Hey! Life Is Not All Crap After All!

From Hollis Gillespie, Atlanta Magazine columnist, NPR commentator, author of 3 books, and dominatrix of her Shocking Real Life Book-Deal Boot Camp :

"These days you have to take hope in any form it decides to present itself, and fortunately that form is pretty damn hard to miss when it's Scott Kenan, the unforgettable 7-foot bi-polar giant who took my book-deal workshop last year. Scott took everything I told him and landed himself a book deal. Walking On Glass; A Memoir of the Later Days of Tennessee Williams comes out next year from Alyson Books. See how I steal all the credit...

Pasted from Hollis's blog: http://www.atlantamagazine.com/blogs/inappropriate/home.aspx?BlogID=1000655&pn=4

Scott Gets a Book Deal!

Posted 7/15/2009 10:25:00 AM
Warning: Below I exalt the triumph of one of my writing students and shamelessly take credit for all his success:My Shocking Real Life Book-Deal Boot Camp alum landed a book contract! Below is the synopsis for Scott Kenan's soon-to-be-released memoir of his time as the personal assistant of Tennessee William during the playwright's last days. How AWESOME is that? I love Tennessee Williams. He wrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Glass Menagerie and tons of other essential works for subversive reading during my high-school days. Kenan is the fourteenth Shocking Real-Life alum to land a book deal! If you have an idea for a book and want a book deal, sign yer ass up immediately. The next workshop is this Sunday. Below is a synopsis of Kenan's book, due out in hard cover, April 2010.

Walking on Glass: A Memoir of the Later Days of Tennessee Williams

by Scott Kenan

To be released by Alyson Books, Spring 2010

>>> NOW AVAILABLE IN KINDLE EDITION FROM AMAZON!!! (Paper coming soon):

 http://www.amazon.com/WALKING-GLASS-TENNESSEE-WILLIAMS-ebook/dp/B0053480S2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322834331&sr=8-1 .

(Click blog header to read my later posts!)

Synopsis:
In the fall of 1981, when Tennessee Williams found his household in an uproar after a visiting ex-lover ran his housekeeper off with a gun, he turned to Scott Kenan for help. Recently laid off from a restaurant management job and standing an inch short of seven feet tall, Kenan was available and appeared capable of handling any situation. He agreed to move into Williams’ house to manage it, run errands, and accompany the playwright nearly everywhere.

Walking on Glass: A Memoir of the Later Days of Tennessee Williams takes the reader on a journey through the world of Tennessee Williams—a world where teetering on the razor's edge of their never-quite-defined relationship, Kenan mollified the playwright's volatile moods while through a revolving door, a cast of characters Williams might have created came and went, competing for his favor.
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Employing rich detail of time and place, Scott Kenan re-creates a lost world in which the Reagan Revolution was just beginning, disco still reigned in dance clubs, and AIDS had felled a few in distant cities, but had not yet crashed the sexual revolution—or even found its proper name..

Never before has anyone chronicled the experience of living and working continuously at the playwright’s side. With compassion and humor, Walking on Glass unflinchingly portrays life and relationships within Tennessee Williams’ world—the rich realm from which his inspiration sprang. Many iconic people, including Meryl Streep, Jackie Onassis, Truman Capote, Audrey Hepburn, and Ronald Reagan, crossed their path—sometimes in shocking ways—as Kenan accompanied Williams to The White House, the Kennedy Center Honors, and, finally, to the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, for the staging of A House Not Meant to Stand, Williams’ last new play produced during his lifetime..

The story climaxes with the emotional roller coaster of the play’s production, after which the two part company when the playwright chooses to travel with his newfound love, a poetry-spouting youth. Ten months later, Williams was dead. Kenan’s chronicle concludes with a twist that casts the entire book in a new light when an executor of Williams’ estate reveals what was found on the playwright’s desk.