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

Hearts and heads

Earlier this week an e-mail popped into my in-box from a student on a Masters course in publishing. A questionnaire was attached; she was researching editors’ attitudes and motivations, and how much we’re influenced by commercial considerations when we commission a book. Or, to what extent we think with our hearts, and how much with our heads.

 

She caught me at the right moment: partly because things are quiet around here as we move towards the end of 2010’s list, and partly because I was starting to think along those lines anyway as I look towards 2011’s. In fact, she asked some questions which I have to ask myself when I’m planning for a new year. So, since that’s where I’m at at the moment, here are my answers to some of those questions – though not entirely the ones I gave the student.

 

What do you feel has the most influence on your decision to commission a book?

That one’s easy – I have to fall in love with it. Crème de la Crime doesn’t publish many titles in a year, so I have to believe totally in the ones I take on. I can only feel enthusiastic about a book that makes my skin prickle with excitement. I suspect the same goes for any editor whose job includes commissioning new work.

 

Would you commission a book by an author whose previously published title had not reached a high sales figure?

That’s a tricky one, especially over the past couple of years. The short answer is probably, if I believed strongly in the author.

With very few exceptions, first-time authors don’t hit the bestsellers with their debuts. With that in mind, if the sales figures after a few months make it plain that I got it very wrong indeed, the answer is no, I wouldn’t commission a follow-up – but in my defence that’s only happened once in six years. And sometimes there are other reasons for not following up a debut.

 

In a post-recession climate, is the commissioning editor under increased pressure to solicit manuscripts on their profitability alone?

The answer I gave to this one was not in my case; and in larger publishing houses, where there is rarely one commissioning editor with control over all titles that are taken on, editors fight a constant battle against that pressure whatever the economic climate.

But here in the real world, how on earth is an editor meant to make that profitability judgement? Even products of that great cash cow the celebrity biog have been known to bomb. And who would ever have guessed that a much-rejected little book about wizards (which 20 years ago were a big no-no in children’s fiction) would kick-start the biggest phenomenon in publishing history?

In the end whether a book gets published is all down to someone’s gut feeling.

Then there was a quote from some pundit or other, about the need for the profitability factor to pervade every function of a publishing house all the time if a spiral downturn is to be avoided. Well, duh! Isn’t that a basic principle of running a business? The ones that don’t watch the pennies don’t last long.

 

The next question was an interesting one:

In your decision to commission a book, which of these factors are most important?

The book’s literary merit            

How the book contributes to your list

How the book fits into the current market

The potential sales of the book            

The author’s notoriety                          

For literary merit I’d substitute brilliant example of the genre, and for potential sales I’d prefer proactive author prepared to pull his/her weight with promotion, but the principle holds.

For the questionnaire I did list them in an approximate order of importance, but with the exception of the last one (badly chosen word – celebrity would be better, and in any case it doesn’t cut it at all for us unless the book’s brilliant), I’d have to give them all pretty well equal weight.  

 

Taken overall, this was one of the more sensible and businesslike questionnaires I’ve been asked to complete. They come up now and again. It’s good to know the students are being encouraged to look beyond the lecture theatre and seminar room and find out how things work in the real world. And it helped me focus my thoughts.

This is Dedicated to the One- Okay, the Seven- I love.

By Barbara Poelle

You swipe a hand over the mirror to clear the condensation and run a hand over your face. You are a tough yet attractive detective creased with the kind of wrinkles that give you character definition rather than age description. Pulling on a pair of familiar trousers you realize you have to inhale a bit before looping the button through the eyehole. You may not be able to run a mile in under 6 minutes anymore, but that layer of thickness around your waist somehow adds to your allure. And let’s be honest. You can’t live on seltzer water and celery sticks unless you’re trying to book Hollywood talkies rather than perps.  

The car smells like burnt coffee. Unopened mail slides across the backseat as you pull out of the drive. You beep once to the love of your life, who raises a coffee cup in salute through the kitchen window as you shift and accelerate towards the end of the block.

This morning you have a rookie scuff shoe riding with you. A newbie. Despite being told the rook’s name once in the office and again when strapping into the car, you can’t remember it.   

“Newb” seems to serve both of you just fine.

Newb seems nervous, but it’s laced with a focus and a vibration. Like the kind of energy Gordie Howe would radiate. You remind Newb that today is a day for watching and listening.

The first call seems straight forward enough; the blues have already been to the scene, looks like a nondescript domestic abuse taken to the next level.

The house, squat and drooping.  The victim, still.  The husband, MIA.  

Newb is the only one having an original experience today.

You remind Newb to watch and listen.

There is the squawk and static of police radios. There are too many people in a small room. There is blood. You step to the center of the room, and confer with the first officer on site. Out of the corner of your eye you can see Newb looking at the entertainment unit.  Newb should watch and listen. Newb has been told this, but no one can control Newb but Newb. You turn back to the cop, Grady. You have been on scene with Grady before.

Without warning, Newb crouches against the entertainment unit and pushes. A man in a blood stained Old Milwaukee t-shirt and ripped sweatpants explodes out of an impossibly small hiding space behind it. He is wild eyed, and cornered. He is clearly on something.  There is maybe a millisecond where you all stand gaping at each other. Until you see the gun.

You are able to cross the small room faster than the husband can get the gun up, but not fast enough to take it away. You launch yourself in front of Newb as an explosion rocks the room and you are aware of the wetness before the pain.

The husband is down. There are a lot of men’s voices raised in only the way men’s voices can be raised in a small room where something animal and base has happened. Someone is rolling you over. It’s Newb.

You close your eyes.

Newb was only supposed to watch and listen today.

And that, my friends, is EXACTLY what it’s like when you read a brand new debut novel submission in its entirety and write a comprehensive, constructive pass letter citing both subjective opinions and industry tides, and wish the author the best of luck on their journey, and then receive something nasty, aggressive and even profanity-laced in response.  

Newb? Today? You just Watch and Listen.

***This post is dedicated to my lovely, amazing colleague, The Beantown Baddy. Just hit delete and keep on trucking sister!

 

 

Obsession, Not By Calvin Klein

Jeff Cohen

This week, my daughter starts training for her summer job, working as a counselor at a camp for children with developmental disabilities and autism. So I'll be driving her to and fro this week (the bus starts next week), and I'll have a lovely library engagement Tuesday night at the Warren Township Library, a birthday dinner for two friends Wednesday night, and after that, I believe it'll be the Fourth of July weekend. Oh yes, and there are two newspaper assignments to get out the door, as well.

So naturally, what I'm thinking about is the Amazon sales rank and PublisherAlley numbers for NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED. 
 

Obsession? You say that like it's a bad thing. The fact is, any author who tells you they're NOT obsessed with the performance of a book, especially a first book in a new series, is either lying or delusional. We're more than concerned--this is our job, and not taking it seriously would be considerably more odd than hovering over every piece of information we can get, no matter how arcane or incomprehensible.

Watching an Amazon page for your book is an especially bizarre practice. The numbers are not the least bit explicable, acknowledged throughout publishing to be arbitrary and meaningless. And we watch them like a lioness watches her cubs, which I assume is pretty closely.

(Amazon reviews are another whole post--DEED received one this week that gave the book three stars, after which the reviewer acknowledged in the first line of the review that she hadn't read the book yet. No, I'm not kidding.)

Publishers Alley is a service that gives you apparently up-to-the-minute sales figures of any book you want to watch, based on Baker & Taylor's figures. Again, they're not easy for us goofy creative types to understand, but they do at least show hard sales figures; you sold this many books and this many were returned. Hard numbers. I look at that at least once a day, too. Still no idea what it's telling me, but I like it when the sales numbers go up.

Does it make logical sense to obsess over these things? It might if I comprehended their meaning, but using my present brain, no. Still, I'll continue to do so, and any author who tells you they don't is lying. Period.

LP-to-Digital Conversion Project Update: One more Phoebe Snow album (the strange but occasionally wonderful "Rock Away") was followed by three albums recorded by New Jersey's patron saint, Bruce Springsteen. Now, as a loyal Jersey boy, born and bred, It pains me to say this, but I've never been a tremendous fan of the Boss's music. I think Springsteen is a remarkably cool guy, but all his songs are about leaving suburban New Jersey for a better, bigger life in New York City, and that's exactly what I'm not about. I love New York, but I'm of the "wouldn't-want-to-live-there" school, cliched and unwashed though that might make me. I did like the "Born to Run" album, which just burst energy, and "Born in the USA" (I guess I like albums with "Born" in the title), and Springsteen's live cover of "Jersey Girl" is tremendous, but a lot of the other stuff just didn't strike me musically. So take your shots--I know I'm wrong, but I can't help it. 

After Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuce came Ringo. Richard Starkey has, believe it or not, made some enjoyable solo albums in his time (and no, I'm not saying Ringo is better than the Boss, so calm down). You have to accept him for what he is, which is an entertainer who likes to have a good time and pass it along, and then you can appreciate what early albums like "Ringo" and "Goodnight Vienna" are trying to do. Later stuff, when his fellow Beatles were no longer helping out quite so much, are considerably more checkered affairs, but "Stop And Smell The Roses" was fun. 

After that, a very odd album of "Star Trek" talk by Gene Roddenberry and some of his cast, the ultimate Targum album (meaning I received it for free as a reviewer for my college newspaper), soon to be followed appropriately enough by the soundtrack album (a two-record set!) of "Star Wars."

"Who's that then?" "I dunno. Must be a king."

In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot.
- Alan Jay Lerne, lyrics from the title song in the musical Camelot

There are a couple of new "Arthuran” historical mystery series out that offer a great example of something I discussed a few weeks back, the problems with most “if you like X you will love Y” recommendations being based on relatively superficial things like setting and protagonist rather than storytelling and writing style.

The one by J. M. C. Blair, which came out first, doesn’t exactly have Richard Burton in tights mooning about in a Disney style castle singing the above lyrics, but it’s definitely much more at the cozy end of the spectrum and closer to the fantasy version without exactly embracing it. The setting isn't wholly fantasy any more than the characters are, but neither do either of them feel believably real. Merlin acts as investigator here, although it’s a non-magical Merlin who is a Da Vinci-ish character—a scholar who is also fascinated by technology and ideas advanced well beyond the times he lives in. There’s also a sort of theatrical effect feel in the way everyone bickers and picks on each other constantly as their basic means of communication. Did I mention that it’s everyone? And that it’s constant? I think some of it’s supposed to be funny, but it got really annoying really fast. I can see the appeal despite its faults to some readers, especially those fascinated by the legendary Arthur. But not really my sort of thing and I've no urge to try another.

Totally at the other end of the spectrum, but still an Arthurian mystery, is Tony Hays’ new series. I just finished the second, and these are very much up my alley despite my not being all that interested in Arthur or his legends. But I am a major history buff and these books ooze with feel for their early medieval setting. They’re based on the so-called historical Arthur of people like Alcock and Ashe, a late Roman or early medieval successful war leader, rather than legends of some glittering figure living out a romantic tragedy in a magical court that is oh so different from the world around it. It was a tough, gritty time of conflicts both military and social, and these are not cozy reads. The publisher’s blurb is more accurate than most such things when it says “Think CSI: Medieval: gritty, powerful…” They're also excellent, with the latest even better than a first book I thought was already very good. Richly drawn characters and setting, with well developed stories using real clue detection and analysis, to justify that CSI comparison. The hero here is himself suitably gritty and conflicted and has nothing to do with legends: a former valued soldier cum military adviser turned drunkard for the reason he also hates Arthur—having lost a hand in battle, he feels useless, less than a man, and that he should have been allowed to die, which Arthur prevented. Not exactly a worshipful observer of a legend in action.

The point really isn’t that I personally liked one series much more than the other, although I could go on at much greater length about that (did I mention annoying incessant bickering and picking on each other in one of them?). It's that there are enough superficial similarities that you could all too easily see someone pairing them up in one of those “if you like X you’ll love Y” comparisons or "if you're into King Arthur you'll love both of these" recommendations, when the reality is that they’re very different in the essentials and unlikely to appeal to many of the same readers because of that. Although if there’s someone out there for whom the word Arthur is enough to capture them, with a taste both for incessant bickering / picking on each other and gritty historical storytelling...

 

The truth behind a Mom & Pop Operation

Robin Agnew

Owning a "Mom & Pop" sounds romantic - though when we first opened, my uncle, who used to do evaluations for Dun & Bradstreet, pointed out, "So you're the Mom, and he's the Pop?  What if one of you gets sick?"  (Answer, it turns out: we close for the day).  And it's true, we do just about everything, but then, there's that satisfaction: you've done everything.  Owning a business isn't that different from owning and maintaining a home.

A couple things we do:

Janitorial/Maintenance.  Yep, we change light bulbs in the ceiling fixtures, we vacuum and we really should get those window treatments dusted but we keep forgetting to bring the ladder in from home.

Shelving:  I like this part, it's like meditation, except when you find someone has thrown the alphabet to the winds and shelved the Dick Francis books in with the Ellis Peters, and some of them are backwards.  Periodically I toy with the idea of not actually letting the customers touch the books.

Accounts Payable: That's me, but then I'm also Accounts Receivable,  

Newsletter:  Editor, writer, communicating with the web mistress, taking it to be copied, mailing the darn thing.  I'm always happy every month to get this out of the way.  

Event coordinator:  That's me.  Much like the newsletter, I enjoy this part, though I don't enjoy it when I have to turn people down.  Scheduling, publicity and the worry that no one will show up and buy books, all mine.  Of course when we're packed to the rafters and sell lots of books - that's me too.

Chauffeur:  Someone has to get those authors to the airport, the hotel, to a meal and key point, to the store.

Oh, yeah - Bookseller!  That one is key.

Big Payoff:  The Big Payoff of course is that if we're doing most parts of the job right, we get to meet the most interesting people, who come in, as Patricia Finney did this week, and give you a short course on (for example) Elizabethan England.  Delightful, and the kind of thing that makes me feel lucky.

My daughter, who is interning at a library this summer, called last night to tell me she'd helped to run her first event.  I was so proud.  She has so much to look forward to!

Are you "Slightly Salinger?"

By Dana Kaye

 

It is my belief that most writers are “Slightly Salinger”. No, I don’t mean I think every author has a dose of brilliance. The Salinger quality I’m referring to is reclusiveness. While not all authors would shut themselves out from the world for years at a time, I do believe that there is a part of all writers that enjoys being alone, away from people. After all, no one becomes an author because they deem themselves, “a people person.”

 

But authors have to spend a certain amount of time in the limelight. They attend conferences, book signings, interviews, and other events filled with people. They e-mail with fans, update their facebook, and tweet about their lives. While books are written in solitary confinement, they are promoted and sold out in the real world, with the three dimensional people. The reclusive authors must smile, shake hands, and make small talk. Some play the game better than others.

 

I find it amusing when I see authors at conferences, the ones who are always at the bar til 2am, telling jokes and entertaining fans, and later they tell me that if it was up to them, they’d just sit at home and read and write all day. One big name author, who is always talking with readers and attending events, said he’d be content not to converse with another human being for weeks at a time. But based on his public persona, you’d never know his true sentiments.

 

While all of us might be “Slightly Salinger”, networking and schmoozing is part of the game. And the key to it all is not showing that you’d rather be cooped up in your writing bunker. Put on a smile, shake some hands and kiss some babies, because if you want to keep writing those books, you have to connect with your readers.

Who wants ... to live ... for-ev-er?

by Alison Janssen

So last night my fiance and I watched Highlander. The original movie, with Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery. (Various asides: 1. Christopher Lambert looks like Aaron Eckhart sans chin dimple. 2. Whenever I type "Lambert" I sing the "Lambert the Sheepish Lion" song in my head. 3. I can't believe it took me this many years to watch the Highlander movie, as my dad and I used to watch the tv show regularly, alongside other tv classics like Xena, Andromeda, and Forever Knight.)

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie (who wouldn't enjoy pearl-earring-wearing Connery teaching swordplay atop beautiful mountains?), but now it's got me thinking. About Connor MacLeod, and Peter Pan, and Edward Cullen.

No, seriously! These fictional dreamboats (less applicable in the case of Peter Pan, but Wendy *did* love him) all suffer from eternal life. The poor guys, through various quickening, Neverlandish, and vampiric means, never grow old, never get sick, and won't die.*

And the women who love them are normal. And they age. And they die.

Well that hardly seems fair.

I like the romantic, tragic bent to these stories. I like the idea of one lonely soul living on and on and on, and one mortal who nature assures will be left behind. I can happily cry my way through various tellings of this same fate, and I'll almost always find it interesting. But I'm wondering, where are all the live-long ladies?

I can't think of any, to be honest. Maybe I'm not thinking hard enough ... do you have any recommendations for me, twists on the star-crossed lovers where the man is normal and the woman is an everlasting, ever-youthful immortal? Comment away!

* Yes, yes, I know that at the end of Highlander he wins the prize and he's able to age and whatever. But that felt pretty false to me, as it was clear that his *true* love was Heather, and the cop was just, you know, around once he turned mortal.

Ringing the changes

No, I haven't taken up campanology. It's just that at the moment I seem to be out at least one evening a week running murder mystery evenings or giving talks – which is great, because not only does it allow me to introduce crime fiction fans to a whole new bunch of authors they can try, it also gives me the opportunity simply to talk to people about crime fiction – one of my favourite topics.

 

In fact, one of those conversations often leads into the other – like this:

“Hey, what a wonderful selection of books! But how can I choose? I’ve never heard of these authors.”

“Maybe not now, but you will – they’re all debut authors when they come to us, but even Lee Child/Ian Rankin/Kathy Reichs/Patricia Cornwell was a debut author once, and look how famous s/he became.”

“Really? What a wonderful thing to do. But – how can I choose?”

“Why don’t you tell me which well-known authors you enjoy reading? Then maybe I can suggest one of ours that you’d enjoy just as much.”

 

Then we go through their favourite authors, and I point out a Crème de la Crime author who occupies roughly the same bit of the marketplace. Adrian Magson if they like Lee Child or Harlan Coben; Maureen Carter if it’s Reginald Hill or Ian Rankin; Roz Southey or Chris Nickson for C J Sansom fans; Kaye C Hill for Janet Evanovich. And so on.

 

It doesn’t work every time, but that’s a useful side-effect: we find out where the gaps are in our list. Agatha Christie comes up pretty well every time, of course, and I have to explain that golden age crime fiction is hard to replicate because authors of that vintage had their own style, and they simply aren’t around any more. And Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwell weren’t just random choices in the list; they come up quite often too. An awful lot of readers go for the graphic path lab descriptions, but for some unaccountable reason it’s a sub-genre with which my submissions pile is underwhelmed. Fortunately we’re not short of blood and guts; a couple of our authors – well, one – gets a little carried away when the blood starts fountaining and bits of body get gouged, and I actually have to start reining back. A little like a story Val McDermid tells about a torture scene involving a dog. The problem wasn’t the torture – it was the dog. Apparently readers can take any amount of agony inflicted on a human, but animals are a different matter. Anyway, that’s a scene you won’t find in that Val McDermid novel.

 

This isn’t exactly a plea for a deluge of manuscripts which give Reichs and Cornwell (Turow and Grisham too – legal is another gap in our list) a run for their money. But if anyone out there was thinking of sending us their magnum opus, you might want to know that for the time being we’re fine for police procedurals, and OK for quirky private eyes, especially historical ones from the 18^th century.

 

Not that we’re about to turn down something in any of those areas which is so brilliant that tennis, football, eating and sleeping are all put on hold while we finish it. (Aaaargh! I can’t believe I said football! It gets everywhere!) But crime fiction encompasses a wide variety of sub-genres, and we like to be able to please most of the people most of the time.

All You Need is Mud

by Barbara Poelle

This weekend I saw a 7 foot banana chase a 6 foot gorilla into a 90 foot mud pit.

And there was no vodka involved. 

See, I turned thir[coughCOUGHcough] this weekend and Husband treated me to a 5K mud run upstate. It was as brutal as it was fantastic:  Some finished in costumes. Most finished with bruises. All finished with mud in their ears.  Full obstacle course, climbing walls, sniper crawls, etc, in uphill 5K mileage with about 1200 other people who were either in better physical shape or worse mental states than we were- as we finished about middle of the pack.  We are sunburned and band-aided but we had a blast.

Husband never bats an eye when I want to do something, shall we say, left of center. When I turned twen[coughCOUGHc—oh wait, no, that one is okay] Husband got me attacked by a K9 Police Dog. It was the second best day of my whole life.  (He has always been supportive in particular of any activity I do wherein you have to sign a waiver that includes the phrase “I understand that this activity is inherently dangerous …” is that something I should be worried about?)

And I’ll never forget when I was a baby agent and I had an ugly thing happen to me and I wanted to armadillo in horror and sadness. (Yes, it’s a verb. Yes, it is.) I had dropped Husband a text about my desire to beat myself to death with my own corporeal rage, and rather than soft coo’ing and empathy, I got a text in return that said, “get back in the ring you son of a bitch, cause Mickey loves ya”.  It slapped the stink of failure right outta me and I was off my stool and back in the ring swinging.  

Everybody has somebody who encourages, supports, and admires their intent, desire and accomplishment of being a published author. Who is yours? Sometimes it is a teacher, or an on-line friend, or a spouse, but they are truly at times the only one in our corner, because even WE can falter in our own minds.  And isn’t that the best part? Having a buddy who supports you in the dog bites and snout pets of life. Today I ask you, nay, I DEMAND you call, email, text, smoke signal, carrier pigeon that person who is your Mickey before the bell.  The monkey to your banana. The band-aid on the three inch gash on your calf. Tell them you appreciate that by the third mile when we are holding a handful of our own kneeskin and can’t talk around a mouthful of stomach bile, they are tra-la-la’ing alongside us as if holding a parasol and talking of memories past.  Tell them that even when we spend some days wishing we had duct-taped our shoes to our feet and maybe have bugs in our teeth, we know they are there to cross the finish line with us, arms raised in victory.

Tell them thank you.

 We can’t do it without them.

 

 

In Defense of the Apostrophe, and Other Lost Causes

Jeff Cohen

I've been teaching writing--screenwriting, to be specific--at the college level for a number of years now (the number is six), and I have learned a lot. Some of my students say they have, too, and that's nice. I try to get across to them such basics as story structure, good dialogue vs. bad dialogue, character development and the importance of opening strong.

But I can't get them to use apostrophes correctly. I just can't.

The current generation seems to believe that if a word has an "S" as its end, it must therefore have an apostrophe before that "S." As is: "Bean's are really legume's." What?

I'd like to blame texting, but this scourge has been coming for a long, long time. Try to remember the last time you went through a whole day without seeing an abused apostrophe. Try to remember the last time you made it through a week without seeing something like this: 

I always want to call up the business and ask something like, "Your fresh organic salad's WHAT?" and then hang up. I guess that would be rude.

Now, I'm hardly the first to notice such lapses. Remember the book Eats Shoots and Leaves?  You thought it was going to change things, right? I'm teaching college students whose parents are dropping tens of thousands a year, confident that their kids are taking a WRITING CLASS, and I have to point out to them, on a regular basis, that they don't know how to use an apostrophe.

Meanwhile: Thanks to everyone who has posted a review or comment about NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED on Amazon, BN.com or just as an email to E.J. Copperman, the author of said book, who is, as loyal readers of this blog will recall, a CLOSE PERSONAL FRIEND of mine. Publishers do care what you think (perhaps not as much as what you buy, but they care), and your kind words do make the author feel quite privileged as well.

One interesting note: A few reviewers have said they especially enjoyed finding out who the author of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED is because they had assumed--given that the narrator is Alison Kerby, a recently divorced single mom--that the author was a woman. And they said this added to their enjoyment. 

I take that as a great compliment, but it is a little strange. Shouldn't any author be able to write any character convincingly? Isn't that the craft involved here? Do you really prefer to read books written only by people who are the same sex as you? 

Discuss, and show your work.

LP-to-Digital Conversion Project Update: Where last week we had gotten through very few albums, culminating in the work of Allan Sherman, this week went faster, possibly because the music was more enjoyable throughout, and partially because many of the records are already duplicated in my CD collection, and didn't need converting.

We began the week with the work of Simon and Garfunkel, who showed up together at a Yankee game a few nights ago, which my daughter pronounced "adorable." I had to convert only two in the collection, as I had the five original studio albums already on CD. The two oddities I had to make digital were the original film soundtrack of The Graduate, 
 which was something of a revolution in its time--popular music was not as ubiquitous in films as it is now.

The S&G music on the soundtrack (there were many instrumental tracks by Dave Grusin that show off how generic film music could be in the 60s) consisted mostly of previously released songs, the hits up to that time, "The Sound of Silence," "Scarborough Fair" (repeated in full after being played through once, for no discernible reason) and so on. The "Mrs. Robinson" on the movie soundtrack is clearly a filler, because Paul Simon had not finished writing the song yet (and was considering calling it "Mrs. Roosevelt" until director Mike Nichols insisted otherwise). It's an odd record, and a sign of things to come.

One of the things to come was the sublime "The Concert in Central Park," a recording of just that, when Simon and Garfunkel reunited (one of many reunions that were supposed to be one-time-only events). Despite my distaste for live albums, this one has a special place because 1. I was there, along with 500,000 of my closest friends; and 2. This shows off both artists beautifully, and makes you long for the recording reunion that almost happened, and then didn't.

Carly Simon's long career was, whether anybody wants to admit it or not, at its peak when she was married to James Taylor. I don't know if her husband was an influence artistically or not, but the run of albums she made then were her best work, hands down. After that, Simon got to sounding like a child of privilege (which she is) singing about "everyday" events like sitting for a oil portrait. But put on "Playing Possum,"  or "Hotcakes," or "Boys in the Trees," and you have something. The sad fact is, Carly never seemed to get as much fun out of the music as she did posing for album covers.

Carly's sister Lucy put out a couple of albums in the 70s, when it was apparently the law that anyone whose last name was "Simon" was required to be a pop singer. Lucy's songs ran the gamut from stupefyingly dull to really quite nice, and there were two or three on each album that were worth the price of admission. Check out "From Time to Time to Time" on Lucy Simon or "Please Say Yes" from "Stolen Time."

Paul Simon's solo career has been an amazing journey, and while most of it was in my CD collection already, the live album "Live Rhymin'" was not. I was at that show, too, at Carnegie Hall, but the album still doesn't do much for me. Putting a South American flavor on "The Boxer" and a gospel choir on "Bridge Over Troubled Water" are interesting, but don't make up for the fact that Artie isn't there.

On the other hand, "Hearts and Bones,"  the S&G reunion album that didn't happen, is one of Simon's best, and an overlooked gem. Coming back from a serious commercial failure with "One Trick Pony," which is a really good album and a seriously lousy movie, Simon was trying hard, and it shows. "Allergies," "Song About The Moon," and "Think Too Much (a)" are personal favorites.

And that brings us to Phoebe Snow. I've written here before about my admiration for Ms. Snow and my sincere hope she comes back completely and quickly from her current health problems. Of the albums I didn't already have on CD, "Never Letting Go" is a favorite, but I found "Against The Grain" a revelation.  I hadn't cared much for this, Snow's last Columbia Records album, on its original release. But now, the melancholy in the synthesizers of "Oh L.A." works like a charm, the bounce and fire of "In My Life" comes across, and "Keep A Watch on the Shoreline" ends the proceedings with some real desperation. Brava, Phoebe; you keep coming back.

Last and most important: Congratulations to Eve 
 and the class of 2010! I can't begin to tell you how proud we are of you--and I use words for a living!

Thanks Dad

Long before The DaVinci Code was a twinkle in Dan Brown’s checking account, I’d already read all about it in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, thanks to my dad.

Like most people I’m a lot of things because of him and another lot of things despite him; but one of the biggest entries on the “because of” side of the ledger is a voracious and wide ranging reader with an analytical turn of mind. Dad didn’t read much fiction, let alone mystery fiction. But he read just about everything else: from George Plimpton’s Paper Tiger to Erich von Däniken's Chariot of the Gods, with vast chunks of history, science, biography and social sciences in between. There was always a stack of books by his bed and his favorite chairs, with him usually working on a couple of different ones at a time. I was encouraged to borrow any of them and to talk with him about them or anything else I was reading. Every year for Christmas I got a copy of the New York Times Book Review special Christmas / Year in Review edition and the number of books I could ask him to order for me. And when I was younger and not responsive to other punishments, my library card got taken away.

I know all the reasons people assume small town America is a great place to raise kids, but the reality isn't that simple. Me, I mostly felt trapped there. We had no public transportation to let you escape and pretty limited entertainment options. A dairy farm next door and a lot of bars, but no movie theater, almost no stores, not even a McDonalds to hang out it. All those books were like a combination "get out of jail" card and magic carpet, letting me escape and find worlds very different from the seeming trap around me. I read a lot more fiction than Dad did, but even there variety was the watchword, everything from Hemingway to Eric Frank Russell (a sadly forgotten golden age SF author who wrote some hilariously cynical stories about human nature), from Gavin Lyall to Jane Austen.

It’s a great legacy. You hear a lot about kids not reading enough and about leading by example to provide role models for them (as a major sports fan I see the latter phrase so often I’ve thought of coming up with a variation on buzzword bingo based on how the phrase is used in context), but I’m not sure people put the two together often enough. It’s one thing to tell your kids to read more or put them in reading programs where other people tell them. It's another thing entirely to let them see you simply reading as an assumed part of your daily life, like sleeping and eating. That's how it becomes a part of their life too rather than something they do just because they have to for school or to stop someone nagging.

I also hear a lot of people say they’d love to read more if they only had the time, when the truth is they do have the time, they just do other things with it. If you assume reading as part of your life then you find time for it. Which is why, thanks to my dad's example, 10 minutes of idle time waiting for a bus or for dinner to finish cooking is as much reading time as a planned couple of hours basking in the sun to feed my inner lizard. Not a big deal and no regrets about not always having a lot of time for it, you just do it.

My mom read too. But it was as likely to be a magazine as a book, and if it was a book it was almost always a doorstop family saga or glittering society sort of thing. No doubt I read because of her example too, but there's even less doubt that I'm the kind of reader I am today because of my dad.

Thanks again, Dad!!

Anniversary City

Robin Agnew

Today is my 27^th wedding anniversary.  How did that happen?  I remember when my grandmother was old, she told me how fast the years went, and being young, I listened politely, but I didn’t believe her.  My husband and I met in the most obvious of places: college.  We met when he was a senior and I was a junior – it seemed impossible!  Sobbing as I drove away with my mother at the end of junior year – I’ll never see him again! – my mother tut tutted and said merely, “If it’s meant to be, it will happen.”

 She was right, of course, and her marital advice (she’s been married 52 years) was on the mark too:  she told me to marry someone who I wasn’t afraid of and who made me laugh.  I hit a home run on both counts, and the very first thing that drew me to my husband was his humor. 

 We got married the month after I graduated from college, and my husband waited for me in Columbus, Ohio, to finish up while he worked a crap job.  After we got married in the great recession of 1982, we shoved all our stuff into our crap car, a VW Rabbit, and drove to Minneapolis on a whim, where Jamie (the man in question) ended up going to the University of Minnesota for graduate school and we both worked a succession of crap jobs while living in crap apartments.  I could have cared less, we had such a blast those first few years on our own.

 When we hit 30 it seemed like baby time and we moved back to Michigan to be near my family, picking Ann Arbor out of a hat because it sounded cool.  It was cool, and the babies came quickly thereafter, granny close enough to drive over and cook and change a few diapers when they were born.

 Zap, another decade or so and we founded Aunt Agatha’s and watched the kids grow up.  I’ve read all sorts of articles on the secrets of long term relationships, but it seems pretty simple to me: marry your best friend.  We also like (well, we are best friends) many of the same things – books above all, movies, art galleries.  Sure marriage has it’s bumps but that’s the advice another relative, a cool great aunt, gave me when I got married: “always be loving friends.”  Somewhere I have the yellowed card she wrote that on.

 Happy Anniversary, James Ford Agnew.  I hope we have 27 more – at least. 

 

5 Books That Changed My Life

Dana Kaye

Inspired by a recent Twitter hashtag I've decided to share with you the five books that changed my life. Of course, I hope the comments section is FILLED with the books that have changed yours.

1) THE BELL JAR by Sylvia Plath. Whenever I tell people that I first read THE BELL JAR in 7th grade, their eyes grow wide and they inevitably ask, "Could you appreciate the book at such a young age?" But if you think about it, 7th grade is a pivotal turning point for girls. Cliques are forming along with identities, hormones are raging, and there's a massive confusion about who you are. A perfect time for Sylvia Plath. I remember coming home and telling my mother, "Sylvia Plath is my hero!" She signed me up for counseling right away.

2) CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger. I'm sure this is high on everyone's list to the point of cliche, but the fact is, CATCHER IN THE RYE was the book that taught me I could enjoy reading and that you could read books multiple times and have different experiences. I first read my father's worn copy in 8th grade and thought that Holden Caulfield was relateable and charming. Read it again in high school and felt differently. Read it again in college and finally picked up on the depth and nuance that I missed the first two times.

3) PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth. I read this book my first year in the Fiction Writing program at Columbia. I literally finished the book in one sitting, my first time ever finishing a book without putting it down. The combination of comedy, drama and strong narrative voice blended perfectly, and I thought, "That's how I want to write!"

4) LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN by Hubert Selby Jr. I read the Tra La Laexcerpt for a fiction class and immediately went out and bought the whole book. For those of you unfamiliar with Selby, he ranges from a highly stylized method of punctuation to no punctuation at all, so each of his stories has a unique rhythm or beat. In my opinion, Faulkner couldn't pull it off, Selby could. As someone who nearly failed high school English due to grammar mistakes, this book showed me that punctuation should be a tool, not a burden.

5) MYSTIC RIVER by Dennis Lehane. As some of you know, I came to crime fiction very late in the game; freshman year of college. My uncle had just published a crime fiction novel and I thought, why not take a Suspense/Thriller writing class? There, my professorintroduced me to Michael Connelly, Tami Hoag, and most importantly, Dennis Lehane. While I enjoyed writing crime fiction, I was never sure that I could abandon my love for lit fic completely. Lehane proved that it was possible to blend the two with great success. Not only did MYSTIC RIVER show me the type of book I would love to write, it showed me which books I really wanted to read.

Video Games Are Art and Genre Fiction Is Literature

by Alison Janssen

I came here all set to refute Roger Ebert's recent "Video Games Can Never Be Art"* blog post. He argues, in part, that gamers shouldn't need the validation of games being called art -- after all, Bobby Fischer never argued that chess was art. Well, ok, no one needs the validation of being called art -- but conversely, no one appreciates being told their endeavors can never be art.

Ebert is failing to make a distinction between the creator and the player. Have you ever appreciated a finely carved chess set? Is that art? I'd argue yes. The artistry that goes into the carving of a beautiful* chess set is analogous to the artistry that goes into conceiving and composing of a beautiful* video game.

If chess as a game did not exist, there would be no call for artists to create beautiful variations and interpretations of the standard pieces. The game -- the desire of players to play -- necessitates the pieces, and a chess piece is both an object and a representation of a set of possible moves. It exists within the game and outside of the game.

A video game is a rendering of ideas, using math, into imagery, action, and possibility. Just like chess, it calls for player participation to reach its potential -- but you could just look at a video game, at the "Begin New Game" screen, the same way that you could just display a chess set without ever sitting down opposite an opponent. The object does exist without the player, and can (and should) be recognized as an achievement -- and I'd argue an artistic achievement -- before anyone settles in to play.

Ok, so what does this have to do with genre fiction? Well, just like in a chess set, there exist in genre fiction standard pieces, and the author takes those standard pieces (eg the drunk, disgraced PI; the mystery-solving granny, the late-night ransom drop gone wrong) and reinterprets and carves his or her own variations on those pieces.

Each author's interpretation is where the artistry comes in. Some novels end up looking like the equivalent of a mass-produced, standard plastic chess set -- players immediately recognize and can play with such a set, it's an easy, lightweight, and perhaps ultimately toss-able, as the board is flimsy and the pieces crack or melt in the sun. In video game terms, these novels end up looking like an unimaginative button-basher. But listen: It's not the fault of the genre that these novels fall apart.

I'm going to say that again.

The flaw does not lie with the genre, nor with the "standard pieces" that define it. The authorial interpretation and execution of those standard pieces is what causes a novel to soar or fall flat.

I'm so sick of pronouncements that this or that type of creative expression is disqualified from being considered art. I find it useless to argue by example, because tastes vary widely and there's no quantifiable bottom line. Ebert dismisses in three quick paragraphs three examples of games that gamers consider art -- and it feels silly to keep throwing games his way to try to prove the point. An argument like this can't rest on the back of one or two examples, there needs to first be a fundamental acceptance of the concept.

 So how about this instead: Can we, as individuals who appreciate the creative energies of ourselves and others, just agree to quit bickering over who's more important and whose legacy will last unto the ages?

Because really, only time will tell. Right? Only time. And in the present, isn't it more important to continue creating and reading and playing the books and games*** we enjoy?

*Special thanks to my fiance, who pointed out the Ebert article to me and gave me good food for thought for this post.
**I'm using "beautiful" here in a fluid sense, understanding that a chess set or video game that I perceive as beautiful may not be a chess set or video game that someone else perceives as beautiful, but also assuming that every person has the capacity to perceive some chess set or video game beautiful.
***Careful, this is addicting. Don't say I didn't warn you. Also, it opens with sound, so if you're at work, click with caution.

To begin at the beginning

They say good things come in threes. Robin’s post a few days ago about stocking entire series, rather than just the author’s most recent title, not only made me cheer, it also completed the set of three booksellers who have expressed this apparently arcane but eminently sensible view in my hearing over the past few weeks.

 

Setting aside the usual excuses of not enough shelf space, and so many books so little budget (is there a booklover in the world who doesn’t have those problems?), I’ve never quite understood why bookshops, especially the large chainstore variety, don’t stock every book in a popular series – especially the first.

 

I always thought the point of a bookshop was to sell books – so why not stock books people might want to buy? But the concept of stocking a popular author’s backlist is such an alien one to most booksellers I’ve spoken to that finding three who do it in the space of a month is… well, it’s unusual enough to motivate me into a blog post on the subject!

 

The other two were, believe it or not, from chain bookshops. Not the great behemoth that is Barnes & Noble; we don’t do things on quite that scale here in the little UK. But nonetheless by our modest standards, substantial chains.

 

The first time it happened I was enjoying a browse in a branch of one of the smaller chains, and I asked a passing bookseller the question which is never far from my lips: why, when I’m here, Visa card at the ready, looking to fill gaps in a couple of series I’ve been collecting, can I never find anything older than the current paperback?

 

Not my call, came the reply; I wish it were, because what you say makes sense and I entirely agree with you.

 

He sounded sincere, and when we’d chatted around the topic for a few minutes I became convinced he wasn’t just trying to placate a possibly chagrined customer. And of course I bought a couple of books anyway. Well, you do, don’t you?

 

The second time it happened I had an axe to grind. One of my authors is setting up a run of bookshop visits to promote her new book (Roz Southey, Sword and Song, out in the UK now and the US in a few months, thanks for asking), and the events organiser in one of the shops called me to talk about publicising the visit. The conversation moved on to the stock he was planning to order, and with no prompting from me he revealed that he’d be getting in copies of Roz’s entire backlist, and twice as many of Broken Harmony, the first in the series. Which filled me with joy, because I love Roz’s work so much that I can’t believe anyone reading the first won’t go on to buy the whole series. OK, I’m biased, but try them and you’ll see I’m right!

 

The third was our own Robin, jewel among indie booksellers, but not entirely untypical. Their shops are usually smaller, their shelf space more limited – but so often they fill it with books people actually want, not great mounds of the latest celeb biog which a multinational publisher has paid a huge fee to have placed near the door. More power to the indies!

 

My own experience at small press book fairs and promotion events is that people always want to start at the beginning, so we make sure we have plenty of the firsts in our several series. And for myself, if I inadvertently begin in the middle of a series I want to pursue, (convention goody bags do that for you!), next stop is the first. That’s what I did with J D Robb, who overtook Tony Hillerman (though only by a slender margin) as my favourite American crime writer after a very pleasant afternoon spent in Barnes & Noble escaping from the rain; now I have a shelf that will only hold two more. (But PLEASE don’t stop writing them, J D.)

 

Some weird book trade logic decrees that books are last season and old news when they’re three months old. But who, aside from the faceless executives who make that decision, actually looks inside to check the copyright date? I don’t. Do you?

A Confidential Internal Office Memo

 A Confidential Internal Office Memo

From the Desk of

Inga VonPeepenskeeven

 Hello All,

Welcome to your summer internship with Ms. Poelle.  This is the type of position that can create a lifelong love affair with the publishing industry, creating a symbiotic relationship between you and the written word as you expand your knowledge of the business exponentially in only a few short months. 

But only if you survive.

 

  A few points:

-The day starts and ends the same, people. With vodka. I have a back up jar of blue cheese stuffed olives handy, in the file cabinet. Under "C". That will make sense in a few weeks. In the meantime, make sure you stay hydrated. With Thrillerfest fast approaching, and some of the most brilliant clients one can hope to see parading in our halls, the vodka will flow like rivers of terror through the office, and that undertow is a beast.

-Don’t make direct eye contact with Ms. Poelle before ten, and for the love of GOD, do not speak to her before noon.  I am contractually unable to discuss the details of what happened to Peterson last year, suffice to say, the doctors decided to leave it in—and now he basically gets tackled at every airport security line.  

-The staple gun is to be used for manuscripts in the morning and then MUST be locked into my top desk drawer NO LATER than 3pm. After that mishap with the goldfish yesterday, let’s try and remember, her aim is BETTER after two martinis, but worse after FOUR. That is a wide and sticky window people, let’s try and slam it closed as quickly as possible.

-Career-wise, this summer, Ms. Poelle has her heart set on one thing and one thing only: a tandem bike ride with Wentworth Miller through Central Park. While two of you make THAT happen, the rest of us are going to be combing the conferences and slush for three things: a spectacular literary suspense, a YA with crossover potential, and something referred to only as an “it devours from beneath” thriller.

-I am the only one authorized to answer the phones around here, but should I be late- and let me be very clear that would only happen if I were to be detained and sold by a Bedouin tribe or  killed by wild dogs- then you send through three calls and three calls ONLY before noon:

1. Anyone who sounds like they may or may not be named Tolly Soot.

2. Amy Lindel. She will be hard to understand as she only uses big words like "pedantic" and "Drug Czar", but try to hang .

3. Husband. He may or may not be drag racing. Or spackling.  

-Under no circumstances WHATSOEVER is Janet Reid allowed to connect with Ms. Poelle before noon. The only a.m. phone calls made by Ms. Reid are of the gloating variety, and they don’t do US any favors.

That should about cover it. And let me just say- to me? You are about to become indispensible this summer. Your opinions and your ideas will count. You will not be relegated to the mundane and you will be celebrated as a contemporary who has the same passion and excitement that caused any one of us already here to leap into this frustrating, fabulous, fluctuating, kinetic, wonderful industry.

Welcome to it.

 

I.V.P.

 

 

Choose Your Marx Brother

Jeff Cohen

It's not that I don't believe in heroes. It's that I don't think anyone is perfect.

Still, coming out of the gate, most of us model ourselves--at least initially--on someone or another. Our earliest influences are usually our parents, and in my case, I was very fortunate. I had a mother who wasn't so much a role model (she was, after all, a girl) as a moral compass, but also someone I could look to for attitudes and thoughts. My mother was a huge Beatles fan when most parents were considering picketing record stores to get rid of those four "long haired" anarchists. She taught me that you don't worry about what other people think so much as what you think.

My father was my first role model, someone to try and emulate, and he was close to perfect in that regard. Perhaps the kindest man I've ever met, he taught me about helping others, the importance of family and keeping a sense of humor in all situations.

But my heroes, as they say, have always been comedians. And if I had to make one choice, I have to look to the Marx Brothers, easily the greatest comedy team America has yet produced.

Why? Because they could do anything; they could pile physical humor on top of verbal humor and never stop the jokes coming. Because they were gifted, each and every one.

Role models, however, are not simply about characters played on a screen; they're about the people themselves. What sort of example do they set, and how do you choose what to emulate and what to leave the roadside?

Let's look at the Marx Brothers individually, as men. I know whose life I'd most like to parallel, but maybe you have different tastes. Let's see:

Zeppo (born Herbert) Marx 
 was and is considered the least talented comedian of the group. But according to all accounts, including those of his brothers, Zeppo might have been the funniest of the four off-screen. In fact, when Groucho was unable to perform with his brothers following an illness, Zeppo stood in for him, and according to those there, matched his more famous brother laugh for laugh. Off-screen, Zeppo became a successful theatrical agent and an inventor after growing tired of being the butt of the jokes. He married twice times (his second wife went on to marry Frank Sinatra) and adopted three children, and probably had the most "normal" life of the four.  

Chico (Leo) Marx  certainly had the most colorful. Probably a compulsive gambler, certainly a serial adulterer, Chico was always the audience favorite at the live shows, according to accounts, and could literally charm the pants off anyone he wanted to. He married twice, once for 23 years, and once for three, and while he didn't die penniless, that wasn't for lack of trying. Chico was put on an allowance by his brothers after his insolvency forced them to make "A Night in Casablanca," a movie that Marx Brothers fans the world over wish they hadn't.

Julius Henry Groucho 
 Marx was without question one of the greatest, if not the greatest, comedian the world has ever known. His nonstop patter, lightning-fast mind and unparalleled delivery stand against any other funny person in any medium to this date. Find a brilliant comic, and Groucho could old-brilliant them. No question. 

Off-screen, Groucho might have been the most troubled. He married three times, each ending in divorce and had three children, with whom he had alternating warm and cold relationships. By the time he died in 1977 (three days after Elvis Presley), he had become frail and according to some accounts senile. He had been one of the most famous men in the world, and had amassed a healthy fortune, but he kept working almost until he died. 

Any one of these lives could appeal to an author (we are, after all, entertainers when it all comes down to it), depending on one's personality. Groucho was incredibly famous, wealthy and, finally, respected (he accepted an honorary Academy Award for the team in 1974). Chico could have any woman he wanted, it seemed, and never spent a day he didn't enjoy thoroughly. Zeppo made the money he needed in a job he didn't like, and got out, in order to pursue the things he did care about. 

But if I were to choose a Marx (other than Karl) to emulate, without question for me it would be Adolph Arthur Harpo Marx. Harpo, the second oldest of the Marx Brothers to survive (one died in infancy), was by all accounts one of the nicest men on the planet. His autobiography Harpo Speaks (written by Rowland Barber) was a bestseller, and he died peacefully, a happy, wealthy man who married once and adopted five children. 

 Harpo was successful, a brilliant comedian overshadowed to some extent by his brother Groucho, something which didn't bother him in the least. And while I love to talk and make my living with words, I would most like to be like the silent Marx if I have the choice.

Why? Because when he died, there wasn't one person on this planet who had so much as a neutral--forget negative--word to say about Harpo. He was universally beloved, and was considered even by his competitive brothers to be the best of the bunch. 

That's what I'd like--to have the kind of life I'd want and then have people say nice things at the end (of course, I'd prefer to hear the words before I check out, but we don't always get that choice). A hero? I don't know. Like I said, nobody's perfect. But something to aspire to? Harpo's my man.

Who's your Marx Brother?

LP-to-Digital Conversion Project Update: After getting through the later stages of Seals and Crofts this week, which proved to be a trial, we moved on to Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, a pretty serious contrast. Mr. Seger was a tonic after the earnestness and proselytization of S&C, a straightforward rock and roller with nothing on his mind other than getting you up out of your chair. Two albums were enough, but it was welcome. Nice work, Bob.

After that, it was comedy week. One ill-advised album by radio/book/television personality Jean Shepherd, whose novel In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash was somehow turned in the holiday perennial A Christmas Story without losing its integrity. Shepherd did annual concerts at Princeton University, and the bits on The Declassified Jean Shepherd that were recorded at one of those affairs are charming. Unfortunately, the rest is strange inserts of "Man On The Street" interviews asking people about Jean Shepherd and odd musical accompaniment. More Shepherd, less filler would have been better.

And then the sublime career (especially the first three albums) of Mr. Allan Sherman. This song parody genius was the biggest thing in the world for a very short time in the early 1960s, hitting the singles chart with "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah," a letter from camp set to a classical tune, and unfortunately not Sherman's best work.

 On his albums My Son, The Folk Singer and My Son, The Celebrity, Sherman performed songs unabashedly from an American-Jewish point of view, turning The Battle Hymn Of The Republic into "Glory, Glory Harry Lewis" and a Harry Belafonte calypso tune into "My Zelda, she took the money and ran with the tailor." Dated? Maybe a little. But hilarious? Always. Don't listen to any of the Greatest Hits compilations, seek out those first two albums and the third, My Son, The Nut.

Language

As someone whose journey out of the womb was probably triggered as much by nascent wanderlust as obstetrical necessity, I love the current trend in favor of mysteries with foreign settings. Real travel rocks, but if vicarious is all I can get I’ll take it.

I kept hearing that the prior dearth was because “Americans won’t read mysteries with foreign settings.” Maybe, but it begs the question "which Americans?" A dozen xenophobic John Birchers... sure, I can see them agreeing. But a few thousand varied and voracious mystery readers… er, not so much. However, a couple recent reads reminded me that the claim probably has some substance when it comes to one issue—language.

Setting a mystery written in English in a country where that’s not the primary language means you’ve got to decide how to handle that native language. Ignoring it is probably easiest for both the reader and the writer, but it means passing over a helpful source of local color. You usually want to use some, just to add flavor, and you want to make that some enough to a) feel specific to your setting, not just some generic indicator that “we’re not in Kansas anymore” while also b) having a bit of rhythm and flow, fitting organically in the story rather than appearing as a blatant “local color found here” flashing light slapped on top. But at the same time, you don’t want to make your readers work too hard to deal with it, or you’ll turn a lot of them off. As is so often the case with writing well, it's a balancing act.

I’m currently reading Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Missing Servant, set in modern India. Hall inserts a lot of local terminology, both where there is no real English equivalent (e.g. foods such as chat) but also where there is. He takes the glossary route to explain it all, with one in the back of the book that runs to several pages. Which is helpful, but... only up to a point. There's too much reliance on that glossary for my taste, shifting all the work onto the reader. Hall almost never even tries to make the words clear in context. You can sometimes get a general idea without looking something up, such as that this word must refer to some kind of food since someone is eating it. But not always and not in any detail. A minor issue if it only happens occasionally, but there are things on pretty much every page you need to look up, continually pulling the reader out of the story and seriously interfering with its flow. It also got to be just plain annoying for its own sake. I enjoyed the book otherwise, which had a lot of charm, more than its fair share of local color and an interesting, multi-thread plotline. And yes I suppose I could just stay ignorant and not bother to look things up (except me being me... sigh, no I can't). But because of this issue and how annoying it got to be, I’m not sure I’ll read another of this series. Which is a pity.

A Murder of Crows by P F Chisholm (aka Patricia Finney) is, amongst fans of the genre, one of the most eagerly awaited historical mysteries in years. It’s well worth waiting for, a great read in a unique, well written and well researched series. This book is largely set in London, while prior books were set on the Scots border marches. And even though it’s more Sergeant Dodd’s story than Sir Robert Carey’s, that means there’s a lot less of the Scottish border dialect. I'd forgotten until I read this one how frustrating I sometimes found it with earlier books being so very filled with similar sounding people and names and nicknames (and everyone had a nickname) to keep straight, along with a ton of dialect. It wasn't that you couldn't sort things out and it certainly wasn't that the results weren't worth it, it just kept pulling me out of the story to figure it all out and at times felt like more work than I wanted to bother with. Here where there’s less of it, it’s so much more effective, while there’s no feeling of struggle to get through what there is. The dialect not only makes it clear who Dodd is, it also reinforces how far he is from home both physically and socially—a key element of the story.

Pat McIntosh is another historical mystery author I really like. Since her books are set in medieval Edinburgh, she too makes liberal use of Scots dialect, complicated by period vocabulary that is foreign to modern ears. She doesn't include a glossary, but she does the best job I’ve seen of making it all perfectly understandable in context. Not only understandable but seamlessly so within the flow of the story rather than having the author or a character constantly stop to explain things to the reader. That's not as easy as it might sound, and it's surprisingly rare. A lot of authors get the idea that making things clear in context is a good thing, because it demands less of the reader, which most will prefer. But they tend to rely on the crutch of those pull you out of the story explanations to do it. Which results in their losing the reader for a different reason.

So yeah, I guess there might be one reason Americans won't read mysteries in foreign settings, or at least some of them, when the author doesn't, um, watch their language.

Bread Crack

Robin Agnew

There’s a local grocery store near my house that specializes in natural foods.  One of the best things about this store is that they sell this French bread that seriously is like bread crack.  Jeff (the breadmaker) delivers twice a day, and if you go in at the right time you can see the addicts waiting for a fresh loaf.  (It’s better warm, though it’s OK the next day).  It’s one of those things that makes this very local specific store worth visiting.

 I was thinking how this applied to our store the other day.  While we can say we have great service (and we do) we also need some products that aren’t available anywhere else.  Sadly we don’t have the bread guy (or Steig Larsson, who at the moment seems to be the book crack dealer of choice) delivering to us twice a day, but we do have some pretty specific to us merchandise.

 This week my husband and I have both sold books we’ve had on our shelves for ten years or more.  One woman told my husband that she’d picked a book up off the infamous “pile” (in front of our check out desk) and it knocked her out.  She’d looked for these books at the library, but they’d been purged long ago, and she was back for another fix this week.

 Some books, like one I sold yesterday, have been knocking around for so long they feel like old friends.  That one was an old YA hardcover about ghosts.  It’s been in the window, in our Halloween display, or generally knocking around our kid’s section for years.  I almost hated to sell it but it seemed like it was going on to a good home.

 We have books signed by authors who don’t tour too often (Maureen Jennings), we have t-shirts with our cool logo on them, and we have greeting cards I make from Xeroxes of old bookcovers.  The bestsellers are Agatha Christie’s The Body in the Library (an original US paperback cover) and Earl Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Careless Kitten (self explanatory why that one sells). 

 And then there’s us.  Some folks find us too opinionated or just too cranky some days, but at least we’re not like everyone else.  And all three of us who work at Aunt Agatha’s will do just about anything to match the right reader with the right book.  I love it when I sell someone a first book in a series, as I did with Caroline Graham’s The Killings at Badger’s Drift a week or so ago, and they’re back for every other book in the series.  I’m pretty sure chain stores don’t carry every Caroline Graham backlist title.

 And then there’s the ridiculous – no, we do not have a used copy of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.  Yet.  But we will.

 

I've Decided

Dana Kaye

This past week, I’ve been feeling under the weather. I’m tired, my head hurts, kvetch, kvetch, kvetch. Girlfriend (who’s extremely tired of listening to me kvetch) says to me this morning, “I think you just need to decide to feel better.”

What a novel idea? How about I decide to earn a million dollars, run an 8-minute mile, and have the ability to sing on key? I’ll just “decide”.

But sitting at my desk now - okay, I’m lying on the couch and sipping matzo ball soup out of a mug - I realize that putting your mind to something really can affect the outcome. Saying, “I’m going to finish my book” or “I’m going to sell this manuscript” or “I’m going to book this TV appearance” is a far stronger statement than, “I’m going to try”. In my experience the stronger your state of mind, the more likely that it will become a reality. Instead of hoping or trying to accomplish something, what would happen if you just decided?

I’m a stubborn person, so when I decide to do something, I’m doing it. When I decided to quit smoking, I did. When I decided to start my own business, I did. This year, I decided to run the marathon, which I’ll do even if someone has to kick me across the finish line. Once I’ve put my mind to something, it’s happening.

There are lots of people out there who are trying to write a book, even more who have a great idea for a book but never put pen to paper. The percentage of those who actually finish writing a book is far smaller, and there are even fewer people who go on to publish their manuscript. But what would happen if all those people who had a great idea for a book decided they were going to finish it and get it published? Completing a novel is a long, drawn out, daunting process, but if you decide you’re going to do it, you will.

The mind is the most powerful part of the body and it’s amazing what a shift in mind-set can do for your reality. So while my “decision” to not feel like death warmed over isn’t really working out, I do believe that success as a writer (or any occupation) isn’t obtained by trying or hoping, but by deciding.

An Impossibly Ambitious Movement

by Alison Janssen

You guys, I'm starting a movement. I'd like you to join me. I'm calling it, I think, Take Back The Impossible.*

It is starting to really, really grate on my when I read a phrase like, "He looked at her, and she felt frozen by his impossibly blue eyes." Or, "He was decked out in an impossibly fine suit, the lapels embroidered with delicate thread spun from gold." Or, "She tossed her impossibly curly hair."

Impossible: Not able to exist, occur, or be done.**

When I read sentences like the above, I have a violent and upsetting break from the world of the novel. I start to think, "Well, his eyes may be impossibly blue, but he's MADE UP. This whole WORLD is made up, so it's ALL technically impossible. Now, what was happening in the story again? I'm lost because I'm busy thinking about how IMPOSSIBLE everything is!"

It can ruin a perfectly good moment for me.

And ok, so now you're probably all, "But used as a submodifier, impossibly means 'possessing the specified quality to an unbelievably high degree'!"

I know. I KNOW, I obviously looked it up specifically for this blog post. But here's the thing: that definition irks me, too. Because of the use of "unbelievably."

While reading an novel, I want to be lost in its world. I want to believe that the characters are real, their motivations and actions grounded in a kind of logic I can understand -- even if the logic isn't that of our real world, but exclusive to the setting of the story. I want to believe that the curly hair on your main character can exist in the Nature of her planet. When an author uses a word like "impossibly," for me, it's the equivalent of them shouting in my ear, "Hey, remember, that book you hold in your hands are words printed on a page and I put them in that order!"

Word choice is a tricky beast, but it's so, so, SO important. Give me "remarkable" over "impossibly" any day of the week.

Who's with me?!

*Movement name subject to change at my whim, in case I think of something better, or somebody leaves a better name in the comments. I'm all about flexibility.
**Everyone who's all, "But definition 2 for impossible says, 'very difficult to deal with'!", shhhhh! My movement has no room for nuance! I'm just being finicky! IMPOSSIBLY FINICKY!

A whole new meaning to deadline

Deadlines play a key role in a publisher’s life, and they’ve been part of my life ever since… well, since forever, really. Even when I was a kid there were homework deadlines, and nothing changed when I joined the adult world and began to earn a living. Somebody, somewhere, always needs something completed by a certain date, or an entire system will collapse. And of course for a crime fiction publisher, the word is ripe with double meanings and potential for corny jokes. None of which will I burden you with here, you’ll be relieved to know. Crème de la Crime has a reputation for originality and I’d hate to shatter any illusions.

 

So this is a serious post about the role of deadlines in a small indie publisher’s life. I’ll leave the humour to those who are better at it.

 

One of the first jobs I do when I’m planning a new year’s publication schedule is draw up a list of what needs to be done and when, usually working backwards from each publication date. (No doubt there’s a management-speak term for this, and if I’d studied the art and craft of management instead of lurching into it by accident and learning on the hoof on a need-to-know basis, I’d know what it is. But I didn’t, and I don’t, and I seem to get along well enough without either the training or the jargon.)

 

You’d think that the other end of that chain of events is delivery of a manuscript. Actually it’s not. At least not every time. A lot of the work happens before the author is halfway through the manuscript.

 

Our authors do get a delivery date for the first draft (which actually means the first draft they’re happy to let go of) specified in their contract, and mostly they deliver by that date, which is calculated to allow enough time for editing, whatever rewrites are needed, and a final copy-edit before the manuscript goes to be typeset. I always try to build some slack into the system too; you never know what boulders life is going to hurl in your path, and sometimes it helps if we can finish one part of the process a little early.

 

In fact, for someone who doesn’t do organised, on the face of it I have things pretty well organised!

 

Except…

 

Oh come on, you didn’t really think it was that simple, did you? Create the schedule, specify the deadlines and it all falls effortlessly into place? If only! Dream on! (insert appropriate exclamatory cliché of choice.)

 

Mostly the problems don’t have anything to do with the authors. There are several more stages in the building of the book production jigsaw where things can go wrong. Here are just a few of the things which have – mercifully only once in each case:

 

·         Cover illustrator gets a bad case of image block – like writers’ block, only with pictures –  and can’t come up with something that really captures the book’s spirit. (A small miracle that this has only happened once, since he’s invariably working from a half-page outline of the plot.)

·         Cover designer catches flu/develops a bad back/moves house and is suddenly unavailable when the printer discovers a glitch in the cover file.

·         Editor has a major family crisis the day before the manuscript lands in her in-box.

·         Advance marketing material for the distributor is prepared and sent off to meet their deadline – and when it gets there someone spots a really stupid typo which has slipped though all the checks. This has happened twice. And guess who prepares that marketing material…

·         Printer who gave us an unbelievably good price suddenly stops answering his phone, so we’re back to square one. Fortunately when this happened there was still time to find someone else. But it goes to show, if a price seems too good to be true, it probably is.

·         And finally… author, who I wouldn’t dream of ratting on but s/he knows who s/he is, has one crisis after another and eventually delivers the manuscript six months late. Just the one author, on just the one occasion. 

 

I’ll probably think of half a dozen more examples as soon as I’ve posted this, but I don’t want to depress myself. Usually it works, and if it doesn’t we find a way round it. That’s life.

 

And that’s it. No double meanings, no corny jokes, no jargon. But guess what? I’ve missed the deadline I set myself for getting my Dead Guy post up.

 

Well, I did say I don’t do organised…

I Left My Haggis In Francisco

by Barbara Poelle

So despite the delivery date for the couch being off by ten days, (see ya soon, couch!) and despite the fact that no one seems to know where my Aegean rugs are (although many seem to think “Ohio” for some reason), Husband and I are settling into the new abode very well.

Especially exciting is that in the new digs, along with laundry and landscaping, we have “Laird Shlomo Macphersonstein”, the Jewish bagpiper. Laird Shlomo practices his piping every Friday around 6pm in the back yard, and let me tell you, for as much as we try to pretend we are being transported to the 18^th hole on Spanish Bay, (can I get a shout out to the Pebble Beach Fam- woot!) it isn’t so much that. It’s more like the soundtrack for one of the battle scenes from Braveheart.  

But like, in this scene, we’ve gotta piper dewn!

And maybe he has an axe still protruding from his thorax.

But when you gaze out the window at him, clad in his kilt and yarmulke, (Yes. Yes, he is.) pipes squalling away, you can’t help but feel that, in the end, the world is just one really big village. I think it helps that by Summer Fridays at 6 pm, momma is well into the double digit BAL, and is not beneath spontaneously belting an inventive and evocative Scottish lament to accompany him.  

But Saturday night, we met yet a new neighbor. An unexpected one. Let me set the stage: we had just hosted a very successful gathering and yet, for some reason, never cracked open a fine bottle of bubbly I had purchased just for the occasion. Maybe it was because they all were enjoying a certain lemony minty concoction I had whipped up. Or maybe it was because I hide all of the good liquor when my in-laws come over and I had this champagne bottle tucked safely in my left rain boot in the closet- who can tell with these things? Regardless, at night’s end, Husband and I took the champagne and two glasses and went and sat in the backyard enjoying a soft breeze and some fine bubbly.

Now, we had seen a stray cat or two in the neighborhood, and God’s Grandmother (she sits out there every day and is maybe 217 years old) puts out a handful of cat food and maybe some leftovers under her bench daily. (Whatever. Let her feed the cats. She is basically just dust inside skin.  Let her have some joy wherever she can get it.) So anyway, in the night we can see one or two shadows slinking around the large expanse. Before long, one of the silhouettes seems...different than the others. Like, more lope-ier than the others. What was it, you ask, breath bated. Some of you are thinking, “Oh dear- BADGER!” others are chuckling, “Definitely skunk.” And you know what? You would ALL be right. What we saw, what lumbered into clear view under the tasteful lighting of our backyard, no less than TWO FEET from us, was the product of one forbidden night of love between a skunk and a badger.

Yes.

It was a Skadger.  

We have named him Francisco.

Stop your doubting. We have truly seen a Skadger. You can choose to believe I was inebriated at the time, and you would most certainly be right, good sir! Give the boy a lolly!  But.  It. Was. A. Skadger.  Now Francisco is starting to have his own lore in our home, and the word “Skadger” is said as often as “vodka” or “@#&%”.  

See, Francisco was a postage stamp size snapshot of an overall incredible evening but he has since blown up to leading character proportions. This can happen a lot in life and in novel crafting. How many times have you played around with a secondary character who then continues to grow and dominate? I have a client, Jamie Freveletti, and her second book RUNNING DARK is out at the end of the month. (The first book in the series, Running from the Devil is available in mass market now- get your copy today!) Jamie has a character that has a very, VERY secondary role in RUNNING DARK- that we all went INSANE for. I mean totally gonzo. His name is Vanderlock and even some early reviewers are talking about him. There is just something so appealing, so kinetic about him, that we all pretty much DEMAND he appears in book three (he does- see ya in 2011!).

The fact of the matter remains is that some characters just have “it”, and you do your readers and yourself a disservice to ignore the pull when you start to feel it. Pay attention to the rhythm of your writing, feel where the narrative pulls you, respect the process, and you can find some astounding delights within what you have already constructed.

Make your very own Skadger.

Because you can’t have Francisco.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ellery Adams Inverviewed by E.J. Copperman

E.J. Copperman, filling in for Jeff Cohen

Jeff was kind enough to let me step in for him this week (and I promise to unlock the bathroom door and let him out by next week) so that I could do something I've wanted to for some time--interview my fellow mystery author Ellery Adams. 

Ellery, a friend of mine from way back when I was just a budding young pseudonym, is the author of A KILLER PLOT, the first book in the Books By The Bay Mystery series, just released (much as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED) from Berkley Prime Crime. You can read her bio here, but that didn't tell me enough, and you might feel the same way. I decided to ask the tough questions, the ones that publicists usually don't allow. And luckily, Ellery didn't have a publicist, and didn't know enough about the business to avoid my probing queries.

So take a look--and watch for A KILLER PLOT, because it really is a fun read. 
 How did you choose your setting, in Oyster Bay, NC? 

I wanted to kill people at the beach. I wanted a lighthouse and a harbor filled with boats and creaky docks. A coastal setting is highly influenced by weather changes. I’m a Weather Channel addict. Plus, who doesn’t like to see a tourist get murdered here and there?

Have you ever been the target of vicious gossip, like your protagonist Olivia Limoges (love the name, by the way)? Tell us, and leave no detail out! 

In the 8^th grade the kids called me OPEC because my hair was oily. I’m still in therapy over that one.

Why do you write mystery, as opposed to any other genre? 

I love puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles, crosswords, cryptograms, so it made sense for me to write a genre that basically creates a well-crafted puzzle.

Own up. How much Olivia is Ellery? 

Ellery is a wuss compared to Olivia. Ellery is constrained by southern courtesy and wants people to like her. Olivia doesn’t give a fresh fig if people like her or not. She’d rather hang with her poodle, Captain Haviland.

Haiku poems left next to the bodies? Without giving it away, is the killer that desperate to get poetry published? 

Dying to Be Published – there’s the title for the next book, har, har. Seriously though, this killer is skilled with words and s/he does like the publicity s/he receives when the media gets a whiff of the dark poetry. I wrote the poems because once upon a time, I dreamed of being a professional poet. (I know! Crazy! I’d make even less money than I do now.)

Did you really want a dog in the story, or are you shamelessly pandering to a cozy audience? If so, why not a cat? 

I’m an animal lover and would like to have a zoo in every book, but that could get distracting. I chose the poodle for its intelligence, loyalty, and adept sense of tracking. Many folks don’t realize that a poodle can be trained to do just about anything. I grew up with dogs and cats, but decided Olivia wouldn’t get along with cats (even though I’m owned by three of them). And my poodle doesn’t have a silly haircut or wear bows, I should add.

What's your favorite baseball team? 

The Durham Bulls.

Olivia joins Bayside Book Writers as a possible cure for Writer's Block. Are you a sufferer? What do you do to cure it? 

Long drives, prayers, margaritas.

Do you already know what's next for Olivia? Will tongues be wagging in Oyster Bay again soon? 

Olivia’s next adventure opens with a rather nasty surprise. She also receives an anonymous letter that will literally change her life. I hate to use a cliché (actually, I don’t, because the killers in the next book will use a great deal of them), but Olivia’s boat is about to be seriously rocked! She is going to have to make some tough choices in this book and I have a feeling readers will be emailing me about which man they want her to be with….stay tuned.

Were you named after Ellery Queen? 

Kind of. My mom loves Ellery Queen and got me reading the clever mysteries in high school. We still trade books but she doesn’t care for my supper club series because, and I quote, she “doesn’t want to read about diets. Just focus on the murders.” Yes, Mom. There isn’t a shred of dieting in A KILLER PLOT. 

Okay, I'll let Jeff out of the john long enough to give his report on the 

LP-to-Digital Conversion Project: Well, it's been a tough week (what with being locked in the bathroom--geez, E.J., you could have just ASKED!), and it consisted almost entirely of the work of Jim Seals and Dash Crofts. Seals and Crofts, whom I touched on briefly last week, were on a TV show for kids called Take A Giant Step back in the day, sort of as the house band. And in the interest of full disclosure, I actually auditioned for that show when I was, I think, 13 or 14.  As you might suspect, I was not cast for a role.

Nonetheless, I started listening to Seals and Crofts, who on the surface were the sort of sensitive singer/songwriter types populating the airways at the time, were also adding a few odd things to their music: First, there wasn't that much rock mandolin being played on records, and also, you didn't find that many songs singing the praises of the B'hai faith.
 

Now, I have nothing against B'hai (or any other religion), but looking (or listening) back, it's amazing how much I missed at that age. I was just focused on the harmonies (which were good) and the musicianship (also). Yeah, I knew they were going on about stuff, but let's face it, Seals and Crofts--chiefly Seals, who wrote most of the lyrics--were not Paul Simon, or even Paul Williams. There were clunkers galore in the lyrics, and I tended to gloss over them.

Heavy-handed? Um, yeah. And while it was nice that the boys found their road to spirituality, frankly, it didn't do much for me. But I kept buying their records until I got to college, when I got them for free as arts editor of my college newspaper.

Listening in 2010, there's not as much to command the attention as I'd hoped. The two best albums are Summer Breeze, with the big hit single of the same name, and its follow-up Diamond Girl, which has some of their best melodies and some of their worst lyrics (try listening to "Dust On My Saddle" without collapsing into laughter).

I'd write about other artists, but I swear, getting through the S&C catalog was all I could manage this week. There was this book coming out, see...

Getting it

Sometimes, as happened this month, as part of thanking me for a positive review (for some strange reason this never seems to happen with even slightly negative ones...) an author will make a point of saying how pleased he was that I "got it,” got what he was trying to do. Which needless to say always gives me a smile when it happens, since it’s effectively saying I’m a perceptive reviewer without making it embarrassingly direct personal flattery.

But it also means that others didn't, since the author thought it worth flagging (and some will even go on to say as much), which got me thinking a bit about the nature of reviews and what might be different about my approach.

I guess it starts with my belief that a review should be a review, not just an expanded cover blurb. Seems self evident, but an amazing number of reviews are little more. A review should definitely cover what the book's about, but in a broader sense—the cover blurb may say this is what the book's about, but the review recognizes that it's very much about this as well, or even really about that instead. And this description should merely be the bones on which you build the review, not its raison d'être. I have trouble with the synopsis part of reviewing most fiction, BTW, not because I can't put figure it out or put it into words, but because I hate so much to spoil any of the little epiphanies and surprises you're supposed to come across while reading that it can leave me a bit thin in how much of the plot I'm willing to actually uncover.

Obviously a review should also give as clear a thumbs up / thumbs down as possible, with the opinion supported by some evidence and examples from the text, especially when that final judement is about good / bad vs just I like / I don't like. Pet peeve—too many people insist a review is never more than one person's opinion and so is always a matter of I like / dislike vs good / bad. Sorry, but there really are objective things that can make a book good or badly done, and an honest reviewer can tell the difference between those and what is just a matter of personal preference. Some other people may love a bad book—I've thoroughly enjoyed a couple myself—but that doesn't change what it is. Anyway, back to the general thumbs up or down—it's important to remember that the reason you're doing this is to help the reader not to broadcast your opinion. I've seen too many reviews at both ends of the scale that runs from an unadorned I love this, without giving the reader any better reason to guess if they will as well, to a huge thumbs down based in little more than nitpicking that seems to be an end in itself rather than a fair-minded attempt at judgment.

But the main thing a review is supposed to do is deconstruct what it was like to read the book, offering up the reviewer's own experiences as reader, augmented by the use of some analytical skills to figure out why that's how the reading experience went. What did the book really say vs what the inside flap said it was all about. What preconceptions did it assume the reader would have and how are they supposed to play into things. How did the author say what he wanted to say—how effectively, in what style or manner, using what tricks and techniques, was it straightforward or elliptical, were things done more for effect than the needs of the story and how did that affect reading it (done for effect isn't always a bad thing and too straightforward can be a problem too. And so on.

I think it's through that deconstruction that I get the compliments for "getting it," since it's not something everyone does and it's all about getting beneath the surface of how and why the author did what he did, and how well it worked.

The Spelling Bee

Robin Agnew

Many moons ago, I dragged my very reluctant children to see the documentary Spellbound, which followed kids who end up at the National Spelling Bee.  To their extreme surprise, they loved the movie, an almost never to be repeated feat.  Usually I drag them to see a couple of the Oscar nominees and their verdict is, almost always, “snoozy.”  (This year they hated The Blind Side, Invictus, Up in the Air and The Hurt Locker).   That year, they actually watched the Bee with me, as they show the final couple of rounds live on national television.

 I am still a big “Bee” fan, despite having never entered one myself, and in fact, I have never read and studied the dictionary as most of the top kids do (for fun, apparently).  I love the spelling bee, because for one thing, it’s one of the few contests that celebrates intelligence.  The kids ask the word origin to help them figure out how to spell it.  That wouldn’t help me, but it seems to work for them.

And talk about grace under pressure!  Most of the kids are between 12 and 14 years old, the epitome of the word “awkward”, and yet they’re on national televison, cameras snapping away, in front of a ballroom full of people, functioning well enough to spell words most people have never even heard of.

 Also they exhibit sportsmanship.  When one of the final 10 is eliminated, the other kids give them a standing ovation, out of respect.  That’s a genuine respect for someone else’s achievement.  To show that kind of grace as a 12 or 14 year old is really something.

 This year one of the girls who was eliminated in the final round cried a little, but she was also mad at herself for making a mistake.  As much as any other kind of competitor, these kids seem to be pretty driven perfectionists.

 Usually the “Bee” telecast ends just as the winner is finally announced after a tense few rounds of perfect spelling from a couple of the kids.  This year they all started to fall early, and the final winner was crowned sooner than usual.  The suspense wasn’t as great as it has been for some of the other years, but there’s always drama.  The kids are so sweet, they’re so smart, and they try so hard.

This year’s winner, 14 year old Anamika Veeramani, spelled “stromuhr” to take the title.  If you are thinking that’s the spelling bee isn’t exciting, give it a try yourself next year.  You might just be knocked out by it.

 

 

Twitter vs. Facebook

Dana Kaye

Some people think Facebook is where it's at, others prefer to Tweet. Personally, if I wasn't a publicist, I wouldn't have a Facebook account, I would only Twitter. Why?

Top Ten Reasons I think Twitter is better than Facebook

1. It doesn't have all the fluff. Simple status updates are what I want, none of this mafia family/farmville BS.
2. It's more streamlined. With Facebook, you sometimes don't get all the status updates or the most recent ones. Twitter, you see everyone's updates right away.
3. Twitter forces people to get to the point. I see too many Facebook updates that look more like novellas and ramble on for paragraphs. Be terse!
4. Twitter seldom gets hacked. There are way too many Facebook viruses. Little tip, never click if a FB friend says they want to share a video with you.
5. It feels more instant. With Twitter, I feel like I'm receiving a stream of up to the minute information. With Facebook, I feel like I have to go hunting for it.
6. Twitter is 10x easier. FB can be difficult to navigate and utilize. With Twitter, you have 140 characters, that's it. No videos to upload, no pages to "Like", etc.
7. Facebook can be too big brother. Do you receive those privacy warnings? Scary...
8. Twitter has more applications and platforms than FB. Twitter has the capability to automatically update my account whenever there's a new blog post (like right now) and there are many social media utilization sites that only support twitter.
9. Twitter feels more like a blog. Facebook feels more like personal web pages. I look at blogs more than I look at webpages.
10. I think FB is reverting back to what it used to be: a way for families and friends to stay in touch with each other. Twitter feels more like a place to network and receive up to the minute information. I watch CNN and listen to NPR more than I call my grandma or BFF from high school.

President of the Facebook Fan Club? Have the blue Twitter bird tattooed on your lower back? Feel free to comment!

Affirmations

While waiting at LaGuardia for my flight home from BEA, I was playing around on Facebook. A friend of mine posted a link to what is now my new favorite YouTube video:

After quite a bit of LOLing, I realized that this girl was acting out the feelings I was having after a great BEA. Jason Pinter said this quite a bit better in his column at HuffPo, but for me, this year BEA was one big exercise in Affirmation.

First off, it was Tyrus's first year at the show as part of the Consortium pavillion. I honestly can't stress enough how fantastic it's been to work with Consortium. Their expertise, their willingness to answer silly questions, their focus on working with indie presses, and their engaging and interested sales force -- all of this and more are factors in Tyrus's successes so far. Ben and I certainly aren't publishing noobs, but knowing we have the backing and support of a crackerjack distributor has allowed us to focus our (harried) attentions to other areas of company development.

And add to that, we shared our booth this year with David Thompson of Busted Flush Press. The mystery community delights me time and time again with how open and supportive everyone is, and David is no exception. We're even partnering with him later this year, as we release the hardcover (and limited edition) of Reed Farrel Coleman's new Moe Prager mystery, Innocent Monster, and BFP releases the paperback. Sharing a booth ensured we had lots of let's-share-intel-and-strategies time with David, and I'm a nerd for that kind of thing.

Our booth looked good, too:

Overall, it was a fabulous show for Tyrus Books. We had great traffic at our booth, and got to reconnect with lots of old friends, agents, and other publishers and editors. (And I got to see my college roommate Maureen, who works for Workman. And they had baby chicks at the Workman booth, and I got to hold one! It peeped a lot and was adorable.) We also had some really, really interesting meetings and and planning sessions, the fruits of which I can't really tell you about yet, but BOY HOWDY are they awesome. And big. And EXCITING.

Not to mention, I got to eat this dessert at one point during the trip:

So while I didn't get to shake any super-famous hands, or collect any sought-after signatures (Dana did ask me to go with her to the Paul Auster signing, and I would have, but I'm still devastated that he signed the Polanski petition and so skipped that one), I did benefit from the overall feeling of awesomeness that you get after spending two solid days with 20,000+ other people who also love books. Working from my kitchen table most days can be kindof isolating -- which is good, when I have lots of manuscripts to read through, but, you know, it feels great to be at the center of it all sometimes.

(As an aside, I think I would go crazy working from home were in not for Twitter. Seriously. It's an immediate, constant stream of information, and it's a *wonderful* way to connect with Tyrus readers, librarians, and booksellers. I can not stress how important it is for Tyrus to be in close communication with readers, and Twitter is the easiest way by far to reach out and make connections.)

Even if you weren't able to make it to BEA, take a lesson from Jessica and her daily affirmation. It's ok to be amped up and excited, even if some mornings it's just you talking to your own reflection.

I like my authors! I like my job! I read some books! I read some more books! I like my coffee! I like to edit! I like my characters ... and my plots! I like my printers! I like sharks! I like my proofreaders! I like my interns! I like my reviews! I like my ponytail! I like my friends! I can do anything ... anything!

Networking and other vexed questions

If I’ve got it right, this blogging thing can work two ways: like a diary, telling anyone who’s interested about things I’ve done in the past few days; and as a means of blowing off steam about something I need to blow off steam about.

 

So how about if I kill both birds with a single slingshot?

 

I haven’t had a good rant about the trials and tribulations of marketing and promotion for small indie publishers recently – and very conveniently, a few days ago I went to a seminar for small indie publishers about promoting books on national radio.

 

It was surprisingly informative, both in the way the organisers intended and in other ways. The speaker was the head honcho of the production team of BBC Radio 4’s flagship daily arts programme, which like most publishing and media is based in London. The seminarees (is that a word?) came from about a dozen small indie publishers based in the north of England – which for non-Brit blog-followers means outside London, which might just as well mean on a different planet.

 

The first thing I learned was that a problem shared is a problem… well, shared. And we all had several problems in common. No money for a publicity department, so no mini-skirted publicists to lunch and charm producers, reviewers etc. Plenty of brilliant books, but no well-known top-selling authors to capture the media’s attention. No time or opportunity (or cash for train fare) to attend London-based networking events to make face-to-face contact with producers, reviewers etc.

 

The head honcho guy was sympathetic, and quick to assure us that a good press release was a more than adequate substitute for all the above. He even told us how to angle it – and I rather think he’ll be receiving about a dozen bright, eye-catching press releases in the near future, all telling him exactly what he said he wants to hear.

 

But will those press releases work as we want them to?

 

He was positive and supportive and encouraging about what we little guys try to do: push the boundaries a little, provide a platform for new writers, go in search of the next big thing which the top five publishers will ultimately pick up and run with – in other words, the really interesting stuff about publishing.

 

But somehow phrases like ‘sold fifty thousand copies in the first month’ and ‘previous career as a top sportsman’ kept coming up when he mentioned books they’d already covered on the programme. And of course they receive upwards of five hundred press releases a day, and they have to be very selective indeed about which ones to follow up.

 

So the jury’s still out. The general feeling seemed to be that you need the sales (or other high-profile hook) to get the coverage – and of course we need the coverage to get the sales.

 

We all made sure he went away with the name of our companies lodged in his mind, so if nothing else we achieved a tiny bit of the networking that still seems to be such a vital part of the promotion process.

 

We knew national media coverage is a precious commodity before the seminar began. When it ended we knew a little more about how to approach it. But I think we all went away feeling a little sad that though the guy was well-intentioned and sympathetic nothing much had really changed.

Names Have Been Changed to Protect the 8-Year-Olds

by Barbara Poelle

When I was eight years old, I was the secretary of the “We Hate Traci Bismark Club” ( Northeast Minneapolis Chapter). We would meet on Saturdays in Beth Brenden’s backyard fort and talk about how much we-surprise!-  hated Traci Bismark.  As the secretary, my job was to bring my notebook and my pencil with the fuzzy hair troll top and jot down the minutes of the meeting, which basically consisted of the horrible things that Traci had done or said to any of us that week, and our corresponding evil plans of revenge and retribution.  And then Beth’s mom would knock on the door and bring us fruit punch and cookies. (Incidentally, one of our revenge plans which I designed was akin to the old board game Mousetra, ending with Traci traped in a large cage. Hey, I wasn’t voted runner up for Young Inventor of the Year in my district for nothing.)

There were four of us in the WHTB club which worked out great as we each had an elected position. Beth was president, then Janelle Roth as vice president, then myself as secretary, then Carol Markowitz as Treasurer.

Oh, Carol.

All I can say, is no matter how awful Traci was to any of us, she was BRUTAL to Carol. Carol hadn’t quite shed her baby fat and had the athletic prowess of a banana slug. Traci worked Carol over like she was being paid to do it. She was like Simon Cowell in Oshbegosh.

The WHTB lasted only a few weeks, because I left for summer camp, and then Traci’s mom moved her to private school because she was “not being challenged enough” in the public school system. (See? NOW don’t you want to join? The membership fee is $.50 and you have to bring a snack to share.)  Suffice to say it felt soooo good to be a part of a group where you could share embarrassing stories and find comfort, solace, and a possible solution to your woes.  Everybody needs one of those.

Especially when you are a writer.

I cannot stress the importance of critique groups enough. They are your first readers, your second eyes, and your third line of defense.  They will be there to cut the gum out of your hair or tell you when you have a “kick me” sign stuck to your back. There are so many fabulous on line groups as well as local chapters just waiting to elect you treasurer. Your local RWA or Sisters in Crime chapter is a great way to start. You don’t have to face the Traci Bismarks of the world alone, and you shouldn’t.

Oh, and years later I learned Traci had run off with some guy when she was 17 and her mother had disowned her. It looks like the private school wasn’t very challenging either….