WAR STORIES: CHAPTER THIRTEEN – “New Beginnings – Part IV”

MARCH 15, 2024 – (Cont.) Once launched the book was on a roll. Our neighbor directly across the street happened to be building a business promoting local authors. She offered to help me gratis to enhance her resumé. She landed multiple signing events at area bookstores and appearances on locally popular talk shows.

Before the inaugural signing at the downtown Barnes & Noble, I’d told my wife that I’d consider the book to be a success when I saw it in the hands of a total stranger. I easily crossed that threshold at that first public event, though it was in my work-a-day backyard where I co-existed with hundreds of friends and acquaintances.

On a Saturday several weeks later my wife coaxed me into going to an open house to inspect a place that had recently been listed for sale. When we arrived no one except the realtor was on hand. He led us on a tour, highlighting one thing and another from room to room. I was paying less attention than my wife until we reached the spacious library. Books lined the floor-to-ceiling shelves on three walls of the well-appointed room. As I examined lots of book spines, I soon forgot why we’d come to the house. I was curious what sort of readers the house owners were; whether they preferred fiction over non-fiction; biographies over surveys of history; great literature over beach books. I was not disappointed. The homeowners had lots of volumes in many genres of literature; in countless categories of science, history, and current events.

“As you can see,” said the realtor, “the owners are quite the readers.”

His words hardly registered, perhaps because they stated the obvious, but more likely because at that very moment I spotted Severance Package. It was pressed against a row of novels by John Grisham. I pulled my novel off the shelf and opened it to the title page. With the realtor standing at my elbow I drew a pen from my shirt pocket. He let out a yelp as I signed my name.

“What are you doing?”

“Not to worry,” I said, as I dotted the “i” in “Nilsson.” Flipping to the back fold-over flap of the jacket I pointed to my photo. “That’s me.”

“No kidding,” said the realtor.

To my wife I said, “And now I can pronounce the book a success.”

“How’s that?” asked the realtor.

“I found it on the shelf of a total stranger.”

*                      *                      *

The book would land on the doorsteps and mailboxes of many other strangers after I took out an ad in The Wall Street Journal, which included the Amazon web page for purchasing. I managed fulfilments through UPS pick-ups at our house. The ad was straight forward:

Hate your boss? Get him a Severance Package.

Go to www.severancepackage.com and

ask not what you can do for your company but

what your company can do for you.

I was pleasantly surprised by the traffic this generated, but as is the case with every flash in the pan, within a few short months, the traffic waned. One day I noticed that Severance Package had disappeared from the shelf at our local suburban Barnes & Noble store. To wreak havoc with the store’s inventory control system, I returned later that day with three copies in hand and surreptitiously slid them among the “N” authors in the “Current Fiction” section. The remaining 7,000 copies (out of an original run of 10,000) would remain in storage at a local warehouse. For the next 24 years (and counting) I’d be paying $16 a month for the privilege of helping insulate said storage facility instead of our garage.[1]

By the end of that year—2000—I had grasped the full reality that my dream of becoming a best-selling writer of a series of “satirical business thrillers” would remain just that—a dream or perhaps more precisely, a fiction. I was still I, me, Eric; a middle-aged guy with a current law license and six more months’ worth of relatively cheap family health insurance thanks to COBRA. I’d burned through my severance package—the real one—and was now sailing my own boat, my solo law practice. Fortunately, I had plenty of legal work to fill the jib and main sail and occasionally, even the spinnaker, but the farther that wind carried me, the farther away I moved from the Writer’s Wonderland. Eventually, the land astern disappeared over the horizon.

In an ironic twist, I still received calls from people seeking advice about their own severance packages and from another set of people (most of them lawyers) wanting to know how to get their own novels published.  I wasn’t an employment law lawyer, so I couldn’t dispense advice in that arena. The would-be writers weren’t expecting to pay me to read (or heavily edit, as was often necessitated) their manuscripts. Eventually, I diverted my time and attention to more remunerative activity, namely, the practice of law.

*                      *                      *

In the subsiding wake of my book project, I experienced two encounters that for me, anyway, were the best evidence that Severance Package had given voice to a wider chorus.

The first was a call out the blue one day when I was deeply focused on my legal work. By this time the extra three copies of Severance Package on my office shelf had gathered a fair amount of dust.

“Hi, Mr. Nilsson,” the individual greeted me with formality to which I was unaccustomed. “I’m John K__________ over at USBank.”

At that point I hadn’t done any legal work for USBank, and my first thought was that Mr. K was calling to retain me, which would’ve been an added boon to my practice.

But Mr. K wasn’t calling about legal services. “I just finished reading your book,” he said, “and I’ve gotta say, you must’ve worked over here, right? I mean, you absolutely nailed it.”[2]

I was delighted by his complimentary call and told him so.

The second encounter that revealed the broader appeal of the novel occurred during lunchtime one day on Nicollet Mall. As I strode along the sidewalk past the al fresca eating establishments through the heart of downtown Minneapolis, I heard a robust voice behind me call out my name.

I turned and saw it was Ron C____________ a senior executive at Wells Fargo; a former Norwest banker who’d done well for himself in the merger with Wells. We’d gotten to know each other as volunteers for the recruiting committee for the bank’s executive training program.

I reversed direction and approached him as Ron quickened his pace toward me.

When we reached each other, we shook hands and exchanged greetings. “I read your book!” he said. “Good work. And I know exactly who Sycophant is.”

I cringed. Many characters had been patterned after people I’d encountered during my years at the bank. I’d applied considerable effort, however, to camouflaging true identities. Yet now Ron, a high-ranking officer of the bank, exuded certitude in outing an unsympathetic character.

“Who?” I asked with trepidation.

Ron named someone I’d never heard of. I was relieved—but also pleased that again, Severance Package had given expression to common experiences among the corporate masses.

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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson

[1] If my blog followers are interested in a complimentary (autographed) copy, I’d be happy to oblige, but I’ll need a mailing address.

[2] A dozen years earlier I’d worked at FirstBank, a predecessor of USBank, but most of my material for Severance Package had been harvested during my years at Norwest Bank—later Wells Fargo—during the seven years immediately preceding publication of the novel.