Interview
Pursuing Will Books
met up with brothers Pete and Bill Blagys outside a small market in the quiet Black Rock section of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The market, the lone commercial establishment in a quiet residential neighborhood is a short walk from where the brothers grew up and an even shorter walk to Bill’s current home. Pete has since moved all the way up to Cheshire, 25 miles to the northeast. We sat at a table outside, Pete leaning over the table and sipping on his ever-present cup of coffee and Bill sloped back in his chair, legs straight out and arms folded beneath his long white beard. It was a warm, early spring day, with the slightest of breezes in the air.
Pursuing Will Books: So you guys grew up not far from here?
Pete Blagys: Yeah, the house was about three quarters of a mile in that direction (pointing past me, down the street). And we went to school right up that road (pointing back over his shoulder in the opposite direction), so we would pass Harborview Market here just about every day walking home.
PWB And on your way in?
Pete No, our dad would drop us all off at school on his way into work. We just had to walk home, past the market here.
PWB So this place has been here that long?
Pete Whoa, what do you mean, ‘that long’? We’re not that old! (Bill chuckles).
PWB Well that’s not what I meant, I just, er…
Pete Okay, whatever. Anyway, yeah, it was here. I think it went away for a while, in the eighties or nineties? (Pete looks at Bill for help).
Bill Blagys I think the eighties. Pretty sure Rick re-opened it in the nineties. Been here ever since.
PWB So then it’s not the same place that was here when you guys were kids?
Pete Nah, it’s definitely different. These tables weren’t here for one thing. And ‘course they don’t have the hitching posts for the horses here anymore. (I looked up from my notepad, but Pete shook his head) No, they didn’t actually have hitching posts. Just how old do you think we are, anyway? (I was cornered now) Or better yet, how old are you? Eighteen? Nineteen?
PWB Wait a minute now, I’m going to be thirty in December!
Pete Wow, that old! (Bill chuckled again, and I decided I needed to get the interview back on track)
PWB So then, did either of you ever think, back then, that you’d be sitting here one day being interviewed about a book that you’d collaborated on? (lots of laughing here).
Pete No, I told you, the tables and chairs weren’t here.
PWB Um, well..
Pete I’m just kidding. But no, probably about as much as you thought, when you were a kid – you know, last week- that you’d be interviewing two old guys about the book they just wrote on a retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
PWB Fair enough. Well maybe we should talk about the book?
Pete D’ya think? (another chuckle from Bill)
PWB So what can you tell me about it. Or, I guess, maybe, can you talk about how you came to collaborate on a retelling of a Shakespeare story of all things?
Pete I think that was mostly my idea (Pete looks at Bill and his brother nods ever so slightly), But I don’t really think I can tell you where I came up with it.
PWB Well there must have been something?
Pete I guess. You got anything? (Pete looks at Bill)
Bill Wellllll, it was definitely your idea. I remember that we wanted to do something where the illustrations were integral to the work. I remember that was your word, ‘integral’. But I don’t recall how you came up with Shakespeare, or The Tempest.
PWB Is that a story that had been one of your favorites?
Bill Me?!? Are you kidding?
PWB Then, you? (looking at Pete)
Pete Me?!? Are you kidding?
PWB Well, then… um…
Pete Nah, just kidding again.
PWB Oh. Thanks.
Pete I guess I have, or had, a little more interest in Shakespeare than Bill has.
Bill I don’t think he could have had less than me.
Pete Yeah, more than him. But Shakespeare’s not something that I was very interested in when I was young, or a kid. I think my increased level of interest in Shakespeare is fairly recent; even more so since we started working on this project.
PWB Which was when? When exactly did you start on this ‘project’.
Pete Ohh, that’s a good question. (Pete looks at Bill again). Um, 2008? 2009? Yeah, that’s a really good question.
PWB Wait, nine years ago? It took you guys nine years to do this book? It’s not even fifty pages long!
Pete Whoa, easy Tiger. That’s a quality almost fifty pages.
PWB Okay, yes, quality.
Pete But that’s not the deal. It didn’t take us that long. Here’s the deal; I guess I had always wanted to write...
PWB But you make your living as an accountant?
Pete You gonna let me finish?
PWB Sorry
Pete So I had always wanted to write, and to be a writer. And I’ve spent a lot of time writing over my life, but never anything that got published. And Bill here has spent a lot of time drawing and he’s obviously pretty good at it. So we started talking about this one day when we were at a family function… I think it was Cal’s birthday, wasn’t it? What was it his seventy-fifth?
Bill Somethin’ like that.
Pete So there you go; find out how old Cal is now and you can figure out when we started working on this book.
PWB Who’s Cal?
Pete Never mind. Anyway, so we started working on this book then and we got maybe seventy-five percent done over the next year or so, and then I started shopping it out to publishers and agents and got pretty much nowhere. And so somewhere along the line, well I guess we just gave up. But I guess I never fully gave up, and I kept saying to myself and to anyone who would listen, and there ain’t too many of those, that I was gonna get this project going again and finish it. And about a year ago we somehow managed to restart it. So long story short, we probably spent a couple years working on this. Of course, that’s in between full-time jobs and families and weddings and graduations and you know, all that stuff. So, yeah, we started it nine years ago or whatever, but it’s not like there’s nine years of work in this thing.
PWB Okay, so backing up, you have no idea how you decided on a retelling of The Tempest.
Pete Yeah, again, that’s a really good question. No, not really.
PWB Oh-kayy, um, well, then how about the tri-syllabic thing? Anything.
Pete Actually, yes, I do know where that came from. We decided from the start, I think Bill said something about this a few minutes ago, that we wanted to put something together that would really be a good mix of words and illustrations, something where the illustrations were integral to the text and visa versa. And when we got to thinking about that we thought, well, what better example of marrying text with illustration than Dr. Seuss.
PWB So you stole Dr. Seuss’s style.
Pete Whoa, whoa, whoa…hold on now. We used him as a model. And so that’s what got me to thinking about using that particular meter. And just to be clear, Seuss neither invented nor owned anapestic tetrameter. And to be fair, we didn’t stick to the tetra.
PWB Ana- what?
Pete It’s the dum, dum, DUM… three syllable, third one accented, beat. From what I understand it’s found in some really old Greek stuff. Hey, did you know that Cleopatra was Greek?
PWB Huh?
Pete Yeah, I just found that out. And my wife and my son were like “Duh!” But I never knew that. So did you know that Cleopatra was Greek? I just thought she was Egyptian. Okay, never mind that. So there’s plenty of examples of the tri-syllabic thing that pre-date Seuss. Clement Moore’s Night Before Christmas? Anyway, I decided to go with that verse and thought it would be cool to apply it to a retell of Shakespeare. I mean, there are plenty of ‘modernizations’ of Shakespeare out there. But most of them just seem to be a clarification of what he’s trying to say. So here’s the deal: We wanted to do something that stood on its own, not something that was just a tool to help people understand something else. However, the idea that it could be that tool as well was also there, pretty much from the beginning.
PWB So you’re thinking that your book can be used as an aid in teaching The Tempest.
Pete Well yeah, sure. Don’t you think so? The verbiage is a lot more modern. Probably not quite as modern as a grade school or high school kid would like, after all I turned sixty last year. But it’s still a lot more modern that what Shakespeare used five hundred years ago. Right?
PWB Yeah, I suppose.
Pete But besides the verbiage being more current, our book’s also got a beat that’s more current. That iambic pentameter thing is a little hard to get a hold of, so I wasn't going to go with that. But our book does have a beat, as opposed to just prose, so that lends itself to being useful for an educator trying to get someone involved with meter and beat and all. By the way, I wrote about this stuff that I’m telling you now a little bit in the afterword to the book.
PWB I must have missed that. Maybe you should have put it in a forward to the book?
Pete What, you didn’t make it to the afterword? No, I didn’t want to have a forward and risk turning a young reader off with this kind of talk right off the bat. I just wanted to get them going on the story. Especially this story because it starts off with a bang in the middle of a storm out at sea. That whole ‘in medias res’ thing.
PWB Right.
Pete But of course, we wanted the book to be its own thing, not just a retelling, even though it is a retelling. If that makes any sense. We wanted it to be something that stands on it's own and that people who have an interest in Shakespeare would be able to appreciate. And since the whole idea from the beginning was for Bill and I to collaborate, illustrations were essential. And not just illustrations, but illustrations being completely married to the text, and an integral part of the book. There’s that ‘integral’ again.
PWB Yeah, integral.
Pete So I was real happy with the illustrations that we ended up with. I just think that they’re a really, fresh look at Shakespeare. Especially so since I don’t think that Bill had much knowledge of this story at all before we got into it (looking over at Bill who was nodding his assent). I gave him a copy of the story, and a cd of the audio version of the play. And then I would feed him the stuff I wrote as I went along so that he would know what I was and wasn’t emphasizing or covering. But the thing is that his work is such a fresh take on it all. I’m pretty sure he’d not seen any visual representation of this play (again looking over at Bill who again nods his assent), so I think it’s really cool in that sense. And then I would use his illustrations to help me as I went back in my re-writes, or even ahead to the parts I hadn’t written. Clearly the most enjoyable part of the process, at least from my perspective, was being able to work off each other this way (one more nod from Bill).
PWB So then we can expect a follow up. More Shakespeare?
Pete Well, I’ll give you a big fat “maybe” on that one.
PWB But I thought you just said you enjoyed the process?
Pete That part of the process. That part! It’s all the other stuff… well let’s just say it’s been a long haul to get to this point. But we’ll see. I have to admit that I have actually started another one. I haven’t gotten anything to Bill yet, but I’ve got a few pages of text.
PWB Shakespeare?
Pete The Comedy of Errors.
PWB I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know anything about it. Good luck, I look forward to seeing it!
Pete Thanks. We’ll need all the luck we can get. There was a fair amount of tempest that we had to get through on the first one. Let’s hope the next one doesn’t become just one big comedy, or drama, of errors!
Pursuing Will Books: So you guys grew up not far from here?
Pete Blagys: Yeah, the house was about three quarters of a mile in that direction (pointing past me, down the street). And we went to school right up that road (pointing back over his shoulder in the opposite direction), so we would pass Harborview Market here just about every day walking home.
PWB And on your way in?
Pete No, our dad would drop us all off at school on his way into work. We just had to walk home, past the market here.
PWB So this place has been here that long?
Pete Whoa, what do you mean, ‘that long’? We’re not that old! (Bill chuckles).
PWB Well that’s not what I meant, I just, er…
Pete Okay, whatever. Anyway, yeah, it was here. I think it went away for a while, in the eighties or nineties? (Pete looks at Bill for help).
Bill Blagys I think the eighties. Pretty sure Rick re-opened it in the nineties. Been here ever since.
PWB So then it’s not the same place that was here when you guys were kids?
Pete Nah, it’s definitely different. These tables weren’t here for one thing. And ‘course they don’t have the hitching posts for the horses here anymore. (I looked up from my notepad, but Pete shook his head) No, they didn’t actually have hitching posts. Just how old do you think we are, anyway? (I was cornered now) Or better yet, how old are you? Eighteen? Nineteen?
PWB Wait a minute now, I’m going to be thirty in December!
Pete Wow, that old! (Bill chuckled again, and I decided I needed to get the interview back on track)
PWB So then, did either of you ever think, back then, that you’d be sitting here one day being interviewed about a book that you’d collaborated on? (lots of laughing here).
Pete No, I told you, the tables and chairs weren’t here.
PWB Um, well..
Pete I’m just kidding. But no, probably about as much as you thought, when you were a kid – you know, last week- that you’d be interviewing two old guys about the book they just wrote on a retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
PWB Fair enough. Well maybe we should talk about the book?
Pete D’ya think? (another chuckle from Bill)
PWB So what can you tell me about it. Or, I guess, maybe, can you talk about how you came to collaborate on a retelling of a Shakespeare story of all things?
Pete I think that was mostly my idea (Pete looks at Bill and his brother nods ever so slightly), But I don’t really think I can tell you where I came up with it.
PWB Well there must have been something?
Pete I guess. You got anything? (Pete looks at Bill)
Bill Wellllll, it was definitely your idea. I remember that we wanted to do something where the illustrations were integral to the work. I remember that was your word, ‘integral’. But I don’t recall how you came up with Shakespeare, or The Tempest.
PWB Is that a story that had been one of your favorites?
Bill Me?!? Are you kidding?
PWB Then, you? (looking at Pete)
Pete Me?!? Are you kidding?
PWB Well, then… um…
Pete Nah, just kidding again.
PWB Oh. Thanks.
Pete I guess I have, or had, a little more interest in Shakespeare than Bill has.
Bill I don’t think he could have had less than me.
Pete Yeah, more than him. But Shakespeare’s not something that I was very interested in when I was young, or a kid. I think my increased level of interest in Shakespeare is fairly recent; even more so since we started working on this project.
PWB Which was when? When exactly did you start on this ‘project’.
Pete Ohh, that’s a good question. (Pete looks at Bill again). Um, 2008? 2009? Yeah, that’s a really good question.
PWB Wait, nine years ago? It took you guys nine years to do this book? It’s not even fifty pages long!
Pete Whoa, easy Tiger. That’s a quality almost fifty pages.
PWB Okay, yes, quality.
Pete But that’s not the deal. It didn’t take us that long. Here’s the deal; I guess I had always wanted to write...
PWB But you make your living as an accountant?
Pete You gonna let me finish?
PWB Sorry
Pete So I had always wanted to write, and to be a writer. And I’ve spent a lot of time writing over my life, but never anything that got published. And Bill here has spent a lot of time drawing and he’s obviously pretty good at it. So we started talking about this one day when we were at a family function… I think it was Cal’s birthday, wasn’t it? What was it his seventy-fifth?
Bill Somethin’ like that.
Pete So there you go; find out how old Cal is now and you can figure out when we started working on this book.
PWB Who’s Cal?
Pete Never mind. Anyway, so we started working on this book then and we got maybe seventy-five percent done over the next year or so, and then I started shopping it out to publishers and agents and got pretty much nowhere. And so somewhere along the line, well I guess we just gave up. But I guess I never fully gave up, and I kept saying to myself and to anyone who would listen, and there ain’t too many of those, that I was gonna get this project going again and finish it. And about a year ago we somehow managed to restart it. So long story short, we probably spent a couple years working on this. Of course, that’s in between full-time jobs and families and weddings and graduations and you know, all that stuff. So, yeah, we started it nine years ago or whatever, but it’s not like there’s nine years of work in this thing.
PWB Okay, so backing up, you have no idea how you decided on a retelling of The Tempest.
Pete Yeah, again, that’s a really good question. No, not really.
PWB Oh-kayy, um, well, then how about the tri-syllabic thing? Anything.
Pete Actually, yes, I do know where that came from. We decided from the start, I think Bill said something about this a few minutes ago, that we wanted to put something together that would really be a good mix of words and illustrations, something where the illustrations were integral to the text and visa versa. And when we got to thinking about that we thought, well, what better example of marrying text with illustration than Dr. Seuss.
PWB So you stole Dr. Seuss’s style.
Pete Whoa, whoa, whoa…hold on now. We used him as a model. And so that’s what got me to thinking about using that particular meter. And just to be clear, Seuss neither invented nor owned anapestic tetrameter. And to be fair, we didn’t stick to the tetra.
PWB Ana- what?
Pete It’s the dum, dum, DUM… three syllable, third one accented, beat. From what I understand it’s found in some really old Greek stuff. Hey, did you know that Cleopatra was Greek?
PWB Huh?
Pete Yeah, I just found that out. And my wife and my son were like “Duh!” But I never knew that. So did you know that Cleopatra was Greek? I just thought she was Egyptian. Okay, never mind that. So there’s plenty of examples of the tri-syllabic thing that pre-date Seuss. Clement Moore’s Night Before Christmas? Anyway, I decided to go with that verse and thought it would be cool to apply it to a retell of Shakespeare. I mean, there are plenty of ‘modernizations’ of Shakespeare out there. But most of them just seem to be a clarification of what he’s trying to say. So here’s the deal: We wanted to do something that stood on its own, not something that was just a tool to help people understand something else. However, the idea that it could be that tool as well was also there, pretty much from the beginning.
PWB So you’re thinking that your book can be used as an aid in teaching The Tempest.
Pete Well yeah, sure. Don’t you think so? The verbiage is a lot more modern. Probably not quite as modern as a grade school or high school kid would like, after all I turned sixty last year. But it’s still a lot more modern that what Shakespeare used five hundred years ago. Right?
PWB Yeah, I suppose.
Pete But besides the verbiage being more current, our book’s also got a beat that’s more current. That iambic pentameter thing is a little hard to get a hold of, so I wasn't going to go with that. But our book does have a beat, as opposed to just prose, so that lends itself to being useful for an educator trying to get someone involved with meter and beat and all. By the way, I wrote about this stuff that I’m telling you now a little bit in the afterword to the book.
PWB I must have missed that. Maybe you should have put it in a forward to the book?
Pete What, you didn’t make it to the afterword? No, I didn’t want to have a forward and risk turning a young reader off with this kind of talk right off the bat. I just wanted to get them going on the story. Especially this story because it starts off with a bang in the middle of a storm out at sea. That whole ‘in medias res’ thing.
PWB Right.
Pete But of course, we wanted the book to be its own thing, not just a retelling, even though it is a retelling. If that makes any sense. We wanted it to be something that stands on it's own and that people who have an interest in Shakespeare would be able to appreciate. And since the whole idea from the beginning was for Bill and I to collaborate, illustrations were essential. And not just illustrations, but illustrations being completely married to the text, and an integral part of the book. There’s that ‘integral’ again.
PWB Yeah, integral.
Pete So I was real happy with the illustrations that we ended up with. I just think that they’re a really, fresh look at Shakespeare. Especially so since I don’t think that Bill had much knowledge of this story at all before we got into it (looking over at Bill who was nodding his assent). I gave him a copy of the story, and a cd of the audio version of the play. And then I would feed him the stuff I wrote as I went along so that he would know what I was and wasn’t emphasizing or covering. But the thing is that his work is such a fresh take on it all. I’m pretty sure he’d not seen any visual representation of this play (again looking over at Bill who again nods his assent), so I think it’s really cool in that sense. And then I would use his illustrations to help me as I went back in my re-writes, or even ahead to the parts I hadn’t written. Clearly the most enjoyable part of the process, at least from my perspective, was being able to work off each other this way (one more nod from Bill).
PWB So then we can expect a follow up. More Shakespeare?
Pete Well, I’ll give you a big fat “maybe” on that one.
PWB But I thought you just said you enjoyed the process?
Pete That part of the process. That part! It’s all the other stuff… well let’s just say it’s been a long haul to get to this point. But we’ll see. I have to admit that I have actually started another one. I haven’t gotten anything to Bill yet, but I’ve got a few pages of text.
PWB Shakespeare?
Pete The Comedy of Errors.
PWB I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know anything about it. Good luck, I look forward to seeing it!
Pete Thanks. We’ll need all the luck we can get. There was a fair amount of tempest that we had to get through on the first one. Let’s hope the next one doesn’t become just one big comedy, or drama, of errors!
