What’s so hot right now is local, serialized novels set in the Bay Area. I went to the library and checked out some books to see how it is done.

I love Armistead Maupin and I totally agree with the reviewer on the back who says that people will be reading the Tales of the City Books centuries from now to see what everyday life in the late 20th century was like, the same way you get a really good sense of a certain kind of aristocratic, philandering everyday household life in the 19th century from reading people like Tolstoy.

Tales of the City had me at a line that went something like: “You can do anything you want in 1970s San Francisco as long as you do it in a place that looks like a rustic old country barn.” Further Tales of the City has them all in the 1980s, epitomized by a Wilkes Bashford sweater worn by one of the A-Gays that is black with a gold jaguar splayed across the shoulders. In short, Maupin is still a genius. Someday, I hope to be drinking too much champagne and talking trash with him at a gathering for important San Francisco people.

Anyway, here is what I learned from his book that I hope will help my own meager effort at joining his storied serial novel tradition. (Tales of the City, as you may know, started out as a serial in the Examiner back in the day – at least that is what I think I read somewhere.)

1. You need a large cast of characters and they should all alternate as narrators. Now I may have backed myself into a corner by starting The Serialist in a first-person, freaking present-tense narrative, but I am trying to figure out how or if I should deal with this. Maybe in a long, Paul Auster-ish story-within-a-story way? That is what I am leaning towards.

2. Local detail and a sense of place is really important. But is it only important to me because I love reading about where I live and hearing that the Marina Safeway has been called Dateway since I was born? I notice they toned the local stuff down a little on the Showtime series. Anyway, ANY detail, insight about characters, etc. etc. would probably be welcome in the serialist. More about this when I finish Renay Jackson’s Shakey’s Loose, in a similarly local vein, and discuss it.