storytelling

It occurs to me that the first bone of contention in getting my fictional fiction convention going is who gets to attend. Only those who have published? The aspiring authors will be put out, of course.

So here's my fix: every published author who is attending may, if he or she choses, nominate an aspiring but not-yet published author to attend. Gotta have a nomination to attend. Guidelines that the published author will need to take into consideration: you should be familiar with the work of the aspiring author you nominate, and find potential in that work. And, no remuneration can change hands for the nomination. Because you know, this is going to be good, this convention. The stuff of legends. And everybody will go home feeling ready to write and positive and up, and nobody will be depressed or envious.

Hey. It's my fictional fiction authors convention, I get to make the rules.

And as long as I'm babbling to myself about this, a few more bits and pieces: no airport hotels for this convention, okay? And no official signings. People who get drunk and go skinny dipping in the hotel pool: fine. People who get drunk and confess secret crushes: dandy. People who do either of the above without getting drunk: even better.

So there you go. Sign up, right here.

Posted by at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Question One: Why is it novelists don't have conventions? Podiatrists do, and telemarketers, and real estate agents. We don't.

I don't want to hear about RWA, okay? I don't belong and anyway, that particular convention wouldn't meet my requirements. What I want is a convention that:

1. includes authors across genres (including the literary genre) -- but only authors. No agents, editors, publishers, critics -- unless they have published some kind of fiction.
2. is three days long
3. meets in interesting places, like New Orleans and New York and Vancouver and Hawaii. Eventually it would go international: Vienna, Edinburgh, Tokyo, Stockholm.
4. has interesting panels on stuff like marketing and advertising and business matters as well as negotiating with agents and editors -- but also matters of craft and research
5. doesn't have keynotes. Keynotes are always counterproductive. has no one-person gigs. everything is in panels of two to six presenters.
6. doesn't have a class system. Stephen King came come if he wants, but he's not going to automatically get to sit in the front row. Same is true of John Updike.
7. doesn't give out awards of any type. No contests, no fashion shows. Nobody comes onto the stage in a convertible. Nobody gets a crown.
8. encourages constructive criticism.
9. provides meeting space for those genres that want them. The Erotica people can meet and the Historical people and anybody can go to any genre meeting that interests them.
10. The main attraction is just having a chance to interact with other authors and talk about the challenges.

So why doesn't this kind of thing exist? Nobody wants the trouble of organizing it? We're too tribal and exclusionary by nature? We'd kill each other? We'd figure out how to organize into a force that publishers would have to take seriously?

Maybe we don't do it because we're worried about facing each other, but I think it would be a good thing. Once a year. Three days. I know there would be major questions to work out, but I think it would be worth it.

Question Two: Those of you who speak French -- and I mean, really speak it, the kind of French that people use with each other when they're arguing or falling in love or half drunk. Colloquial French. I don't need book French, okay?

If you have a command of that kind of French, tell me, how would you say something like this:

What's the matter with him?

He got stuck in the belly.

Question Three: I forget. Nevermind, I'll post it when I remember.

Posted by at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

So you want me to talk about books I've read. Okay.

First, in the lower part of the right hand column, I've added a recommended list which will keep growing as I think of things to add to it.

And now, about Scott Turow's Ordinary Heroes.

I like Turow's work. He's thoughtful and he knows his way around a sentence; he tells a great story. This latest novel is a bit of a departure for him. Most of his stuff is about the law, from one angle or another (he is, in fact, a lawyer). This is a historical novel that tries to do a lot of different things at once, a lot of which is still about the law.

The main character is Stewart Dubinsky, a disenchanted 55-year-old crime reporter, divorced, no longer employed. His father is recently deceased. The biggest single fact about his father's life is that he married a woman he helped liberate from the extermination camps when he was in the Army at the end of WWII. Stewart's mother is still alive. He's helping her sort through his father's effects when he finds a bundle of letters that set him off on a journey to discover the truth about his father's past. Because, to Stewart's surprise and disquiet, it seems as though his father -- who had been a JAG lawyer -- had not only jilted a fiancee left behind in order to marry Stewart's mother, but at the time he had been in the middle of a trial, namely, his own courtmartial. This goes against everything Stewart believes to be true about his father.

The story is told in a combination of approaches. Stewart's recollections, his narrative as he pursues various lines of inquiry; the document his father wrote, his own story of what happened during he war, and the crime he was accused of committing; the lawyer who defended him -- 96 years old, living in a nursing home and willing to tell Stewart what he knows.

The novel is, you can tell from just this much, philosophical in approach. The nature of good and evil, right and wrong, ethics, depravity. The way people cope -- or fail to cope -- with the burdens of the past. There is a great story here, and Turow's voice is as clear and compelling as ever. But I had some trouble with this novel, anyway.

I found myself putting it down for long periods -- days, even two weeks at one point -- and reluctant to pick it back up again. This is not a good sign. It means that the narrative voice has failed to really capture my attention, and I know why that is, in this case.

I never warmed to Stewart. I didn't much like him to start with, and as the story moved along and his own ethics began to give way in the face of his enormous curiosity about his father, I liked him even less. Also, there were also some plot twists which I found to be heavy handed and even cliched, which I won't go into here for fear of giving too much away.

So, did I like this novel? Not as much as I hoped I would. It's got a lot going for it, and if you absolutely love any story having to do with WWII in Europe and its aftermath, it may be just right for you. But I couldn't get comfortable with Stewart.

Posted by at 10:28 PM | Permalink

We are finally getting high speed DSL, out here in the boonies. No more ISDN. High speed, wireless DSL... I am so happy.

I am such a geek.

Posted by at 10:05 PM | Permalink

By way of Riemanna, here's Sandra at Tropic of Fiction, who uses her weblog to post bits from what she's reading. I always mean to do this but then I'm caught up in the book and it doesn't happen.

Lovely short excerpts, kept me reading for a long time. Made me want to read Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys again (this is one of Sandra's favorite bits, and mine, too):

"Luckily for me an absolutely superb idea for a novel soon followed--three brothers in a haunted Pennsylvania small town are born, grow up, and die...I had to much to write: too many fine and miserable buildings to construct and streets to name and clock towers to set chiming, too many characters to raise up from the dirt like flowers whose petals I peeled down to the intricate frail organs within, too many terrible genetic and fiduciary secrets to dig up and bury and dig up again, too many divorces to grant, heirs to disinherit, trysts to arrange, letters to misdirect into evil hands, innocent children to slay with rheumatic fever, women to leave unfulfilled and hopeless, men to drive to adultery and theft, fires to ignite at the hearts of ancient houses. It was about a single family and it stood, as of that morning, at two thousand six hundred and eleven pages, each of them revised and rewritten a half dozen times...I was nowhere near the end."

Because really, as odd as this sounds? It feels like this sometimes.

Posted by at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Sometime ago I posted about eggcorns and mondegreens, and I'm going to recycle bits of that post here.

I guess the easiest way to define 'eggcorn' might be simply: a reinterpretation of any given word that is first heard and assimilated on the basis of the spoken language alone. "Eggcorn" for "acorn" is an example; "wheelbarrel" for "wheelbarrow" is another. This is related, of course, to the mondegreen phenomenon where whole phrases are misheard and recast ("... and deliver us some e-mail ..." instead of "... and deliver us from evil ...").

Mark Liberman from Language Log quotes Geoff Pullum on eggcorns:

It would be so easy to dismiss eggcorns as signs of illiteracy and stupidity, but they are nothing of the sort. They are imaginative attempts at relating something heard to lexical material already known. One could say that people should look things up in dictionaries, but what should they look up? If you look up eggcorn you'll find it isn't there. Now what? And you can't look up everything; sometimes you think you know what you just heard and you don't need to look it up.

I find that in writing dialogue, I am sometimes tempted to use eggcorns. There is something endearing about them. My father, whose first language was Italian, had a lot of eggcorns: Mr. Lanious for 'miscelleanous' as in I put aside forty dollars for Mr. Lanious this month; doggydog for 'dog eat dog' as in It's a doggydog work out there, you better watch out. I'm telling you. Children produce a lot of eggcorns in the process of language acquisition, and again when they are taught to recite prayers, songs or other material by rote without explanation of meanings that might be beyond them. ('Jose, can you see?' for 'Oh say can you see?')

You run into eggcorns everywhere. Just yesterday I ran into an interesting one. I was reading antebellum letters on the subject of slavery, and I came across this: "a word to the wise is a nuft."

That is certainly an eggcorn.

I use letters a lot in my novels. Letters and newspaper ads and other bits and pieces that bring the time and place more into focus. I love the idea of these supplements to the narrative being lifted out of the novel. Imagine this: the dozen or so letters from one character to another are handwritten on aged paper, folded as was common in the early 1800s, and stuck in the pages of the novel to be unfolded and read when you come to that part of the story. The newspaper articles and ads also printed on newsstock and tucked into the pages at the right spot.

This is, of course, a fantasy of mine. I don't know how I'd ever talk my publisher into something that would clearly be a huge expense, and I also am not sure how it would go over with the readers. Maybe I'm in the minority on this one. Maybe only those of us who adore the Jolly Postman books would take note.

The Jolly Postman, in case you have not had the joy, is a book for children (one of a series of books, actually) in which some of the pages have been turned into envelopes, and inside the envelopes are letters to take out and read. For example, from Little Red Riding Hood's lawyers to the Big Bad Wolf, demanding that he cease and desist.

My point (and I do have one) is that for me personally it's easy to get caught up in the artifacts. I love the idea of a multimedia novel, but the closest I can get is to give the readers letters and newspaper bits and broadsides in the traditionally typeset way.

But here's the issue: when one character writes to another and I include the letter in the novel, I face the fact that people wrote differently in 1814. Spelling, punctuation, capitalization, all these things were more highly variable than they are now, in the age of dictionaries and the Punctuation Police. So do I reproduce letters exactly, or do I recast them for a modern audience?

I recast them, mostly. It's what feels right to do, because otherwise the content of the letter becomes less important than the way it's presented. If, for example, a character writes this:

We are all Wel and in high good Spirits since News of the end of the War reached us. Gabriel continues coffing despite my Best efforts but then the child won't keep a Hatt on his Head for Love or Mony. In his case a Word to the Wise is most certainly not a Nuft.

The fictive trance that is so important to keeping the reader with the novel will be disrupted. What to us looks like odd spelling and punctuation and the eggcorn "a Nuft" will strike most readers as funny, and they'll step back from the story.

So to my list of things to avoid in the way characters express themselves in dialogue and writing:

adverbs;
dialectal (or supposedly dialectal) spellings;
info-dumping;
anachronisms;
the overuse of quotation marks and (dog forbid) exclamation points;
eggcorns and mondegreens;
contemporaneous spellings and punctuation.

Posted by at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Where to start. A list of impressions, I think: surprising, visually stunning, just the right combination of sweet and cynical, impossibly romantic, wonderfully cast, and the big one: Deborah Moggach, who wrote this screenplay pulled off what I thought to be impossible. She managed to get the essence of this much loved novel into two hours. And she did it with flair.

Things missing? Of course. Tons of them when you have to conflate a story into two hours, but the only thing I personally really missed was this: Miss Bingley's final discussion with Darcy, when she knows herself bested. That scene I want back. I'm wondering if they filmed it, and, if I'm very good, if they might include it in the DVD version.

Please, please do.

The Austen purists won't like this, because they can't. Okay, fine. But I loved it for the period detail and beautiful photography and for the performances. I was really surprised and pleased by Keira Knightly, who up until this point hasn't exactly wowed me. And I confess that I was very doubtful about Matthew MacFadyen as Darcy, but you know what? He's really good. There's a complexity to the way he plays Darcy that really struck a chord. Better than you-know-who? Maybe. I'm going to have to see this again and think about that, but my first impression: possibly better. Believe it or not.

The most important thing is, in the end, the chemistry between Elizabeth and Darcy, and it's here. The romance is carefully constructed and completely effective. I found myself holding my breath now and then, which means I've been taken in by the story and the characters.

I love the six hour version of P&P;, don't get me wrong, but this shorter take has a lot going for it. Dame Judy Dench brings a subtlety to Lady Catherine that up until now has been missing. Every actress who has played her has gone to an extreme, but here she's got an icy edge that elevates the whole performance. Also, in the BBC version, Mrs Bennett is played to such an extreme that it borders on caricature, but in this version again the performances are finer tuned, more subtle, and more believable.

Also, I was struck by the period detail. Of course the BBC version was accurate, but it was also somewhat sterile. This version has a much more gritty feel to it. Country balls are crowded and noisy and actually look like fun; you can see why a fifteen year old would be wild about going. The Bennetts, who are not rich, live in a house that could use paint, and they live close together. The farm is right there, a part of their daily existance. An Austen scholar complained about a short scene where Mr. Bennett is walking along behind a boar. Boars have testicals, yes. But this was not some kind of reference to Darcy, it was more a reminder that the facts of life, while not openly discussed, were more visible to young women like the Bennetts than we'd like to think. They were physical beings.

From the negative remarks I've heard from purists, I had the idea that this version of P&P; was going to go where nobody else has ever gone in terms of sex, but, not true. There is some very charged, very lovely touching of faces, but we do not see one kiss until the principals are married. And even then, it's more about love than it is about sex, and it's perfectly done.

There were a few scenes that felt too clipped or rushed, sure. But overall? A wonderful film, a great adaptation. My highest recommendation.

Posted by at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

The logical, very resourceful Mathematician is currently in England visiting his parents. He'll be back Monday, but in the meantime it's up to me to remember to do the things on his list. For example, on Thursday evenings (even if the Thursday is a holiday) the trash has to be taken up the long, curved, steep driveway to the road.

Yesterday, Thanksgiving, the Girlchild and I went to have dinner with the Usual Suspects, dearly loved friends, as close as any family. We had a great dinner and talked and had our usual arguments:

E.R. has jumped the shark!
You can't say that, you've never watched it.
I can say it, I know a shark when I see one.
Hey, you know that mechanical shark business on Lost?
Wait, we're still dealing with the non-existant E.R. shark.

Note: no car accidents of any kind in this story.

Then I puttered for a while, watched some television, sewed. At 9:15 I remembered the trash, so I went off and did that.

You know it's the end of November, but the temperature was about 55 F, and it had stopped raining. So the dogs came out with me and I trudged my way up the driveway, thinking, as I always do, how very dark it is on our road. No streetlights out here in the county. I had to guess about where to put the trashcan in the dark, and then I stood there looking at the house. Lights on in the kitchen and hall, garage door open.

All the doors locked.

I went sprinting down the driveway hoping I was wrong, but no. In my zeal to balance out the Girlchild's oh-so-casual attitude toward locking up the house, I had gone to the other extreme. Door from the garage into the house: locked. Front door: locked. Back doors: locked. locked. Car: need you ask? Locked. Windows, locked.

The dogs were standing by the front door looking at me expectantly. I have no phone, no flashlight, no keys. No jacket. No umbrella. Some place or another there's a hidden key, but after fifteen miinutes I give up trying to (a) remember where and (b) find it in the dark.

Time to go for a walk over to the neighbor's place. Down the narrow, very dark, pitch black, one lane road. Of course, the neighbors aren't there. They've gone away for the holiday weekend. I'm thinking, I see lights! Down a ways, lights!

By this time my puppies have abandoned me and gone back to wait by the front door. I walk along, focused on the lights... which turn out to be driveway lights, left on because, yes, those neighbors were away, too. In fact, to cut this long story shorter, I walked more than a half mile down the narrow dark road in a sleeveless blouse -- and now it was raining again-- looking for a neighbor, and found: none. Not one of the house occupied. I stood in the middle of the street and yelled HEEEELLLLLLOOOOOO until my voice went hoarse. Nothing.

Finally I turned around and went back home, by now soaked, and of course it's still dark. Did I mention we have coyotes and yes, cougars? The puppies were glad to see me. I was glad to see them. I stood and thought for a minute, went into the garage, came out with a big heavy shovel, and broke the window into my study, which is nearest the front door.

A double hung window isn't all that easy to break, it turns out. I had to swing that shovel like Ernie Banks. When it finally gave, the glass flew about ten feet in every direction. However, I was able to flip the lock, open the lower window, and climb in.

At which point I went around turning on all the lights and opening all the locks.

Then I made some phone calls. I called the Mathematician in England and asked him why we live on a long dark road where not one family cooks their own damned turkey dinner, and how quickly could we move into town? Because you know, this rural dark winding lane thing, it's old. I'm a city girl. I grew up in Chicago. I require street lights. My circadian cycle goes wonky without the gentle prodding of the electric company.

The Mathematician listened for a while, made calm noises, told me I was okay now, and then said: sounds like a full fledged panic attack.

Panic attack. Well, yes. Okay. Panic attack, I had one of those, I'll admit it. I am serotoninly challenged. And wouldn't it be strange if I hadn't had an attack? If I had said, oh never mind, I'll sleep on the floor in the garage and look, here's an old newspaper I can use as a blanket? Wouldn't that be more worrisome?

Of course, said the Mathematician, of course.

Then I called Penny and went through the whole thing again. And so then the Girlchild came home after all, because apparently Penny told her I was still in the grips of a panic attack, and she was going to come out here, at which point the Girlchild jumped in her car instead and came home. So, you know, points for that.

You've been waiting so patiently for the punch line. It's coming now.

The Girlchild and I go to lie down and talk, which we often do, with the puppies and lots of good blankets and the lights low. And I tell her the whole story, and she makes all the right noises and says all the right things, and I'm feeling much more ... steady. Really, I'm starting to get my equilibrium back. And so I tell the story one more time, with feeling, to get it out of my system. The utter dark, the lack of any way at all to even see the driveways that lead to houses, the lights that mocked, yes: mocked my increasingly tenuous grasp on calm. Light! Nobody home!

Feeling much better, really. And the Girlchild says, in a calm, loving tone: Mom, isn't there a phone in the garage?

Yes. Yes, now that you mention it. There is a phone in the garage. An old phone that we never use, but is there, hooked up, for... emergencies. Hanging there on the wall. While I was inching my way through the dark and wet, the phone was hanging there minding its own business. How, I'm asking myself, did I forget the phone?

I recall the Mathematician's tone of voice, the panic attack comment. So that's what he meant. HE remembered the phone, but was afraid to remind me at that point. You see? He's not so dumb. The Girlchild reminded me only after a full hour of calm talk.

And then, following her revelation: a half hour of hysterical laughter.

This morning I made the necessary phone calls to have the window replaced. I talked to my Mathematician, and we discussed the Emergency Phone That I Somehow Just Forgot. I wondered out loud if I should talk to my doctor about my medications. He kept silent on that topic. I picked up glass and vacuumed and picked up more glass. A friend came to measure the window and tape it up and I vacuumed again.

Now I feel as though I've run a marathon, and I'm wondering if going to sleep at one in the afternoon would be a reasonable thing.

Panic takes a lot out of a girl.

Posted by at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (1)

At crimefictionblog there's a post about what constitutes a good read. The conclusion:

Bottom line, when you're talking about genre fiction, the book has to be entertaining. These are stories we read to be entertained. Genre fiction can educate, illuminate, enlighten, and all the rest, but above all it must entertain. Otherwise, it fails.

1. It seems to me that 'entertaining' is another way of saying that story comes first, and will always be most important. A good story is what the average reader wants. A really good story can make the reader overlook all kinds of writerly infelicities.

2. The distinction made in the crimfictionblog post between literary fiction and genre fiction is (in my view of things) an artificial one. Literary fiction is just another genre, with its own set of expectations and history and intended audience. Some people would argue that the literary genre is inherently more worthwhile or better than the other genres, but in the end, that's subjective.

Question: Is story less important in the scheme of things within the literary genre?

Answer: The literati like to say that Character is All, and All Things Derive from Character. But you know what? This is a fashion, and like all fashions it will eventually change. My own position is that even if you put characterization as the top priority (for the literary genre), the ability to really build and expand on character is in turn dependent on the story in which the character exists.

So, my conclusion: story comes first, regardless of the genre.

Posted by at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The hardest part about getting near the end of a novel is when all the threads start to come together and you've got multiple plots vying for the upper hand. Characters pushing their way to the forefront. Look HERE! HERE! Shooting off guns to get your attention, generally misbehaving.

The easiest thing about getting toward the end of a novel is when all the threads start to come together and things move fast and then faster and then break into a gallop and you're having trouble keeping up with things, character flinging themselves across the page, sprudling out dialogue faster than you can type it.

Cue the Dickens quote here.

Posted by at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I can hardly believe this, but the Cherry Ames novels are back in print. Or at least some of them are.

I have to confess that when I saw this cover for the first time in many years, I had something close to a panic reaction. As if I had run into an old friend who had supposedly died years ago. Shock and a sense of disconnection and then a deep, abiding sense of joy.

Now you're thinking how really strange I am, but you have to understand what these books meant to me when I was ten years old. Things were really tough at home, and reading was my primary escape. I read my way through the school library and the public library, and then I came across this book, which was the first in a series. At the time I did't realize how old the story was -- it was first published in 1943 -- but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Because the character and the setting struck such a chord that I was immediately drawn in.

The first novel starts with Cherry Ames going off to nursing school, aged 18. She leaves home and starts a career. She lives in a community of other nurses, she goes to classes and works in the wards at the hospital. She struggles, and succeeds.

Cherry Ames was responsible for my early -- and long lived -- intention to go into medicine. Until I was eighteen, there was no doubt in my mind that I would be a nurse. This wasn't adolescent dreaminess, either. I researched nursing schools, wrote away for catalogues, filled out applications. I looked at three year hospital nursing programs in Boston, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles. I was dead serious.

Clearly things got in the way and my plans changed, but I have always felt a strong affinity to the nursing professions. I think because somehow or another, I used Cherry Ames as a projection device. I projected myself out of a bad situation at home and into an orderly, structured community of women caring for the sick and (in my adolescent understanding) each other. Nuns, but without the god stuff. Doctors instead of priests. A perfect goal for a kid like me. Between the ages of 10 and 12 I saved every penny, and bought all of the Cherry Ames books. There were close to thirty, I believe.

I don't have to re-read them now to know that they were rife with sexism, the doctor as god, the nurse as servant. At that age, in 1967, the produce of an italian American home and a Catholic upbringing, what else was there? Then it didn't matter. Now it probably would, so I won't reread them. I'd like to keep the good memories and feelings. Cherry Ames stories were something I did for myself as a kid, something positive and uplifting. I want to hold on to that.

There's a part of me that is pretty much convinced that in a parallel universe, I am nursing somewhere. Maybe teaching in a nursing school. Maybe in midwifery. I like the idea. I'm holding on to it. If I had the time and money, maybe I'd go to nursing school at age fifty, catch up with Cherry Ames after all these years.

There's a Cherry Ames website, which has summaries of all the books, their settings and plots.

Posted by at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Via Alison Kent a link to Agent Obscura, where an experiment is about to be launched to see how much impact readers really have on a novel's potential success. To be truthful, the post in question isn't clear on exactly what they'll be doing, but I'm interested enough to keep track for a while.

From Desiree these two questions:

1. Do publishers try to get an author under contract for another book? What if an author wants to work without a deadline hanging over their head (ie, no advance money)? Are the publishers receptive to that? 
2. Do publishers agree to pay an author a given amount for the next book before receiving a completed manuscript? What if they are not happy with the manuscript even after edits? Are they still obligated to pay the author or does a book contract include some clause that gives the publisher an out?

and my answers:

1. My sense and experience is that if you sell a book to a publisher, they will try to get you under contract for your next book, or at least to get a clause that gives them first chance at your next finished manuscript. Because of course every editor is hoping that this new acquisition will be the Big One, his or her Harry Potter or Gone with the Wind, the purchase that makes an editor's career. And if it does turn out that way, they want to be able to hold on to you. So yes, they try to set up a future relationship. One they can get out of, if things go belly up. Also, you can write any many novels as you like without a contract, of course. then you have (1) no deadlines and (2) no advance money.

Say you write a three novel series, historical or crime or whatever, and your agent sends all three manuscripts off to six or seven select editors. If the series is well written with good characters, the editors are going to be very enthusiastic, because in this situation marketing is much easier. With the first three manuscripts already in hand they can go to town building a reader base.

But it almost never happens like that, as far as I know.

2. If an editor gets the go ahead to make an offer on a manuscript, and there's an obvious sequel waiting in the wings, they will often contract for that second unwritten novel right away. That's what happened with Into the Wilderness. Bantam offered me a two book deal, and so I had to go off and write the second novel in the series.

If the publisher contracts for a novel that is unwritten, there will be language in the contract about what they expect. What kind of novel, and how long. There will also be an out-clause, in case it doesn't turn out to their taste -- which does happen on occasion. When it does, the author has to come to some agreement with the publisher. S/he can pay back the advance and sell the novel to a different publisher; or sometimes, if the publisher really wants to hold onto the writer, they'll say: okay, not this one, but we'll take the next one if it's more in our ballpark.

If you've got a good agent, paying back the advance has been worked out ahead of time so you don't get presented with a huge bill. You'll pay it back in chunks over a certain amount of time. It's not a great situation, but if your agent has sold the novel in question to a different publisher, things will work out for the most part.

I'm still a little virus-woozy, so if this doesn't make sense, speak up, k?

Posted by at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I should have thought to do this with the original post, but here's a list of authors whose new novels I buy automatically, without reading reviews and stopping to check my bank account.

I may have missed a few.

Also, because somebody is on this list doesn't mean I'd recommend every novel they've ever written -- although that is the case for a couple of them.

A.S. Byatt
Alice Munro
Annie Proulx
Dennis Lehane
Greg Rucka
Jenny Crusie
John Sandford
Judith Ivory
Laura Kinsale
Lee Child
Loretta Chase*
Mary Doria Russell
Michael Ondaatje
Richard Russo
Stephen Hunter
Susan Wiggs

*A number of Loretta Chase's novels should have been on the original list.

Posted by at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm still sick. Damn virus. One of those sneaky ones that seems to retreat and then wham, clamps down again. But here I am for a few minutes anyway. To complain about viruses, and while I'm at it:

1. vampires. Really, hasn't this been done enough? Can we leave the undead to deal with each other for a while? I understand the concept of deep fears and how they have to be exorcized on a regular basis, but really.

2. Double Stuff Oreos, which my daughter insists on buying. Can we leave the classics alone, would that be possible? These abominations are way too sweet, and I'm too sick to be sitting here disassembling Oreos to scrap off excess Stuff.

3. Iceland novels. In graduate school I was forced to take Old Iceland, and so I admit, I went in there with a bad attitude which may be responsible. But be that as it may (what a strange turn of phrase, come to think of it): I have no interest in huge historical novels set in dark, cold places where people tell stories about Thor and Freyr and Coyote-in-Disguise: Loki. So this new historical novel that's got such high praise? No. I don't care that Booklist loves it. I don't care that I should read it for purely professional reasons. I've read lots of historical novels written about places and times that did't originally interest me, but here I draw the line.

No.

4. dopey turns of phrase, or: put down the stick. "More tension than you can shake a stick at." What does this mean? What stick are we talking about? Is it some stick that gets passed around to people who have something to say, like a Talking Object at a consciousness awareness gathering? If so, why haven't I had my turn? And if not, why would you be shaking a stick at tension anyway? How does this work, I'm wondering. You stand in the middle of an open space, shake the stick at the sky and shout: Damn you Tension!

I think we should drop the stick thing. Immediately.

Except I have to say that all this talk about putting down the stick has reminded me of Put Down the Duckie, that classic piece of ensemble musical genius that I used to dance around the room to with my daughter when she was very little. Put Down the Ducky might help me out of this mood, but you know what? I have no idea where that VHS tape is, and you can't buy the song from iTunes (and why not? is this some kind of ageism thing?) and so I'll just have to make due with the lyrics before I go off to my sick bed.

Ernie: Excuse me, Mr. Hoots I hate to bug a busy bird But I want to learn the sax And I need a helpful word I always get a silly squeak When I play the blues

Hoots: Ernie, keep your cool
I'll teach ya how to blow the sax
I think I dig your problem
It's rubber, and it quacks
You'll never find the skill you seek
Till you pay your dues

You gotta put down the duckie
Put down the duckie
Put down the duckie
Yeah, you gotta leave the duck alone
You gotta put down the duckie
Put down the duckie
Put down the duckie
If you wanna play the saxophone!

You didn't hear a word I said
You gotta get it through your head
Don't be a stubborn cluck
Ernie, lay aside the duck!
I've learned a thing or two
From years of playing in a band
It's hard to play a saxophone
With something in your hand
To be a fine musician
You're gonna have to face the facts

Though you're blessed with flying fingers
When you wanna wail, you're stuck
What good are flying fingers
If they're wrapped around a duck?
Change the toy's position
If you wanna ace the sax!

You gotta put down the duckie
Put down the duckie
Put down the duckie
Yeah, you gotta leave the duck alone
You gotta put down the duckie
Put down the duckie
Put down the duckie
If you wanna play the saxophone!

Don't have to put it on a train
Don't have to wash it down the drain
Don't have to lock it in a drawer
Don't have to shove it out the door
Don't have to stuff it in your pocket
Or send it flyin' in a rocket!
Don't have to get it out of town!
Ernie, put the quacker down!

You gotta put down the duckie
Put down the duckie
Put down the duckie
Yeah, you gotta leave the duck alone
You gotta put down the duckie
Put down the duckie
Put down the duckie
If you wanna play the saxophone!

Posted by at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

still. sorry. There are some great questions in one of the posts from a few days ago which I will tackle when I'm human again, or at least when the small furry animal burrowing into my cheest goes away.

ta.

Posted by at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

fever. head full of gunk. cough.

gack.

back when I've returned to the land of the living.

Posted by at 6:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I had no idea my book reviews were so missed. This is a little akward, because I can see a few ways of proceeding: Only reviewing books I really like and would recommend highly (which means, not many reviews); reviewing everything I read (which would be a bit much); a mixture of good and bad. But the last option means I'd be putting up negative reviews, and you remember what a stink that caused, right?

So here's a list of novels I'd recommend, in no order at all. Everything mixed together, all genres, but just novels, and all modern. With another hour to spend I'm sure I could double it without hesitation. Which means: there are many, many other novels I would recommend as well, if I had time. But I'm stopping, because otherwise I'd be sitting here all night.

• The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
• Jim Fusilli's series
• John Sandford's series
• The Light in the Piazza, Elizabeth Spencer
• The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
• A Thread of Grace, Mary Doria Russell
• The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
• My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult
• Ain't She Sweet, Susan Elizabeth Phillips
• Every Secret Thing, Laura Lippman
• White Doves at Morning, James Lee Burke
• A Catch of Consequence and Taking Liberties, Diana Norman
• Harmful Intent and Wrongful Death, Baine Kerr
• Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels
• The Love Letter, Cathleen Schine
• All Saints, Karen Palmer
• Dorothy Dunnett's Niccolo Rising series
• Shutter Island and Mystic River, Dennis Lehane
• Dennis Lehane's Patrick & Angie novels
• Bride of the Wilderness, Charles McCarry
• Dan Simmon's series starting with Hardcase
• Jenny Crusie, everything she's written
• Flowers from the Storm and For My Lady's Heart, Laura Kisnale
• Judith Ivory (aka Judy Cuevas), everything she's written
• Stephen Hunter's series
• Sacred Hunger, Barry Unsworth
• The Grand Sophy, Georgette Heyer
• Shipping News, Annie Proulx
• The Inn at Lake Divine, Elinor Lipman
• Possession: A Romance, A.S. Byatt
• Margaret Lawrence's four novels about post-revolutionary Maine and New York
• Greg Rucka's series
• The Magician's Assistant, Ann Patchett
• A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin
• the first three novels in the Outlander series, Diana Gabaldon
• The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
• The Rose Grower, Michelle de Kretser
• Passing through Paradise, Susan Wiggs
• The Water Method Man, John Irving
• Beloved, Toni Morrison
• Straight Man, Richard Russo
• Rose, Martin Cruz Smith
• The Moonflower Vine, Jetta Carlton
• The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

Posted by at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

InternetWritingJournal.com has a list of the best author blogs, according to them. I'm not on the list, and I'm okay with that mostly because (1) I had never even heard of this organization (2) there's lots of good blogs on the list but also lots I've never come across before (3) really, I don't mind. I'm happy to sit here in the dark. By myself. Really, don't think anything of it.

Going over this list there are some blogs I like and try to read regularly: Monica Jackson, Tess Gerritsen, Alison Kent, Paperback Writer. Others I read only rarely, some I gave up reading because they irritate me. Some blogs I read often and think a lot of aren't on the list, so I'm in good company. Here in the dark.

Interrupted to say: so I went and crawled around the IWJ website for a while and there's some interesting industry news on the front page. IWJ is associated apparently with WritersWrite (what does that mean, anyway? I always feel like I missing something clever, but it does sound a bit circular to my ear), another organization I don't know anything about. But you know what? If I spend all my time getting to know all these wonderful online communities and news organizations, I won't meet my deadline, and that would be Bad. Very Bad.

So back to work. But first: I've got this photo I want to post because it's completely taking over my imagination, but before I do that I'd like to take requests. Questions about my stuff (old or new), about research or craft issues, the business, whatever. I ask this because somebody told me the other day that she loved THE BAT, THE KNEE, THE BICYCLE HELMET, THE HUSBAND AND DICK, THE DOCTOR, which of course featured my mathematician husband. I said, you should comment on things you like, I'll try to hit that note more often.

My point: Speak up, or I'll just go ahead with this photo. Mwah ha ha ha.

Posted by at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

*STAR*Antonetta, Susanne. A Mind Apart: Travels in a Neurodiverse World. Putnam/Tarcher, $24.95 (1-58542-382-3)

Antonetta's galvanizing first book, Body Toxic (2001), marked the emergence of a poetic and frank chronicler of life lived in a polluted world. She now offers a kinetic, impressionistic, and philosophical inquiry into neurodiversity, a term for "people hardwired to think differently from the norm." [...] Once again, Antonetta alters our perception of ourselves and our place in the biosphere as she makes unexpected connections, traverses rarely charted territory, articulates provocative observations, and leaves readers pondering a startling question, is neurodiversity as essential to life as biodiversity? **Donna Seaman

Posted by at 10:34 PM | Permalink

Sara G asked about the 10% I mentioned in the last post in my example of royalties per book sold. She thought the figure seemed low.

Well, sorry to say that it's pretty much on target.

If you're talking about a hardcover book, the author generally gets 10% on the first 1 to 250,000 25,000 copies sold, 12% on the next 250,000 25,000 and 15% on anything sold above 500,000 50,000 copies -- after the advance is paid out, of course. And these figures are negotiable. I would guess Stephen King's numbers are better.

For softcover, the range is much greater, usually someplace between 6% and 10% of the cover price, again with increases as the number of sales climbs.

This probably is pretty sobering for those who are hoping to make a living writing fiction. A small ray of sunshine: you know how the big box stores sometimes sell new hardcovers for 10-30% off the cover price? That doesn't hurt the author, who still gets a percentage of the listed cover. That 30% discount comes out of the publisher's and distributor's chunk of the profits.

Another good thing: your novel is sold in North American, you get an advance. If your agent is working hard, you'll also have a shot at foreign markets, and for each of those that buys the rights to publish your novel (after translating it, of course) you'll get another advance. Usually much smaller than the US advance (and you'll pay a bigger percentage to a foreign agent, as well), but still something. If a novel sells to three or seven or twenty foreign markets, the money adds up.

Homestead has been translated into ten foreign languages, including Chinese and Catalan. Into the Wilderness has been translated into (I think) eight, all European.

Edited to add:

Alison pointed me to Lee Goldberg's blog, which quoted this post. To his post there is a comment by Laurie King, which I include here. Here's what Laurie said about the royalty information above:

"Man, this is one writer who REALLY needs a better agent. I can only hope it's a typo--a more typical royalty division (for regularly discounted books sold in the US market) is along the lines of 10 percent for the author on the first 5000 books sold, 12 1/2 percent on the next 5000, and after that 15 percent. Or more if, as you say, your numbers mean you can dictate to your publisher what you want. Then 7 1/2 percent on trade paperback, 10 percent on mass market."

First: those were typos (now fixed). Second: they aren't my numbers (I do have a great agent). Third: I can't find my notes on where I got the damn numbers to start with. I will assume that Laurie's right, in which case I apologize profusely for making the situation sound worse and more depressing than it already is. Finally: the numbers were off, but the general way it all works (advances, pay out, etc) is on target.

Now I have to (a) feed the people and (b) the puppy boys and (c) I have to go cut up pieces of paper so I can draw one out of a hat. Hopefully I'll get that done sometime this evening.

Posted by at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It's a strange word, isn't it? As if publishing a book put a crown on an author's head.

The money an author makes from a given book usually comes in two ways. The advance is the upfront money, 5 or 10 or 200 thousand dollars, or, occasionally, more. The book is published, the book starts to earn (hopefully), but the author doesn't get any money until the advance is "earned out" -- that is, if author X is supposed to get (for example) 10% on a cover price of $20, and she received $10,000 as an advance, she won't get anymore money until 5,000 copies of the book have sold.

If she takes the $10,000 advance on an unwritten book and can't write it? The money has to be repaid.

If she gets an advance of $200,000 and the book only sells a total of 1,000 copies? She doesn't have to pay back the advance, but the publisher is unlikely to buy another book from her.

This topic came to mind because Alison Kent posted about her own royalities and earnings. It was an interesting post, but it was really the comments that surprised me. A lot of people write hoping to be published, and they want to be published... why? For the fame? To prove that they can? To share a story? To make money? All of the above, in many cases, no doubt.

And then I'm always surprised that many aspiring authors don't understand how the money works. A publisher offers you a contract, and an advance. The amount of the advance doesn't have to do with how good the novel is, or how much they like it. A million dollars does not equal an A+. The advance is their best guess on how many copies of the book they can sell. No matter how much the acquiring editor loves your novel, the publishing house does not want to overpay you. End of story.

After reading Alison's post I got to wondering about my own books, and I realized I don't know how much money any of the books has actually made. When the statements come, I file them away in the big pile of stuff that I don't want to look at. My agent knows all this, so if I really want to hear numbers I call her up.

I hasten to add that I do know how much money I make a year in total, all royalties and advances, domestic and foreign. Since I've started publishing novels in 1999, my annual income has fluctuated between 400,000 and 170,000, with the average around 220,000. Something to remember: this will not last forever. Sooner or later, this well will dry up.

The information about advances and pay outs becomes more important if there's a new contract being negotiated. Publisher X says: well, we'd like to offer you more but her last novel didn't pay out... or Agent X says: look, she's had four novels pay out within a year each, you've got to do better.

And still, I don't know and don't care to know, because it would get in the way of actually writing the damn book. Which I have to go do, right now.

Posted by at 8:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The paperback edition of Fire Along the Sky is due out on November 29, in case you've been waiting breathlessly.

Somebody mentioned in a comment that Tied to the Tracks is already up on Amazon (albeit without a cover) and it's true, it is. Which also means it has an ISBN: 0399153497.

Imagine that.

Posted by at 5:09 PM | Permalink

There's something about this photograph which really strikes me as melancholy, and it doesn't have to do with the sharecropper's torn clothes. It's got more to do with the fact that he's standing by the side of the roada, which moves off without him while he's looking over the fields.

This photo was taken in 1936 in rural Mississippi. It's hard to imagine what life was like for people who were poor to start with. How much worse could it get? Did sharecroppers in the rural south starve to death in the Depression? I don't know the answer to that question.

I do know that relentless povery grinds people down. It robs people of hope, of the ability to feel anything but despair and anger. The poorest places are the biggest eyesores not so much because soap and paint cost money, but because they require hope and optimism and energy.

This particular sharecropper might have been one of the lucky ones. Maybe he and his sons were able to earn enough to keep the family fed. Maybe the younger kids could get a couple years of school. Maybe his extended family was made of strong, stern stuff and they found ways to manage. If his boys came home now and then with a chicken they said they found dead in the road or pockets full of butterbeans, he looked the other way and hoped his wife would do the same.

Maybe he considered himself well off, and fortunate in his family and faith. Maybe he was too tired to go to services on Sunday, and dragged there by his mother, sat stewing in his anger at the preacher and his god.

Maybe he died of bleeding ulcers or tuberculosis or a cut he got in the field that turned septic, in an age when there was no such thing as an emergency room or antibiotics. Maybe he lived to be 98 and died surrounded by his great grandchildren.

I hope somebody remembers his story.

Posted by at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This photograph was taken by Toni Frissell:

Toni Frissell (1907-1988) began her career as a photojournalist and fashion photographer about the time Frances Benjamin Johnston's was winding down. She demonstrated a versatility equal to Johnston's in her work as a staff photographer for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Sports Illustrated and in her publication of several photographically illustrated books, ranging from A Child's Garden of Verses (1944) to The King Ranch, 1939-1944 (1975).

I had some wonderful nuns as teachers when I was a kid. Women who were strong without being overbearing, clever, innovative, and sometimes, distinctly odd. Some of them were really funny and fun; others were a little scarier because they demanded a lot. I can't think of one nun who was cruel. I remember a nun I didn't have as a teacher who used to shout when she got aggravated: you kids are going to drive me to drink!

There were so many good and comfortable things about the convent attached to my grade and high school. It radiated calm certainty and cooperation and dedication. It smelled of lemon wax and starched linen and lavender. It was immensely appealing to a kid like me, because if my mother was at home, she was most likely drunk, and if she was just drunk enough but not too drunk, she zeroed in on what a good idea it would be to tell me what a disappointment I was and would always be. If she was very drunk there would be other complications. Screaming was a certainty. Often there were messes of such magnitude these days might call for a hazardous biological waste clean up. Sometimes trips to the emergency room. On a few memorable occasions, all three.

Nuns did have moods. They got mad or impatient at times, but generally they were supportive of me and encouraging. I can hardly remember any of them ever talking about religion. The priests came in to teach cathecism, the nuns stood off to the side and looked like they were thinking of something else. Except in fourth grade, when obviously something else was going on because one of the nuns left the convent to marry one of the priests who taught cathecism, so you know, points for that bit of devilry.

So it's probably no big surprise that I have relentlessly good memories of these women, idealized to some extent. I will always have positive memories about convents, too. If only you didn't have to believe in God -- in one very specific God -- to enter a convent, I might have done that at one point in my life.

I look at this photograph and I'm reminded of the School Sisters of Saint Francis, who taught at my school, because they wore habits that were very similar. Stiff white linen around their faces and in a wide bib that covered shoulders and upper chest. These two look like they like to do things together, and they're not afraid to get muddy when they find something interesting to look at. My guess is that one of them is an art teacher. She tells her students not to be afraid of the paint, that art isn't greedy or narrow. Art embraces life! The other one is probably the housekeeper in the convent. She oversees the novitiates as they do the housework and does most of the cooking. She experiments with spices, which once in a while gets her in hot water. The two of them go to protest rallies together and take students along for the experience.

They've got stories to tell.

Posted by at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Over at Putnam they are putting Tied to the Tracks in their new catalog. Which is of course wonderful.

The art people haven't finished futzing with the cover yet, but they are going with this one for the catalog, at least.

It's interesting, in a variety of ways. But my name? Way big.

Posted by at 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

sherryfair had this to say in a comment to yesterday's post:

IMHO, writers who write these critiques get an unparalleled opportunity to articulate to themselves their own aesthetic standards. Their own goals in their art become clearer to them as they indirectly write a manifesto on what they believe in. Writers within the romance genre who don't do this may be losing out on something that could offer them a lot of insight. A lot of writers saying: "I believe this, and this is where I stand on this question" -- how can that not be healthy for a writer's work & for the genre as a whole?

Here goes.

1. A good novel tells a story; a story begins with conflict, small or large.

2. A good story has rounded, well drawn characters who move the story, instead of being moved by the story.

3. A good story floats along on well done dialogue.

4. The author's voice should be distinctive, but not intrusive or louder than the narrative voice.

5. Authors owe it to their readers to get the details right.

6. Talent is there or it isn't, but craft can be learned and honed. A good author has mastered the craft so that it doesn't intrude into the reader's awareness.

7. Lazy authors resort to stereotype and take shortcuts with character motivations and plot.

8. A good author sets up a set of expectations the reader can count on for the length of the ride.

9. A good author uses language so skillfully that the invisible becomes visible.

10. A good story evokes powerful feelings that stay with me for a long time, and a very good story, forever.

--------------
I could probably nudge these ten things around for days and days and not be quite satisfied, but I'm going to stop and make a different list.

The five biggest problems with the romance genre:

1. Outlandish, outdated motivations and plot devices. Girls masquerading as boys, women tricking men into getting them pregnant, dukes posing as highwaymen, secret babies, etc etc.

2. The restrictions on female characters motivations, habits, background.

3. Trite, overused, painful vocabulary that needs to be locked away in a vault for the next five hundred years. First word on that list: sensual.

4. Ridiculous titles and cover art.

5. Awkward, stilted, clumsy writing.

(okay, six):

6. Dependence on a small set of settings and historical periods which are used in stereotypical ways.
----------------

Before you start shouting at me: Of course there are hundreds of well done romance novels that commit none of these sins. Judith Ivory and Jenny Crusie and Laura Kinsale are examples of authors who have done a lot to lift the bar, but there is still a lot of bad romance writing out there, and worse: a reluctance to have serious discussions about things that go wrong.

Commence firing.

Posted by at 8:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (25)

Reading over the comments to yesterday's post (and really, if you haven't, go read them -- interesting stuff in there) something occured to me.

To those people who feel strongly that it is wrong for a reviewer to claim that a given novel is crap, a question:

Reviewer A says: This is a brilliant novel.
Reviewer B says: This novel is crap.

If you object to B, don't you have to object to A? Both state a strong opinion. Both will have readers who agree and disagree. So why is one acceptable and the other not?k

If it's simply the word that is causing you problems, let me rephrase:

Reviewer A says: This is a brilliant novel.
Reviewer B says: This novel is a complete failure.

Same question. If A, why not B?

Posted by at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Beth started the discussion of crap, which was then picked up (pretty much simultaneously) by Candy at Smart Bitches, and by me. There are some very interesting bits and pieces in the comments to Candy's post.

These discussions are interesting to me because I've been thinking about them for a long time, though in my posts here I've never been as direct as Candy or Beth. For them the question seems to boil down to something fairly straight forward: why can't we admit that some books are just crappy?

Really, the bigger discussion is about aesthetics and relativity and a lot of very complex philosophical tenets. Which I'm going to leave alone for the time being. Maybe, forever. Another wrinkle: one of the interesting comments over at Candy's has to do with the role of authorial voice in the evaluation of a piece of fiction. That subconversation was started by Robin, and it's a good thing to think about, but again, I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible for the moment.

So in a nutshell, my take on all this:

If we had a hundred authors and a hundred dedicated, thoughtful readers and a place to hold a year long retreat (say, Hawaii), all expenses (including mortgages) paid, we probably could not come up with a set of criteria we'd agree on that would allow us to easily shift the crap from the not-crap in the world of fiction. Each of us can do that, of course, for ourselves. If I sat down in a room with every novel I've ever read (this would be a very big room), I could easily put every book in one pile or another. Some of the piles would be: I have no memory of this book (i.e., a forgettable story); this was a crappy novel, and I hated it; this was a crappy novel, and I liked it; this was a well written novel and I hated it; this was a well written novel and I liked it.

And then there would be a pile of novels that I love, independent of whatever other category they may fall into. You want an example: a really badly done romance novel that I still re-read on occasion because... I dunno. I love the characters, though they infuriate me. I love the story inspite of the fact that it is so very flawed in so many ways. Here it is, a guilty pleasure: Mackenzie's Mission, by Linda Howard.

There are other books by Howard which I don't love at all, and which are flawed enough for me to put them in my crap pile. For example, I will never, ever get over Son of the Morning, in which a woman with a PhD conducting research on a number of very complex and specialized historical topics turns to... an encylopedia. Oh, man. The whole book was full of stuff like that. Crap.

To get back to my point (and I do have one): I agree that neither authors nor readers are served by a it's-all-good approach in reviewing.

Further, in reviewing any given novel, it's important to remember that some people pick up a book first and foremost for the story, while others care primarily about the characters, or the prose, or the setting. There are many readers who have litmus tests. They are only interested in novels about WWII, or espionage, or true love. Mostly, in the end, readers want a good story. First and last. They will put up with all kinds of garbage if the story is strong enough.

And there are readers who want it all. They want a good story, strong characters, solid research, great dialogue, interesting themes, and beautiful prose. They want all that, and a cherry on top. That's what I want, anyway. Every time I pick up a novel I'm hoping it will be all these things.

Books that manage to miss everyone of those bells? That's my personal definition of crap.

Posted by at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (1)

I should probably leave this alone, but then that would be cowardly. So please go read this post by Beth on the subject of reading and reviewing. Yes, Beth who hated A Breath of Snow and Ashes. And yes, there are curse words in the post, but you know what? It's a great post and she says some important things that most people are afraid to say.

So come back after you've read it, okay?

Now that you're back, I have a question.

What is life without passion, may I ask you? Boring. Beth is passionate about this subject of books. I think that's good. Of course, because I write novels for living, I'm happy that there are people like Beth out there who feel strongly about what I do.

Beth's argument goes something like this:

1. Some novels are badly written by even the most lax standards.
2. To pretend that there is no such thing as a poorly written novel does no good; in fact, it does harm.
3. Some people mistakenly equate criticism of a crappy novel as criticism of people who like the novel despite its inherent crappiness.
4. To avoid reader backlash arising from this basic mistake, many reviewers will resort to the "just not my cuppa tea" argument.
5. "Just not my cuppa tea" (JNMCT) arguments are intellectually suspect because they permit the reviewer to wiggle out of an honest assessment of any given novel.
6. This is particularly true in the romance community.

So my take on this: I agree with Beth that this is a big problem in the romance community.

In my opinion, however, there are times when it's intellectually dishonest not to acknowledge that JNMCT is appropriate. There are authors whose work I do not like. Here's a short list of titles from these authors. These are books I disliked intensely:

Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
Joyce, Finnegan's Wake
Brown, Slow Heat in Heaven
Swerling, Shadowbrook

In two of these cases, I think JNMCT is appropriate: Hemingway and Joyce. In the other two, I would argue that these novels are poorly written. Each of them has dedicated readers, but that wouldn't change my opinion that the novels are seriously flawed in conception, design, craft and execution.

NOTE: If you are one of the many readers who adore Slow Heat in Heaven, I have no negative feelings about you. You probably like liver and the smell of cigar smoke, too. If we got to know each other we might become best friends, but no matter how solid our friendship, I would still maintain that Slow Heat in Heaven stinks like a cheap cigar.

On the other hand, I recognize that there is both craft and some dose of genius in the work of Hemingway and Joyce. My dislike of those authors' work has to do with my personal history and inclinations. It would be dishonest of me to claim that because I don't like them, there's nothing valuable to find in those works. For me, they are classic JNMCT.

So that's my argument for retaining the JNMCT ending to reviews. Just as long as it isn't being used as an easy out.

Posted by at 9:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

I figured I should follow up funerals with something a little lighter, so here (via the radiant Robyn Bender) an essay from Steve Tilley, who writes for Sun Media. The essay is called "Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Then you owe me $20 milliion dollars."

And of course it's about Andrew F. Knight's dopey scheme to patent a plot, which I brought up a couple days ago, here.

Here's a bit of the essay. When you've stopped giggling, go read the whole thing, okay? He deserves your clicks, does Steve Tilley. Who wrote these words:

The actual patent application is about four quintillion pages long and makes my brain hurt, so we'll refer instead to a press release about the application.

The Zombie Stare "tells of an ambitious high school senior, consumed by anticipation of college admission, who prays one night to remain unconscious until receiving his MIT admissions letter."

OK, I'm already lost. Why would you have to pray to become unconscious? That's what tequila is for. This kid's not going to last a week in college if he doesn't know that.

It continues: "He consciously awakes 30 years later when he finally receives the letter, lost in the mail for so many years, and discovers that, to all external observers, he has lived an apparently normal life."

What the hell? Where do the undead come into the picture? Does he wake up to discover zombies have eaten his brain, and the cute co-eds at MIT are put off by the gaping, blood-encrusted hole in his skull?

No. In fact: "He desperately seeks to regain 30 years worth of memories lost as an unconscious philosophical zombie."

So it's not about zombies at all. It's a male version of 13 Going On 30. It's Fry from Futurama, give or take 970 years. It's Rip Van Freakin' Winkle - with a lot of sleepwalking.

Hey dude, Washington Irving called and he wants his story back. Yeah, he's been dead for almost 150 years, but he called from the grave because he's a non-philosophical zombie. You know, the kind that don't suck.

Posted by at 7:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've always found funerals to be interesting in a variety of ways. So much that is normally hidden comes to the surface when you're confronting death. So this photo from the Bain Collection really grabbed my attention. A hugely elaborate funeral hearse being drawn by four white horses. Paris, May 5, 1913. The caption says only that this is the funeral of Isadora Duncan's children.

Isadora Duncan was just a name and a few facts to me when I first ran across this image. The mother of modern dance, flamboyant, controversial, that was about it.

So I did a brief search and found that a new biography of Isadora Duncan came out in 2001. There's an article about the biography at Salon, with a summary that tells me pretty much everything I need to know if I wanted to base a character on her life. Here's the relevant information about the funeral of her children from the article:

In 1913, her two children -- Deirdre, fathered by theater designer Gordon Craig, and Patrick, fathered by Paris Singer, the wealthy heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune -- drowned in the Seine when the driver of their car stepped out to crank the engine and failed to secure the brake. The Renault pitched over the embankment, trapping the two children and their nanny inside. One year later, a third child, who Duncan believed would be the reincarnation of either Deirdre or Patrick, died a few hours after birth.

Early May in Paris along the Seine. The trees showing new green, and the air warm to the skin. Lily of the Valley and daffodils in blossom everywhere, and windows open to let the bedding air. People waking from the winter.

A uniformed driver leaning over the crank of an expensive Renault, and the violent motion of the car as it jumps the bank and goes into the Seine.

This is the rear seat of a 1913 Renault. I can imagine the children sitting there with their nurse. Maybe she had been with them since birth, and they were as attached to her as they were to their mother. I wonder how well the nurse and the driver knew each other, if they were friendly or if there was animosity. I wonder how the driver survived that day, if he was charged with some crime and went to jail, if he lost his family, if he simply went on to his next job, or went into the army and died the next year when the war broke out.

I wonder how it is that he forgot to secure the brake, if he was preoccupied with the health of his own children or gambling debts or if he was new at his job and just not very careful. If he was worried about getting the children home late and losing his job, if he was irritated because he had told Isadora Duncan many times that the car was unpredictable and really should be taken out of service. If he hated the spoiled children or felt pity for them or nothing at all.

Of course there are answers to these questions. It might even be possible to find those answers in newspapers of the time, in police reports and letters and biographies. But I'm not so much interested in the details of what really happened. That was Isadora Duncan's tragedy, and what is going on in my head has to do with my imagination and a different story.

Which I have to put aside now, and get my mind back to New Orleans.

Posted by at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When I was teaching regularly, I often brought in photographs to use as writing prompts. A good photograph can really get a discussion going and imaginations firing.

The Library of Congress is a great resource for old photographs. The Prints and Photographs Division has an online catalogue which is getting bigger all the time. The Bain Collection is online, and it's full of incredible stories waiting to be told.

Here's the blurb about the Bain Collection:

The George Grantham Bain Collection represents the photographic files of one of America's earliest news picture agencies. The collection richly documents sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, political activities including the woman suffrage campaign, conventions and public celebrations. The photographs Bain produced and gathered for distribution through his news service were worldwide in their coverage, but there was a special emphasis on life in New York City. The bulk of the collection dates from the 1900s to the mid-1920s, but scattered images can be found as early as the 1860s and as late as the 1930s.

Over the next couple days I'm going to post a couple of the photographs there which are most interesting to me as a storyteller.

I'm starting with one taken in 1908 on the east side of Manhattan. The only information on the photo's page is sparse: a group of women discussing evictions and a rent strike. You can click on the photograph to get a bigger version of it.

What I like about this is the way the women are dressed against the cold, aprons and many layers of skirts and multiple shawls, in contrast to the austere architecture of the church behind them. I imagine what it must have meant for one of these women to join a rent strike, to risk eviction. I imagine each of them with a husband and children and at least one elderly parent, all living together in two small rooms in a walk up. What it would mean to chance losing those rooms. What courage it must have required, and what anger.

Posted by at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I appeal to your superior knowledge and hope that somebody out there can explain to me what this means.

For some time now I've been told I should register my name(s) as domain names, for various reasons legal and marketing in nature. It made me uncomfortable. Why? Blame it on my catholic school education, if you like, but I just cringe at the idea of www.rosinalippi.com

But okay, I decided I had better follow the advice and so I trotted off to my service provider and was given instructions. Except in the process I thought to check, and it turns out that www.saradonati.com is taken.

If you look at the page, you'll see it's not a person who happens to be named Sara Donati. It's a place-holder kind of page. So here's my question: did somebody buy the domain name thinking that sooner or later I'd want it, and they could then extract great piles of money from me? Or is there some other, simpler, less expensive explanation?

Truth be told, they can have it, if they really want it. I'm not going to tie myself into knots over something like this, but it would be good to know what's going on.

In fact, I'm having fun thinking of alternates I'll never register:

www.saradonatithenovelist.com
www.saratherealdonati.com
www.saradonatinotaplaceholder.com

It would be a waste of money, but it makes me laugh.

UPDATE: I'm closing comments on this post, but would like to point people to Dennis P. McCooe's entry, which includes his email address. He's an attorney who has represented other people who have run into this problem with Manila Industries.

Posted by at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (26)

By way of Paperback Writer, a link to eMediaWire and a story about a guy who has applied to patent... a storyline.

A plot. He wants to patent his plot, so that nobody could ever use it again.

His name is Andrew F. Knight, and he's got a website. He also has a very odd way of looking at writing fiction.

...the value of a singer's performance or a dancer's performance or a writer's performance... in in the performance, while the value of an inventor's invention is in the invention, not a single instance, embodiment, expression, or performance of the invention. The value of a performance is in the performance, while the value of an inventor's invention is in the invention, not a single instance, embodiment, expression, or performance of the invention. The value of a performance is protected by copyright; the value of an invention is not. An artistic innovator is given but two choices absent patent protection: to sacrificially innovate for the unearened benefite of thieves, or to not innovate. Both options are morally and practically repulsive...

There are so many things wrong with this that my husband says it's ridiculous to even consider it seriously, but then he's a mathematician and I deal in stories and emotion. So some things jump out at me.

First, the sentence above that I've highlighted: sacrifically innovate for the unearned benefit of thieves.

I sit here writing my novel, coming up with a plot as I go along. I'm both performer and inventor, in his way of looking at things, and I'm also stupid, sacrificing my creative drive for... oh yeah. I'm not doing this for nothing. I get paid. People pay me indirectly when they buy a book to read the story.

So that 'thievery' bit is, seems to me, a bit of overstatement. (And what's with the 'unearned benefits'? Because really, do thieves ever earn their benefits? Isn't that what thievery is about, not having to earn, but still getting the benefits?)

Unless Knight is talking about the situation where I'm sitting on a bus and I overhear somebody proclaiming outloud a wonderful storyline that has never, ever before been imagined in the world (which really, isn't likely because every plot out there can be reduced to one of a dozen or so basic plots, we all know this). But I run home and write a novel based on that storyline. Then I get the profit, and the originator of the storyline gets nothing.

And how often does this happen? Are there legions of plot inventors out there languishing for lack of payment?

Actually, it happens quite a lot. Any published writer will tell you about the dozens of time somebody comes up to them at a party and says, hey, bub, I've got this great idea for a novel. See, there's this farmer's daughter...

And the writer says, wow, yeah, let me know how that works out for you.

My point being that it's artificial and stupid to try to separate the two parts of the process, the story structure from the creation of the story.

For a lawyer and an inventor of storylines this guy isn't the greatest writer. And maybe that's the problem. He gets ideas, he can't do anything with them, how to get around that? He could sit down, butt to chair, with a pen and paper and get to work, see if he's got what it takes, or he could go to the patent office and try to sucker them into this skewed view of the world.

My understanding of patents is this: it's a measure to encourage invention. A temporary protection for the inventor so that in the long run, everybody profits. In this case, we've all been profiting from stories told for as long as we've had language to tell them. So really, no grounds for patent. None.

And beyond all that, I am reminded of Tom Sawyer convincing all his friends what a great honor it would be to paint that fence, and how little it will cost them to participate in that great opportunity.

Posted by at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Booksquare has a short post about Greg Sandow, who is going to unusual lengths to keep himself on schedule with a book he's writing called The Future of Classical Music.

Greg has set up a website which is subtitled Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress. He's going to post chapters every two weeks for people to read and submit their comments.

It's such a delicate process, working with somebody as they write a book. I taught creative writing long enough to shudder at the thought of what kind of feedback he's going to get. At least the undergrads in my classes weren't anonymous and they knew if they acted out I'd be all over them. In this case?

I'd be pleased to be wrong, and I hope it all goes beautifully for him.

Posted by at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Interesting things to read while I focus on this darn warn of 1812, which, let me tell you, has got me in knots. Writing battle scenes that stay interesting enough for a wide range of readers? Priceless.

Bookseller Chick has an interesting long post on the politics of being apolitical when it comes to selling books.

Sarah and Candy are talking about condoms and the difficulty of writing about them in the context of ... well, you can guess.

And following logically, there's this post from Salon's Broadsheet (you may have trouble getting to it, as Salon restricts some content to subscribers) about a guy on trial for rape who called his urologist as a witness for his defense. His claim is that he is too large to have committed the crime:

A urologist has shown the court a plastic model of a penis that supposedly approximates that of the defendant, Mischa Beutling. Beutling is 6-foot-7 and 240 pounds. His repli-cock, designed to simulate a semi-relaxed state, measured eight and a half inches in length by six and a half inches in girth. Yes. Girth.

Earlier in the trial, the same urologist had testified that Buetling's penis is in the top 5 percent size-wise among his patients. Really? Who's in the top 1 percent?

Rape isn't funny, and I hope whoever is guilty of this crime is suitably punished. And then, when that has been taken care of, I reserve the right to come back and laugh my ass off thinking about this urologist on the stand with his props.

Posted by at 8:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)