When he was in his early 20s, author and longtime Recorded Books executive Brian Sweany experienced a "one-two punch" that upended his life: first, he lost his dad in a freak car accident. Then he outed his godfather as a serial child molester. Though Sweany said he never went to therapy or counseling to help work through this difficult period, he did write, and found composing his memoirs to be therapeutic. But something about it didn't sit quite right, and years later that memoir eventually became a semi-autobiographical novel called Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride, published in April 2016 by Rare Bird Books (dist. by PGW).
The novel follows the narrator from about the age of 15 to around 40, as he loses his father in a sudden accident, reveals to world that his godfather is a pedophile, and finds out "how to be a man when the men in his life are either gone or have turned out to be monstrous examples" of what men can be, Sweany said. He also stressed that though the book could be quite dark, it is "much more humorous than tragic."
"People often ask me how much of the book is true and how much of it is made up," said Sweany. The core tenets of the book and certain details of the narrator's life are all true. "But beyond that, I tell people not to worry about it."
Shortly after graduating college, Sweany became an editor for Macmillan Computer Publishing, when it was a division of Simon & Schuster. After working as an editor for a few years, he answered an ad for audiobook publisher Recorded Books looking for people "who like to read and are good with other people." Sweany became part of Recorded Books' library sales force and, after a year, moved to the corporate side. For the last 16 years, he has been the company's acquisitions director.
Sweany has written since he was in college, but it was for a long time more of a therapeutic hobby than a serious pursuit. "I wasn't one of those people who grew up knowing I'd be a writer," he said, though by the time he was attending Marian University, a Roman Catholic college in Indianapolis, Ind., he had "figured out that I had a way with words and could write poems." However, his interest in poetry was limited mostly to using his poems as a way to impress women. It wasn't until one of his professors, a nun at Marian University, took him to task that he started to think of writing seriously.
"She called me out one day at the end of class and said, 'I know you write little poems to catch the eyes of ladies. Your gift should not be wasted,' " Sweany recalled.
As he reworked his memoir into a roman à clef, Sweany drew inspiration from writers like Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote and other practitioners of "New Journalism." The book's title is part of a quote from Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride... and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well... maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten."
Before it was published as Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride by Rare Bird Books, Sweany published a two-volume version of the story with Australian publisher Writer Coffee Shop. The first volume, called Exotic Music of the Belly Dancer, was a significantly pared-down version, with years removed from the narrative. It was available digitally or by print-on-demand in 2013, and a sequel, composed mostly of the cut material and titled Making Out with Blowfish, appeared about a year later. Though Sweany said he never quite agreed with WCS's editorial decisions, which resulted in a toned-down, lighter version of the story with a radically different ending from what he had originally envisioned, he went along with them, at least until Writer Coffee Shop was sued by some of its former employees for withholding royalties. Fearing that his story would be "stuck in some bankruptcy court," he got the rights back.
Sweany met Tyson Cornell, the founder and publisher of Rare Bird Books, through his job with Recorded Books. After their conversation turned to Sweany's own writing and his publication history, Cornell eventually asked him to send over his books. Sweany recalled: "He said he would like to publish me, but he didn't want to just republish these books." Cornell, he explained, wanted to give him the chance to publish his story the way he wanted.
Sweany launched Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride in April with a party at Books & Brews, a used bookstore and brewpub near Sweany's home in Indianapolis. Opened by Jason Wuerfel in 2014, following a successful Kickstarter campaign the year before that raised over $17,000, Books & Brews frequently names its beers with a literary theme (some past examples include Charlie and the Chocolate Milk Stout, Cream and Punishment and Clifford the Big Red Ale). For Sweany's launch party, Wuerfel created an Indiana session ale called Buy the Beer, Take the Ride that apparently tasted like Blue Moon but was about 7% abv.
The launch was a "smash hit," said Sweany. "When all was said and done, we had two copies remaining out of 80." –-Alex Mutter