I know I’ve blogged about this before but it seems to be getting worse. Here’s an article from The Phoenix, Aesthetic genius: Why can’t more writers be smart enough to be beautiful, handsome, or at least cute . It's interesting, although this author seems to think I should feel sorry for these attractive young Ivy League writers because people think they're getting such a huge push just because they're attractive young Ivy League writers...
My thanks to Sphinx Ink for the link.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Katrina Plus Two
I’d planned to write about New Orleans today. But then I got together with a group of writer friends for a Katrina Survivors Anniversary Lunch, and as I drove home (actually, RODE home—I still haven’t replaced my car) past the usual miles and miles of empty storefronts, of boarded up houses and weed-grown empty lots, I realized, I can’t write about New Orleans today. So I’m going to write about Katrina and me.
I had an epiphany of sorts this past weekend. Spurred on by the imminent ninetieth birthday party we’ve been planning for my mother, Steve and I spent the weekend painting the upstairs hall and getting ready to lay flooring. If you’re wondering why we keep doing this work ourselves, the simple reason is that it’s impossible to hire anyone for small-scale projects here in Katrinaville. We were part of the vanguard of residents who returned just days after the storm. Faced with the choice of waiting until construction crews filtered into the city or starting to rebuild ourselves, we set to work. As a result, we were one of the first families in the neighborhood to move back into our house. Also as a result, we’re still not finished rebuilding (along with hundreds of thousands of other people).
I was pondering this irony—and the looming two-year anniversary—last Sunday as I caulked crown molding and sanded trim. That’s when it hit me. You see, there was a time when I was so caught up in Katrina and what it had done to the city and to my family that I couldn’t see beyond it. Yet at some point in the past six months, without my even realizing it, something shifted. At some point, all of my experiences in those dark, terrible days settled down to become a part of who I now am.
When I started this blog nearly a year and a half ago, I blogged more about Katrina than about writing. An old friend stumbled across one of my early posts and quoted me that saying, ‘What doesn’t destroy you makes you stronger.’ I told him I didn’t believe him. I might still be alive, yet I felt diminished, weakened. But you know what? He was right. Thanks to Katrina, bitch that she was, I am stronger today. I say that not with arrogance, but with a kind of wonder.
Don’t get me wrong. I still wish with all my heart the storm had never happened. I still mourn my city, the loved ones I lost, the way of life we all seem to have lost. But I now know that I can watch my house destroyed and build it again with my own hands. I have found a new peace and joy in yoga and meditation. And I now appreciate as never before what incredible children I have and what a wonderful man I married barely twenty months before a hurricane turned our lives upside down.
I know I am one of the lucky ones. There are many who suffered so much they will never recover from what this storm did to them. Ironically, that realization of how lucky, lucky, lucky I am is another gift from Katrina.
A Bookseller's Thoughts on the Publishing Industry
Indie bookstore owner Jim Huang has a long, interesting post on the publishing industry at his blog The Mystery Company. Depressing but insightful. I hear this sort of thing often from writers, but Jim brings a bookseller's perspective to the discussion.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Readers Guides
My publisher recently suggested I draw up a Readers Guide for WHY MERMAIDS SING, my next Sebastian St. Cyr mystery. As you know, Readers Guides are those lists of questions intended for book clubs.
I belonged to a book club once—for two and a half months. We read THE INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST and THE QUINCUX. I struggled manfully (womanfully?) through both. I forget now what the next month’s selection was, but I decided the book club scene was not for me and withdrew with politely murmured excuses about time. We weren’t a particularly organized book club, so we didn’t use Readers Guides. If we had, I would have left after two and a half minutes.
Nevertheless, having received my assignment (publisher’s suggestions are generally treated like commands), I Googled “Readers Guides” and set about looking at some examples. Yikes. (If you yawned through any college lit class, you can skip these examples and go straight to the next paragraph.) Consider this from THE LIFE OF PI: “Yann Martel sprinkles the novel with italicized memories of the "real" Pi Patel and wonders in his author's note whether fiction is ‘the selective transforming of reality, the twisting of it to bring out its essence.’ If this is so, what is the essence of Pi?” Oh my God! Then there’s this example from THE DUEL: “Like much of Russian literature from the nineteenth century, The Duel deals explicitly with ideas and ideologies and how they function in the ‘real world’ depicted in the novel. Chekhov’s story plots the conflict between two protagonists who espouse antithetical worldviews: Von Koren and his Social Darwinism, in which only the fittest should survive, and Laevsky and his “Hamletism” (“My indecision reminds of Hamlet”), that is, his tendency to blame his own hypocrisy and moral turpitude on the corrupting influences of his time and civilization. Identify and discuss some of the passages in which the two characters discuss their own and, more important, each other’s worldviews. In what ways do these two protagonists embody their self-professed beliefs?” Okay, maybe Chekov was a bad choice. I keep looking, and find this: “I’m Not Scared is preceded by an epigraph by Jack London: ‘That much he knew. He had fallen into darkness. And at the instant he knew, he ceased to know.’ Why has Niccolò Ammaniti chosen to begin his novel with this quote? How does it illuminate what happens in the story? What is the literal and symbolic significance, in terms of the novel, of falling into darkness?”
Are you running screaming for the door yet?
These are the kind of questions that make college kids think they hate fiction. But I tried. I tried to come up with questions that wouldn’t make a reader’s eyes glaze over, that would perhaps stimulate some positive thinking about my book. I sent them to my editor this morning. Her response? “If they remind you of an English class then maybe they’re boring questions. Try to come up with the kinds of questions a group of women sitting around with coffee and cookies would like to discuss, something that relates the story to their own lives.”
Um. Okay. How about… “How would you react if you found a partially butchered body with the severed hoof of a goat in its mouth? Compare and contrast your reaction with Sebastian’s.” Or maybe… “How would you feel if you discovered you were sleeping with your sister?”
Somebody just shoot me now.
I belonged to a book club once—for two and a half months. We read THE INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST and THE QUINCUX. I struggled manfully (womanfully?) through both. I forget now what the next month’s selection was, but I decided the book club scene was not for me and withdrew with politely murmured excuses about time. We weren’t a particularly organized book club, so we didn’t use Readers Guides. If we had, I would have left after two and a half minutes.
Nevertheless, having received my assignment (publisher’s suggestions are generally treated like commands), I Googled “Readers Guides” and set about looking at some examples. Yikes. (If you yawned through any college lit class, you can skip these examples and go straight to the next paragraph.) Consider this from THE LIFE OF PI: “Yann Martel sprinkles the novel with italicized memories of the "real" Pi Patel and wonders in his author's note whether fiction is ‘the selective transforming of reality, the twisting of it to bring out its essence.’ If this is so, what is the essence of Pi?” Oh my God! Then there’s this example from THE DUEL: “Like much of Russian literature from the nineteenth century, The Duel deals explicitly with ideas and ideologies and how they function in the ‘real world’ depicted in the novel. Chekhov’s story plots the conflict between two protagonists who espouse antithetical worldviews: Von Koren and his Social Darwinism, in which only the fittest should survive, and Laevsky and his “Hamletism” (“My indecision reminds of Hamlet”), that is, his tendency to blame his own hypocrisy and moral turpitude on the corrupting influences of his time and civilization. Identify and discuss some of the passages in which the two characters discuss their own and, more important, each other’s worldviews. In what ways do these two protagonists embody their self-professed beliefs?” Okay, maybe Chekov was a bad choice. I keep looking, and find this: “I’m Not Scared is preceded by an epigraph by Jack London: ‘That much he knew. He had fallen into darkness. And at the instant he knew, he ceased to know.’ Why has Niccolò Ammaniti chosen to begin his novel with this quote? How does it illuminate what happens in the story? What is the literal and symbolic significance, in terms of the novel, of falling into darkness?”
Are you running screaming for the door yet?
These are the kind of questions that make college kids think they hate fiction. But I tried. I tried to come up with questions that wouldn’t make a reader’s eyes glaze over, that would perhaps stimulate some positive thinking about my book. I sent them to my editor this morning. Her response? “If they remind you of an English class then maybe they’re boring questions. Try to come up with the kinds of questions a group of women sitting around with coffee and cookies would like to discuss, something that relates the story to their own lives.”
Um. Okay. How about… “How would you react if you found a partially butchered body with the severed hoof of a goat in its mouth? Compare and contrast your reaction with Sebastian’s.” Or maybe… “How would you feel if you discovered you were sleeping with your sister?”
Somebody just shoot me now.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
When Bad Things Happen to Good Writers, Part Two
Our second tale involves a writer done dirty by a bookstore. That’s right, a bookstore. You know, one of those huge bookstore chains that can make or break a writer. We won’t say which one.
First, a bit of backstory: Our writer—we’ll call her Honey—is the author of (among other things) two historical mysteries. Her mysteries were originally published several years ago in hardcover for an unusually large advance. Unfortunately, the books didn’t come close to earning out that advance and, rather than print the third book in the series, the publisher dropped Honey. Not all that uncommon, you say, and she did have those two fat advances to assuage her grief. But wait—it gets worse.
Flash forward a few years to the summer of 2007. Honey’s publisher has decided to reissue Honey’s historical mysteries in trade paperback with a planned release in the fall. Now this is a Very Lucky Break, almost unheard of in the industry. And then something even better happens—a Mega Bookstore Chain contacts Honey’s publisher and suggests they release her first book early, in August, to coincide with the release of the latest Jane Austen flick. You see, the MBC has a grandiose plan to feature Honey’s book on a table in the front of all their stores under a big sign that says, “If you like Jane Austen, you’ll love these books,” and they put in a nice big order for Honey’s trade paperback. With visions of high sales dancing in her head, Honey also begins nourishing hopes that her publisher will, finally, pick up the third book in her historical mystery series. Every author’s dream, right? Wrong.
Two weeks before Honey’s book comes out, the MBC decides—for reasons unknown—to scrap their plans for the Jane Austen table and they cancel their big orders for Honey’s books. But by this time, 10,000 copies of the book have already been printed and over 1/3 of those were destined for the MBC. Guess what this does to Honey’s “Numbers”?
What do these two very real stories have in common? Both feature writers tantalized by a chance at success only to be crushingly disappointed and let down in the end by people they trusted. This happens in the publishing industry so much, it’s scary. I suppose the lesson here is an old one—It ain’t over till the fat lady sings, or Don’t count your chickens before they hatch—you know the drill. But it doesn’t hurt to repeat the warning.
Writer beware.
First, a bit of backstory: Our writer—we’ll call her Honey—is the author of (among other things) two historical mysteries. Her mysteries were originally published several years ago in hardcover for an unusually large advance. Unfortunately, the books didn’t come close to earning out that advance and, rather than print the third book in the series, the publisher dropped Honey. Not all that uncommon, you say, and she did have those two fat advances to assuage her grief. But wait—it gets worse.
Flash forward a few years to the summer of 2007. Honey’s publisher has decided to reissue Honey’s historical mysteries in trade paperback with a planned release in the fall. Now this is a Very Lucky Break, almost unheard of in the industry. And then something even better happens—a Mega Bookstore Chain contacts Honey’s publisher and suggests they release her first book early, in August, to coincide with the release of the latest Jane Austen flick. You see, the MBC has a grandiose plan to feature Honey’s book on a table in the front of all their stores under a big sign that says, “If you like Jane Austen, you’ll love these books,” and they put in a nice big order for Honey’s trade paperback. With visions of high sales dancing in her head, Honey also begins nourishing hopes that her publisher will, finally, pick up the third book in her historical mystery series. Every author’s dream, right? Wrong.
Two weeks before Honey’s book comes out, the MBC decides—for reasons unknown—to scrap their plans for the Jane Austen table and they cancel their big orders for Honey’s books. But by this time, 10,000 copies of the book have already been printed and over 1/3 of those were destined for the MBC. Guess what this does to Honey’s “Numbers”?
What do these two very real stories have in common? Both feature writers tantalized by a chance at success only to be crushingly disappointed and let down in the end by people they trusted. This happens in the publishing industry so much, it’s scary. I suppose the lesson here is an old one—It ain’t over till the fat lady sings, or Don’t count your chickens before they hatch—you know the drill. But it doesn’t hurt to repeat the warning.
Writer beware.
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