Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room

Now I Have A Slush Pile?

Dana Kaye

 

I used to be the Aquatic Director at a health club and the part of the job I hated most was the hiring and the firing. (Okay, I sometimes slightly enjoyed the firing part, but only when they really had it coming). But the hiring was awful. You constantly had to remind yourself that they needed you more than you needed them and you had to look through their smiling, all-the-right answers façade to figure out their true character. And that was just hiring lifeguards and swim instructors.

 

Now, I’m hiring a publicity assistant. The resumes and cover letters have been pouring in all week. All polished, no typos, and a boat-load of experience. In fact, most of the applications are so strong, I’m having trouble remembering which is which. They all made Dean’s list, most are in a fraternity or sorority, and they all have had internships and do volunteer work. I’m making mental notes:

 

Jane is the one who’s the lead editor of the school paper, interned at Clear Channel, and currently volunteers at the literacy center.

 

John is a member of the Publicity Club of Chicago, interned at NBC, worked at B&N all through high school, and tutors foster kids in his spare time.

 

No one writes that they’re frequently late, bad on the phone, or recently broke up with their significant other and it’s taking all of their energy not to burst into tears in the middle of the interview. That would make the process SO much simpler.

 

So as I’m pooling over these resumes, I’m thinking, “This is how agents and editors must feel.” They get hundreds of queries, all perfectly polished without any typos. All of the writers are putting their best foot forward and unless your pitch is gripping and unique, it’s difficult to stand out in the sea of papers.

 

I’ve heard writers ask agents, “Are you just waiting for us to screw up? Do you want a reason to reject a query?” Based on my experience with these resumes, I’m thinking, maybe? If a pitch is unprofessional, has typos, or goes against submission guidelines, it’s easy to eliminate. One less piece of paper to consider. And if you can’t follow instructions and be detailed oriented on a single pitch, how are you going to work on a 350-page book?

 

For me, it’s only been a week of submissions and I’ve received about 20. Agents and Editors, I cannot imagine the constant sea of slush, hundreds a week, with no end in sight. Now I know why agents drink.

 

Writers, take this as a reminder. Your pitch should be pristine and tailored to every agent or editor you submit to. Don’t give them a reason to reject you and craft your two-line pitch well enough so that it stands out in the slush pile.

 

Now if you excuse me, I have to pour some Jameson in my coffee and get back to interviewing the future leaders of America.

Inventive Inventing!

by Alison Janssen

When I was younger, I thought it might be really awesome to be an inventor. I think this desire was mostly due to the fact that when I stayed home sick from school, commercials like these aired during The Price is Right:

Yes, I was tempted to do that Art School drawing test, too.

But anyway, I had a STELLAR invention idea that would make me millions: You know those little bean-filled eye mask pouches that have relaxing-smelling herbs in them, and they're soft and you can microwave them for a few seconds to make them warm before you put them on your face? Ok, so that same filling and material, only instead of being an eye mask, this is a steering wheel cover. It slips on and off your steering wheel easily, and  before you leave for work in the morning, you pop it in the microwave and voila! Warm hands on your way to work, and you don't have to wear your mittens or gloves in the car. And since lots of offices have microwaves, it works for your commute home, too.

Genius!

Well, instead of growing up to be an inventor, I grew up to an editor and part-owner of a publishing company. (Though "grown-up" is perhaps a loose term when applied to me.) And I feel pretty good about that. I may not be creating handy household items or gadgets that make good stocking-stuffers, but I am bringing quality crime fiction to eager readers. That's certainly something to be proud of.

And because Tyrus Books is small and independent, we can be inventive with our publishing strategies. So I guess it's kindof like a grew up to be an inventor AND an editor!

Our latest inventive publishing experiment is our unique partnership with author Seth Harwood. Tyrus employs a multi-format publishing strategy -- that is, we usually publish a hardcover and trade paperback version of each title simultaneously (and we're working on near-simultaneous ebooks, now, too!) It works for us because libraries prefer hardcovers, while retail outlets often prefer paperbacks, especially for debut authors.

And now, with Seth, we're trying another format and order structure:

A special edition, with limited availability. You can ONLY get this version of YOUNG JUNIUS if you preorder online, starting May 5th. Because Seth has such a stellar fan following online, and because his fans are such a talented bunch of folks, the special edition will feature an all-artwork cover, and it's artwork provided by the fans.

We're encouraging all kinds of online evangelism for the book, and Seth has set up some great opportunities to make spreading the word as easy as changing your Twitter avatar.

What makes this experiment extra-exciting for Tyrus is the blend of tactics we're using. The special edition preorders will generate revenue for us before they're printed -- and the special edition print run will be dictated by the number of preorders (not to exceed 1,000, since we want the special edition to be, you know, special!). The special editions will be printed at the same time as the regular editions, allowing us to benefit from the economies of scale and high product quality offered by offset printing. It's like the best of all worlds!

Seth has really been a pioneer in terms of online marketing and novel-podcasting -- you can listen to the full, pre-edited YOUNG JUNIUS at his site, and that's only added to the hype and excitement for the finished book to be in fans' hands!

I'll certainly let everyone know the results of this project, and I'm sure Seth will be blogging and podcasting like crazy as well.

The publishing landscape these days is wide open -- there are so many opportunities for unique experiments and innovations. What strategies have YOU most excited for the reading future?

The great debate

I had a really sad conversation with a literary agent the other day. She’d taken on an author who she was clearly very, very excited about: great writing, brilliant storytelling, first novel a real pageturner, you won’t be able to put it down – the praise just kept on coming. But every big publishing house she’d approached had come back with the same answer: it’s cosy crime, and cosy isn’t selling; tell the author to ramp up the bloodshed and violence.

 

Well, this wasn’t going to happen; the novel worked just fine as it was, and the author prefers to leave most of the bloodshed and violence to the reader’s imagination – which she actually does a great job of stimulating.

 

So the agent was doing the rounds of us smaller guys, in the hope that we might be willing to look a little further than yet another ingenious form of graphic torture.

 

It appears that, here in the UK at least, the explicit stuff that leaves nothing to the imagination is what sells best. The question I ask myself over and over is – why?

 

I know reading, like theatre, is about the suspension of disbelief – but surely criminals who spend their time dreaming up ever more creative and disgusting ways to damage or kill their victims is a step too far? The odd psychopath maybe – but not your common garden variety murderer.

 

And – small digression coming up, but it really is only a small one – am I the only person in the world never to have sat through a complete episode of MASH because I couldn’t take the fountains of blood or the horribly realistic maimings created by the props department? (Or is everyone reading this too young to remember MASH?)

 

I sometimes get the impression that authors who produce that kind of thing regard it as a competition: a test of who can cram the most violence into 80,000 words, or invent the goriest, most appalling fate for their victims. And the result is that it moves beyond imaginative: way beyond viable, in fact. I’m all for a bit of escapism, but surely fiction has to stay within the bounds of the possible?

 

Don’t get me wrong: I’m the last person to tell someone else what they ought to be reading. If graphic violence lights your candle, that’s your prerogative. But cosier varieties of crime fiction have a lot going for them too. Maybe, just for a little light relief, you could move past Simon Kernick and take a look at, say, Kaye C Hill? You might be pleasantly surprised.

 

It appears that in the USA the trend is different. I don’t claim Crème de la Crime is a totally typical case, but we try to come up with something for most tastes (though I have to say we steer clear of anything that actually makes me feel unwell), and our grittier strands, for some reason I’ve yet to figure out, are not the titles that do best over there. People seem to love Kaye C Hill’s sparky accidental PI Lexy Lomax and Kinky, her chihuahua who thinks he’s a rotwelier. They like most of the others as well, but not quite as much.

 

I hope the story I began with ends well for the author. There were various practical reasons I couldn’t take her on for Crème de la Crime, but after I’d read the first few chapters it became plain that the agent’s praise wasn’t just hype; my reasons for rejecting it had nothing to do with the writing or the storytelling.

 

The tide has to turn on ever more graphic violence soon. Doesn’t it? Please?

Any Potato Vodka in a Storm

by Barbara Poelle

So, like everyone, I am really into Columbo.  I mean, unless I have NO idea what I am talking about, I’m confident saying it’s practically as popular today as it was in the 70’s. It’s like Harry Potter with cigars, am I right? I am sure we could sit here and debate between favorite episodes, and how we felt when we discovered his first name. (What’s that? You think it was never said? Well, you would be correct. But some of us are going to go ahead and be smarter than that, and pause the episode when he flashes his badge in season one and read it off of his ID card. BOO-YA! DOUBLE FIST AIR PUMP!)  Anyway, I am almost done with every episode, I have ONE LEFT, and I am feeling sad about it. And by sad about it, I mean shuffling around the apartment clutching a bottle of Luksusowa and quietly mewling, “Coluuuumbo” every night.  

 

In the hopes that I will stop donning an oversized, rumpled trench coat and occasionally bursting into our neighbor’s apartment to solve a non-existent crime, Husband (who finds this behavior “distracting” and “unnerving” and “dangerously close to in-patient treatment”) has taken it upon himself to research new series for the Netflix queue with the idea to lure me from my mournful widow’s walk.

But none can promise the squinty befuddlement.  None can promise investigations along the dusty culverts of Topanga Canyon, the too-bright lights of Hollywoodland.  NONE CAN MAKE ME CHEER WHEN I SAY IN UNISON, “OH, JUST ONE MORE QUESTION…”  

AGGGGH! The agony of saying goodbye! It burns like a bunion! (Pause to drink from my flask. And by flask, I mean bottle. And by bottle, I mean ceramic head mold of C. Thomas Howell.)

There was a particular episode, (I am going to say season 3??) it was called Any Old Port in a Storm. Anyway, Donald Pleasence gave a RIVETING performance as the episodic antagonist and when Columbo finally closed the deal, it was an arrest so touching, so original, that a single tear made its way down my effervescent olive complected cheek. (Oh, it is effervescent. Don't you worry about that.) So I scuffled my way out of my Snuggie (yes, I do, the leopard one) and I marched into the home office and got out the good stationary. “Dear Mr. Pleasence,” I began, “in an industry where the 'star' gets the credit, you were a veritable supernova in your performance as Andre Carsini…” It was at that moment that someone we’ll call Golly Moot texted me, “What are you doing?” (I swear, she has this weird sixth sense for when I am doing something aggressively odd) And I proudly texted back I was writing Donald Pleasence a fan letter for his portrayal of Andre Carsini in Columbo Season Three and how excited I was for him to read it and she was like, (and I might be paraphrasing, but I doubt it) “I’m not too sure that he will care seeing as how he has been DEAD for 15 years.”

 

AND I WAS CRUSHED.

 

CRUSHED I SAY!

 

 Oh, and how I mourn him still! And then I watched Mrs. Columbo Takes the Case, or some such nonsense, and he played the antagonist AGAIN!! I was SWOONING!!!!

 

Ugh, did anyone appreciate Donald Pleasence the way they should have in Any Port in a Storm?!?! That will plague me until my own death, I can tell you that.

And this brings us to the point: If you have read something in the last six months that really moved you, that really pulled your vestigial tail, DID YOU WRITE THE AUTHOR???? I bet you didn’t. I bet you were all, “She knows she was awesome. I’ll wait until 15 years after she is dead to cry into a martini while my best friend sends 'hahahah something is wrong with you' over a text before I consider dropping her estate a fan letter”.

 

I challenge you…Nay.  I COMMAND YOU, to write a fan letter, today. Right now. Look up the website of an author you adore and just do it. You never know when someone needs to hear it the most. You never know when YOU need to hear it the most.

 

And finally, my question to you is, my people, my Scooby Gang …what do you Netflix the girl who has seen every Miss Maple, every Murder She Wrote, and every Sherlock Holmes? (Of COURSE the Jeremy Brett ones, what do you think I am, an animal??!!?) Can you please get me hooked on something else before I am fitted for a glass eye?

(At least I stopped smoking the cigar….)

 

Great Art

Jeff Cohen

I have some screenwriter friends (no, really; I do!) who think that what I do is absolutely astonishing. They believe that writing a novel is an undertaking of such high art and seriousness that it dwarfs what they do by a factor of about twelve.

Utter nonsense, to be sure. 

Writing is a job, it's a calling, it's an entertainment, it's a source of education and sometimes, yes, it achieves the level of art. But so does screenwriting. And playwriting. And glueing Cocoa Puffs onto a piece of oaktag, if you do it well enough.

But just because a person writes, that person is not an artist. Some writers are lucky to be writers. Some novelists should be screenwriters. To be honest, some novelists should be carpet layers. 

The point is that the medium, in this case, is not the message. The level of skill, thought, and talent will determine whether something is art. So when one of my screenwriting friends or my friends who are teachers or mechanics or salesmen or newspaper reporters is impressed because I wrote a book, I beg them to read the damn thing, and then tell me whether they're impressed.

It's amazing how many don't. 

Friends of mine--good friends--come to every book launch party. They buy every book, and thank goodness for that. They smile broadly and genuinely about knowing a "real live author." And then they take the book home, put it on a shelf (or in a closet, or for all I know, under the short leg of the dining room table) and forget about it until the next book launch party.

That astonishes me. It doesn't offend me, because I feel that no one, not even my wife, is under any obligation to read my work, but it does surprise me. If a good friend of mine wrote a novel or a non-fiction book (and here I'm excluding the friends of mine who were authors before they were my friends--I read some of their books and don't read others, based on time constraints and, frankly, general interest level based on subject matter), I'd at least give it a chance. 

Like I say, I'm not offended, but I am puzzled. 

One note of note: It was exactly 23 years ago today that a very beautiful and astounding woman took my hand, walked across a field on the campus of the university from which I graduated, and told a rabbi she would love me for the rest of our lives. And there has not been a day in those 23 years that I have been anything but thrilled to pieces that she did. She is a brilliant, warm, dear person and the fact that she chose to marry me never fails to amaze me. Happy anniversary, honey. I sincerely hope you never come to your senses.

And one last note: That university will, come this September, start being home for my daughter, who is also a brilliant, warm, dear person. My alma mater was smart enough to see a gem when one was dangled, and leapt at her. I hope she's at least as happy there as I was.

LP-to-Digital Project Update: This week began with a two-record Charlie Parker compilation that merely bore out my lifelong impressions of the work: I think Parker was a breathtaking saxophonist, and jazz isn't ever going to be my thing. I just don't connect with it. I realize this means that I'm a pedestrian, small-minded, proletariat idiot, but I can't help it. 

For a strange segue, next up came a number of albums by the Alan Parsons Project, a very odd "band" that was comprised, essentially, of a record producer and a songwriter. Guest artists (although there were some regulars on every album) would show up to play through song cycles that dealt with everything from Edgar Allan Poe to the architect Antonio Gaudi.

Of the albums I converted from Parsons (who worked on the albums Abbey Road and Dark Side of the Moon as an engineer), probably the least known was my favorite. The Turn of a Friendly Card dealt with games, gambling and competition, and had a sort of Abbey Road-lite medley on its second side that is worth the price of admission. While the band's three most popular albums (including Eye in the Sky and Vulture Culture) were not converted (I already had them on CD), later efforts like Stereotomy and Gaudi offered fun pop songs in spots, but didn't hold together that well.

The next record converted was among the strangest in the whole collection: At the height of the popularity of Peanuts, the Charles Schultz comic strip, some genius got the idea to get Kaye Ballard (of TV's The Mothers-In-Law, among other things) and a stage actor named Arthur Siegel and have them act out some Charlie Brown and Lucy comic strips. It wasn't as excruciating as I'd feared, but it was still damn odd.

Next were two of my beloved wife's Peter, Paul & Mary albums, and it was surprising, after all these years, to hear how those darlings of the folk set come across as depressed kvetches on so many songs. And the song "I Dig Rock and Roll Music" is just a mean swipe at the Mamas and the Papas, almost as toxic as Randy Newman's flat-out takedown of the Electric Light Orchestra 10 years later.

And last this week, for you whacked-out Broadway cast album fans, came the Original Cast Recording of the Bob Fosse (and Stephen Schwartz, who later struck platinum with "Wicked") musical Pippin, famous for being panned by critics and selling lots of tickets by advertising on television, which just wasn't done in those days. So as you can see, this was a very bizarre week. Next up, The Pointer Sisters, Richard Pryor and a favorite band of mine, The Punsters. (The Beat Goes on, Cuz!)

Dislike vs Bad

Alright, yes, with a collection of pet peeves this large and varied, it’s been suggested I set them up somewhere as a private zoo (the phrase protecting the public from them probably came into it somewhere); but this one stands out because it really hits home and roars in my face a bit too regularly: people’s insistence that reviewers can't be objective. Reviews are never any more than what the reviewer likes / doesn’t like. There’s no such thing as right or wrong, good or bad in any more absolute or objective sense.

Drives me crazy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’s true of a lot of them, and no question it’s a big element in my own reviews. But it’s not all that’s there; and I try to differentiate, often flagging things as a matter of taste just to make sure the readers stop and think if theirs matches mine, while providing a concrete basis for things that are about right or wrong in a more absolute sense.

There really is such a thing as bad writing on its own merits; it’s not always because I don’t like it. In fact some of the slushpile manuscripts I’ve read were so unimaginably bad as to be enjoyable in an unintentionally campy way for all the wrong reasons. Think hideous old low-budget SF flicks and the people who seek them out by preference over more finely crafted works of modern genius. It's the stupefyingly mediocre that's usually harder to get through than the actively bad. While I've eagerly recommended books and manuscripts that I didn’t like personally, because they just weren’t my sort of thing (e.g. psychological thrillers—about the last thing I want to do to unwind is to get in the head of a serial killer); but they were clearly excellent examples of their sort of story and deserving of help finding an audience because of that.

I’ve also heard the “yeah, but even if you say it’s bad and think you’re being objective about it, it may be someone else’s book of the year” argument that reviews are just opinion. All of which may be true, but it doesn’t make a bad book a good one; it simply means some people liked it regardless (see above about B-flick SF).

So what makes a book bad vs just being something I didn't like. Writing is a big factor. I don’t want or expect every book to have memorable prose that leaves you breathless and awestruck with its beauty or cleverness. I may enjoy that (think Peter Wimsey's "becoming drunk on words so often that he's rarely sober"), but it’s not inherently necessary for a good read. And honestly, sometimes I genuinely prefer less demanding mind candy. But prose filled with amateurisms like “let no word go unmodified syndrome” and never use a two syllable word when a ten syllable one will do, with technical mistakes that make it hard to understand or keep pulling you out of the story, with too many high flights that interrupt the flow and distract from the story itself—prose that gets in the way of the story, for whatever reason—that is bad writing. And it’s bad because it’s not doing its job, regardless of whether I like it.

Follow that reasoning right on down the line. Stories with a plot that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t resolve or is onion skin thin in a book that’s oversized leek thick to chew through are bad because they aren’t doing their job either. You may not care so much about plot and enjoy the book regardless, or it may be the type of story you like so you cut it extra slack, but it's still poor craftsmanship. Characters you can’t believe in, at least within the world of the story, aren’t doing their job. Caring about them gets closer to that borderline territory between taste and right / wrong—I have trouble enjoying a book without at least one character I care about and empathize with to some degree, but in a strongly plot-driven story whose characters need to adequately fit their roles more than be well rounded people, that’s not necessarily a matter of bad. Just not to my taste and something that could possibly have been done better.

Descriptions may be offered in exquisitely detailed prose, but if they still leave you with a muddy image rather than a clear picture in your head, they’re not doing their job. Other more minimalist descriptions, written in utilitarian prose that merely triggers your own imagination into filling the blanks—but filling them vividly and thoroughly—are not only doing their job, but doing it very well.

Yes, Virginia, there really are bad books. But there also are a lot of good ones. Take your reviews with a grain of judgment and look at why the thumbs up or thumbs down as much as which way the thumb is pointing when making your own decision. And realize that it's not always just a matter of opinion before you brush it off or swallow it whole.

A Day in the Life

Open store, turn on lights, fill cash register.  Wheel bargain book cart outdoors.   Recently the city has decided that we can use our sandwich board (we use it for events) only if we don't have the name of our business on it!  I'm taking advantage of this sales opportunity, at least.  The sidewalk permit is paid up.

Business starts right up and the day remains brisk, which is a relief.  The last few weeks have been sluggish, leaving me wondering if there is anyone left on the planet who reads any more.  A gravelly voiced man calls to ask for directions to the store.  I'm wondering if he'll turn up, but am hoping he does.

An older couple comes in with a shoe box full of books to trade in for credit, they ask where "the guy" is (meaning my husband).  However, after a few false starts, I turn the wife on to Tasha Alexander, who she hadn't heard of.  I grit my teeth when the husband says why read Rhys Bowen when you can read Andrew Greeley, if you want to read about the Irish.  I smile pleasantly and agree, though I think anyone who skips Molly Murphy is just cheating themselves.

While they are browsing, a nice looking fellow comes in and begins to carefully dissect our Hard Case Crime shelf (or guy magnet shelf, as I call it.  The books demanded their very own shelf).  He's joined by an attractive Asian woman, who grabs up the used copy we have of Larssen's The-Girl-With-the-You-Know-What.  She pokes around a bit and then comes up to the desk, holds out her hand, and says, "Hi, I'm Tess Gerritsen."

I have a geeky fan girl moment, where I babble about how much I enjoyed The Bone Garden.  She's in town to talk to the Borders mucky-mucks but has been nice enough to stop by.  We then share a double confession (and please don't post a comment about this): we are the last two people on the planet NOT to have read The-Girl-with-the-you-know-what. 

We chat for a minute and after she leaves, I call my husband to tell him about her visit.   After I hang up, the shoe box lady says "Was that Tess Gerritsen?"  She has her own fan girl moment.  She and her husband check out happy, only hesitating over the wife's reluctance to buy a new trade paperback.  The husband shushes her and snaps out his credit card.

The browsing man then begins to make a stack on the desk, and as he searches for every noir title we might have, he makes his own confession: he hasn't enjoyed a writer since Jim Thompson laid down his pen.  As we talk, I convince him to give Connelly's The Concrete Blonde a try.   I think the deciding factor is when I tell him that Connelly rented Chandler's old LA apartment to write in, but I think I'm on pretty safe ground here.

As he comes up to the counter and peels a hundred dollar bill out of his wallet, it turns out he's a merchant marine with lots of reading time on his hands.  I'm feeling even better about the Connelly recommendation, and wish he lived in town.  He was very pleasant.

The day ends with book club (after lots more customers), where we have a nice discussion of John Hart's The Last Child.  The social worker in the group insists that child protective services would have been called in to take the central character, a 13 year old boy, away from his mother, but the rest of us think that Hart was well within his narrative rights.

I tell them about Tess Gerristsen, and they are a) excited and b) wonder if she could possibly have been nice as her books are so darn scary.  I tell them that not only was she not dripping blood or sporting a weapon, she seemed very charming.  The nurse in the group insists that she hates blood and can't read Gerritsen's books.

I finally wheel the book cart back inside at 9 p.m.  The day started around 9:30 a.m., and I'm happy to head home, collapse with a glass of wine, and watch the Project Runway finale.  Go, Seth Aaron!

Please Cease and Desist

Dana Kaye

You all know I'm a positive person, right? So you won't think less of me if I take this Friday morning to kvetch a bit?

Lately, I have noticed some growing trends amongst authors, seasoned and newbie, that want to make me jump through the computer, wring their neck and say, "You just lost a reader!"

Authors, I understand you have pressure to promote. I know you want to sell a million copies. I know you wake up every day with anxiety: Am I going to sell through? What if I get a bad review? Am I not doing enough? But often, in these times of panic, you end up over-promoting and becoming a nuisance and, in the end, lose potential readers.

Top Ten Things Authors Should NEVER Do To Promote Their Book

1. Send Facebook Page suggestions every day. Send one suggestion, if they want to become a friend, they will.
2. Update Twitter every day with contests, hashtags, and links to buy your book. Think of Twitter as a conversation; updating with interesting tidbits or questions will engage your followers. As I've said before, it's a conversation, not a soapbox.
3. @ Reply in that spammy way that's just to get people to look at your post. @ reply if you're talking to me, don't post, "My book is now available on Amazon, @Dana_Kaye". It's obnoxious.
4. Post your promotional material on other people's walls. I log on to FB one morning and find someone had posted a photo of their book cover and a link to their website on my Kaye Publicity page. That page is for my clients and he isn't one of them. I de-friended him and certainly will never buy his book. If your friends want to assist in your promotional efforts, they will. But don't invade their space.
5. Steal e-mail addresses for your mailing list. Just because I registered for a conference or post my e-mail on my website, does not give you the right to take my e-mail and add it to your list. If we've conversed a few times via e-mail or Facebook, ask if I mind being added to your mailing list. Any newsletter I receive that I didn't sign up for gets marked as spam and the author is on my "Do Not Read" list.
6. Use forums and listserves as your personal opportunity for self-promotion. Forums like Backspaceand the ITW Debut authors forum are meant for authors to ask questions and build an online community. They are not an audience for your promotion tactics.
7. Use other people's blogs as your personal opportunity for self-promotion. Fortunately we don't get a lot of this here at Hey, Dead Guy, but other blogs aren't so lucky. Comment on posts where you have something to say, but don't comment on every single blog with a link to your site or Amazon listing.
8. Post every single review you've ever gotten, good and bad. If you get a rave in the Times, post away. If a blogger said something particularly cool, go for it. But I don't need to see every single review, most of which are old and out of date. And why are authors posting negative reviews? Do they really want to bring their shortcomings to my attention?
9. Badger book critics. So they didn't review your book or they didn't give you a good review. So what? They don't have a personal vendetta against you, what good is it to confront them? Professionalism goes a long way.
10. Waste money on ad space. I'm seeing this more and more, authors buying blog and facebook advertisements for their book. Don't waste your money. Your much better off guest blogging or doing an interview on a blog than purchasing an ad. And Facebook ads? Focus on beefing up your presence on Facebook organically. Honestly, when was the last time you bought something because a Facebook ad told you to?

My apologies if my list is blunt, bordering on bitchy. But if you are an author and using one of these 10 tactics to promote, please do yourself a favor and stop immediately.

Is there anything missing from my list?

Earth Day

by Alison Janssen

Happy Earth Day, everyone!






















Take a minute to look at the planet you inhabit.

Make an impact.

A less than volcanic day...

April is London Book Fair time, so first thing Monday morning off I packed my blue badge and appointments list and went to catch my train, thanking heaven fasting (well, OK, breakfasting) that I didn’t have to get there by plane.

 

In fact I got there in record time and with minimal hassle, if you don’t count slaloming around the concourse-long queue at the Eurostar booking office in St Pancras railway station. But whoever’s up there deciding these things was clearly having a good laugh at the book trade’s expense.

 

Exhibitors were hanging around huge, expensive stands looking bored and slightly distraught. Someone mentioned a stand which had cost the company several thousand pounds, only to find that all but one of their meetings over the fair’s three days had been cancelled. In the course of the day no fewer than seven people told me a hundred and sixty stands were empty. One was right opposite my meeting place of choice for people who didn’t have stands of their own, which was not without its convenient side for me and quite a few other people, but in general, not good news at all.

 

The small proportion of overseas visitors who had circumvented the dust cloud, mainly by flying into London before the volcano erupted, wore slightly anxious expressions: they’d got there – but how were they going to get home?

 

I was luckier than many. All but one of my meetings were with people based in the UK, and though trains and motorways were much busier than usual, at least they continued to get people where they wanted to go; so the only person I missed out on was Crème de la Crime’s American distributor, who was grounded somewhere a few hundred miles from the eastern seaboard. A great pity, because LBF is the only chance I get to meet him face to face, and the personal touch is important to me; but hey, what’s e-mail for if not for staying in contact?

 

The International Rights Centre, usually buzzing with energy and the place where high-octane worldwide deals are cut and authors’ futures decided, felt like the Marie Celeste after the Daleks invaded. Swathes of tables lay empty. Usually bright-eyed young women slumped in their chairs. Everyone I deal with in the book trade is charming and friendly, but the welcome I received when I arrived for my three o’clock was out of all proportion to the amount of business I’m likely to bring them; they just hadn’t seen anyone all day.

 

The fair continues, albeit in a subdued and half-speed fashion, until close of play today. If the newsletters which bombard my e-mail in-box can be believed, certain events have drawn an even bigger than usual crowd, but the underlying atmosphere has to be frustration and disappointment.

 

And all because of a volcano in Iceland. An act of God, politicians and airline executives are calling it.

 

Well, if God had anything to do with it, there was probably a reason. Maybe s/he was telling us it was time to stop rushing around the world using up resources?

Or the Flamethrower of Hubris

by Barbara Poelle

For as much as I loved Wonder Woman as a kid, upon reflection she had some laaaame props. Like when she would sit in that invisible plane WE COULD STILL SEE HER. So, um, what’s the point of that? It just seems more difficult for HER. Like the henchman who had to stand on the roof as a lookout just clicked on his walkie-talkie and was like, “Um, this might be something. There is a chick in a seated position hurtling towards us. Should I, uh, shoot at her?”

 Also, the Lasso of Truth? Come ON! I realize she had to leave Themyscira fairly quickly, but she had enough time to grab the bullet deflecting bracelets.  Why wouldn’t you grab, I dunno, the Blow Dart of Sleepytime?  Where you could shoot your enemy from a long distance and then beat the truth out of them when they wake up.  Or the Super Soaker of Scream where you would douse your enemies with liquid acid and they would melt and then who cares what they had to say anyway?

Or the weapon I would choose, the Paddleball of Email Response.

This is the MOST valuable weapon in your arsenal as it allows you to immediately retract an angry and/or humiliating email sent prematurely.  Don’t believe me? See below:

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Sharktastic@agent.com

Date: Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 10:59 AM

Subject: Something is wrong with all of my pencils

To:Vonpeepenskeeven700@publish.net

Inga-

Something is wrong with all my pencils. When I stick them in the electric sharpener they shatter. What the hell kind of [redacted] is this? Why can’t you order me some [redacted] pencils that won’t [redacted] fall apart in my [redacted] hands when I sharpen them?!!?

-BP

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Sharktastic@agent.com

Date: Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 11:04 AM

Subject: Re: Something is wrong with all of my pencils

To:Vonpeepenskeeven700@publish.net

Inga-

Why haven’t you gotten back to me about the [redacted] pencils? I tried to [redact] sharpen another one and a [redacted] shard of SOMETHING flew at my eye. It was [redacted] HORRIFIC. Like that time the [redacted] hobo spit in my mouth in Madison Square Park.  I am trying to do the [redacted] crossword and you know I can’t do it in [redacted] pen. If you don’t email me in the next seven minutes I am going to [redacted] with the [redacted] and [redacted] [redacted] which will most definitely be unpleasant.

[Redacted]

BP

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Vonpeepenskeeven700@publish.net

Date: Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 11:09 AM

Re:Re: Something is wrong with all of my pencils

To: Sharktastic@agent.com

 

Ms. Poelle-

I am sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner, but the elevator is out and I am carrying the crate of Chopin up to the seventh floor.  

The pencils are all mechanical.

-Inga

-------------

Now see?  Clearly the Paddleball of Email Response is needed.  I mean, can you believe it! It was a low point, I mean, truly. Because, you KNOW Inga didn’t want to sound as condescending and arrogant as she did with her response. She must have winced the second she hit send. And why wasn’t she setting the crate down at each landing and checking to see if I needed anything in the time it took her to heave it up another flight? If she had the Paddleball of Email Response, she would have activated it immediately and then she wouldn’t have had to miss her parent’s 30^th wedding anniversary party and stay and catalogue all of my NHL trading cards. (I STILL CANNOT BELIEVE MIKE MODANO RETIRED!! I have his rookie card. Let the envy wash over you.)

See, the thing is, email tone and intent can be easily misread, and sometimes, an angry email response UNSENT is worth the follow up email from the sender that apologizes or clarifies what they meant in theirs.  I have a friend we’ll call Volly Boot who reminds me to treat frustrating emails like eating at swimming pools- wait at least an hour to let everything settle before diving in.  Sometimes I remember this, but sometimes, like Inga, hubris gets the best of me and I fire off something that is aggressive and unnecessary.  (Once, when I was being chastised for sending a, shall we say, pointedly worded email, my colleague Jon Sternfeld said: “You run differently than the rest of us. It’s like, she pushed you, so you shot her. “)

Another colleague of mine, we’ll call her Beantown30, sent a kindly worded pass letter to an author and got back two words:

“[Redacted] fantastic”

Only then to receive a HORRIFIED email follow up minutes later with the author explaining she was trying to forward  the response to a friend and did NOT want Beantown30 to see that and she is totally mortified.

We are all guilty of some form of it or another. So spill it. I gotta hear it. Have you ever sent an email you shouldn’t have?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is E.J. Copperman Better Than Me?

Jeff Cohen

It's now official: E.J. Copperman is more popular than I am. And I'm certainly glad to hear it.

As of Friday afternoon, E.J. had about 100 more Facebook friends than I do. This is something, considering that I have been on Facebook for quite some time, and E.J. joined about two months ago. So I have to assume that E.J. is a generally more likable person than I am.

That's fine with me. The more people who think E.J. is wonderful, the happier I am.

It's crunch time for NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED,  to be on your bookstore's shelves (in theory) five weeks from tomorrow. And with the economy being what it is, and the publishing business being what it is, it would be really good if this book became a great big ginormous hit. Or even a regular-sized hit. A hit of any kind. That's what we're looking for here. 

And I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. E.J. has written quite a fine book there, one that I think can appeal to quite a large segment of the book-buying public. What's hot now--paranormal? Well, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED has ghosts with a problem: They don't know who murdered them. Mystery? Alison Kerby, the newly divorced single mom who buys the haunted house, is compelled to try to find out. Humor? Maybe not as in-your-face as in the Double Feature series (which I personally found hilarious), but yeah, it's there. Romance? Well, Alison's going on her first date since her divorce. You never know what might develop.

Do I think we're on the level of J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer or Charlaine Harris? To be honest, no. Anybody who truly believes their novel is definitely going to sell that many copies is, you know, probably delusional. But I think it's possible that the large majority of people who read NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED are going to enjoy it.

The trick, as it's always been, is getting enough people to read it.

Hence, Twitter. Hence, Facebook. You can get a preview of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED by requesting it from the Facebook page. And E.J.'s website will be up any minute (right, Sue?). But you can already read about a contest to win an ARC of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED at E.J.'s blog, Sliced Bread.

The point is, take a look. Explore. E.J. has close to 1,000 Facebook friends, and is hoping for many more. And I can honestly say that if you enjoy my work, you're pretty much guaranteed to like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED. Let's make a hit.

LP-to-Digital Update: Started this week with Olivia Newton-John's Greatest Hits. Now, I'm sure many of you are not aware that Ms. Newton-John had great hits, so this may come as a shock to you. I'd also like to point out that some of these records are what in my house we call "Targum albums," because they were promotional albums I acquired when I was arts editor of my college newspaper, the finest college daily in the country.

Well, Olivia had a few hits, although "great" might be an overstatement. She did have two hilarious country-rock songs she sang as a duet with some guy who had a great bass voice, and they are worth the price of admission, which as I've pointed out in this case was nothing. 

Moving on, I converted nine albums from the beginning to the end of the career of Harry Nilsson. Nilsson, whose work ranged from brilliant to downright unlistenable, blew out his voice working with John Lennon (who was producing) on the album Pussycats, which iTunes calls "P****cats." No, I'm not kidding. When he (Nilsson) was good, as on his children's fable The Point, or Schmilsson, or the entire album of Randy Newman covers he recorded with Newman playing piano, he was terrific. After his throat problems and drinking problems, he was only sporadically brilliant, playing some very funny but juvenile compositions ("How To Write A Song," "Here's Why I Didn't Go To Work Today"), but his choir-boy voice was gone, and it became sad. By the time he died in 1994, he was almost forgotten, which was a shame. 

Following Nilsson was the re-recorded (that is, recorded live from the original score) soundtrack from Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest, music by Bernard Herrmann. An amazing score, it's as much fun to listen to as a movie soundtrack can be, but it's still better to have Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint doing stuff while the music is playing.

Since then, it's been my darling wife's collection of Laura Nyro. Given all the songs are about committing suicide or drinking oneself into a stupor, it's been somewhat sloggy going. But the high points, like Stoney End (suicide), Sweet Blindness (drinking) and Stoned Soul Picnic (just guess) are memorable.

Coming this week: Charlie Parker and the Alan Parsons Project (together as you've always wanted them).

Springtime is icumen in

Springtime is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!

Twitches usually come over the decision to pack up the shovels, salt and other snowaphernalia until next winter. Sounds like a simple decision I know; but while we can have lamblike Aprils and Marches, we’ve also had a famous April Fools blizzard that was anything but a joke and those rare occasions of May snowshowers rather than flowers. Not lasting snow, I’ll grant you, but not necessarily an ephemeral, lacy flake or two either.

But this year has been a bit... unusual. Even for springtime in New England, which can best be described as a sort of schizophrenic mud season. Lots of sloppy ground from falling rain and melting snow, with temperatures whose consistency strives to live up to the line attributed to Mark Twain—“if you don’t like the weather in New England, wait a minute.” There's no record of his actually saying that, but check here for a highly entertaining version of what he did actually say about the local weather, including:

There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration—and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season.

Sigh, ain't that the truth.

Still, after a shockingly pleasant March, leading into “100 year” legendary rain and floods, it finally became safe to put the arks up in drydock. Well, slightly less than full flood dock anyway. And hopefully settle into a normal spring.

Which we’ve more or less done ever since. We got a record setting day in the 90s right after the floods stopped. Followed a day later by a sudden descent into the 40s (That’s not the worst I’ve seen—one fine summer afternoon in the low 80s several years back, the wind suddenly picked up, some clouds suddenly covered the sky like a dropped blanket, and the temperature suddenly dropped about 40 degrees, all within the space of about 2 hours. Hmmm? Oh yes, I've lived here a while. Of course I had a jacket with me "just in case."). A few more nice days (Easter bonnets had reason to smile) and now, suddenly we’re back in the 40s. With snow showers part of the next couple nights’ forecast.

Hey, in some other places you'd have to go to an expensive spa, well-stocked with saunas and various hot and cold pools, for those sorts of health building changes. We get them for free without even having to ask. In fact despite begging for them to stop. Lhude sing cuccu!

The Sunshine Awards

Jeff Cohen

Filling in for Robin Agnew (who will be back next week)

HEY, THERE'S A DEAD GUY IN THE LIVING ROOM is the proud recipient of a Sunshine Award presented by BV Lawson at  In Reference To Murder and Janet Rudolph at  Mystery Fanfare, who originally received this award from The Rap Sheet. Here's the deal: The award'ssupposed to go to bloggers whose “contagious positivity and creativity inspire others in the blogging universe.” 

The rules read as follows:
1. Put the logo on the blog within your post.
2. Pass the award on to 12 bloggers.
3. Link to the nominees within your post.
4. Let the nominees know they have received the award by commenting on their blogs.
5. Share the love and link to the person from whom you received
this award.

Since this went out last Sunday, many of the Blogs that the Dead Guys chose will have been chosen by others, but we're okay with that, since our choices really are the ones we think are especially deserving. So here are those we think should be held up to the light and recognized for continued excellence and, you know, contagious positivity and all that. 

1. The Outfit: A Collective of Chicago Crime Writers
2. Criminal Minds--A Virtual Panel
3. Crime Always Pays
4. Jungle Red Writers
5. Do Some Damage
6. Detectives Beyond Borders
7. Jen's Book Thoughts
8. The Lipstick Chronicles
9. David J. Montgomery
10. Mystery Scene Magazine Blog (Oline Cogdill)
11. Cozy Chicks
12. Poe's Deadly Daughters

My First Con

Dana Kaye

 

This weekend is the C2E2 Comic Book Convention, and since I have a couple clients in the comic book industry, I decided to attend my first “con”.

 

One of my clients is Challengers Comics + Conversation, a great local comic book store. Since they were busy setting up for the convention and running the store, they asked that I attend the Diamond Retailer Summit on their behalf. This is where hundreds of retailers throughout the country and Canada meet for panels, focus groups, and of course, free s%&#.

 

I came away from the summit with a surprising revelation: When it comes to digital technology, bookstores and traditional book publishers are actually ahead of the game. Surprising, but true.

 

The keynote speaker at breakfast was Ted Adams, the CEO of IDW Publishing. The topic was, “Digital Distribution: Should You Be Scared?” It’s a topic that’s constantly being discussed amongst traditional book retailers, why would comics be any different? With the release of the iPad, digital distribution is a valid concern. Readers can have the full on comic book experience without sacrificing quality, plus there is potential for a more interactive reading experience.

 

But instead of discussing how retailers can adapt to the changing market he basically answered his own question with a simple, “No.”

 

No? Really? He basically told the audience, “Don’t worry, print sales aren’t going anywhere.”

 

Sorry, Ted, but I think they are.

 

Traditional bookstores have already begun adapting to the e-book market. They’re offering e-books through their websites, some stores are even setting up “E-book Kiosks” so customers can purchase e-books directly from the store and download them instantly to their device.

 

I mentioned this to some of the retailers at lunch and they looked at me surprised. One retailer from Canada said, “We don’t even have a website.”

 

I spit my water all over him in shock. No website?

 

Another retailer said they don’t have a POS system; they’re a cash-only business and all records are kept manually.

 

Yes, I think these folks should be very scared.

 

Although the e-book market is changing so rapidly and it seems new technology is coming out every day, book publishing (despite all its flaws) seems to be staying ahead of things. While there are still plenty of pricing wars and battles over e-book rights, publishers have accepted that e-books are here and they’re getting better by the day. And instead of denying their threat, traditional bookstores are embracing the phenomena and using e-books to boost their sales rather than hinder them.

 

With e-books, it’s an adapt or die situation. And although the world of publishing can sometimes seem dated and “behind the times” compared to the comic book industry, book publishers are futuristic innovators.

Teach Your Children

by Alison Janssen

So this morning I woke up with the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song playing in my head. In case you don't know it:

I'm not sure what prompted my brain to start up this song, but I'm pretty happy about it. Though I don't have any of their albums (or mp3s), I'll be enjoying some Crosby Stills and Nash action all day thanks to youtube and blip.fm.

But anyway, while listening to them sing about teaching children and parents, I noticed a lesson that I could try to teach writers. Specifically a lesson about writing dialog.

Check out the verse that starts at 1:12 in the video.

Graham Nash (yes, I had to look up which one he was -- I knew which one David Crosby was, but I didn't know who was who between Stills and Nash) sings different lyrics in this verse, over the (essentially) bass line lyrics of Crosby and Stills. (Mom, if you're reading this, I've forgotten the technical musical terms for this -- counterpoint?)

Anyway, there are two sets of lyrics happening at once, and though they compliment one another, they're not necessarily related.* But as a listener, I'm able to absorb all the words anyway, and the sounds and harmonies and the ways they fit together or don't fit together depending on the beat.

Dialog is like this verse. A conversation doesn't have to be two people singing the same tune -- sometimes the most interesting conversations are two characters talking AT one another, not listening to each other, but continuing their own agendas through dialog.

Readers can learn SO MUCH from these types of conversations, and they can be a great way to impart critical information that the reader needs. Remember that each character -- whether they speak in your mss or not, but for now let's limit this to just your speaking characters -- each character has his or her own agenda. Each conversation is an opportunity for the speaking characters to impart or enact their agendas to reach their goals.

And your readers can keep up, even if your characters can't. Think of how much fun you could have out of a conversation where your main character is dwelling on the fact that he wants, say, green beans. And he's talking to your antagonist about how DELICIOUS some green beans would be right now, and how it's green bean season and as a kid he used to pick green beans for a local farmer, etc, etc, etc. Your antagonist could be talking about his plan to hatch a clutch of dragon eggs, and how he's not sure it's a good idea but thinks if your mc has no objections, then he's going to go ahead and do it.  He's preoccupied with incubator settings, dragon hatchling impressioning, etc, etc, etc. If they're not really listening to one another, no real information is passing between them, but LOTS is passing to the reader.

Remember that in conversations, like in Crosby, Stills, and Nash songs, sometimes people say things that don't directly relate to what their friend said previously. Conversations aren't linear. They're layered, harmonic, and contrapuntal.

*See also: Sondheim

Away from it all... or maybe not

I used to do it three or four times a year, but not recently. And you do forget what it’s like: the electric atmosphere and huge sense of energy. Positivity and creativity in spades! The feeling soon comes back, and even though I was on the other side of the table, so to speak, it still permeated my nerve-endings.

 

It was a weekend conference of writers: a new one, held in the north of England but attended by people who had travelled from all over the UK and also from Ireland, mainland Europe, even India and South Africa. About 400 aspiring writers had signed up, and we trade people – mainly publishers and agents – were there by invitation, to be consulted and pitched to at every opportunity.

 

At the end of the weekend as I was waiting for my cab back to the railway station, I found myself in conversation with another publisher. “So many dreams,” she said, in a kind of wistful tone.

 

Writing a successful book is so many people’s dream. Over the two days I talked to teachers, government employees, social workers, university professors, a financial consultant, a professional musician, a radio presenter, and countless others whose background never came into the conversation. And what did they have in common? They’ve all written, or are writing, a novel, and are determined to do whatever it takes to get it into print, stopping short of little apart from paying a subsidy publisher.

 

There were talks and workshops, q-and-a sessions and readings. Novels were pitched all day long. Most popular of all were the pre-booked sessions of ten-minute appointments; the demand was so huge that the event organisers had to lay on two extra sessions. There were two sessions of performance pitching: someone said Richard & Judy meets The X-Factor, (apologies to American blog-followers on whom those are cultural references are probably lost – what happened was that each evening after dinner eight unbelievably brave people read out a chunk of their work in progress before 400 conference delegates and a panel of experts who made useful or devastating comment – and yes, Dutch courage was available.) And not a breakfast, lunch or coffee break went by without someone plonking down beside me with the bright intro, “Hi. My name’s John (or Mary, or insert as appropriate) and I’ve written a novel…”

 

It was exhilarating and exhausting, and I confidently expect a small deluge of manuscripts over the next few weeks. Most of the one-to-one appointments had been preceded by a 3000-word extract of the work to be discussed, but 3000 words and ten minutes of intense conversation is really only a way of making contact. And ten minutes over breakfast without the 3000 words doesn’t even fix a name in my mind. The coffee has to make its way to my brain before I start to make sense of the world in the morning, even when alcohol has not played a part. Does that make me a bad person?

 

And now, with hindsight’s usual clarity, I’m wondering how many of those 400+ writers will stay the course. If I’m honest I have to say that out of 20+ pitches, only a small handful have stayed in my mind as possibles. But who knows, maybe one, maybe even more than one, will take up residence there and become Crème de la Crime’s next discovery.

You Can Only Blame Jameson for So Much

By Barbara Poelle

So I was off visiting Husband and I finally found out what he does!  But then, a delightful Irish Pub in Kentucky later, I woke up the next morning with no memory of the day before, so-- gone again. I also lost the name of my 4^th grade teacher, which is weird that my brain would store that information in the same drawer.  Like what kind of filing system is that?

Wait…MISS SATHER!

Phew! It’s back. Hang on, do I remember what Husband does? Something to do with, I want to say, organic produce. Or maybe kites. It might be kites. But Miss Sather is back in the drawer next to how to tie a square knot, so I got that goin’ for me.

Anyway, on the plane ride back I was seated next to a very good-looking deaf man. He looked like Matt Damon and Patrick Dempsey ran at each other really fast and when they collided they made this dude.  Now, in high school I took immersion sign language through the community college courses, which meant that for 3 nights a week for three hours a night for several months, I sat in a classroom and was only allowed to use sign language to communicate. The first month was wildly frustrating and I actually had tears in my eyes at one point trying to just ask if an assignment was due tomorrow or next week.  But, by the end, I was a sign talkin’ fool, and golly if I didn’t end up using that a few times in everyday life. 

Oh jeez, I just remembered:  for one assignment, our instructor said she would be calling us sometime in the week out of the blue so we could experience a call using a telecommunication device for the deaf. This is a relay service where the call is being connected through a third party who is typing everything I say and then my instructor was reading it and typing back and the caller would relay it.  We were chatting along and then OF COURSE I got stuck in one of those horrific spirals where I said, “No wait, don’t type that, CRAP! Don’t type that I said that and don’t type that I said not to type that- and don’t type that either!” but the relay operator HAS to type everything and then she started giggling wildy. Yes, leave it to me to turn a simple phone call into a frothing orgy of humiliation.  I did not get the best grade on that particular assignment.

By the end of the year, we had become so profficient at non-verbal communication, those three hours had a certain sound deprivation to them and it was truly like doing life without aural intake. But, um, that particular feeling was quickly shattered when one of my classmates forgot that even if the classroom FELT like it was full of the hearing impaired, certain bodily functions trumpeting a blast will unfortunately remind us we are not and, inversely, scare the living crap out of everyone in the room except the instructor who just kept signing, "What happened" over and over as she watched the classroom all jump 3 feet in the air and then laugh hysterically. Of course, I very helpfully signed what happened, but could only manage "backside wind", much to everyone's continued amusement.

That's the day we learned slang.

But, come back with me now to the awful news: because I haven’t used the language in YEARS, I had lost it all and had no way to flirt with Matt Dempsey!!! (Which is how I referred to him when texting Husband that I may run away with my flight-mate. Husband was nonplussed. Like a yak. ) I tried as desperately as I could to think of something witty and fabulous to sign, but all that would have come out was “Popcorn girl pretty, milk thank you!” and then he would’ve switched seats. So he spent the flight chatting with his friend while I spent the flight getting angrier and angrier that I totally lost a language. And not even on account of the Jameson shots in Kentucky! Just because I let those language muscles atrophy.

When we are trying to improve on something, we practice.  That includes physical, mental and practical endeavors. I know that you are already writing your 2000 words for every 2000 words you read, otherwise my wrath would unfold around you like the ashy wings of a giant she-bat. But!  Right now my boss is running a reoccurring monthly auction on ebay for manuscript critiques (I think it is three chapters) and 100% of the proceeds go to organizations such as the Deafness Research Foundation.  You can read about why she chose this and how to get in on the critique action as well as comments from many pleased recipients here.  This is a way to get something as you give something and a guaranteed way to have honest feedback from someone who has been in the business for 30 years. 

Okay, I refuse to ever be that unprepared again. I am off to Google how to sign, “My husband sells kites, but since we are the ones flying, how about some shots?”

How Facebook and Twitter Lead to Self-Censorship

Jeff Cohen

In an email this week, I was discussing Facebook with a friend, and she said she understood why someone like myself would participate, because after all I am "a public figure."

After I stopped laughing, I thought about it.

Social networking has become possibly the most crucial tool in author-initiated book promotion. Yes, we have to keep in touch with booksellers and do library talks and signings and show our faces at conventions and anything else we think of to promote our work. But publicists, agents, editors and other authors will tell you, a presence on Twitter and Facebook is now more essential that your web site.

And that means I have to watch myself. I can't tell you how many people I've "friended" make comments about politics, religion or some other sensitive topic that set my teeth on edge. If I weren't a "public figure," that is, if I weren't concerned about offending people lest they tell their friends not to buy my books, I'd probably respond. But I don't, because I DO want them to buy my books, and tell their friends to do so.

In a perfect world, it would be possible to have it both ways. The work could speak for itself and be divorced from the personal views of the writer. If I were a golf fan, I'd probably feel that what Tiger Woods does off the course is none of my business. As it is, I resent his pushing baseball off the front of the sports section. 

But I can't say that hearing the personal views of some artists hasn't changed my opinion of them, for better or worse. I'd be lying if I told you I'll ever willingly pay money to see Mel Gibson do anything ever again. There are other actors whose political opinions do indeed prejudice my opinion of them, perhaps not as strongly, but still. 

So it's a conundrum. I understand that readers might form an opinion of me based on something I might tweet off the cuff because I think I'm being amusing, or because my delicate sensibilities are bruised by some asinine opinion of a much more public figure than myself. I can't honestly say I wouldn't react the same way under different circumstances.

Does the writer censor himself, then? To be brutally honest, yes, sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't always say everything I'm thinking about even here at DEAD GUY, because I want to keep this job. I love writing and entertaining people, but I need a lot more people to be entertained. I can't risk alienating even one at this point if I want to keep doing what I'm doing and making a (insert rueful laugh) living at it.

Maybe someday, if I have a large enough audience that I'm secure in my ability to pay the bills, I can let loose. Maybe I shouldn't; maybe it's not my place to make statements, but I do believe everyone, even authors, are entitled to have opinions. If you convince me I'm wrong, I'll admit it.

We'll see. Maybe someday.

Vinyl-to-Digital Update: Another slow week. A few one-album wonders (for my collection): Greatest Hits of the Steve Miller Band. Maybe three great hits, and some filler. Joni Mitchell (my darling wife's collection): To paraphrase a character from the musical 1776, that woman could depress a hyena. Even when she thinks she's being amusing (she laughs at the end of "Big Yellow Taxi," and it sounds like someone pretending to laugh), you consider suicide. The one song of hers I actually like, "Raised On Robbery," was not in the vinyl collection. Naturally.

The Monkees. I know, pre-fab four, put together by a TV network, songs written and produced by others. And yet, they managed some pretty good stuff there for three or four albums. Some dreck, certainly, especially when Davy Jones was supposed to be soulful, but they weren't awful much of the time. And Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were real musicians. Out of the four albums I had, you could probably get three really good sides.

Maria Muldaur: One album, from darling wife's collection. Interesting voice, not bad over all. Better than her ex-husband Geoff, whose album I had. He did do a rollicking goofy version of "Hooray For Hollywood," though.

Michael Nesmith (hey, it's alphabetical): Once freed of his wool hat and his three bandmates, he put out some very interesting, if odd, music. Check out "Rio," "Tonite," or "Dance." 

Quick hits: Randy Newman: A genius, but the nastiness gets a little difficult to take after a while. Juice Newton: Um, what? 

Coming up: I'm not sure. Have to go into the basement and pick up some more records. See you next week.

I Can Hear Music

Does your life come with a soundtrack? You know, background music that you don't really notice has been playing in your head all along. Then when it catches your attention, you realize that it's not the annoying neighbors with their stereo too loud again and it's disturbingly synchronized with whatever you've been thinking or doing.

It's one of those things I thought everyone did, like being able to mentally taste a recipe just by reading it (yes, I know, that one sounds like a handy skill, and it is most of the time, but trust me, being able to get indigestion from just reading the recipe emailed to you by the woman with the Naugahyde palate [props to Calvin Trillin] is not fun). But since I got the three heads look from some people last time I mentioned it, apparently this is really something my subconscious pulls to stand out from the crowd.

Which is bad enough when the music it selects seems disturbingly well tuned to what's going on... (lately there's been a lot of Centerfield by Credence Clearwater Revival, which I really like and will even reach for my guitar to play that opening riff once I realize it's on the subconscious jukebox. And, inspired by my student neighbors, a lot of She's a Maniac by Hall and Oates, usually with a gender switch. However, there's also been a truly disturbing mix of 4 Seasons by Violent Femmes and Singin' in the Rain as performed by Gene Kelly, apparently inspired by the weather of late.). And it's even worse when I'd really like some silence—these performances are not a conscious act so they can't be stopped by one. Try to NOT think about the 900 pound guerrilla in the room.

But it borders on scary when there's a real life appropriate soundtrack. Like the day a pair of friends who were a couple, but not one noted for fidelity (yes, there had been mutterings amongst friends and acquaintances about their deserving each other, because they both were great people but...), decided to separately use me as confidante over an affair each was having that they were sure the other didn't know about... yet. It was only as I was talking to the male half of the pair that I realized the music which had been filtering through from the next apartment all through both conversations was Carly Simon's We Have No Secrets, seemingly set to eternal replay. I couldn't decide if I was sorry or relieved that neither of them gave any signs of hearing what seemed to be a message to them both from the gods of fate.

So between the subconscious jukebox and the MP3 player, as the Beach Boys just started singing in my head, I Can Hear Music... all day long. What about you?

The Egg and I

Robin Agnew

One of the standard titles on my re-read list (i.e., books I read right before I fall asleep) is Betty MacDonald's wonderful The Egg and I.  Unfamilar with Betty MacDonald?  But you are, if you were a child that read books (which I assume is anyone reading this blog) because  Betty MacDonald also wrote the wonderful Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books, variously illustrated by no less than Maurice Sendak and Hilary Knight of Eloise fame.  So it was a delight to me as an adult to discover The Egg and I which, at the time it was published (1945) was a giant bestseller.

"Egg" spawned spinoff titles -  The Plague and I, most notably, about Betty's experiences in a TB hospital on the west coast.  But "Egg" is a true classic, as impressive a document about American life in it's way as Little House on the Prarie.  The  book begins with Betty's childhood quite literally in the wild west - her father was a mining engineer, and the family moved all over the country living in various mining towns.  En residence was her upside down corset wearing granny, who was so protective she made the children shut their eyes when they passed a saloon.  As Betty points out, in western towns at the time, that meant the children never saw anything.

Betty, raised in the 20's, was told by her mother to be supportive of whatever her husband chose to do.  She pointed out "it's depressing enough for a man to know he has to work the rest of his life without the added burden of knowing it will be work he hates."  For Betty, this meant embracing the life of a chicken farmer.

Her husband Bob thought moving into the wilds of the pacific northwest, renovating a remote cabin, and raising chickens was heaven on earth.  Betty, thankfully for us, did not agree with Bob. There's a chapter in the book titled "I Learn to Hate Even Baby Chickens."  Betty hated the endless work, the getting up at five a.m., the attempts to keep her floors clean when skunks actually strolled into her kitchen on a regular basis.

Her most famous neighbors were (really) Ma and Pa Kettle, who may be familiar from movies but who, encountered in print, are even funnier.  Ma explains to Betty how she could never change Pa so she just adapted to his ways.  Betty tries to take this advice to heart but it's difficult.  Ma proves to be one of her better friends on the mountain (something she also hates - she was raised in the west and she feels closed in).

This book is so funny, so interesting, and at times, so heartbreaking that I always look forward to picking it up again and re-visiting Betty.  It's a unique look at a specific life in the Pacific Northwest and a look at the way families used to live together, multigenerationally.  Betty's lonlieness on the mountain is almost palpable.  The humor leavens it, but it's bittersweet.  If you've never read this gem I recommend hunting up a copy.  Betty will stay with you for a long, long time. 

If I'm stuck with a day that's gray and lonely, I just stick out my chin and grin and say...

 

This is what my day looks like.

1.    Pour first cup of caffeine and insert butt in computer chair.  Sing "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow" while waiting for the screen saver to fade and change to Desktop.

 

2.    Hit icon, pour second cup of coffee, and write first draft of DEAD GUY blog.

 

3.    Pour third cup of caffeine. 

 

4.    Finish electronic copy-edits on STARS OF FIRE (circa 1860-1861) by Mary Ellen Dennis, then tweak ancillary material: cover copy, author's bio (note to self: update Mary Ellen's photo). Cross fingers and toes that my publisher will obey my command. . .er, take my suggestion to use my favourite cover artist, Timothy Lantz. 

 

5.    Re-read revision email for my saga, HEAVEN'S THUNDER (circa 1893 to 1923, with an emphasis on Colorado's film industry).

 

6.    Drink fourth cup of caffeine, scarf chocolate-chip bagel, and try to ignore sticky note that reminds me to re-format my two pending Sourcebooks novels.

 

7.    Walk my chocolate Lab, Magic, in the park while my mind is still in creative mode. Throw ball and dummy for Magic (Magic loves chasing balls and dummies) and TRY to teach her that 5 short blasts on my whistle means "come" and one blast means "stop/wait." Ignore laughter from other dog walkers.

 

8.    Eagerly check email to see if John Jakes has replied to my plea. . .er, request to give me a cover quote for THUNDER.

 

9.    Squish Associate Editor's cap atop curls. Sing "It's a  Send formatting guidelines to authors wanting to submit their completed manuscripts. Start reading the next submission in the queue.

 

10.    Change to rehearsal clothes for ANNIE: loose pants, leg warmers, comfy sneakers, and an Annie T-shirt found on eBay.

 

Tomorrow I'll  finish chapter 4 of my mystery novel, The Da Vinci Toad. . . I hope. No! I will! 

In any case, the above is a fairly full day, and it started at 7 a.m.

But you know what? The most important part of my day is Number 1.

Because if you want to be a writer (and I do, and always have), you must take control of your life and your time and commit to writing. Let me repeat that: Commit to writing.

Writing takes discipline.

If your day job pays the bills, try to fit an hour a day into your writing schedule. Write one page a day! Believe it or not, if you write one page a day, by the end of a year you'll have written a book. Just one page a day.

The next time I guest blog, I'll repeat my "Walking the Dog" story. Sub-title: Procrastination.

Over and Out,

Deni

Yes, I may want an iPad

Dana Kaye

Yesterday, I posted a simple question on Facebook:

"Would you rather have a free kindle or $500 worth of books?"

The responses came pouring in, "Books! Books! I'll take the books!"

Then a friend posted another question: "Is iPad an option?"

For me, that changed everything. Even though I love reading actual books, and I'm not too impressed with the Kindle as an electronic device, and I despise all things Apple (Alison, we can fight about it later!), the iPad is a truly impressive device. There are a lot of things I don't like about it (I would never use it to type, it can't run multiple apps, etc.) actually holding it and seeing how it worked showed me how it could change reading for the better.

A friend of mine was kind enough to show me hers, and she pulled up the Wall Street Journal app. Not only did the image look better than a newspaper, but it was easier to skim and scroll, and I didn't even get ink on my hands. Then she showed me the video component, how a photo in the newspaper can be turned into a slide-show or motion picture. Immediately, it got me thinking:

What's next for fiction? Will there be video components to the Kindle App? Will you have the option to see a clip of Jack Reacher blowing into town or will a book trailer play at the end of your e-book advertising the next? Will non-fiction books include actual footage or interactive maps? Will e-cookbooks have demo videos?

Fiction purists may be cringing at this thought, but what about the people who don't read? For years, my brother has proudly boasted that he'd never read anything unless school required it or it was the sports page. But he does watch a ton of movies. Would he be more likely to pick up a book if there were video components? Would people who get their information online be more likely to read the actual newspaper if there was more multimedia and you could scroll versus turning the page? Would students researching a term paper be more likely to buy a nonfiction book rather than obtaining all their information online?

For me, the difference between an iPad and other e-readers is enormous. I never considered buying a Nook or Kindle, but holding my friend's iPad, I felt a pang of jealousy creep into my stomach. I wanted one. And I love books, actual books. I read newspapers, actual get-ink-on-your-hands newspapers. But the iPad would make me a convert, and depending on where this new trend takes us, I can see many other converts upon the horizon.

Once More With Feeling

by Alison Janssen

I've recently started re-watching The West Wing with my fiance. (He's never seen it before, can you believe that? I mean, ok, I haven't seen it since it aired, and I didn't watch all the seasons all the way through, so lots of it is feeling very new-to-me anyway, but really he'd never seen a single episode! And he works in politics!) This started because my downstairs neighbors (I live in a 3-flat), have been watching The West Wing now every night for about three weeks. And I know this because their living room is under my living room, and they turn their tv up LOUD. Loud enough that I could recognize the theme song through the floor. And I can hear the cute little fife-y music in the end credits, so I know how many episodes they watch in a night (usually four before I go to bed, and I can't hear the tv there).

Anyway, I heard that music through the floor and said, "Oh! They're watching West Wing! (Or Star Trek Voyager, but I think it's West Wing.) I love that show! We should rent some and watch it, too."

Clearly I'm open to the power of suggestion.

But my susceptibility to hypnosis isn't what this post is about. This post is about music. The opening of theme of The West Wing is SO GREAT, and the score of each show is incredibly evocative. I cry easily, yes, but still, I tear up every time one of the characters (especially Sam Seaborn! And the president! And Toby Ziegler! And ... ok, all of them.) begins to make an impassioned argument and below them, the horns and strings swell. (Aside: "swell" is a word that isn't used nearly enough. What a great word.) The music triggers my emotions, and the music underscores (literally) the point being made in the dialogue. The score gives power to the words.

And it's not just the score of The West Wing! Bear McCreary wrote INCREDIBLE music for Battlestar Galactica (honestly, did you really think I could go more than four posts without mentioning BSG?), and Michael Giacchino, for LOST (which I didn't get a chance to watch last night, so no spoilers, please!). And let's not get me started on film scores I love.

TV and movie scores get my blood pumping, they automatically engage me on an emotional level, and they make me sit up and pay attention. And really, that's so unfair!

For books, I mean. Books don't have that kind of easy-in to my senses. With just words on a page, it's much harder for an author to ramp up the sense of triumph, or suspense, or any other number of things a tv or movie score can cue in viewers.

Some books come with suggested playlists, but it's a vastly different thing. (Did you know you can design your own playlist for free on iTunes, and pair it with your book, and make it public? Such a neat idea!) The playlist isn't tied to my turning the pages, and the pace of my reading varies, so there's no way to ensure that the trumpet will sound at the exact moment that I read about the gun firing, or whatever. Books are digested in a way that's unique to each reader. But now ...

Remember those old kids' books that came with a record, and when a tone sounded you'd turn the page? Think of how those books can be adapted to new digital platforms. Remember Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf? Think of how neat it would be to press the page turn button on your ereader, and have some high and light oboe line come in as you read about leaves fluttering in the wind. Or think about how you could touch the specially colored text on your iPad when you start the paragraph about the femme fatale, and next thing you know you're hearing va-va-va-voom saxophones heralding her entrance into a room.

Yeah, a lot of it could be super cheesy, but the potential is there for a really awesome novel score.

And I'll leave you with this, one of my favorite scores to work to:

Ladies (and men) who launch

or, don't mention the...

Spring is a favourite time for high-profile new titles, and the online book trade newsletters I receive have been full of launches recently: an elegant dinner here, champagne and canapés before a roaring open fire there. I don’t suppose our first launch of the year will exactly make headlines, but for us that’s not what it’s about.

 

I’m about to send out invitations to the launch of The Broken Token, latest jewel in Crème de la Crime’s Period Pieces strand, and a launch in more ways than one. Our speciality is finding and launching new talent, and The Broken Token’s author Chris Nickson is exactly that.

 

Well, almost. Chris has been around for quite a few years as a writer; his name may even be more familiar over in the US of A than it is closer to home. But not as a novelist. He’s a music journalist, specialising, so he tells me, in folk and world music.

 

There’s none of that in his novel; it’s a whole different direction, and for him the realisation of a dream. It’s a meticulously researched historical: think C J Sansom for atmosphere and detail. And it’s set in Leeds, west Yorkshire, in the 18^th century, when the wool trade was thriving.

 

So, when we were looking for a venue for the launch, Leeds was high on the list. The event will take place in early May at the headquarters of the Thoresby Society, a group of enthusiasts who collect material and mount exhibitions on the history of Leeds. Couldn’t be more appropriate.

 

Finding an appropriate place for a book launch can be something of a challenge, but hey, Crème de la Crime is an indie publisher; our whole life is a challenge! We gave the first of Maureen Carter’s wonderful Bev Morriss series its send-off in the heart of Birmingham, exactly as it should be. In fact, now I think about it, the Bev books have had their first outings at several venues around the Second City, notably a canalside pub, a wholefood shop and a local festival.

 

Then there was Goldsboro Books, a small but perfectly formed bookshop in central London, where several London-based titles first saw the light of day.

 

Other launches have happened in bookshops too, and a couple in libraries. We’ve held three at crime fiction conventions, another at a historical fiction conference. There was one in a private club for people in showbusiness, another during the interval of a recital by a musical ensemble, and yet another at the home of a great guy who just loves throwing a party.   

 

I wouldn’t want you to think we keep trying to out-do ourselves, like super-mums whose party bags have to be better than the ones at the last birthday bash little Allegra or Harry was invited to. We just like to get it right. We learned a long time ago that the press and media will stay away in their dozens; they hardly ever attend launches for top ten best seller authors, so why would they come to ours? It’s the author’s night, so we try to make it the author’s call. The idea of asking the Thoresby Society came from Chris Nickson himself; we’re just glad they thought it was a good idea.

 

And we’re even gladder we can offer a few people a distraction from the General Election which will be in all our faces for the next four weeks.

 

There – I wrote a whole post and didn’t mention it till almost the end!

 

Blades of Glory

by Barbara Poelle

Spring just exploded all over New York City as if someone loaded a watermelon into a rocket launcher; it’s all greens and pinks and screaming. This means I will take many things outdoors, like my commute, my lunches, and my drinking, and I WON’T BE HELD TO THAT ORDER.

Part of that whole embracing-nature-and-springtime -because -I -get -so -angry -during -March-that -there -is -often -some-sort-of-arrest-made is that I am rollerblading to work some mornings. Yup. That’s right. Just a quick 9 mile jaunt in the fresh air to make sure I find my chi and don’t punch any morning commuters when they stop to open an umbrella. (It’s called ECONOMY OF MOVEMENT PEOPLE! LET’S GO AHEAD AND MULTI TASK WITH THE WALKING AND THE EXTENDING. WE’RE WALKING AND WE’RE EXTENDING. WAAALKING. EXTEEENDING.)

The rollerblading is working for me on a lot of levels. First of course, because when I talk about it, it brings my parents closer to believing their ultimate dream of seeing me on the roller derby circuit is coming to pass. (No, they really do want me to do it. They think I would be awesome. My father even picked out my name: Erin Brokeabitch. I know. I almost HAVE to just to have that name on my back.) Second, it gives me an opportunity to find new people to judge and berate. (I AM TALKING TO YOU ARROGANT WEIRD SITDOWN BICYCLE GUYS WITH YOUR PRETENTIOUS SILVER-STREAKED BEARDS AND YOUR OBVOIOUS LASCIVIOUS FEELINGS TOWARDS YOUR 20-YEAR-OLD TEACHING ASSISTANTS.)  And third, because it makes me find unique and exciting parallels to the publishing world.

Safely we can say that the bikers and rollerbladers make up most of the rolling commute and there is roughly a 30 to 1 biker/blader ratio and so we are responsible for many of the interaction on the gorgeous ribbon of trail along the Hudson.  There are as many rules to the rolling commute etiquette as there are ways to roll, but the most common interaction is the one that takes place during passing. Many bikers use their polite little handle bell in order to signal passing.  (Can you hear it? Hear it with me. Jinga jiiing. Jinga jiiing. ) Many of them understand the timing of this, and give a simple chime as they approach behind me and make the move diagonal to my left to pass. We may even murmur a thank you-you’re welcome. Deeelightful. There are others who spot me 20 yards ahead and begin jing-ajiinging repeatedly as they approach, for a solid 6-9 seconds. Now, let’s not kid ourselves, at some point this is going to lead to me timing their approach, flipping to skating backwards, tearing the little bell off of their handlebar, tackling them bike and all to the ground, cackling wildly and screaming “ON YOUR LEFT! ON YOUR LEFT!” while I stuff that little bell down their throat. (Hmm, maybe roller derby DOES make some sort of odd sense.) Okay, now get ready to have your mind blown because in the publishing chain, this is how we all feel when we are nudging each other to get things accomplished.  Think about it. The normal chain of events is: an author needs something from the agent who needs something from the editor who needs something from the marketing department/art department/publisher. Now, oftentimes a single jinga Jiing is all that it takes to get everyone rolling along the line. But sometimes, one of us thinks it might be more helpful to give 6 or 9 little taps on our “You-whooo! Bell” about an item that everyone knows is coming down the road, and that makes the next person in the chain flip around and go all Sarah Impalem. (That would, of course, be the secondary roller derby name the ‘rents have offered.) I have definitely been guilty of it. I’m actually guilty of it right now. I’m perching on an editor’s shoulder like a mentally ill parrot who only knows the phrase, “Any news?” and I can tell that editor is thiiiis close to havin a hankerin’ for bird-on-a-spit.  And it is important for me to remember there is a fine line between “checking in for updates” and “this is the part where you turn and punch me in the face, isn’t it” especially when there are several riders up the chain that have to get a little jinga jiing themselves.

So I’ll try to be better. In fact, let’s all try to be better and that way we can ensure a spring peppered with good business, expensive wheels and cheap booze.  And, hey, keep an eye out on your left, because Phyllis Killer is coming fast and inside.

Blockhead

Jeff Cohen

As I have often said in this space and anywhere else someone will listen, I don't believe in Writer's Block. There is no special disease that only writers get which prevents them from hearing The Muse. If I told my editors from my "day job" that I couldn't get the newspaper article in on the proper day because I had Writer's Block, they'd fire me the second they stopped laughing.

But I do believe in another affliction: Promotion Block. That one I have, and it might be terminal. To an upcoming book.

Writers, to grossly generalize, are lousy publicists. We tend to be introverted, solitary folk who like to type stuff out on a keyboard for kicks and then see if anybody else thinks what we typed out is interesting in some way or another. 

We don't often know how to best attract their attention, and much ink has been spilled and pixels, um, pixelated, on this very subject. If you're looking for advice on how to publicize your book here, perhaps your time would better be spent learning to grow your own beets.

I know the typical ways writers help promote their work. We usually announce our upcoming release months in advance on DorothyL and elsewhere; we agree to book signings (which are fun when they're not humiliating); we send out bookmarks or postcards or some other little knickknack designed to best remind booksellers, critics, and best of all readers that this particular tome is on its way.

There is no evidence, to my knowledge, that any of this stuff works, but we do it, mostly because the vast majority of us can't think of anything else.

Then there are the promotional geniuses, the authors who come up with unique ideas simply because they have a unique understanding of the process. Some of them study the publishing business from head to toe before jumping in, like my pal the brilliant Rosemary Harris, and some are driven and just wired to grasp the situation in ways the rest of us can't, like the equally brilliant but in a different way J.A. Konrath. 

But some of us just don't get it. It's not that we don't want to, and it's not that we're lazy. The component for effective, innovative promotion is missing from our DNA. We blog, and people read it occasionally. We post on lists, and readers seem to enjoy that, but our sales stay at exactly the same level. We send out tchochkes, and never hear from them or the people who saw them, again.

I'm stuck right now. My CLOSE PERSONAL FRIEND E.J. Copperman's first novel NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED  is less than two months from publication. I should have been beating various bushes months ago. I have actually purchased NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED sunscreen to send out. E.J.'s publisher is being very kind and sending bookmarks. E.J.'s website is under construction, and will hopefully be wonderful and running shortly. E.J. has started blogging (fitfully, to be sure) about the book. 

ARCs are being sent to booksellers, reviewers, casual passersby and for all I know sea captains (although they'd have little tie to the story of DEED, which is about a woman renovating a Jersey Shore Victorian to use as a guesthouse, until she runs into two ghosts in the house who want her to find out who killed them). E.J. will be offering two of them as prizes for readers at the website when it's up and the blog, pretty much right now.

But I'm sure there's stuff that should be getting done that isn't, and that's because of Promotion Block. It affects one in five. Won't you help?

LP-to-Digital Update: The project was slowed this week by Promotion Block and continued Knee Recuperation for my daughter. But we managed to plow through the Bette Midler catalog, and as much as I think she's a lovely personality and a terrific entertainer, Ms. M. has never been a great recording artist. A few flashes of fun here and there, but mostly, vinyl that might have been better used to make PVC plumbing materials. 

Peeps

It’s Easter (both Orthodox and Western together this year) and so I’d like to celebrate my peeps.

Yes you, all of you. The yellow, squishy marshmallowy ones, the pink bunny-eared ones, the brown and tan and white and pink and yellow tappety tappety, clickety clickety on a keyboard ones, and even the sugar free ones, who are still sweet and never bitter over their strange lot in life.

You are all my peeps and I love you.

Peeps of whatever kind should never be taken for granted. Squishy marshmallow ones have made generations of kids—and their fully employed dentists—happy people. They’ve also inspired an amazing amount of cheerful lunacy, from the Washington Post’s annual Peep Show Diorama contest (item 14 this year riffs off one of my all time favorite books of sick humor cartoons—The Book of Bunny Suicides: Fluffy little bunnies that just don't want to live anymore) to Peeps Research by someone who clearly has far too much time on their hands and man am I grateful that they do. With stops in between for brettneilson on Flickr’s Peep Show for Peeps and Matthew Beals’ award winning documentary titled The Power of the Peep, the story of “what happened when a marshmallow met America... got to the shelves of your convenience store—and what happened after it left them behind.”

But never think that I take you tappety tappety, clickety clickety peeps for granted either. You may not be as much help when a snack or snigger attack hits, but you bring other things I value as much or more. Where would I be without you reading what I write and commenting on it, creating food for thought... such as why didn’t I say that first and is there an easy way to make it look like I did. After all if a blogger tips over in a forest and nobody comments, do they make a peep?

So whether or not you celebrate Easter, take this day to celebrate your peeps. The squishy sugary kind gathered in baskets on top of the table (Note: this is not, I repeat NOT, the time to unveil before the family your exciting new idea for a peeps diorama based on the French Revolution and Madame Guillotine. Especially if the gathered family includes impressionable young minds who may be able to top that without any sign of effort) and the even more important ones gathered around it or just gathered in your heart. Peeps rule!

More Than An Author

Dana Kaye

 

Barbara’s post on Tuesday got me thinking. Funny, Barbara’s posts usually get me drinking…

 

Growing up, most literature lovers want to become authors. They want to be the next Virginia Woolf, Raymond Chandler or Ray Bradbury. They usually don’t say, “I want to edit the next Ray Bradbury” or “I want to market the next Virginia Woolf”. But over time, they discover they enjoy reading more than writing, or find their knack for marketing and promotion is stronger than their writing skills, or maybe they’d rather draw or paint than write.

 

It takes more than one person to publish a book, it takes a team. To produce the book, you need the writer, agent, editor, copy editor, cover designer and printer. To distribute the book, you need sales reps and booksellers. Then there’s the publicist, who gets the book out to reviewers and the marketing director, who reaches out to bloggers or corporate partners.

 

So whether you’re in college, recently laid off, or simply want a career change, your love of books can take you in a few different directions:

 

Are you constantly correcting people’s grammar and usage? Do you avoid Twitter because you can’t stand all the shortened words and abbreviations like TTYL and LMAO? You may be a copy editor!

 

Can you step back from a book and see the big picture? When you read, are you always thinking, “But if the author did this, the story would be so much better!”? You may be an editor! However…

 

If you also get a high from bartering with vendors, anticipating the next big stock market boom, and were captain of the debate team in high school…You may be an agent!

 

If you also find yourself drinking cheap polish vodka out of a Saved By The Bell commemorative mug…You are Barbara Poelle!

 

Did you major in literary criticism? Do you enjoy discussing books and telling people what they should read next? You may be a book critic!

 

In high school, did you work part time at Barnes and Noble or Borders? Were you the one getting yelled at because you’d get in hour long conversations with customers discussing books they might like? Were you in charge of the “Read-alikes” or “Staff Picks”? You may be a bookseller!

 

As a kid, did you always sell the most Girl Scout cookies? Did you always raise the most money trick-or-treating for Unicef? In college, did you sell Cutco knives or work for Save The Children, trying to get people to sponsor a child in Africa? You may be a sales rep!

 

Do you buy the Sunday paper for the ads or collect promotional pens, buttons, and t-shirts? Do you frequently ask, “Why doesn’t product A join forces with product B?” Do you read THE TIPPING POINT on Sunday mornings instead of a bible? You might be a marketer!

 

Do you subscribe to several newspapers and magazines, listen to talk radio, and read dozens of blogs on a regular basis? Are you personable, organized, and don’t mind going days without sleep? You may be a publicist.

 

And if you love telling stories, spend all day writing in your journal, and rather spend your time alone with your computer than out in the real world, you actually may an author after all!

 

Fool Me, Fool Me

by Alison Janssen I'm a trusting person, and I tend toward the optimistic side of the spectrum. Sometimes incredibly awesome and unlikely things happen to me, like the time I met Matthew Broderick outside a Broadway theater and he recognized me from the audience. Or the time I won a model spaceship by entering a contest from the show Encyclopedia on HBO. Or the time, at age 28, I ran into the boy I loved when I was 12, and he asked me out ... and now we're engaged.

So you'll forgive me if I'm a perfect target for April Fools' pranks.

My senior year of college, I lived in a Town House (considered campus housing, but across the street from campus, and seniors-only) with my best friend and three other students. They were three (mostly) nice guys, and they built a kegerator and we had occasional weekend parties (which of course did not interfere with our studies [which was easy because no theater classes were ever scheduled before 2 in the afternoon]), and we all had a good time.

One weekend in March, after enjoying some freshly kegerated beer, my old roommate Maureen and I got to talking about movie stars, and which ones we thought were cute. As the Lord of the Rings movie had recently come out, and as Maureen is a HUGE LOTR fan, and as we are both in general pretty nerdy, we decided that Elijah Wood was the cutest of the cute. And we decided that the best way of spending our Saturday evening was to craft -- for hours, I think -- a fan letter to him.

We seemed to think that by Googling "Elijah Wood email," we'd be able to find an email address to which we could send our lovingly rendered fan letter. And we did! We found a site that promised to forward fan letters to various stars, without a fee, and so we ambitiously hit Send. Then I think we drank more beer, probably.

Anyway, cut to about a week later, when (gosh, I wish I still had the emails), something WONDERFUL arrived in my Inbox. An email! From Elijah Wood! He got our letter, and was responding! With enthusiasm! And he thought we were nice!

Of course Maureen and I freaked out and got all excited, and wrote back.

For weeks.

Yes, we corresponded with Elijah Wood over email for weeks. Turns out, he was filming his next movie in upstate New York! Not far from where we went to school, really! He was heading down toward Poughkeepsie to meet an old friend! Did we want to maybe grab dinner or something?

Yes, yes. I know. I KNOW! But see above! Crazy things sometimes happen! Why couldn't it be that Elijah Wood was moved by the power of our fan letter to set up a generic hobbit-related Hotmail account and being a correspondence? Is that so much less likely that being hit by lightning or eaten by a wolf?!

Well, thankfully, the three mostly nice, but prank-prone guys I lived with eventually couldn't carry on the charade any longer, and while Maureen and I were squealing and giggling in my room, planning our upcoming dinner with Elijah, they burst in to let us in on their Fake Elijah joke. And it was funny, I'll give them that. Not as funny as the time that same year that they slowly started stealing random items of mine (like my Godfather DVD boxed set), wrapping them, and putting them under the Christmas tree as presents for me, but still funny.

And so you see, I'm going to take a very cautious approach to today. Though I'm sure before the sun sets, I'll be someone's fool again.