{"id":14080,"date":"2025-01-29T11:23:12","date_gmt":"2025-01-29T16:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/?page_id=14080"},"modified":"2025-01-29T11:23:16","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T16:23:16","slug":"brennen-wysong","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/brennen-wysong\/","title":{"rendered":"Brennen Wysong"},"content":{"rendered":"
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During the 2008 financial crisis, I worked on Wall Street. I didn\u2019t work on Wall Street in the sense that I spent my days bundling ugly mortgages or evaluating the risks arising with the repeal of Glass-Steagall or plugging holes in Lehman Brothers\u2019 leaky dam with my thumbs. No, I worked on<\/em> Wall Street, a stretch of brickwork laid in Lower Manhattan, where I dragged myself to a nondescript office a few stories above the New York Stock Exchange, spending my days reading words that died upon my tongue. Such was where I\u2019d somehow landed in my late thirties, and such were the labors necessary to produce some of the last of the dying daily ink in the financial news industry, that little newsletter we printed on genuine paper covering private equity and bankruptcy, venture capital and M&A, all of it spoken through gargantuan dollar figures, outlandish sums of money that could leave my head reeling. The job did offer quite a view, though, if you weren\u2019t afraid of the heights: Here was where I watched the big gears turning behind the country\u2019s private-sector economy. Here was the money changing hands among companies and investors and law firms at such a furious pace it all became a blur. And here were the 1% fat cats getting even fatter, while I was taking a pay cut just to keep all of us on staff and out of the breadlines. When I worked in that office, it sometimes seemed to me, it was as if I\u2019d traveled on a rocket ship to some cold, dark, distant planet\u2014and I just wanted to find my way home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what sort of apprenticeship, one might ask now, for perhaps this is an origin story, was this for an aspiring novelist? Simply put, it wasn\u2019t one. I\u2019d learned much about the trade of fiction long ago, and I\u2019d flat-out stopped writing by the time the housing bubble popped. Having gotten the bug back at UMass in Amherst in the early \u201990s, then receiving my MFA at Cornell before the turn of the millennium, I\u2019d quit with fiction by the time I\u2019d picked up a dictionary to finally figure out just what in the hell was<\/em> a \u201cstalking horse\u201d bid. And, yes, I\u2019d seen some successes with my work. I\u2019d published a dozen or so stories in journals like The Georgia Review<\/em> and Glimmer Train Stories <\/em>and The Massachusetts Review<\/em>, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, taught college for a few years, even had a couple agents thinking maybe I was hot stuff\u2014but now, once and for all, I was acknowledging that it was high time for me to stop with all that dreamin\u2019, kid. And like many writers, I\u2019d gone through this whole quitting bit before. The air leaks out of the balloon slowly, though, so I suppose in that office I still found myself thinking<\/em> like a writer, leaving my eye naked, even if I didn\u2019t set a single word to page. But I needed from time to time to remind myself that lunch was over now, kid. I\u2019d brown-bagged it once again today, some cold sandwich and a piece of bruised fruit, my break taken outside on<\/em> Wall Street, the Financial District humming like a hive about me. So yet again, I scraped myself off the steps of Federal Hall beneath its bronzed George Washington, then trudged back to my desk above the stock exchange, where I stared at a screen blinking with massive transaction after transaction, my soul wholly flown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometime between Occupy Wall Street and Hurricane Sandy, I was finally, inevitably, mercifully laid off from that job. Laid off, one might ask now, for perhaps this is an origin story, why on earth did you stay so long, soul crushed, all that sad brown-bag lunch stuff, etc.? There\u2019s an easy answer, and there\u2019s a hard one. And since this is basically a three-paragraph theme you\u2019re reading here (and we are already into the third), let\u2019s go with the easy one: I am, if anything, a creature of routine. And like that job holding me in its clutches for so long, perhaps nothing more than the familiarity of writing off and on for more than twenty years brought me back into the fold. A few months of unemployment allowed me to finish a backburnered historical novel (rejection, rejection, rejection!), then start another book (my debut, Relic Light<\/em>, a ten-plus year undertaking that\u2019s forthcoming in Australia in 2025 from Transit Lounge). And because one thing often leads to another, the day after I\u2019d finished Relic Light<\/em>, I sat down at my regular writing time of four a.m. and began In the Riddle Sea<\/em>, which will come out at Regal House in 2027. Fear not, dear reader, the book is not<\/em> a chronicle of Wall Street (neither the financial markets nor the brickwork outside the NYSE), but it is perhaps at some level about the gross inequities in our country when the money tree is shaken. Set in the months between Occupy Wall Street and Hurricane Sandy (see what I did there?), In the Riddle Sea<\/em> begins when Peter Fischer\u2014a recent college graduate, DJ, and former occupier himself\u2014takes a job as a healthcare attendant on the Upper West Side for a man named Benjamin, then quickly falls for Benjamin\u2019s adopted daughter, Mamiko. And like those records Peter plays during his radio show, his world goes spinning as he eventually has to confront the death of his father after a career in a weapons testing facility in the Skylands of New Jersey. \u201cLove will tear us apart again,\u201d Joy Division\u2019s Ian Curtis once sang. Peter drops the needle on it now. Perhaps you\u2019ll tune in to listen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A playlist from Peter on his radio show Touching From a Distance<\/em> on WFNO<\/a>, including tracks from Agitation Free, PJ Harvey, A Silver Mount Zion, Gang of Four, and Christian L\u00f6ffler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regal House Publishing is proud to bring you Brennen Wysong’s In the Riddle Sea<\/em> in 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the 2008 financial crisis, I worked on Wall Street. I didn\u2019t work on Wall Street in the sense that I spent my days bundling ugly mortgages or evaluating the risks arising with the repeal of Glass-Steagall or plugging holes in Lehman Brothers\u2019 leaky dam with my thumbs. No, I worked on Wall Street, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-14080","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","5":"entry"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P9DpGh-3F6","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":578,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/jan-alexander\/","url_meta":{"origin":14080,"position":0},"title":"Jan Alexander","author":"Jaynie","date":"August 13, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Jan Alexander grew up in a family of political activists and always imagined that someday she\u2019d write a utopian novel. Later, a trip to a ghostly village in China\u2019s Sichuan province inspired her to write a tale drawn from Chinese mythology and her own contemporary political fantasies; the result was\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Jan Alexander, Regal House Publishing author","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/jan_alexander.jpg?fit=742%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/jan_alexander.jpg?fit=742%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/jan_alexander.jpg?fit=742%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/jan_alexander.jpg?fit=742%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2234,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/james-ross\/","url_meta":{"origin":14080,"position":1},"title":"James Ross","author":"Jaynie","date":"November 7, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cJimmy, quit telling tall tales!\u201d was my mother\u2019s frequent admonition when I was a boy.\u00a0 It took several decades before she begrudgingly accepted that she might have produced a writer and not a future politician. \u00a0The capitulation took place at my dining table where she and I were listening to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Regal House author of Hunting Teddy Roosevelt, James Ross","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IMG_1840.jpg?fit=800%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IMG_1840.jpg?fit=800%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IMG_1840.jpg?fit=800%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IMG_1840.jpg?fit=800%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10093,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/peter-selgin\/","url_meta":{"origin":14080,"position":2},"title":"Peter Selgin","author":"Jaynie","date":"September 13, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cI was born of Italian immigrants, one of a set of twins my mother hadn\u2019t planned for. The birth notices read, \u201cSelgin Boy A\u201d and \u201cSelgin Boy B.\u201d I was Boy B. Six months later, my papa quit his job with the Washington Bureau of Standards to become a freelance\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Regal-author-photobw.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Regal-author-photobw.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Regal-author-photobw.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Regal-author-photobw.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Regal-author-photobw.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Regal-author-photobw.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1925,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/john-blumenthal\/","url_meta":{"origin":14080,"position":3},"title":"John Blumenthal","author":"Jaynie","date":"August 15, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Introverted and admittedly somewhat lazy by nature, John Blumenthal decided to become an author at the age of nine when he realized he could do it at home. \u201cAn early influence was Mark Twain, who often wrote in bed in his pajamas,\u201d he says. \u201cVery civilized. 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