working with Joan Barnes, you mentioned earlier, she was already that way. She was transplanted. mental clients are that way they have to trust you.

They have to believe that you won’t think less of them for telling you what they seal and I think that’s the key. And eventually over time, people open up. Then they let you in and then you could do the back better jobs and write their story.

Joel: And so how do you build that trust with your clients?

Michael: Think that you ask your questions and you let the answers just fall and you need to follow up. You fall off. but you don’t in any way intimate that you’re disagreeing with them. And that’s not easy sometimes because you do want to challenge them, , that the true memoir. true crime memoir client that I’ve been working with this year.

it’s been a pretty heavy experience cause she’s right about the death of her father and the rape and kidnapping and she’s pretty transparent, but she’s also tough and there will be times when I feel, no, I can’t let that go. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta make her accountable, but I think you have to pick your spots.

I think if it sounds like the process is more about you than it is about them, you’re in big trouble. So I think you have to be, it’s another expression I’ll have for myself, which is you have to be a little bit of a fly on your own wall. You have to understand the dynamic that’s happening between you and your memoir client.

Making sure they feel comfortable, making sure that you affirm them when you can, and now you ask them about how they SEL, and that you’re inquisitive and that there’s no sort of, kind of edge to your questions, having a hidden agenda. I mean, I think it’s a matter of skill about how you ask a question in a way that doesn’t appear, like you’re judging them.

I don’t know if there’s any easy answer to your question other than understanding that you have to be completely aware of the dynamic constantly that’s the most, and then let it go to play out. I think that the more you do that, I’m for example, I’m working with a Marine about his time in Vietnam and he actually I’m the second writer.

I actually interviewed him for my novel and while we, and we got really connected. And since I was, I’m a veteran also, I have some instant respect with them, even though I hadn’t even heard it yet. but over time they were given the PTSD quality of the experience. he’s opened up.

But I think he, even though he respected me because I was a veteran, even though we connected well, when I interviewed with them right now, just, five military chapters, it took a while for him to really feel at ease so he can tell me everything. And so I just think you have to, it doesn’t happen right away.

I think just, you have to be constantly aware. And I think I wrote challenges, writers, cause we have egos that sometimes get in the way. Because I’ll write something and I’ll think, Oh my God, this is so good. Then the client will say.  I can’t say that. It’s not me. Or I don’t like that.

I’m like, fuck, man, what are you telling me? I’m the professional. But no, that’s what you need to check yourself. That’s what you need to know that you’re in the service business. That’s where you need to be on there. You want to, you don’t want to rupture you. The trust you’re building with this person. You want to respect, this is their book.

Term and all my contracts that I don’t need to be asked to put in, which is they have final say on more content. I encouraged them. I said, look, don’t hold back. We don’t have to keep everything in there, but we can write the best book you can write. Unless I know everything if you want to decide, for example, in the true crime memoir, she just took it out a page of stuff that she thought would embarrass her.

I want you to, when we put it in at first, she was, she, she loves it. Yeah. She, Oh my God, I love this. Right. but over the over time she decided, no, it’s not a right thing to do. That’s the kind of patients you have to have her, even though I told them, I got, I love this piece. I didn’t want to take it out in terms of the literary contribution by that was, there was a no-brainer.

Joel: I think, we’ll segue to your, your fiction book. That’s upcoming, it’s called truth is in the house. Can you tell us a little bit about that book? What the plot is and synopsis,

Michael: let me tell you how it came to be because it had that Securitas route. Okay. I grew up in South Bronx and in a neighborhood called Highbridge. I love growing up there in the streets because we had in those days rules and the streets, , we lived in the streets, we play street games, we got our own car. it was a separate existence apart from school and family. and I was really proud of growing up there. I wanted to write a book it’s celebrated my neighborhood.

In some way, I thought it would do it from a fiction standpoint. So she’d give me more. We waited to tell stories and stuff and ask them, ask them false starts. And then I decided, , I’m just going to start interviewing people. And see where that goes. So I interviewed two guys who I grew up with, but who I hadn’t seen in 50 years.

And I only connected with them through Facebook and I wrote them both and said that I was coming to New York and I was writing this book. I wonder if they would sit with me and just talk to me for a couple of hours. So we met three of us and this was the only interview I did for the book. That was more than one person.

I did for my 30 interviews for the book. This was the only time I did it. And we actually met for four hours and these guys were master storytellers. Oh, it was great. I’d ask a question and let them go 10 minutes. And they told me about twin homicides that had occurred and may of 1970 in the neighborhood and the two kids, kids who were killed.

I knew, but I never heard of the homicides because in the 70, I was in the military. When I came out of the military, I didn’t move back to the neighborhood. Cause my parents had moved to a different place in the Bronx. So I never went back to, and I’ve been back to the neighborhood since, but in terms of coming home at the age of 21, I was just completely blown away by what I heard.

And it was a racially infused, That led to the homicides and a bar that I knew in a neighbor. And so for some reason I couldn’t get it out of my mind and it, and, so I actually did some research, found some newspaper article, and then I got in touch with the local PR precinct on a Lark, and they actually were cooperate  with me and they assigned a detective to it and they wound up finding the cold file from 1970.

Oh, yeah. So now I had, and they wouldn’t give it to me direct cause I had to do public records, act, request, but they basically told me what was in it, which is all I needed. I actually got, I actually tried to find the people, the perpetrators, that’s a whole other story, but I had these two murders and there was two white kids killed by a couple of African-Americans in the neighborhood over a silly, stupid thing, silly, but it was reflective of the racial tension in the neighborhood. In 1972, the neighborhood was changing rapidly. white flight was occurring and that sort of thing. And so now we had this event and so I began to backfill and long story short, I created two main characters, one white, one black character immigrates from Ireland to Manhattan, with his family in the 1950s. And, has a really tragic thing happened to him. The black character is born in Mississippi and has a tragic thing happened to him. Eventually they both wind up in the Bronx. The other character, his family migrates from Mississippi in the early sixties, to enable her to joining mine. And basically, and that book really evolves organically from there. two kids. from, from disparate backgrounds and cultures, whose character and personalities are formed by what happened to them tragically.

And they begin to have intersecting lines in the Bronx, in the Marines in Vietnam. And then later they have this day, new mom home and at the bar for the homicide standpoints. and so, and I ended the book has a major quality of historical fiction. I mean, there’s actual data and quotes from like, , Lyndon Johnson and one who’s the King.

And in essence, general Western one had to fight in Vietnam for the United States. And I interviewed, like I said, about 30 different people, most of whom, I didn’t know. , I’ve interviewed a bunch of Marines. I got introduced to who fought at the time. I interviewed, emergency room doctors cause I have a scene in an emergency room.

I interviewed nurses who served in Vietnam. IThe DNR I interviewed, various people who knew about the neighbourhood that I had never met before. What am I, what the main, the black character goes to a high school in the Bronx where a friend of mine went to as an athlete and basketball player.

So I did stuff like that. At the end of the day. It’s a spiritual journey for both of these men. Who, wind up having a, a final, sort of intersection when they’re older, who they are, how they reach to each other, how much power of human connection.

Joel: What’s what, which was harder to write the fiction book or a memoir?

Michael:  I’m going to give you a try to answer and then IMB be better. I don’t find any of this hard just to be clear. I mean it takes time, but I just love the process so much that to me, it’s this fun by Benz or relative. I think when we’re writing is a little more difficult because with, with writing the novel and I’m going to be, this is where I’m headed.

I’m going to be doing more fiction. You don’t have the same boundaries you have to worry about, but you want to have truth in the essence of your points of view, but you have more creativity on your scenes. So his character develops and, I just felt, I was really shocked and I was, I had read the book, maybe, , the on writing by Stephen King and somewhere in there King writes how he doesn’t really have this great vision for his books.

He just kind of sits down a and I read that. I said, come on is if you use that, you’re, you’re, you’re Stephen King. Right. But that’s exactly how my novel evolved. Every time I would finish a chapter, I’d say, okay, This is where we are folks, what’s the next logical place to go? What, what, how we do, how do we build on where the characters are now?

And it definitely that’s how it worked. And even though I did start with that one chapter about the bar and I built a backfill, but other than that, it was organic and I felt really free doing it. Would memoir you have an obligation to capture not only someone’s story accurately and well, but in their voice. So there’s a pressure to perform that is different. And it’s not that it’s still fun, but it’s, it’s hard to do. I think.

Joel: I’m going to wrap it up with one last question. And this is something I ask all my guests and that is, do you have a favourite book or maybe perhaps a book that you like to gift often?

Michael: You asked me that in email an that’s a really unfair, fair question.

Joel: I know.

Michael: Yeah. You can name a couple. Those here. I made a list. It caused me to ask this question to myself. how would I how would I decide? What’s my favourite book or books? And so I thought I went back and thought about, and it’s hard to remember all the books you’ve read.

Right. But the books that stayed with me that I could read and want more than once I came up with eight books. Can I tell you them?

Joel: Yeah, go ahead.

Michael: Okay. So, Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I would say authentically that I’ve read everything that Dickins has wrote.

I have a complete, empty collection. The next one might surprise you what am I I’m X by Alex Haley book. That really changed me. I should that’s cradle Kurt Vonnegut. Yeah. The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde whose works. I also have devoured and who, by the way is my favourite writer.

Joel: So I know I said that was going to be the last question, but I do have a follow-up and that’s why I choose those eight.

Michael: Well special about those. I intimated. I think I try to find a thread by the way when I put them on paper, I said, what’s common about these works. And I think they were all a little edgy. Roll a little out of the norm, the wall, a little crazy. I mean, you don’t get any crazier than Catch 22, although Catch 22 as a powerful political message. I just think they’re out of the mainstream,  I’ve enjoyed so many different books with these books.

I felt a kinship with the story. I mean with the Malcolm X book. And I also read that by the way, when I was doing the undergraduate equivalent of a thesis on his life. So I was really, I did our whole, his speeches and writings, and this book was important, but I think these books, I wouldn’t say they’re counter-cultural, but there’s some counter-culture aspect to them.

And maybe that’s the best way. I mean, I don’t know if that would apply to all of them, but, but most of them, I think, so I just think that they’re, outside the box, not being mainstream. I bet if you look at, if you look down the list of somebody tally of the most popular books of all time, they’d be somewhere on there.

So they’re not completely added to me too. I just think that the characters in those books really appealed to me the point of view, the attitudes. Living edge. Awesome.

Joel: Well, Michael, thank you so much for being on the show today for people who want to reach out, where can they find you?

Michael: Well, I’m actually redoing my website, but they can certainly find me in my email.

I’m happy to hear from everybody who’s interested in writing. One of the things I like to do when somebody posts something that I can help with, I told them to call me. So I like talking about it. So my email address is michael@michaelcoffino.com and that’s the direct way. I’m happy to get on the phone with people who want to talk about writing or if someone has a ghosting project, they want to explore with me.

Obviously I’m happy to do that. And my website is michaelcoffino.com.  It’s going to be changed in the next couple of months.

Joel: And when is your book coming out?

Michael: We just changed the release date to April 30 next year.

Joel: Awesome.

Michael: Yeah. And it will be, we will be involved in the same pre-order stuff normally happens.

Joel: Thank you, Michael and enjoy the rest of your day.