The Idea People by Mike Lubow
Anxious ad agency creative director Ben Franklin Green accidentally falls through a wall during a boardroom presentation, but instead of returning to the conference room, he hops a plane and flies west.
And we’re off on a wild and crazy adventure, The Idea People by Mike Lubow, a former ad man in his own right. Green tracks down his mentor, but when the mentor’s outdoorsy daughter is kidnapped while working in the Rocky Mountain wilds, Ben, with the sharp creativity of a Madison Avenue idea man, becomes an unlikely detective as he is reluctantly drawn into the case.
There’s a lot to unpack in Lubow’s witty, insightful storytelling, and he lets us into the backstory in this recent Q&A:
Q: Where did the idea for The Idea People come from?
A: Being lost. Twice. I thought these incidents could be woven into an engaging mystery. First time: I was hiking in the Rockies hoping to spot a Peregrine Falcon. I accidentally bushwhacked too close to a towering moose who chased me until I fell on my face. When I recovered, he was gone but I was lost. Second time: I’d felt similarly lost in a towering ad agency where I was an “idea man” prone to stage fright, which sometimes caused me to lose my train of thought while presenting to clients. In the book I tried to dramatize this feeling, and even have a little fun with it.
Q: Your book seamlessly blends the wild outdoors with the corporate indoors. How did you bring those two contrasting worlds together?
A: I’ve spent much of my life in those two worlds. As a kid I enjoyed wild places: Chicago’s forest preserves, prairies and waterways. As an adult traveling on business, I made time for canyons in California and mountains in Colorado. My other world involved office life in New York and Chicago ad agencies where we created ideas to surprise and amuse. Since they’d been my lifelong dual realities, weaving them into an adventure to share with others came naturally, and was a pleasure.
Q: What drives your protagonist, ad agency whiz kid Ben Franklin Green?
A: Our hero is a twist on the term “everyman” — he’s an “everyguy.” What drives him? A shot and a beer, a wink from a sweet girl, a basketball swish, an honest job. He is driven to see the truth in all things and tell it at all costs. “The hamburger in your hand is not the hamburger in the poster!” At work he invents hilariously creative solutions to sell potato chips, beer and detergent. This same thinking drives him when drawn into a life-and-death detective story. He thinks outside the box — that’s where answers often are.
Q: How do your own experiences play into the story?
A: The main character is an ad agency creative director, a job I’ve held. He was a lifelong birdwatcher — that’s me, too. Such similarities come in handy when inventing a story, but they have limits. The guy in the book has affairs while I’m a contentedly married man. He gets into a knock-down brawl, while I’ve never done that. But he does spend time in Hollywood, and also in the Rockies, both places I have a real feel for.
Q: The book takes place in 1987, the “greed is good” era. How do you incorporate that theme?
A: Well, there is a greedy bad guy, but the setting, 1987, is more important than that “greed” reference from the hit ‘80s movie, Wall Street. Was “greed good” then? Or now? That wasn’t the main point. I was simply going for the pleasure of literary time travel. Riding my keyboard back to a simpler day and taking you along. No cell phones. No computer in front of every face. No self-driving cars. No Covid! Is that good? Everyone has their own view. But you might like taking a nostalgia trip to ’87. I know I did.
Q: What other themes are vital to the story?
A: You might think that the hero is going to fall in love with the beautiful damsel in distress … and I don’t want to give too much away. But this is ultimately a thinking person’s story. There’s a slightly more mature woman who makes a memorable though brief appearance, and the two wind up talking through the night about old TV sitcoms they remembered watching. That connection — verbal, not physical — might have counted for something. Do you think? There’s many an adventure to be had before we get the answer.
Q: What was the most challenging part of the book to write?
A: Believe it or not, the synopsis. It’s needed to pitch your story. Short, sweet, compelling. Like a good ad. Ads were my thing for years, so you’d expect the synopsis would be easy. But as a writer of a fully fleshed out book, you want to be sure you’re not short-changing anything. Keeping the synopsis short is challenging.
Q: What do you want readers to take away from your book?
A: A good time. Pure and simple.
Q: What’s next on your plate?
A: Over the years I’ve been a fairly prolific writer of short stories and have had the good fortune of having them published in magazines both here and in other countries. Literary journals are indispensable to the art of storytelling, but they don’t get a wide readership. I’m planning on taking eight of my best uncollected stories (I’ve done a collection once before, “Paper and Ink,” widely available) and publishing them in a collection book which I hope to have released in early 2024. After that? Well, there’s been a lot of curiosity about Ben Franklin Green’s plate and what might be next on it…
Mike Lubow has worked as a writer and creative director in New York and Chicago ad agencies. He wrote a weekly column for The Chicago Tribune titled “Got a Minute,” as well as feature articles. His short stories have appeared in magazines around the world, including Playboy, Barcelona Review, Carve and The Best of Carve, Amarillo Bay Literary Magazine, Blue Moon Review, Etchings of Melbourne Australia, Bravado Literary Arts Magazine, Tauranga NZ and many others. His stories have been anthologized into books that are available from booksellers everywhere. He is the creator and author of the online nature journal Two-Fisted Birdwatcher. He is a husband, father and grandfather who divides his time between his hometown of Chicago with frequent sojourns in Miami and Los Angeles. His heart, however, resides in the rugged pine forests, granite peaks and secret canyons of the Rocky Mountains.
