Not Low Maintenance review

I haven't done much (enough) to publicize my books but I did submit it to a review site, The Romance Reviews and today the review was published.   I couldn't ask for more.  The reviewer, Rho, is obviously astute and well-read! ;-)  In truth, Rho read the book carefully and understood it.  I'm grateful for that.  That the book was well-received is lovely.

I noticed that several other books received 5 stars and they were traditionally published.  2 weren't "tradpub" and received 4 stars.

What does this suggest to us?  The important issue is that it's perfectly possible to achieve the level (laughably easy one might say) tradpub insists can only be gotten thru a relationship with them.

I write and edit all my books, getting no outside input.  I create the covers myself.  I want it that way.  I want to sink or swim on my own.

It's true I've been doing this nearly all my entire adult life and am pretty good at it.  Writers just starting out might need some help or another perspective.  That's fine and they are encouraged to get all the assistance they need.  The goal is to be at the same level if not better than tradpub (laughably easy to achieve, for further illumination on this point check yesterday's post on cover art).

It's very nice to get a glowing review.  Thank you Carole and Rho.

Back to Bad Apple2.

Marc Chagall

Love In The Air

This is the book I have coming out next year from Avalon.  It's about two people who fall in love while performing a World War I era show at an aerodrome.

Since I'm working on a couple of different projects right now, I don't want to take time away from them to do a mock-up cover for LITA for the blog.  I'll just say it wasn't what I would have done at all.  It's a romance, there's a  handsome flyboy in the book.  Why not feature him on the cover?  Women read these books and we should assume they like men.  It seems like a good choice.

First is their cover as the editor sent it to me last week.

Then there's an image I found a year ago that I thought would make a good cover.  It's what I can offer.

And then there's a really quick mock-up I did for my agent without a super handsome guy but a super good pilot, Cole Palen.

Maybe Avalon didn't have the budget for a male model.  There was a budget for a plane.  How about using a plane from the book, ie the plane the character flew, a Fokker Dreidecker.  Which was red and would have shown up a lot better (on a baby blue background???).  I don't understand their choices.  Neither did my agent.

Make It Interesting

I came into publishing just as the impact of television was really being felt.  A hundred years ago a writer could stroll their way into a story.  Not anymore.

Some years ago I wrote 3 chapters of a mystery and my agent sent to to Avon.  After about a year they said it started too slow, (talk about slow, they can't read 3 chapters in 12 months?) the murder didn't happen quick enough.  I rewrote it so the first line was "Oh damn, a dead guy."

How fast does a book need to start?  Do we want the experience of being immersed in the world of the characters or do we just want the bare bones of the plot and how it all turns out?

When I first approached Sweet Cider/Bad Apple I wanted to set the scene.  To me, unlike for some people who read this book, the story is not about the murder.  The roots go back 30 years.  It's a concatenation of events and choices that lead all these people to where they are in the present day.  It's important to know this otherwise nothing can be explained.

Do we want to know why people behave the way they do or do we just want to be titillated.  (I met a guy on the internet who was interested in electric devices to be used in the most startling of ways, oh never mind.)  Do we just want that shock, that visceral reaction?  Maybe it's a vampire screwing someone's head around on their neck.  What's the next shock?  How do you outdo that?  Or do we want to know why people do what they do.

This is the essence of entertainment now.  What are we trying to say?  If nothing, okay.  There's an audience for that.  BIG audience.  Maybe these people never get tired of Life Lite.  The non-caloric, non-substantive meal that doesn't feed, doesn't nourish.

If you're trying to say something, make it interesting.  Your readers will stay with you.

Christmas In Connecticut or When Does This Thing Start

After yesterday's post I decided to watch the movie again.  As soon as it began I remembered I fast forward through the first 10 minutes until we get to Elizabeth Lane.

I realized this is something important.  Something went really wrong in this movie if you can replace that much story telling with 2 lines of dialog spoken by the magazine publisher which goes something like "A nurse at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital wrote and asked if Elizabeth Lane would host Christmas for a heroic sailor who never really had Christmases growing up and so enjoys her cozy magazine columns.  I said yes."

Actually that's pretty much the log line isn't it.

Do we need to see Jefferson Jones in his act of heroism, floating on the ocean for 18 days?  I don't.  If it was any good, I'd watch it again.  After all, I've seen the movie a bazillion time and it never gets old.  Except the first 10 minutes.  Has storytelling changed so much since 1945?  No.  If I were to guess why we see Dennis Morgan for 10 minutes is that they paid for him and they were going to use him.  They would have been better off doing the dinner scene that doesn't exist for 10 minutes.

So what's wrong with these scenes?  They don't advance the story.  Do they reveal his character?  He is the love interest so maybe we do need to know about him.  Yeah, that's a good argument, but what we learn isn't that positive and also is restated later when the nurse shows up at the farmhouse.  While we supposedly should care about Jefferson Jones because he's the love interest, he's with the nurse and his buddy who we are not supposed to care about and don't.

Why am I making a big deal about this?  Because starting your story when the story commences is better than starting your story when your story starts.

What am I saying?  Starts?  Commences?  Same thing.  Probably the words are close but take the movie, yes because the sailor survived an ordeal on the ocean then was in the hospital and the nurse fell for him and wanted to do something nice is where the story "started".  It's the backstory.  But the real action begins when Elizabeth Lane finds out she's hosting Christmas for the sailor at her Connecticut farmhouse where she supposedly lives with her husband and baby and woops she doesn't have a husband, a baby or a beautiful farmhouse in Connecticut.

I don't think we need to know the particulars of Jeff Jones' incident.  We don't need to see it, especially if everything we need to get out of it can be said in a couple lines of dialog.

In general, if you have to set your story up, keep it brief, keep it salient.

Do I always do that?  No.  Read Sweeps and you'll be shouting I don't follow my own advice.  That sounds like a part 2 to this thought may be required.

Thanksgiving

Now we have Thanksgiving bearing down upon us, then Christmas and New Year's and then we pretty much have a month off until the completely concocted (as if they're all not) Valentine's Day.

I'm ambivalent about writing about the holiday season.  Please note, many Hollywood movies make use of one holiday or another.   You can also check the many romance novels set at Christmas.

So what is it with the holidays that writers are trying to tap into?  I just love Christmas to pieces and I'm Jewish.  But as Ariel Robbins said in Sweeps/Love After Lunch, it's a secular holiday now.  Historically it was a non-holiday.  Christ's Mass was the day when all the medieval folk went to church.  That was the end of it.  It wasn't until the Victorian era when it became a big thing with presents and decorations.  The tree business was from Germany and all about the evergreen.  Maybe it had something to do with the Solstice, since the days were getting longer and there was renewal in the air.  I'm not a maven on this so if I get it all a little wrong, don't send mean emails.  There was the whole Kris Kringle thing going on in Northern Europe and it all came to fruition in America.

Now we have these incredible tense days when everything is supposed to go so perfectly and if they don't, people kill themselves over it.

I was lucky to find the trailer for one of my favorite holiday movies, Christmas In Connecticut.  I don't know why it's my favorite, I also love White Christmas, but it contains most of the right elements.  Connecticut.  Snow.  Romance.  Big Christmas Tree.  What it doesn't have, and maybe it did, but was cut, we really need the iconic holiday meal.  We schlepped the chef all the way from NYC and there's endless talk about food but we don't see them at the table with the candles lit and the turkey glistening.  I needed that and I feel its absence.

When I do Christmas or Thanksgiving, I always write about the dinner.  I did it in Just Kate but now that I look back, I think I could have done more.  When I was doing the rewrite, I didn't feel the more of it so I tweaked and hat-tipped Christmas in Connecticut, and it was snowing.  I expect I did 75% of what I should have done, but the book wasn't structured for that.

Now I'm facing both Thanksgiving and Christmas in my current project.

The best Thanksgiving I ever did was in a book I haven't finished yet.  It's really good but it's not snowing.  It doesn't usually snow in Connecticut until Dec. but it was cold and it wound up raining.  This is the companion book, not so much sequel, to Not Low Maintenance.  It was more specific.  I think that's better.  And a terrific woman is going to let me use one of her marvelous food photographs for the cover, so I suppose I should finish that book Real Soon Now.  Like around Christmas when the book ends.   

Well Boo!

To quote a chapter heading from Sweeps which is now for the time being called Love After Lunch (thanks J!)

Last day of the month. 

I was talking to someone about ebooks and they were stuck on the old model of once something's published, it's that way forever.  Most of my ebooks have undergone some kind of change after publication whether it's the cover or the title.  Why is this?  Because no one of are really sure how digital publishing works.  We don't know what sells and why.  Because we can change any or all the elements, we do.

I know I will be challenged on both of the what and why and I will even help do it.  For the most part the simpler the idea, the easier the sell.  The hotter the idea, the better it will sell.  No one buys a Joe Konrath book and wonders what it'll be about.  It's a known quantity already.  No one buy a vampire book and wonders what it's about.  The only question is what's going to happen.  Like an action movie.

A cover--let me interrupt myself here.  You can learn a lot about digital books by reading books on writing screenplays.  One of the cardinal rules of writing a movie is that the initial image tells you what the movie will be about.  This rule was never done better (that I've seen) than the movie The Bodyguard with Kevin Costner.  The opening scene is Costner standing over  the person he's protecting and there's a firefight in progress.  So that's great, we know he's a bodyguard, there's lots of violence and potential for death.  For me, I didn't have to see any more of the movie than that.  Didn't that just tell us everything?  Of course what it doesn't tell us is that the best part of the movie is Whitney Houston singing I Will Always Love You or whatever it's called (written by Dolly Parton, btw).

So in digital publishing we want to have a cover that's much like that first scene in a movie (as opposed to any artsy 20th century type covers which may be quite complicated visually).  We want it to be so bold and simple that it can be read like a billboard going past your car at 60 mph because it's a thumbnail.  Potential book buyers are scrolling through an almost endless list of books and they are all introduced to the public as a tiny little thumbnail and title.  Is this combination so compelling the buyer will stop to click?

Some people think they know.

Some people are so lucky.

Crime and Television

OJ Simpson was the first time, that I can remember, television viewers being treated to a soap opera like blow by blow account of a crime.  And then of course the circus/trial.

Since then it's become an industry and a madhouse full of violent criminals and kooky television pundits.  I admit to tuning in Nancy Grace now and then to see what's the latest story.  We went from Lacey Peterson to Stacey Peterson and an uncountable number of little girls who disappear and Nancy insists it's disappear when I think most sensible people know they've been killed.

We're still hanging on the Caylee Anthony story.  Haleigh Cummings hasn't been found.  I forget (sorry) the little Florida girl who was lured into the drug addicts' trailer and was murdered.  Florida seems a hotbed of such stories, altho no region of the country hasn't had the media descend on it.

The worst for me is the recent one in North Carolina, Zarah Baker.  This little 10 year old had osteosarcoma, had her leg amputated, went deaf and still seemed to smile, even though her stepmother abused her for not walking more gracefully on her prosthetic leg.

I'm not suggesting that such things never happened 50 or 100 years ago, but people do seem more unmoored than ever before.  Violence and abuse is validated.  It's everywhere.  It's approved. 

Someone gave me a book to read over the last week.  It was not violent, it was supposed to be funny but it tripped my perimeter defenses and I told the author I wasn't capable of giving it a fair reading because of some of the elements in the story.

Sometimes you just have to say no.

 

Giant Pumpkins

I don't understand the competitions to grow the largest anything.  The pumpkins are especially unnerving because they look like Adam Arkin playing that whale guy in the Mr Monk episode, a guy so huge, he can't get out of bed.
There are also competitions to grow the largest tomato.  I don't understand.  I already have trouble finishing a normal size tomato.  I don't grow large tomatoes for that reason.  If you can't put a tomato in the fridge to save it until later because the cold reduces the flavor quality, then I have to give it to the dogs.  Who are totally good with this, but still the point is I'm not finishing it.

This has nothing to do with writing.  Or does it?

Quality or quantity.  Life can be seen in a myriad of ways.  Will you grow a tomato so that it reaches 6 pounds and is aesthetically ugly or will you be pleased with a beautiful smaller tomato, which because of the size, all the goodness and taste is compressed?

It's all a contest and ultimately we are the only judges of ourselves while we're alive.  Good luck if there's something beyond this!  (I should throw in some commas because everyone has been accusing me--rightfully so-- of not using, enough, commas, in, my, writing.)

a Beauty King I grew from seeds from Brad Gates, Napa, California

Nothing Serious

Disconnected/Paige, Turning/Nothing Serious.

There's something about this book people are not getting.  It's a very cute story.  It was with a publisher before I asked for it back.  I'm not sorry I didn't let them go forward with it and I still think, eventually, it will find an audience.  I like the cover image.  So did an editor I sent it to.  I'm not sure how much difference a cover makes.  If it's attractive, shouldn't that work?  I don't have the answer.  Would I be better off with a naked male torso like someone assured me?

That brings up the question/problem I have.  Should a cover have ANYTHING to do with the book?  Yeah maybe naked men sell books but if there are no semi-nude men in the book, isn't that a misrepresentation?  I took the sex scene out for the publisher and I didn't bother to put it back.  It wasn't all hot and steamy anyway.  I'm rather embarrassed by these invasions of privacy.  (Which is why I'm not racing to deal with Fling.)

Audience

I've been having an exchange over the last few days with an ebook writer who is doing massively better than I am.  This person writes commercial fiction and I think if you can do that it's very easy to find an audience.

I've never really done commercial fiction.  Whatever I've done is more on the quirky side.  Not in a good Bohemian type way that's all edgy and easily identifiable as being predictably quirky.  It's more along the lines of "Sheesh!  Was it this?  Is it action, romance, comedy, tragedy WHAT?"  No, it's just life reflected on your screen.

My great hope for ebooks was and is that people who are out of the mainstream can find a group of like-minded weirdos here in the virtual world. 

I renamed Sweeps and created a new cover.  I only put this version on B&N.  And yesterday the 1st copy sold at Amazon.  So as a test marketing adventure, I draw no conclusions.

Threshold Level

Just before I got my first job in television I was working closely with the team at Procter & Gamble (Hi, John, wherever you are!).  Since I had absolutely no previous experience in television writing my big concern was that I was at the same level as working writers whose material was airing.  To get confirmation of that was a big deal.  I felt I had achieved something significant.

Fast forward to nowish.  Over the weekend I emailed 2 chapters and the cover of Bad Apple to an agent who treated me with professional courtesy and who exhibited an excellent disposition.  She was in the editorial side of Big 6 publishing for many years until she retired and decided to do a little agenting on the side.  I suspect she was rapidly overwhelmed by people who want representation and she cut back to nonfiction only.  I would have loved to be represented by her because she was such a nice lady and has a ton of experience but it wasn't to be.  The reason I sent her the material was to thank her because something she had said about Sweet Cider was what pushed me into the clarity of Bad Apple. I appreciate that she took the time to say anything at all and wanted to let her know that tidbit was nurtured and bloomed.

Her reply reminded me of being on the brink of television work.  Was I threshold level then.  Now the question becomes can an independent author working completely on their own without paying for cover art reach a level equal to traditional publishing.

Here's the quote

"Amazing cover--it's definitely the creepiest apple I've ever seen!"

Things to feel good about.

Being Out There

We all want to think of ourselves as different and we are.  Some of us are just more different, we are out of the mainstream, there is something about us that sets us apart and keeps us there.

Lest you think I am speaking of myself, let me tell you about an actor I met at one of the soaps I worked on.  He was then and continues to be so handsome.  He is so almost beautiful in real life, that I could hardly speak coherently to him.  (Isn't that embarrassing!)  This man is so talented, has so much depth, so much in reserve to draw upon, he isn't interested in working all that much.  He already knows the truth about this business and intellectually it's a bore.  Whenever he decides he wants to work, someone will hire him between the first and second breath.  He's not like anyone else.  You know that standing next to him.  You know he is going places in his head, you couldn't follow with GPS on a fast motorcycle.  I wonder what he does during the day. 

I wonder if digital publishing will enable niche writers to find their niche readers or are we just going to have more vampire stories.  Having learned the lesson of homogenizing everything at the feet of big entertainment, will anyone be experimental or will we just wind up with exactly more of the same?

Specificity

I've been writing quite a long time now and time and distance have given me the opportunity to look back--

T. S. Eliot -
- We shall not cease from our exploration
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

I'm not going to be arriving where I started anytime soon but I sure can know that place better than when I was there.

I wrote very fast.  Which did me in good stead in television, where you wouldn't be at all if you couldn't write really really fast.  The problem with writing fast is that most people don't think that fast.  I don't think I think fast at all. 

Some people, and I've written with them so I see how they do it, can write mechanically.  They say "Vicki becomes Niki and then Mitch Laurence shows up and we have them..."  And they'll mechanically move the pieces around until they have story.  I do very poorly at that.  I need things to come to me and often it's not on schedule.  Things come to you when they come to you, unbidden, a surprise.  Not good for television.

The real problem with speed is that like a speed skater, you're flying over the ice 1/16th of an inch deep.  There's no time to reflect.  You neglect the texture, the implications, the coloration, and the specificity in order to be done.

This works for an awful lot of writers, and many readers don't mind.  These days, people don't miss complications.  You don't have it in television or film.  You don't have it in music.  Why should it be in books.
I had to explain a shallow little love story to someone involved in the project.  She couldn't imbue the dialog with the meaning that was on the page.  (I wasn't specific enough!)

So my advice of the day is to take the time to be specific with your characters, make them complicated, make them detailed, make it possible to understand them. 

B&N--This Joint Is Jumping

First off, if anyone is visiting here from Ukraine, a big hello.

B&N is the place to be, and their royalties are better as well.  The drawback is there are no humans answering questions, all you get are cheery robo-replies to any question.  For instance, Not Low Maintenance went to B&N via Smashwords.  Smashwords only allows a 400 character description.  I unpublished from Smash and uploaded NLM to B&N myself complete with the same description from Kindle.  No change.  So I wrote Support to ask what could be done.  I got a welcome letter that had nothing to do with the issue.  I guess the lesson to be learned is don't try to change anything, get it right the first time.

"I heard Barnes is great but Noble is a real prick."--Billy Crystal in Analyze This.
Very good line even if completely untrue!

Here's the incomparable Fats Waller

Mr & Miss Mitnick Live

At B&N, it'll take a couple more days for Amazon.

Publishing in all its forms has become a scrying ball.  You look and see not what the future is but perhaps your past and the way you wish the future would be.

It's like anything, the personal experiences may be wonderful or they may be painful.  The fact is that digital books are gaining a foot-hold.  For every lament from a publisher of how terrible the situation is and how badly they're being treated by writers, there are 1000 laments from writers who have been abused in this business.


It's hard to feel sorry for those with the whiphand.

PubIt is Really Live

I'm still working on the Mitnicks, I thought it would be done yesterday but I got overly involved with illustrations.

I uploaded the first books to B&N on the 6th.  I've already sold more there than I have at Smashwords for the last 6 months so that convinces me to forget about that venue for a good long time..  Very impressed with Nook readers and their perspicacity even if the cover images aren't visible. 

Fond of Fonts

I had a book designer look at one of my covers who thought it was fine except for the font.  The takeaway for those of us trying to get by with what's free and what we have, is to keep it simple.

I spent several hours looking for an Arts & Crafts style font and didn't turn up with anything I thought would work on a cover.  The one I thought would work carried a price tag.

The Art & Crafts movement  started in England with people like William Morris and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the 1800's, not stuff from China you buy at the hobby shop.  When it came to America, designers like Gustav Stickley, Elbert Hubbard and a whole host of others created a Craftsman style inspired by the California missions.  Hence Mission Oak furniture.  Square, simple and desperately uncomfortable.

That's what I wanted for my mystery set on the Central Coast of California with a mission in the center of the valley.  Couldn't find anything useful so went to a Celtic font which is close enough.

The question is--do you attempt to find a font that is somehow linked to the book or do you just go for an unadorned font that will convey only the title and stylistically recede into the background.  I don't know the answer this morning.

PubIt Is Live At B&N

I signed up to be notified months ago but learned today it's live now.  So if you have only been at Amazon, you might was to stroll over.  They don't require an ISBN (yet, I'm sure at some point everyone will) and it's an easy to navigate form.

Because of the formatting issues with Smashwords, I haven't used them for the last few books.  There was a ton of information in the PubIt FAQ and I can only say it seemed that kindle style formatting would be acceptable at B&N.  There's a similar preview and the document looked as good as I could expect.

If we listen to Joe Konrath (and we should) the sales away from Amazon are a fraction for him, which is another reason why I haven't been bothering with Smashwords.  I don't want another afternoon spoiled by phone calls to my computer smart friend and struggling with obscure Unix commands trying to get the formatting right.  It's not always easy to understand what the problem Word is having.  Sometimes it's just easier to solve it in Open Office.  Googling doesn't always give you a good answer.

Get your books to the reading public.

Root Vegetables

I don't have anything clever to say about publishing.  This is my quick advice:  Be professional.  Realize it's not about you personally until you make it personal.   Realize there is something bigger going on always.  Be grateful.

Root vegetables are good this time of year.  Unless you live in Australia.

Swept Away On A Sea Of Soap

I've been working on this all week, mostly trying to perform certain Photoshop tasks (see how I'm not complaining anymore).  I had most of the pieces for a couple months knowing this book would finally rise to the top of the queue so it was just a matter of fitting everything together and getting the colors to be beshert.

I got the rights to the Wish You Were Here Series from Penguin yesterday but I don't know if I'll have the time or inclination to format them for Kindle.

I think I probably broke most of my own rules for this cover.  What say you?