I'm Just Here For The Story

I don't know what constitutes the story, tho.

Someone left me a 1 star review on Sweeps saying I apparently didn't even bother to do 1 revision.

It took me years to write the book and I wouldn't be surprised to find out I went through it 50 times.  So why am I giving this person any credence at all.   Well I'm not and I hope no one else is either.

Why bother reading?  What is the point?  These people are going so fast through these books that the last chick didn't realize Viva was never married to David, and this one can't see the story or something.

Maybe this is all about education.  And I'm lumping MTV etc in with that because those entertainment outlets do train us.  The whole notion of a story starting out slowly and leading you in, is so 19th Century.  You can't do that now.  I probably still do at times because I don't give two hoots and a holler.  I'm not a commercial writer.

We have a generation and a half of people who do not sit down to savor a book , they're there to inhale it., gobble it down as quickly as possible and move on to the next comestible word source.  They're not there for the details, they're there to find out what happens in the end.  But the details are part of the story.  How do you understand what's happening, what the motivation is, why people love or hate, if you're not paying attention to the details?

Or do you just want the main characters to get together at the end?  If it's a "romance", don't we already know that so what's the rush?  I feel like giving everyone a short cut and you can read the end at the beginning in order to save precious time.

I don't have anything smart to say about it.

I started to read Sheri Anderson's book.  I think she's smarter than this but I'm sure the books will sell so that's the point, right?  She obviously can handle the language but it's not interesting in this form.

When you're the headwriter for a show you write a lot of documents that tells the producer and the network where the story is going.  There's a certain tone to this.  You don't have a lot of room and they don't have a lot of time.  They already "know" the characters from watching the show, so you don't have to get into any of that.  You don't need but a hint of back story.

What you're going to load up on is plot.  What's going to happen?  How do all these characters and divergent pieces fit together?  That's what this book reads like.  Like a story pitch more than a novel.  It's repetitive and unbelievable.  There's no sense of the characters as live people, there's no sense of place.

But what I will tell you there's plenty of and that's produce placement.  I have never read a book that was so full of brand names from the sheets to the shoes and everything in between.  I better go take out the reference to Pratesi sheets in NLM2.  I'll just say 2000 thread count sheets.  That's fine, that works for me.

I'm sorry and I'm disappointed.  I probably won't bother reading to the end.  I don't know who any of these people are besides Marlena and John and am not fascinated by their incredibly toned bodies.

I finished Thomas Greanias' 2nd Atlantis book.  This worked a lot better for me, less to imagine.  I have to admit, I'm one of those terrible readers I'm talking about in that I'm skimming a whole lot.  But I wouldn't go to Amazon and leave a 1 star review after essentially reading 4/5 s of the book.  Again I suppose these books are very light on characterization so I don't know very much about the main players.  It's light on the graphic violence and just a hint of sex so I give it high marks for that.

Here's another commercial I like very much.  The young man is beautiful.  Wowwee.

What Washes Ashore

In the floods

Sheri Anderson used to be the headwriter at Days Of Our Lives.  During her tenure, to say I was impressed with her storytelling would be minimizing my reaction.  I finally had the occasion  to meet one of the writers on the show and discussed it.  She said "Every day was like a Friday show."  The story went by so fast.  And it was inventive.

This morning I learned she's written 2 books based on Days, they're both available digitally, the first is free.  I rushed right over to BN to download my copy and I don't know, it's supposed to be in my library but it's not.  For hours it's not so I wrote to ask.  I don't feel like BN has their act together yet.

There have been a few ex-soap writers who went on to books.  I don't remember their names now.  I don't mean me.  I went from books *to* daytime then back again.  I bugged the suits because they said they felt like my attitude was always "Hey, I can go back to books."  Which was true but...

The switching up until now was a dubious proposition as I've said before.  I was accused of writing "soapy" for years.  Heck, maybe I still would be if I had my TV credits on my resume.  It will be interesting to read Sheri's novel.

I read Melissa Nathan's Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Fields over the last 24 hours.  I wanted to like it but didn't for purely personal reasons.  It was very much based on the Jane Austen book but Lizzie Bennet wasn't so mean-spirited and rude.  Maybe she was for the time but it doesn't come across that way now.  Maybe in 200 years Jasmin won't come across as a right little bitch but to me, now, she does.  Typical chicklit book where the main character is a bitch and that's supposed to prove she's a strong woman.

Screw that.

I started Thomas Greanias' 2nd book in the Atlantis series and this one is much better for me/my spartan imagination.

I love this commercial.  Yes, it reminds me of the Bad Apple series,  but imagine a world where this would be commonplace.  How wonderful!


"Where's Tru?!"
"I thought he was with you!"
"Steve, go get him!"
And there's Tru, at the piano.
Of course he wouldn't have been caught dead at any age playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but I love this commercial anyway

Time As Friend Or Enemy

Here's the reality.  In traditional publishing if you aren't a hit immediately (4-6 weeks), they pulp your book and won't give you the rights back for about 15 years.  Time is your enemy.  In self-publishing you have 100 years to find your audience.  Time is your friend and ally. 

That was a short discussion.

I just finished Thomas Greanias' first novel, Raising Atlantis.  I liked it very much in the beginning but I'm not good at imagining architecture and action scenes so I was lost and bored by the middle and skimmed to the end.  I could tell it was marvelous, just not my kind of thing.  I'll probably finish the series though because it was at least that good.  In action books, there's not much characterization.  I guess no one wants it.  I didn't like the female in this book at all.  I hate it when dogs are killed as plot points.  So there wasn't that much glue to keep my attention sticking around.  And there was a whole group of characters I just don't want to hear about in any context, medium or venue.  I guess upon reflection there were a lot of negatives but the positives were strong.

There was an article in the WSJ about 99 cent ebooks.  This really bugs people.  The ones who aren't self-publishing.
Cheap E-Books Crowd Out Bestsellers

"Crowd Out"

Bring forth the whaambulance.

As digital sales surge, publishers are casting a worried eye towards the previously scorned self-published market. Unlike five years ago, when self-published writers rarely saw their works on the same shelf as the industry's biggest names, the low cost of digital publishing, coupled with Twitter and other social-networking tools, has enabled previously unknown writers to make a splash.

Oh how dare I compete with Michael Connelly and John Grisham!  My pixels aren't fit to be near their pixels!

Previously unknown and scorned by the elites in publishing for not conforming to their arbitrary standards.

There.  I fixed it for ya.

"When I saw that highly successful authors were charging $9.99 for an e-book, I thought that if I can make a profit at 99 cents, I no longer have to prove I'm as good as them," says John Locke. "Rather, they have to prove they are ten times better than me."

They're not 10 times better than me. 

Here's what Rush Limbaugh always says.  "They will tell you who they fear."  By mocking, demeaning and attacking that person or activity mercilessly, relentlessly, they tell you where their soft spot is.  Who are "they"?  Decide for yourself.  But one thing is certain for the purposes of this blog, traditional publishing is scared sleepless over digital self-publishers.

What A Month So Far

If you don't want to hear about politics/reality, don't read this post.  See ya tomorrow.

I guess I won't be able to put my contact lenses in today because crying always gets schmutz all over them.

Last night it was the news that Osama bin Laden was shot in the head.  I love that part.  I love the part where an American SEAL confronted him and shot him dead.  This isn't over, it's not entering a new phase, we're still at war, we will always be at war because they want us dead.  If they stop wanting us dead it can be over but for 1400 years they've wanted everyone else dead so I don't hold out much hope.

If you think this has nothing to do with my work, you're wrong.  Two words.  Blue Raja.

So I was all emotional when I went to Amazon to check on the sales.  It seemed like such a large number when the month was only 30 hours old that there was no choice but to cry in gratitude and relief.  NLM had sold 237 copies by 6 am.

As a little treat, I offer the preliminary cover for Bad Apple 3.  I suspect it's the final but I've got time to play with it, so might.

Some years back I made this vid.  It's Kate Smith singing God Bless America.  I can't listen to it without crying and the final note is so clear, so perfect that I am in awe of her voice.  It was written by the great genius of popular music, Irving Berlin.

Don't bother viewing it if all things America bug you, this will just annoy you.

What Happened in April

It was certainly a burst of activity.  Not being a numbers person, I pretty much ignore them whenever possible so I went into digital publishing with the goal of reaching an audience not with expectations of how many of anything I would sell.  I suppose I reached an audience in April but to be very honest, we have no idea how many people actually read any of these books.

There are only 3 confirmed readings of Not Low Maintenance.  Why did people buy it?  Is it on their To Be Read shelf?   What prompted them to buy it?  Not because of the vast number of happy readers.  There were only 2 reviews up until 2 days ago.  The true fact is that when a book gets on a list, people see it and buy it.  It climbs higher on the list and more people see it and buy it.

This doesn't explain Fling which has been doing very nicely in the past 2 weeks and is not on a list.  I must attribute that to people reading Sweeps and seeing Fling promo'ed at the end of that.  I think both Sweeps and Fling are mentioned at the end of NLM.  People must be reading to the end of these books in order to find Fling.  They must be reading NLM and like it/me enough to seek out what else I've done.  I guess we have to assume--I haven't given this any thought until this morning--the books are being read.  Just not reviewed or liked.

Okay.  That's good to know.  Thank you everyone for being so supportive of my efforts and I hope you try the Bad Apple series even if it says it's YA.  That's a whole other thing that's really off-genre.  It's not not not a romance but it is is is a love story.  No sex, however.  Don't be mislead and wind up being disappointed!

So you want the numbers.  6603 copies total sold for the month.  It's a stunning amount.  In March, which I didn't actually look at until just now, the total was about 1400.  This month Sweeps sold more than that--1440.

NLM came in at 4379.  All that's just dandy.

Here's the real issue tho.  The only game in town was traditional publishing.  If you didn't play by their narrow standards you weren't allowed in.  They were/still are pretty arrogant about it.  I was invited to the party and then I was disinvited.  Things changed, life moved on.  I wasn't "with it".

Noel Coward so marvelously said "Those who try so hard to be with it, soon find they're without it."

Now there is literally a world opening up of people who might not be so "with it" according to the standards of 27 year old editors in NYC.  I am grateful to be alive at this transitional moment in publishing when the tyranny stops.

So what's next?  I've never worked harder in my life.  This morning I build the cover for Bad Apple 3-Rise.  I keep editing that book.  It's close but I'm not sure when I'll be ready to let it go.  Then I return to what I'll call NLM2, the story of Viva's sister, Bel.  I bought 2 cute tea towels and sent for Helen DuJardin's new book on food photography From Pixel To Plate.  Yes, I was a photography major in the day but I'm sure she knows more about food photography than I do.  I'll begin the test shots for the cover of NLM2 soon.  That will take me into the summer.  I don't write as fast as I used to.  I used to be sloppy.  I used to throw anything down on the page and be happy with it.  And I was apparently pretty good at that because it was all published.  It wasn't until I started thinking about what I was doing, what I was trying to say, that traditional publishing had no use for me!  ;-)  I worry that we're all writing too fast now because digital is so exciting and so fast and the rewards can be so immediate.  I don't know if readers notice but I do.

So wherever you are on this journey, I hope May is a great month for you, for all of us.  I will say again, for me as much as for you--do your best work.  People will respond to that sincerity.

Helen DuJardin http://tarteletteblog.com

A Good Way To End The Week

We've had floods, I thought we were going to have a tornado (about 2 miles down the road, they've been hit twice in the last 10 years), I have a bad tooth, those 2 reviews leaving me confused and all it's done is rain.

But Mrs. Awiggins, who I was pretty sure was dead, came back today.

And NLM achieved its highest ranking ever!

• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #199 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers > Legal
  • #4 in Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers > Legal
  • #5 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Comic

I was going to say something about a Mary Martin movie I saw years ago.  I can't tell you what the title was.  She played a dance teacher who knew 2 steps more than her students.  When they caught up to her she'd have to go to Dallas (whatever) and go learn 2 more steps.

Here's my advice.  Don't learn anything from someone like that.  A lot of people are well-meaning but clueless about their own abilities to teach.  Find someone with a lot of experience.  I don't want you steered wrong.

My pal Jack Douglas who was a famous comedy writer for decades had a saying "Those who can, do.  Those who can't, don't."  If your teacher isn't doing maybe they're just not that good.

First Time For Everything Etc

Hm.  I got a less than stellar review on Mr. Mitnick's Harem (A Central Coast Mystery) because my mystery was a mystery. 

It's difficult to respond to this unsatisfied reader.  It says it's a mystery.  Nowhere does it say it's a romance.  Just like Dream Horse never claimed to be an adult book and was given a poor review because it wasn't.

I spend quite a bit of time trying to come up with the best description I can for each book.  Misleading the audience is never on the table.

So was Mr. Mitnick's Harem a good mystery or not?  No, it wasn't a good romance.  I have had readers say they couldn't imagine who the killer was and they were completely surprised at the end.  I don't know if that's true and I would be surprised if a lot of people actually thought that but okay I'm glad to hear it.  At least that has something to do with the book itself.

But this is a review of something that doesn't exist--the story of the romance between....who?  Berry and Coco?  Berry and Mark?  Berry and the owner of the vineyard?

I created this book as the first in a series.  My then agent sent it around and there was admiration for the writing but it didn't have enough hook--the ol' yarn shop mysteries, donut shop, pet shop, blah blah.  If anyone wants to know who Berry did wind up with, email me and I'll be glad to tell since I sincerely doubt I will ever go back to this book series.  Do cozy mysteries have a digital following?  Since editors refer to this audience as "the Large Print Crowd" and that's not a demographic that's likely to adopt the technology RSN (Real Soon Now), I don't sense much urgency in dropping more viable projects.

I had someone write me to ask if there is ever going to be a Blue Raja 2.  That was another leader in a trilogy.

Hopefully I will get to that but since I've sold 11 copies and 1 person has been compelled to ask about it, I'm not putting it at the top of my to-do list.

Who Makes It Who Doesn't

And why.
Search me.
Most people don't make it.  Most people are not going to get out of the 5 figure ranking at Amazon.  Most people are not going to have a hit record.  Most people are not going to make it to the Olympics.  We live in a very competitive world and the playing field is not level.  It never was and it never will be.  You can't legislate uniformity of outcome.
So pretend you're going to fail.  I remember hearing Robert Schuller the Christian pastor say years ago "What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?"  Then everyone ran out to do the things they wanted to do completely without preparing for it.  Yay, thanks a lot, Bob.
So you're going to fail.  Now what does your life look like?  What do you do tomorrow?

Small Brag

Okay.  Big Brag.  It's hilarious.  You have to see the humor, the irony, the sheer bizarre nature of this.

(Oh and I just earned $10 from Amazon for Jan. Feb and March put together.  And I'm ranked behind multimillionaires.)

• Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers > Legal

Bestsellers in Legal Thrillers

The most popular items in Legal Thrillers. (Learn more)

1. 1.

   

   The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel

   Michael Connelly (Author)

   4.6 out of 5 stars   (432) | 4 customer discussions

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   $7.99

2. 2.

   

   The Confession: A Novel

   John Grisham (Author)

   3.4 out of 5 stars   (692) | 8 customer discussions

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   $11.99

3. 3.

   

   Not Low Maintenance

   Barbara Morgenroth (Author)

   4.5 out of 5 stars   (2)

   Auto-delivered wirelessly

   $0.99
   
   
    

Reading Eyes

I frequent a couple blogs written by psychiatrists.  Hmmm.  I like their insights on behavior.  On one this past week, The Last Psychiatrist
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/04/why_do_autistics_score_poorly.html#more
was telling us why autistic children do poorly on the Eyes test.  They're shown a series of pictures only of eyes and are asked what is this person thinking or feeling.  Autistics can't seem to empathize or read more about the person from the eyes.  But everyone else can or something.

So I looked at the eyes and was completely stumped.  That it looked like an advertisement for starters was something I couldn't get past.  I couldn't tell if she was selling mascara or a car or perhaps herself (porn).  I had no idea what this woman could possibly be thinking.

"I think she wants me."  Wrong.

The test is 36 pictures of eyes like the one above.  The woman's eyes, above, have choices:
a) decisive
b) amused
c) aghast
d) bored 

HUH?  None of those have to do with eye makeup or selling anything.  Aghast?  How can you see that??  Her eyebrows would go up, no?  They've been plucked and shaped within an inch of their lives but I don't see up there.  I did not go on to take the test.  I don't like tests anyway, they give you an opportunity to fail according to someone else's narrow standards.  That is a trap.

You can take the test here if you'd like.

http://glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/Faces/EyesTest.aspx

(Yes the English psychologist who created the study, Simon Baron-Cohen is the cousin of the comic Sacha Baron-Cohen.)

To me this is pretty much a picture like ones we see every damn day where the woman stares blankly into the camera and that's supposed to be sexy.   It's more tabula rasa than anything, it says more about us than her.  We want a blank slate, we want to be able to project (that's something psychiatrists should know a little something about) our desires onto her.  When TLP said above in the caption "she wants me.  Wrong" I think he's wrong.

That's what men want her to be thinking.  What women want her to be thinking?  Could be anywhere from "I found a great new product that ends waxy build-up on your kitchen floors" to "If you want to please your man in bed, here's Cosmo's list of 10 sure-fire ways".

The takeaway of this post is as a culture we're not reading people nor are we able to.  It's a facility we're losing supplanted by texting and tweeting and whatever else we do to distract us from human interaction.  

We appear to be growing more shallow.  Is what's at the heart of us dying or is it still there waiting to be brought forth?  I don't know.  I can't read it in the eyes.

Fortune Telling

Joe Konrath's last post is astounding, stunning, and somewhat scary.  You know how bad I am at math, numbers aren't sticky for me, but just let's say he sold 35,000 copies so far this month.

Phew!  And he says this is just the beginning, sales will only increase.

I must admit I'm up 500% over what I ever did before.  (We'll leave the numbers until the end of the month and I will tell all)  I'm still nowhere near Joe.

Is it possible, conceivable this will continue and grow?  Is this a fad?  Has there been such a hidden and passionate desire for books and reading unrealized until the readers came onto the market?

A reader makes reading easier.  The Nook has improved my life, that's true.  I have always gone to the library and taken out a plastic bag tearing number of books.  But your choice is limited at a small library even with interlibrary loan.  A reader makes it all easier and you don't have to lug the books back and forth.  And no late fees.  So sure I can believe other people hold the same feelings.

But at this level?  35,000 copies sold in a month?  To be duplicated next month?  And the next and the next and so on and so forth?  Really?  (I did sell my first copy of Not Low Maintenance in Germany over the weekend.)

I'm sorry I don't have anything smart to say about this.  It's like being caught in a tsunami.  I'm not sure where any of us will end up.  I hope it's true and this is a renaissance of reading.  I hope I was correct when I said there was an audience for my work, even if it's a much smaller niche audience than that of Konrath, Locke and Hocking.  Still if you're drawing from the world, that can be substantial.

I believe this can be the point of the spear.  What we've seen are the people who are the early adopters.  I don't think we've seen the juvenile demographic, and I include YA, enter yet.  The price of the device has been too high to make them commonplace. You can see Amanda Hocking and others making substantial sales to a portion of that audience--the vampires, the horror, the paranormal.  You don't see it across the spectrum though.

My pal in England was given a Kindle for her birthday last week.  She's thrilled and almost giddy.  "I bought my first book!"  She's my age.  This bodes well.

We have not seen the audience who will really benefit from readers enter the population yet.  Older people with eyesight issues, or even hearing problems will find reading  or listening--much more enjoyable once they get accustomed to not holding a book.  Devices should be as common as television sets in Senior Citizen centers.

The economy is bad now but we haven't seen the bottom of this yet.  It's going to get much worse.  When gas goes to $6 a gallon, there will be few among us who can ignore what a predicament we're in.  A book priced at 99 cents will seem like the best deal around.

During the Depression in the 1930s people found the 10 cents to go to the movies.  That was all they could afford.  People looked to films for entertainment and uplifting.  Who was the biggest star of the 1930's?  Shirley Temple.  This is true.  Think about the most popular movies of that era.  Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  The screwball comedies.  The Wizard of Oz.  People need to be uplifted.  You can't look to Hollywood for that now.  Hollywood makes movies that scream their hatred of this country.  That's why their revenues are down.  Most Americans love America.  Most Americans are good and decent people.  If they can't afford to go out to the movies, and what's on DVD or their televisions is too damn depressing, they will turn to reading as a comfort and distraction.

So will sales like Joe's continue?  Oh gee, I'm not a fortune teller.  I don't know.  But I believe digital books are a sea change and are not going away.

A French and Saunders Sunday

I have long admired the comedic genius (I don't use that term lightly) of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.

These women are funny.  I offer you 2 TWO! clips from their show French and Saunders and regret I can't link to The Cleaning Ladies which is my favorite of all because I experienced a similar situation and they nailed it.

I should mention, yes, Dawn played The Fat Lady in the Harry Potter movie.

Here they do a parody of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal.

Here they do a parody of Guns & Roses.

Stop Making Sense!

Or start.  One way or the other.

I've been reading some women's fiction (?)/chicklit (?) by Jill Mansell over the past week on Mr Nook.  She comes up with some cute situations.  The books are quite long.  Are how many pages a reader claims the same as in real life?  There are always so many characters with their own story going on I'm dismayed to say I have difficulty telling them apart.  Wait who's Chloe?  I thought that was Pru.

Obviously I'm in the minority because Jill Mansell is enormously popular.

When I was in daytime television, sometimes you'd get into a predicament storytelling-wise.  Things stopped making sense and you'd be trying to get back onto firm ground but you couldn't get there.  My "Michelle" (the character in Sweeps) would say "Just assign it!"  What she meant is state it clearly, then so mote it be.  So Dr. Cutiepie is a genius in microsurgery which the last writer/producer wanted, but you need someone in ER.  Just say Dr. C wanted the excitement of a Trauma Center and play that from now on.  You don't have a lot of choices in daytime.  You still have to churn out a complete show every day, 5 days a week, until the end of time.

Is writing a novel any different?  Hey, Cassie is now in love with Jake.  Play that.  But why is she in love with Jake?  She just is.  Shut up about it.  "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage" doo-wop-doo-wop-doo-wop.

Stop singing and just suspend your disbelief!  Don't we need to see some kind of reasons why they're in this...what's it called again...uh love?  It's freaking chemistry, you dolt!!

Sorry I need more than he has gold flecked eyes and she has long legs.

In one of these books I thought we were actually going to see Jill Mansell go into the reason, a reason.  Miss Blue Hair worked in London and on the street outside of the hair salon where she worked was a bum.  She wasn't paid well but shared her lunch with the bum and got him some warm clothes. (Cute situation)  I thought oh finally, a character who isn't hopelessly self-centered and is worthy of being loved.  errrrrrrkkkk, come screeching to a halt.  She went on to sleep with a guy she barely knew, acted a prat and finally did wind up with the bum who was actually a journalist (same thing AFAIC).  I sort of can fill in the blanks and know why he would "love" her but I would have preferred to see this relationship happen instead of it being assigned.

Let's be honest about it.  That may be what people want, it may be what we're all about now, but this is life lite. There is actually another way to live.

Agents

This is the first, but probably not the last, time I'll tackle this topic head on.  

After years in the business, I can say without reservation I don't like agents.  Oddly enough, there is still one agent I have respect for and that's probably misplaced.  Oh well.

Agents wield an enormous amount of power over your life and they don't often have the intelligence or compassion to wield it wisely.  I told my agent, Barry W., much to his horror and denial, that there are 3 sides in any negotiation.  Mine, his, and the buyer.  He denied it of course "I'm on your side."  Nah.  I love you Barry but it's not true.  You threw me under the bus for Paul.

Agents are running a business.  As another of my ex-agents, Deborah S., told me "We're not friends, this is business."  That's a POV that puts a writer in a seriously creepy position.  You work closely with this person for an extended period of time, you reveal your heart and soul, you become vulnerable and then you find the money is the issue not you or your work.  

They handle what they want to handle, not what you want to write.  If you write something they don't handle, too damn bad.  I happen to be interested in a lot of different arenas.  Too damn bad.  As the agent Michael Larson told me "You are a victim of your own talent."  See it was a bad thing I could do too many things well.  It's better to specialize.

Sure there's wisdom in that.  Brand yourself as a fantasy writer and that's good for business.  

But it's not good for a writer.

So a year ago when I started this blog, I had just dipped a toe into digital.  I don't think many people had a clue what would happen in the next 12 months.  Joe Konrath didn't know.  We were all gambling that it could be a good thing.  But still being in the tradpub mindset, I didn't want my name mixed up with something that might ultimately hurt me.  Don't forget I'm the person with 2 resumes, 1 with the television credits and 1 without because those credits hurt me in the eyes of agents and editors.  I had no idea what digital publishing would do.  Would people hold it against you?  Was it "vanity publishing"?  Was self-publishing an ego trip?  How would it be perceived?  No one knew.  Okay then.  Let Robin O'Neill (my old pen name) take it on the chin for me.  I could distance myself from the ebooks and this blog and still be abused by tradpub without repercussions.

This week some quite well known writer in her genre spoke up on a mailing list I'm on.

I may be just a tad overly sensitive to the word "hack" at present,
having lately been told by my very knowledgeable agent that, yes, she's
interested in representing my proposal for a historical novel but she'll
have to present it to editors under a different name than [redacted]
because my having written 23 novels of history /mystery /would
be a liability. If an editor shows interested, then she/he could be
told about my other books, but to know beforehand that I was the author
of history /mysteries /would count against me. So -- decades of
in-depth research and developing the skills to write well and use
history in novels count for nothing because I've used all that to write
 /mysteries. / I find I am annoyed -- to use the kindest word possible in
the circumstances.

This is obscene.

Romance Novels

Not for me, thanks.

Did it take me all this time for figure that out?  Well, not really.  It's not the genre I make a bee-line for when I want something to read.  Actually I don't read all that much fiction anymore because it makes me all schpilkis.  I did buy 2 books from Amazon this week and running true to form they are cookbooks, pastry.  By Sandra Bullock's sister.  Who knew she HAD a sister, not I.  One's about sugar work and I know nothing about that so I thought now's the time to learn a little bit since as soon as I finish Bad Apple 3, I want to finish "Not Low Maintenance 2".

I've been on the Nook since I got it.  It's a wonderful thing and makes reading for me so much more pleasant.  I acquired some books by Jill Mansell so I've been reading those.  They're not traditional romances--I like the covers a lot better--actually they're hardly romances at all.  If the prime directive of a romance is that you must concentrate solely on the lovers, then the Mansell books don't fit at all.  There was one where the guy showed up sporadically, they fought, he'd disappear for another 100 pages, rinse, repeat, until the last few pages where they declared their undying love.  (Scratches head here.)  I don't think you could get that published in America.  Yes, it's published now because it was published in England.  But if you put Chrissy Barker down as the author and switched the details so it would be America and not England, I don't think an agent would be interested.

Yes, they're all very Bridget Jonesish.  The girls drink--a lot--and they have sex with quite a few men who they don't know (which is always a good policy in real life if you want to get an STD, raped, beaten up or perhaps murdered and left in the pine barrens of Long Island, or just simply very disappointed), lead lives without consequence or meaning and generally bemoan that fact without having a clue what's wrong.  At this point the reviews shriek "Bridget Jones is me!"  (Attendant peals of laughter and pride that I suppose there are others who are as fill in the blank as you.)

Romance novel covers look so similar.  That's so potential readers can identify them.  (Note to self--see, that's where you're going wrong, your covers are all over the place.  Even Konrath warns against that.)

Who wrote the first romance novel?  That's a good question.  We know about the gothics--Jane Eyre.  That's never been topped.  Here's the answer from Wikipedia

One of the earliest romance novels was Samuel Richardson's popular 1740 novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, which was revolutionary on two counts: it focused almost entirely on courtship and did so entirely from the perspective of a female protagonist. In the next century, Jane Austen expanded the genre, and her Pride and Prejudice is often considered the epitome of the genre. 

P&P, yeah, it's on my Nook.  Does it really focus solely on Lizzie and Mr. Darcy?  What about the whole plot about Jane and Mr. Bingly or whatever his name was.  And that awful awful sister, Lydia going off with that soldier guy.  And Jane Austen didn't pull any punches with Lydia, it was made quite clear she was sleeping with him.

Here's the wonderful Lesley Gore from the 60's (this is from the 80's but I wanted you to see her).  And I like this song.  For once, listen to the lyrics.  I always get yelled at for listening/making sense of the lyrics "Who cares?!  Why are you talking about the philosophy of the lyrics?!!!" 

Hootenanny.  Oh geez, one of my favorite disparaging words of all times.

 

Swept Away On A Sunday

I don't talk about Sweeps often enough.

• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #881 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Arts & Entertainment > Television > Screenwriting
  • #1 in Books > Entertainment > Television
  • #4 in Books > Entertainment > Movies

Being #1 in 2 different categories--that's very nice.   It's selling well, exceedingly well any other month and it's dragging Fling with it.  I will always be ambivalent about Fling and its relationship to the world.

There's a review up at Amazon for it and the person targets what I think is a fairly important scene but I suppose if you're just reading as fast as you can and you don't tear it apart, then it's indeed nothing more than walking blocks in the rain to have a 3 sentence conversation as she puts it.

So either one must I assume I am a stupid writer and just made a really bad choice, or I knew what I was doing and there's a good reason Ariel was forced out of the office in horrible weather to go have a cup of tea and a couple dry biscuits with the man who had fallen in love with her.  What could that reason be?  (Scratching head in total bafflement)

Isn't that the answer?  A phone call is impersonal but if you want to connect with someone you do it in person.  I think we learn quite a bit from this scene (or it wouldn't freaking be there!).   You make the effort to get to this "3 sentence meeting" because that says "I have time for you.  I will go out of my way for you.  I will be in a wet and steamy heavy wool sweater in a sleet storm to accommodate you."

You pick up clues from facial expressions.  Is someone nurturing?  Does he help you off with your coat?  Did he order in advance to make things more pleasant?  But we can see Dorsey is not a slick character.  Whatever he says, she takes it the wrong way.  Whatever she says, he takes the wrong way.  He made the effort to connect but it didn't work.  That sets the stage for other incidents.  

We know...well, not all of us, there is something personal going on between them that Ariel is going to resist mightily.  But the forces of matchmaking are working against her.  We know there are 2 warring factions at the studio.  We know Dr. Rees is just another burden in the juggling story task the overwhelmed Ari faces.  This seems like a lot of info in a couple pages.

Maybe this scene isn't needed.  Could it be cut?  Well, if time and space is at a premium, sure it can be cut.  The more you cut these quiet personal scenes from your work, the less texture you have.

When my book Will The Real Renie Lake Please Stand Up was bought to be made into a TV movie, I asked to do the script and the producer said no.  Writers don't know enough about their story to turn a book into a movie.

Whatever time passed and by then I was working with P&G on their show Texas or something when Renie Lake aired.  The P&G liaison with a background in the theater came to me and said "They missed every dramatic set-up in the book."  Yes, they did.  As stupid as they perceived me to be, I couldn't have done worse than they did with all their "wisdom".

This is the problem when you mistakenly think that everything has to be big and hot and action filled.  Taking time for a quiet scene which reveals character and foreshadows the future is also important.

Know what you're doing and why you're doing it.

Commonplace or Sublime

A couple years ago when I was trying to delude myself into thinking I could write straight romances (I can't, I nearly went nuts writing Love In the Air), Harlequin was offering free books for their 60th anniversary.  So I downloaded several of them and never read them until the last few days.  Because Mr. Nook is a fixture in my life now and I can see to read.

If you want to be a better writer, you have to read books written by better writers than yourself.  In some genres this may be pretty darn near impossible but I betcha it can be done.

I learned a huge amount about writing, not mystery writing just writing, from Ross McDonald.  He was an accomplished and skillful writer, a man who used his mind.  His work is carefully crafted.  I learned how to create metaphors and similies by seeing how he did it.

I learned delicacy from Laurie Colwin.  All her characters are carefully observed.  There is no insufficiency of information but there is nothing unneeded.  Each word is required.  Her people are real people with genuine, sincere emotions.  

When I finally became serious (a condition yet to be accepted by legacy publishing) about writing women's fiction, I had to look long and hard to find someone who resonated with my sensibilities.  I didn't want to hear about body contours or how beastly men are.  I didn't want bitchiness as a stand-in for backbone.  I wanted to see characters behaving like real (decent, nice) people. 

Eventually, by reading a lot of books and a lot of reviews and going to recommendations "People who bought this also bought..." I found Victoria Clayton.  I had to send to England for a couple of her books but it was worth it.  She writes about adults.  Sometimes the characters stumble but they have real lives and are sincere.  It's not fluff.  It's not cotton candy.  You need a dictionary by your side.  I will be forever in her debt for introducing me to the word trull.  She graduated from Cambridge University and it shows.

You won't find these writers using cliches.  The work, the stories, the characters are not derivative.  You haven't seen it or heard it before.

What I learned from Harlequin romances is pretty simple--don't do this.

I wish I could have ended the post there because it was perfect but the women who write Harlequin, Mills Boon and all those sorts of books over the last 50 years believed in the books they wrote.  They're fine stories to distract a reader for 2 hours.  They're needed and appreciated.  Some of them even overcome the genre (but I'm sure it's against the wishes of the publisher).

I will give you the same advice I always give.  Write the best book you can.  At whatever level you're at, stretch.  Think.  Reflect.  Read.  Don't become complacent.

Sad News (but not death)

ABC is stupidly cancelling All My Children and One Life To Live.

I think that's all I have to say about it.  I'm in mourning.

The Gatekeepers And Why They're Not Morally Up To The Task

This is going to be PG-18 or 38, I'm not sure, so everyone subject to queasy stomachs when confronted with vile material, go to http://www.tarteletteblog.com/ and see lovely photos of food.

For the rest of us, that "marvelous" writer/liar James Frey has a new book out titled The Final Testament of The Holy Bible.  Here's the review in the Guardian (I didn't even mockingly call it the Grauniad) http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/10/james-frey-testament-bible-review.  Feel free to go read it if you'd like.

Here's a quote from the review:

This current crock of mendacity is a "high-concept" fabrication, artlessly crass in its retelling of what's meant to be the greatest story ever told. Christ returns to Earth, to get us ready for the annihilation of our vile, belligerent species. Renamed Ben Zion, he joins a band of apocalyptic loons who hole up in the subway tunnels beneath Manhattan. His divinity seems to be proved when he miraculously survives an accident on a building site after a sheet of glass punctures his skull and severs his arteries. He communes with his heavenly father during epileptic seizures, and gathers around him a gaggle of hapless apostles, to whom he preaches drippy sermons about peace. He licks and laps the genitalia of his female acolytes, disseminating celestial bliss in their nether regions; bouts of tantric sex follow, along with vegetarian love-ins at a rural commune.

This is disgusting and obnoxious, vile, stupid, sick and deranged.  That about covers James Frey.  Except one question.  If you're brave enough to tackle Jesus, Mr. Frey, will you make Mohammed the centerpiece of your next novel?  If not, why not?

I just wasted more of my valuable life on this piece of excrement than I should have.  On to the real topic.

Why was this published?  Let's go for the obvious reason--to make money.  Fine.  But still WHY?  

What is a gatekeeper?  They are supposed to keep the crap from getting through the gate.  So they don't think this is crap.  You take the life of a holy man, the teachings that surround this person have over two thousand years contributed to the civilizing process of the world, and you debase this person and his believers in the most vulgar means possible. 

Try that with Mohammed.  A couple cartoons resulted in deaths world-wide and death threats against the cartoonists.  Yale didn't have the courage to publish the cartoons in a book ABOUT the cartoons because they were worried about fatwas.  They think they've got a good head on their shoulders and would like to keep it that way.

But it makes people in publishing and the media giddy to do this to Christians.  Plus it's safe, right?  Anything good and decent and traditional is to be mocked and torn down, savaged by these hyenas.  They are the gatekeepers. They know what's good for us because we are too stupid to know for ourselves.  So they push this trash at us, trash of all kinds, poor writing, shallow, superficial, inconsequential insisting it's good until most of us don't know the good from the dreck anymore.  They don't know.  Most of them don't.  They don't know they're tearing down the best society the world has ever seen, to be replaced by moral anarchy.  Yippee!

I know.  Not a week goes by that I don't take a shot or two at publishing.  "Why be so angry?"  This is why.

Kindle With Ads for $114

That doesn't seem like such a bargain price to have damnable ads on your homescreen.  Hack around that in available in 5...4...3...

$99 maybe.  OR $114 plus a free book priced at 99 cents every month or something.

Over at Buy.com today they have an excellent deal on Kingston (good brand) micro sd cards 8 gb with an adapter which you need to be able to insert the tiny thing into your computer or card reader and free shipping for about $12.  So I ordered one.

The Nook comes with 8 gb storage so this doubles it or it gives me the ability to root the Nook.

The best vid for rooting the Nook Color

The upgrade is coming (in slow motion) but I have read that it won't include the app Kindle for Android (Did I get that switched???) which is my whole purpose of wanting to root the thing to begin with.  I like B&N (less this month than Dec.) but Amazon does seem to have a more extensive selection.  Without the Android for Kindle app the Nook can't access ... big freaking annoyance.  Be Brave B&N ("Barnes is a great guy but I've heard Noble is a real prick"--Billy Crystal in Analyze This or That who cares.)  Let us access the Kindle store.  Make Bezos look like a coward.  You already blew past him with color.

I finished reading a recently (2010?) published mystery, maybe it's a cozy, it's more Chicklit than that so I don't know what it is classified as.  I won't give the name or the author because it's not my intention to be mean in public.

I couldn't follow it.  The tying  together of all the loose ends at the conclusion, well, that ain't happening.

What I find objectionable about chicklit is that the main character is so bloody self-centered and this amateur sleuth was that in spades.  I really started to hate her and I'm trying to remember if she was that horrible in Book 1 and I ignore it or she got this way over the last couple books.

What the real problem is, I think, that the idea was thin to begin with.  So there was page after skimmable page of filler/nonsense to fill up the book because you have to hit an arbitrary word count or something.  We had a hippie ex war vet or something.  We had the obligatory gay couple.  We had an obligatory earnest young black girl.  We had an obligatory female abuser.  We  had the totally expected political rhetoric clumsily injected in to make us sure Ms Author was in with the in-crowd.  There was a story line that was left hanging completely.

Some novels may just be short.  My first editor, a fine and wise and well-respected woman Jean Karl, said a book is as long as it takes to tell the story.  Having required word counts shouldn't be a factor in digital books.  Digital should be an improvement over the way paper is managed.  Traditional publishing is a tyranny.  It's run by people who make decisions based on nothing concrete, completely whimsical.

Early on in my digital career I was told by someone who sells at lot more copies than I ever will (I'm sure!) that my books are too short.  People are paying 99 cents and they want something as long as War and Peace.  I don't think so.  And the book I read yesterday is the reason why.  I can get the story told without fluff and filler.

Maybe readers want that now.  Maybe they want to prolong the experience of sitting there with the characters.  Yeah I understand.  I love Neal and Truly too.  That's why there's a Bad Apple 3.

I've never been good at following orders.  If you tell me I have to do something to conform, my inner mechanism grinds to a halt.  I'm surprised that so many people consider themselves free-spirits and buckle to authority figures all the time.  I'd rather do something my way and risk failing, than doing what everyone else is doing successfully or not.

No shoes, no water bugs in the future.