Eating M&Ms at the keyboard

link to newer blog

2012-01-02T10:29:00.001-08:00

I've been doing more recent work on my latest dead tree, and posting it here:http://wherethegoldisburied.blogspot.com/. Please take a look.

Niagara Falls

2011-09-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

Damn the Stooges. When I'm introduced, usually in the workplace, and the "where you from" question is asked, and I answer... someone (usually my age) always chimes in with "Ni-a-gara-falls... slowly I turn." I can't laugh anymore. I can barely smile in a friendly way. It's just not funny anymore. Fortunately this particular joke is passing into history.

The falls are special. My father grew up within a mile of the falls and used to ride his bike around Goat Island. We lived about ten miles away, in the country, and I couldn't get my parents to take us to the falls nearly often enough. When relatives visited we could get in a visit. I also fell in love with the regional history, well before I learned that my family had roots in it. I loved the two summers I spent taking tourists around the falls. I learned that one cannot make a living off tourism in Niagara, not without having a second livelihood to carry you in the cold weather. What's worse, there have been some questionable decisions in the recent history of Niagara Falls, from the demolition of the South End to the building of the Robert Moses Parkway, and the more recent gift of the South End to the Seneca Nation to build a casino. The city today looks painfully like Atlantic City.

In the years since I left Niagara (1978), the Internet has changed the world. I can now read the Niagara Gazette online, as well as the Niagara Falls Reporter, which is primarily online. I can say that not much has changed since I first left the area. Niagara's loudest voices tend to be small-minded and petty. The Gazette is too much a mouthpiece of the city's vested interests, and the Reporter is a vinegarish, perpetually cantankerous broadsheet. The city has also lost people, and this past year sank below 50K people, a (un)healthy percentage of which are on public assistance. The city is poor and hurting.

So I will opine here. The view from 500 miles might be clearer than from 500 feet.

"I don't like change" (Stewie Griffin, Family Guy)

2011-09-09T06:41:00.000-07:00

A frame from 'Family Guy' showing where Peter has torn a wall from the house to build himself a club house, the wall being an outside wall from Stewie's room. From outside we see the baby stand in the opening. "I don't like change," he announces in a frightened tone.

I am facing a career shift in my mid-fifties, dropped on me by my employer of 15 years. They layed me off, then extended me and extended me... today was supposed to be my last day and HR just called and asked if I'd stay another week, they still can't decide whether to make me a part-timer or rescind the cut. Flattering, I suppose, but more indicative of their own poor decision making.

Writing: I've been able to get back on the short story horse. I've got a couple that I'm steadily polishing. I have also been looking more and more at self-publishing my Buried gold tale. The industry has changed since 2001, with many more players, and many permutations on the services offered. One thing that has changed it hugely: the web. Self promotion is so much easier now. Even those uninclined to stand in front of a crowd can easil put up a web site. Of course, then you need to drive traffic to it...

Summer, 2011

2011-07-30T17:20:00.000-07:00

I knew it had been some time since writing on this blog, but I didn't realize it dated to January. That's the problem with writing on a schedule. A little writer's block and the blog gets dusty. Since January we've bought a house in Westford, which is mostly wonderful.

I am skipping going to writing camp this year. Initially it was to attend a family reunion picnic I've missed for years, and some details have changed, but I'm skipping writing camp this year.

I've been trying to write short pieces instead of launching novels. Much harder. I find the storylines hard to tie up. I had always understood that short stories were harder to write than novels, and it's true enough for me. I've also had some family crises and work issues that have been very distracting.

But tonight the Red Sox are winning against the White Sox. As we learned in Field of Dreams, we will always have baseball....

2011...

2011-01-07T16:35:00.000-08:00

Another exercise in self-publishing. Using lulu.com, I uploaded scanned pages from a privately published family history (1905, 2 huge volumes, privately printed, no book number). I like the site, you can upload word files and download proofs in pdf. I set up a 56 page family history and some old photos for the front and back covers. Printed and shipped it came out to about $6 a copy, a nice additional xmas gift for my immediate family.

On heroes

2010-12-09T13:24:00.000-08:00

I was surprised the other day to see that my last posting was quite some time ago... So this is an issue that's been quietly bugging me for a long time.

Heroism has been devalued in the past decade, largely thanks to international terrorism and its intended product of causing broad-based terror. When unsuspecting and largely innocent civilians are attacked by bombers or shooters, they cause terror. Those who become victims are often called… heroes?

Victims are victims. They are suffering unnecessarily, unfairly, unjustly. In a world where we tend to believe good behavior and bad behavior are sorted out through punishment, victims are those injured or hurt - in effect punished - without having indulged in bad behavior. Sometimes they are forces for good and are killed unjustly. So they really are victims. But they are not heroes.

It’s become especially popular to call all soldiers heroes. This is thornier, and more sensitive. Joining the armed forces isn’t the same as getting a job at, say, Sears or Microsoft or Bank of America. Civilian work is considered generally non-life threatening, not intended to be dangerous. People who work at Bank of America go to work in the morning expecting to peacefully return home. Soldiers, on the other hand, take a job that could put them in immediate danger for their lives.

It’s really with soldiers/sailors that the ‘hero’ label gets used too broadly. On this point alone I know I face opposition. Soldiers=heroes for many. I agree that many soldiers behave heroically, but not all are de facto heroes. In WWII, and since, there were soldiers identified as heroes. Usually they got medals for this distinction. More soldiers fired guns at the enemy than were given medals. This group, the undecorated shooters, could be considered heroic, but they are not singled out and recognized, and while soldiers do their job without special recognition, even risky assignments, I do not believe they should all be called heroes.
They have the potential to become heroes, as can civilians, if they encounter an emergency where they react with the values considered heroic. If they put their own lives at risk to save others, or to eliminate a lethal enemy under lethal conditions, they are heroic. If they did their job with logical respect for staying alive, they are honorable soldiers but not heroes. They do deserve the nation’s thanks for going where they go, and should be honored as soldiers, as our defendors.
But heroes? We need to distinguish Victims, and Honorable Soldiers separately from Heroes. It would seem that suddenly we are awash in heroes. I don't think we're all behaving so much better than people did fifty years ago. I think the global instant information age has devalued, among other things, the label 'hero'. Survivors are suvivors. This label needs to again become special.

Ni-agara-Falls...slowly I turn... a history museum, anyone?

2010-09-18T08:01:00.000-07:00

When you are from the falls and live elsewhere, people over 50 will eventually run the Three Stooges opening line. I remember seeing it as a kid, and it's still got the power to draw an amused smile of recognition...but that's all. The other recurring joke (unintentional) is when you are somewhere far away - say, Tucson - and someone asks you where you're from cuz you don't sound like you come from around here - and you say Niagara Falls... "I knew this guy I worked with on the Alaska pipeline back in the seventies, he was from there, name was Steve?"

My usual response is to say, "true, there's only four of us, but he never made the meetings. You sure about him?"

I decided to post an idea I've had for years. It's about Niagara, and about its declining fortunes. I've been watching from afar for over twenty years and seeing promotional ideas come and go, businesses come and go... and the falls is even more decrepit looking than when I left in 1978.

Yes, the Canadian side is a blueprint for tourism development. But with all those lights and attractions, they have overlooked a cultural touchstone. There really isn't a Niagara Falls museum on either side. We have the Schoellkopf, and it does a fine job with the natural history of the gorge, but I'm talking about human history. In particular about the development of industry that erupted along the river in the late 19th century. There's a vast amount of interesting history that is virtually unknown outside of us geeks who seek it out.

I don't know for a fact how to do this, but I would hope there are grants out there that would get the process started. I know there was a collection, but it wasn't displayed properly - I think it was associated with the Local History section in the library, another neglected institution.

More later as I discover how good/bad an idea this is...

Lulu-ed - docutech and nuvera

2010-06-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

Yet another foray into the semi-slutty world of print on demand, and self publishing. I've been monitoring ebay for the past couple months, watching auctions on docutechs and nuveras - these are the trade names for the most widely sold digital printers, used for POD. Though these machines will take up a wall of your basement, and originally sold in the upper tens of thousands, it's been ten years since they first appeared and the prices have dropped. Currently one can buy one for about five thousand. I can't justify the expense, but I'm keeping an eye on it. It would be neat someday...

Separately but in the same vein, I took my historical novel and went poking around lulu.com. They are unique (I think) among self-publishing companies in letting you play with their typesetting software free. You can even create a cover and display it on your screen for free. I set up a version of my buried gold story and it looked so good I decided to spring for the $15 to get a hard copy. As best I could tell, looking at the many, many self-publishing outfits out there (hard to believe in 2001 there were only a handful, though a fair number have come and gone) require you to give them chunks of money before they even show you the software.

So I have a galley of my buried gold tale, and separately it's still being read by a small publisher, but I thought in the mean time I would try to get some blurbs by sending the galley around.

The publishing model continues to change...

Espresso Book Machine

2010-04-10T17:47:00.000-07:00

Today I met the Espresso Book Machine, at Harvard Books on Mass Ave in Cambridge. It's the only one in Massachusetts, and was closer than the one in Manchester, VT. From the online documentation I've found, the Espresso is a fraction of the size of the Xerox machines that provide POD.

Current technical drawbacks to the EBook machine. The bookstore currently has access only to public domain titles. Even though my first novel, Weathermen, was POD, it was not available. I asked and was told that access to POD titles is currently very limited. Only Lightning Source (Baker and Taylor) titles are at all available, and there are still some glitches, so access to titles remains a big hurdle to in-store book creation. To see the machine in operation I had to pick from public domain titles. I tried George Orwell, hoping for one of my favorites, but one of a very few options was Animal Farm.

Second technical drawback. The machine does require hot glue to bind each book, and however fast a computer may boot up, glue must be reheated in the physical world. My wife and I waited an hour (they thought it would be sooner when we started, and when it took longer we decided to wait it out). The machine ordinarily gets enough business from the neighborhood scholars seeking out of print titles; we were the victims of a warm Saturday. The Xerox printer spit out the pages in under a minute (172 pages). The entertainment value is watching the cover printed on a separate, color printer, then watch the pages run over the glue roller, then tucked snugly into the cover, pinched tight, then run over a tiny router that trims the book. The book is dropped into a spout and it appears like candy bought in a vending machine. The entertainment value of watching a book being made is evident in that the Espress machine's sides and top are transparent plastic.

I don't mind too terribly that we got a parking ticket waiting for the glue to get hot enough...

A memory - David Finitz

2010-03-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

David Finitz

In late May, 1970, in Niagara Falls, New York, eleven year old David Finitz was playing with two other boys near the upper Niagara River. The boys found an abandoned door, or something akin that floated, and dragged it into the river to use as a raft. It drifted into fast water and the two older ones managed to swim to shore; David panicked and stayed alone on the raft as it began the terribly fast trip down the Upper Rapids and over Niagara Falls.

To stay out of the upper river was as common gospel to children in Niagara Falls as not playing in traffic, though my father, who grew up within a mile of the falls, one day pointed out a pathway one step from fast water he and his friends biked as boys. Because the Robert Moses Parkway and the factories on Buffalo Avenue constitute a physical barrier between the residential area and the upper river, there hasn’t since been a story like David’s, and that may be why his death still is a marker in my memory. To this day there are few scarier ways to die in my dreams than being swept over the falls. And yes, I occasionally have that dream, though the falls in my dreams never appear as starkly cold and rocky as they are, and I somehow linger at the rim until I awaken.

What disturbed me then and continues to are the photographs. At least one tourist was on the bridge over the upper rapids. She looked upriver and saw a boy on a piece of wood in the middle of the Upper Rapids coming downstream fast, and she aimed her camera and shot film. The clearest frames ended up in the local paper, and then in the June, 1970, issue of Life Magazine. She was paid for the photos, as is customary.

I was thirteen when this happened and the local paper printed a front page photo, grainy black and white of David on his raft and I was chilled. It wasn’t hard to conjure a scenario where I might have stumbled into the same predicament, especially if I was trying to impress two older boys with my courage; I’d endured stupid, less lethal dares. Now in my fifties, I was sifting through Ebay listings one day and remembering David’s name, typed it in. I got two hits, both for editions of Life Magazine for sale featuring four frames from the amateur movie camera.

I have to wonder how that tourist felt, and if the memory stays with her. She captured the last minute of someone’s life, both of them knowing it was the last minute. I am a photo-bug myself, as my wife can testify, but I have never been witness to sudden tragedy and don’t know what my reaction would be. Would I have shot film? Would I have dropped my camera and screamed with him? Might I have glanced around to see if there might be rope or some other flotsam with which to attempt a rescue? I like to think I would have done something besides firing a shutter – and that is unfair to the photographer, having never been in that position. There is one argument in favor of documenting the event – Mrs. Finitz did not become a mother of a missing child, wondering ever after what became of David.

There have been rescues in the upper river, people plucked from the waters, in one case a girl I knew slightly was saved near the very precipice of the Horseshoe Falls. Most of the rescues have been in the shallower rapids of the Horseshoe, which are far broader than those preceding the American, or Niagara Falls. A helicopter ride has crashed a couple times over many decades and boats drift too far downstream and shear off their props in the rapids, then usually run aground. But all of these rescues occurred in the Horseshoe Falls, in the broader, shallower rapids where victims may be able to hang on and permit rescuers reaction time. In fact, of those going over the falls involuntarily, the survivors all went over the Horseshoe.

Part of me wishes there was no photographic evidence of David’s last minute. It was, in a way, an early snuff film.

Where the gold is buried...done, more or less

2010-03-08T11:23:00.001-08:00

What a journey this project turned into. While SHD was in the process of being published I began writing WTGIB, so peg it at about seven years. I needed to know the circumstances of the loyal Quakers and their overland journeys to Niagara, and finally had to accept that, in the words of the UEL records, a key book that may have contained such details was likely burned in 1813. So I had to make it up, which isn't as much fun as it might sound, not when one is taking pains to keep it all historically accurate.

I pictured the story arc beginning in the 17th century, with the martyrdom of French priests, then going to 1759 and the siege of Fort Niagara, and then to the actual storyline of loyal Quakers in 1789, and finishing today, with my two Tuscarorans - my favorite characters. I took the first chapter to Vermont and Ellen Lesser patiently explained why I should keep the story 'organic', i.e. stick with the actual story line and end it then.

So I ignored her suggestion and wrote a 150K word novel that nobody, but nobody wanted to read. I went back and chopped up the siege of the fort and tucked it into the Quaker's story, which made sense then. And last year I decided to follow Ellen's advice and sacrifice my two favorite characters... so now I've got a reasonbly tidy $72K word historical novel. I'm still missing Diane Printup and Chris Green, my Tuscaroran lovers...

All I need is a publisher(!)

Assassination of Jessse James by the Coward Robert Ford and other westerns

2010-02-12T11:21:00.000-08:00

Ron Hansen wrote this novel, dosed with much fact, in 1991. It was put on the screen a year ago, a point worth noting for those writers dreaming of movie deals. The book has a conversation with the author, and he relates that the movie producer picked up a used copy of the novel in Australia. I'm also reminded of the poet whose book was picked up in a 2nd hand shop by Sheryl Crow, for her first hit. Anyway, Casey Affleck got an Oscar nomination for playing Robert Ford (Brad Pitt playing fellow Missourian Jesse James was ignored by Oscar - I think he's got Cruise-itis).
Original point - many times I've enjoyed a movie for which a book was previously written, and I can't recall ever going back to read the novel. Most agonizing example: Last of the Mohicans. Loved the film. Loved it. Went back to the book. Couldn't get past page three... that 18th century writing style was torture.
Hansen's book of course tells more story than the movie showed (picture=thousand words notwitstanding). I learned that Bob's brother Charley took his own life, a downer that didn't reach the big screen. By way of almost misleading the viewer, Bob Ford's killer is protrayed as a crazed looney seeking fame, which is part of how Ford explained killing Jesse, ie for the fame, expecting applause. In fact the looney was a local with whom Bob was feuding.
I previously read 'Desperadoes' by Hansen, his chronicling of the Dalton gang that met its end in Coffeyville, KS.
Does this mean I've aged just enough to be my father? Loving westerns? Perhaps. But for those who dread such a comparison, consider this: two winters ago I took my then-favorite film, The Proposition, home for my parents to watch. Set in turn of the 20th century Australia, starring Guy Pearce and Danny Huston and Ray Winstone, I found it masterful and poetic. My parents politely waited for the final credits to finish before getting up and scramming... I suspect westerns are changing.

As it happens, over Xmas I saw 'The Road', McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel, a departure from oaters. In lieu of horse, father and son push a shopping cart. Sad story, sad movie. I don't think the flick lost much moving from the book, which I'd read several months prior.

Writing Camp

2010-01-27T12:35:00.000-08:00

Writing Camp is my name for writing workshops/conferences. Years ago, when I attended my first, I was unsure what the reaction of non-writing people might be to 'I'm attending a writing conference'. What reaction did I fear? The same one gets if admitting in public to being a writer. "What have you written?" And if your work isn't immediately recognizable you feel obscure, unknown, a charlatan, i.e. anyone can claim to be a writer.

So writing camp became an amusing, disarming way to say 'I'm going off for four days to eat, drink and sit in rooms with other people who write. We'll have a nominal leader who teaches for a living and is therefore qualified to lead us.'

What does one encounter at these gatherings? Other writers, of course, and they run the range of newbies, weary veterans, the published and the unpublished. I have to confess one rarely meets writers who are publickly known - the workshop leader and I walked down a street in Montpelier without a single starstruck fan asking him for an autograph. I never met at a workshop Michael Crichton, Stephen King, or other writer I knew of from my regular life. The writers who teach at these gatherings are usually teachers in writing programs in colleges and they have a few publications to their name, but you'll need to explore Amazon to find them. So you aren't being taught by a famous writer - which is for the best, as some famous writers probably can't teach.

Past writing camps: Rappahannock Fiction Writing Workshop, in Virginia, catering strictly to fictional prose - attended 3 years. No poetry, no nonfiction. Sadly, this workshop had its last gathering in August, 2001.
Colgate Writing Conference, at the college in upstate New York - attended once, left early.
Vermont PostGraduate Writing workshop in Montpelier, VT. I've attended three times and plan to return this year. They offer workshops in fiction (short story, novel), non-fiction, translations, and lots of poetry.

Are you better than me?
For writing workshops, you submit your writing and you will receive copies of the other attendees' works. So before the gathering, you've already read their work, and they yours. And as part of the workshop everyone is reviewed by everyone else (And if it's a five day workshop and you learn on the first day that you are 'up' on Day Five that can make for a long workshop). And because life is short and these workshops aren't free, you begin to rank yourself compared to others. You don't want to find yourself out front, you won't learn anything that way. I'm happiest when my work doesn't look shabby next to the other material. I feel humbled and a little dismayed when someone presents a polished story - when you say (maybe just to yourself) 'I wish I'd written that'; it's the highest compliment I think a writer can give. I've read through those photocopies and said, "this one isn't bad"... "this one has good spots but seems to be missing something" and I confess to once reading an attendee's work and suspecting the workshop was letting in some sub-par writers to pay the bills. Ironically, that writer promoted himself as published to boot... I have no doubt he was.
I've seen one attendee leave early when she was called from home to say an agent had called... that's the best way to leave a workshop, with everyone else's tongues hanging out.

I applied once to Bread Loaf and was rejected. Everyone should apply once... The reason I like Vermont is its closeness, and now I know some of the people. I just wish it was cheaper, though they have a culinary school on site and 2 out of 3 years the food has been great.

But I've left for last the best part of these workshops, why I keep returning: being exposed to other work and other writers is so revitalizing! This is something you can't get reading someone's work on craft, or in any other way. (I also get a mild charge out of leaving copies of my novel in the bookstore - though last time it was just for an airing out, none sold(!))
You may arrive utterly burned out and blocked, but by the end of the workshop you will very likely be working on something new or have a better idea how to fix a work in progress. At Vermont, each group reads in a public room to whomever feels like listening (honestly, it's usually just the groups slated to read that day, and those who feel strong about solidarity), and I don't know a better way to ruthlessly edit writing than preparing it for public reading to other writers.

Kindle...again.

2010-01-06T18:37:00.000-08:00

As a sort of birthday gift for my wife and anniversary present for both of us, I bought the latest Kindle last June. This is the 8x11 page sucker. It looks like a full sized notebook, compared to the original Kindle which looks like a PDA on steroids.

As I say, I bought it in late June. My wife has downloaded a lot of novel excerpts and one novel. I downloaded the memoirs of U.S. Grant because it was public domain (99 cents) and I'd read it was one of the more readable presidential memoirs. I can say that Grant did not load up the narrative with dense vocabulary, and if I only had the Kindle next to me in the room where I park at night and watch TV, I might have finished the memoir. I also ordered the New Yorker via Kindle. It does an adequate job with the cover (it's a WSJ type display, no colors) and okay with the cartoons. I admit the learning curve on navigating the TOC is steeper than I'd expected (again, if I were using it more frequently this would probably be a nonissue), but the bottom line with the Kindle is that I don't pick it up as often as I'd thought.

It's not too heavy, and the display isn't bad. It's certainly portable enough - yes, I've read it on the hopper. It's not at all hard to back up a page on the Kindle, the response time is probably faster than the time it takes me to flip through print pages... why is it so hard to say this? I like books.

In part my slow adoption of the Kindle is that many of the books I want to read are not yet available electronically. I most often purchase used books by authors I've discovered (whose titles may be ten or more years old) and these titles have not been set up for Kindles. I spend more on shipping than on the books.

So in ten years, if titles are retrospectively set up for the Kindle, I may be carrying a battered electronic reader around...maybe. By comparison I was hopelessly addicted to my first Ipod within three months... and I now watch more flicks via Netflix download than DVD, so I'm not the slowest of adopters.

I wonder which is the greatest burden on the environment, print books or the energy required to run a Kindle? I haven't seen any statistics I trust either way...

Friends of the editors - 1 year anniversary

2010-01-05T08:11:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed in earlier postings I announce the web site friend Denise and I have to publish people (including ourselves); friends of the editors has been limping along for about a year now.

We haven't been deluged in submissions, and that's largely because we've been hesitant to promote it. We did get a shout-out from Grub Street, and got a few excellent submissions from that.

We do things a little differently on FOTE. We do decline material, but usually we give detailed reasons, and in one case, I reverted back to my days as a comp instructor and did a line-by-line edit. I presume others do this as well, but I've never had a rejection that wasn't a form.

So...I've finished a draft of 'Mud Season', the zombie novel, but now I'm rewriting it, going from a third person POV to first person. Periodically I remind myself that I have more fun writing than publishing. Less rejection, more creative....

So consider sending a short piece to www.friendsoftheeditors.com. We do fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

Janet Reid... I'm sorry

2009-11-14T13:47:00.000-08:00

Confessions of a Query Shark follower. I've twice submitted a query to Janet Reid's skewerous Query Shark for 'Where the gold is buried', and the first time I got bounced because I was too ordinary a screwup - I had failed to absorb the wisdom to be found in the wreckage postings.
Second time I thought I had a better handle on what an agent might want, but I kept overlooking a key issue - my novel in its original length ran 150K words. See, I got spoiled because Stone House Diaries, published by a hobby publisher, was wonderfully indifferent to length. (They did say I didn't need to add any more). Back on my butt on the sidewalk, I think in terms of those craft workshops who preach 'write the story, don't worry about the length' but now I know size matters.

So I still follow Query Shark, reading others' queries and I think I'm learning to query - and the new draft is just 78K words (easy to cut, once you shoot off the first limb), but I still don't make the acknowledgement cut. Sigh.

Blood Meridian

2009-11-05T18:52:00.000-08:00

About a year ago I started reading Cormac MacCarthy, and starting with Blood Meridian is not unlike experimenting with drugs by starting with a mix of crack and oxycontin. The Road, All The Pretty Horses, I suspect would have been gentler introductions to MacCarthy. When I finished BM the first time I felt like I'd just run through a thrill ride, been blinded by the show and emerged into light, wondering where the hell I'd been, not unlike my first viewing of Apocalypse Now in sensurround in a Toronto theatre in 1979... (three hour version ending with the bombing of Kurtz's camp, without the interminable visit to the French plantation, they handed out pamphlets listing the screen credits. Phew.)

I have a list of books I swear I'm going to reread, but this one I did. I'm about halfway through it and it's like I only skimmed it the first time. And here's the reason I'm writing about it: I already know I'm not the best writer around, but other stories usually inspire me to work harder, or perhaps they just make me jealous because I feel I'm as good as they are but they caught the right ears, had the right contacts, etc.. Grapes of Wrath inspired me, that is it suggested a path I thought I could emulate - I'm not Steinbeck, but I thought someday I could write like him. Mind you, I've read more than a few writers who don't inspire me in the least (Dan Brown?).

Perhaps it's because this is a historical novel, which is my chosen milieu. All the Pretty Horses was less compelling, The Road was just a tour de force of sorts, but with Blood Meridian I'll never approach this level of detail and intensity, and I feel no shame admitting that.

Now, back to jealousy and loathing and all the other good writing motivations...

Hobby publishers

2009-10-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

What is a hobby publisher? I've found a few references to the term, defining it as self-publishing, which is not how I define it. Hobby publishers are folks who become publishers as a hobby. Sometimes they are retirees, or late-in-their career types, but they are small operations who are or who have earned their way doing something besides publishing. Publishing becomes their hobby, and it's becoming more common with the growing availability of POD equipment and the web's bookstores and the evolution in online book buying.

I coined this phrase because of my experiences in publishing. Stone House Diaries was published by the Local History Company of Pittsburgh, and TLHC is a prime example. They are a retired couple with some help. They specialize in publishing books for the Pittsburgh area. They are good people and I'm pleased to see their web site shows new titles.

(Slight digression)
Earlier this year I finished a historical novel with the working title 'Where the Gold is Buried'. The story is built around a map to buried treasure at Fort Niagara. I stumbled on this legend of buried treasure years ago, and felt connected with it because the luckless soul who tried to find the treasure was my ancestor. So over the past several years I've been searching through known history and making up the rest, and finished with about 550 pages trying to flesh out the legend.

The rule of thumb these days for getting published is for story length to be between 70,000 and 90,000 words, which is in the neighborhood of 350 pages (doublespaced, etc). At 550 pages I was a little long. So... I edited. I cut and cut and rewrote (usually a good idea anyway). Got it down to (imagine a calculator clattering away) 109,000 words Damn! Still 19K over.

The story line begins in 1649 and finishes present day, and years ago a writing advisor suggested stopping the story in the 18th century. So... last summer I said a sad goodbye to a couple of my favorite characters - both Tuscaroras - and stopped the story in 1789. (Warning: this is really traumatic)

What does this have to do with hobby publishers, you may be asking? (Go ahead, ask, someone's got to keep me on track). Well, for my latest opus I decided to try, again, for an agent. I labored over my summary and query and have heard contradictory advice on how many agents to email (1. email only the handful you have exhaustively researched and believe would truly love your work, 2. email agents until your fingertips bleed). Whatever. I got no interest.

Before the Severe Truncation, I sent part of the novel to an online outfit, a hobby publisher that does Canadian history (most of the novel is set in Canada). If they publish it they might get it reviewed, but they use POD equipment and the book will essentially join the long lists on Amazon and BN.com and will only appear in my local bookstore if I take a pile in and try my charm.

It has led me back to hobby publishing. I did some research and the cheapest POD printer I could find was $15K used. Also available for lease. Am I doing the world a disservice by bypassing the vetting process of agents, intended to save the world from bad novels, and cranking mine out anyway? Well, I don't think mine is so bad - not while Dan Brown is still getting published... I'll stop here.

SASE

2009-10-17T07:33:00.000-07:00

I suppose I'm among friends here, so I'll admit I've been writing for over twenty years, and I stank until about ten years ago. I knew early on that an agent made publishing easier. Before the web (henceforth to be known as BTW) there was, of course, no email option in querying agents, so I went to the library (quaint, I know) and filled a couple pages of a legal pad with agents addresses from LMP. Then I typed up cover letters - knowing little about what to put in a query, I don't remember now how sucky that query must have been, but what the hell - and tucked in the SASE.

Around 2001, when I was trying to find a publisher for Weathermen, I vowed no more SASE crap. Postage was starting to be a less trivial cost, and I was certain that no traditional agent wanted me, and the newer agents would have email. I was partly correct in both, at least I assume so, as no traditional agent has EVER expressed an interest in my work and some agents had email. So began a epoch of emailing. I've had modest success in publishing, none in agents.

At the Muse/Marketplace workshop Grub Street holds, one recently published writer gleefully explained she broke a couple of the 'rules', mailed her novel over the transom to an agent, found publishing success. So, I vowed to myself, at some point I had to break that old vow.

Well, two weeks ago I used the web to find agents who were a) looking for new meat, er, clients and b) would not take email queries. I used web resources to cook up a query letter and bought stamps, and sent out a total of six snail mail queries. I know that one must blast out queries much as LLBean junk mails their catalogs. Junk mail is considered successful if it gets a 3% response, so how do you calculate a 3% success rate on six mailed queries? Agent took a little longer to throw it in the trash? I mailed them on a Tuesday(?) Got the first rejection on Friday, and two more since then.

Moral of the story? I suspect the writer who bagged an agent by being quaint and ignoring the rules also had a leg up because she was a marketing pro. Trying to find an agent by using an old road seldom used does not necessarily work. Yes, common sense should have told me that, but at the end of the day don't you want to be able to say, I tried everything? Even SASE?

Agents... it would help if I wore a dress

2009-10-02T06:14:00.000-07:00

I have had exactly one literary agent in my writing life. Ralph from Cambridge Literary, at the time in Newburyport, accepted my first novel in 1999. From his website I could readily see the agent hadn't sold any fiction. After a year of absolutely no contact, I terminated the agreement. I eventually self-published that manuscript, Weathermen.
In retrospect I wish he'd offered to edit the story, as I now see it needed.

Lately I've been doing the agent hunt, and it's been as futile as ever. I have been published 'traditionally', and I thought that would help my agent hunt. What I've noticed from the online agent databases, and the individual entries I assume the agents create, that most agents are women and most of them dearly want 1) chick lit, 2) romance 3) women's fiction. The agent will then include most other categories - mystery, commercial fiction, 'literary fiction', but their priorities are plain. My wife, who tears through women's fiction like Sherman through Georgia, reminds me that women buy most of the books, so it's a simple supply-demand situation.

I should note that, besides women's fiction, fiction for teens is a close second. Now, is that because teens are reading books (in this age?) or because the schools need fresh material for required reading? I'm sounding soooo cynical.

So, if one cannot get an agent, then one chases a publisher, and not the big publishers, most of whom won't look at non-agented work. That leaves the amateur publishers, the small timers who may not last more than a few years. I used an amateur publisher for my historical novel 'Stone House Diaries'. They printed nice copies, blundered painfully getting reviews, blundered painfully getting the book into the stores... oh well.

Remember Wilde: Every life ends in a tragic death

2009-08-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

The healthcare debate in this country seems obsessed with who should pay for healthcare, and the fear of rationed healthcare, as though it isn't already rationed.

There are the right wingers largely trying to impede any progress by scaring the chickens with the threat of 'death committees', a version of the UK's NICE committee that decides when a drug is too expensive to approve. They have established a value of life cash amount of around $30K/yr, and if a drug costs more than that and doesn't significantly improve the patient's life, it is not approved and is available only to those who don't need insurance. Our 'death committees' would presumably follow suit, putting dollar amounts to quality of life and letting Granny die because Coumadin costs too much.

Then there are the left wingers, and this is often younger folks, who don't want to pay into a health insurance program knowing they are subsidizing the cardiac care of old people who eat the classic 'western diet' (i.e. fatty foods). Interestingly, I've read that insurance companies seem comfy insuring these elderly cardiac cases (they usually avoid those with 'preexisting conditions') so long as the youngsters are required to sign up - so the left wingers have a salient if selfish point. Needing very little care, they will be paying the same as the elderly cardiac patients...

So, healthcare rationing and who pays for this rationed healthcare? It seems clear that nobody under thirty wants to pay for anyone but themselves, and most everyone wants to believe we don't ration it. John Mackey of Whole Foods recently wrote an op-ed (and is being cross-nailed for it) proposing eight steps to better healthcare. I mistrust the advice of any millionaire on this issue, but Step 6 I like: make costs transparent so consumers understand what treatments cost. My current carrier, BCBS, does send FYI notes to us, detailing our claims and what was paid. It is enlightening - one sees the dynamic tension between what a physician wants to make and what the policy pays and there's usually a gap. I don't know how common this practice is, but if we all knew exactly what payments are made on our behalf, maybe that would smarten the debate, one way or the other.

As for rationing healthcare: a simple search of your favorite engine (yeah, probably Google) using terms like 'insurance denies claims' will net you much reading material, largely protests from angry Americans with denied claims for expensive medical treatment. It's easy to find human interest reporting on fund-raisers to pay for the treamtent or medical device an under or un-insured soul otherwise can't get? Our insurance carriers already have their version of the NICE committee/Death Committees. Wouldn't you like to make that process more transparent?

2009-07-06T07:12:00.001-07:00

If you want to see your writing in electronic print, consider submitting it to www.friendsoftheeditors.com.

The horror story has been rolling along quickly. Not having to fact-check historical detail really frees up the imagination.

I recently finished reading Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead. I had a workshop with him eleven years ago at the now-defunct Rappahannock Fiction Writers Workshop. It was my first writing workshop and he had a ton of advice, some of it very hands-on and some a little more abstract. I soaked up as much as I could, but I suspect he was a little disappointed in us because by the third day he was, in effect, lecturing us that he was trying to help us. Coal Black Horse is set primarily in Gettysburg, and it's vintage Olmstead in that it has a very moral tone and minimal dialogue. It may be classified as 'guy lit' as one reviewer compares it to Cormac MacCarthy. Having read some of MacCarthy's work, Olmstead does write in the same vein - horses, arduous travel, dangerous adventures.

In contrast, just before Coal Black Horse I read Clint McOwn's War Memorials. Clint currently teaches at the Vermont PostGraduate Writing Conference, which I've attended three times. I bought his book after hearing him read one evening, in part because his work sounded funny. What I very much liked about War Memorials is that it's a novel composed of short stories, and most of the chapters could stand on their own as short stories. That's how I believe most novels should be ideally structured. My own don't work that way, which explains my admiration for his technical skill.

What disappointed me in WM was a climactic scene between the main character and the bad guy who has been sleeping with his wife and has probably impregnated her. Now, the POV is first person through the main character and he considers himself a loser and non-violent. The scene where these two guys should be having it out, the villain reveals he's dying from an aggressive cancer, and a minute later blows himself up, making any thrashing superfluous. I expected something a little less gimmicky, less deus ex machina. I did enjoy reading the book, and most of the characters were quaint Southern stereotypes, and the book was a gentle, nonviolent tale, so too much violence would have given the story a darker end than the writing justified... but it was a let-down.

Motivation...

2009-06-08T06:41:00.000-07:00

What gets me going? I can identify two powerful motivators. First, a really good idea gets me going. It may be good enough to power me through a complete draft. Second: jealousy. Someone else's success. When I was writing Stone House Diaries (that is, during that decade), the novel City of Light by Lauren Belfer was published. Now, Lauren appeared to get what I'd been dreaming of. She got a big publishing company behind her novel about Buffalo, she had an agent, she was feted locally (she's not from Buffalo, she just went to school there. She lives, doncha know, in NYC). Me? My book was published by an unknown indie publisher, I have no agent and I got minimal attention locally. So, as I said, jealousy is a motivator.

And I know this isn't just me, as a good friend of mine who writes just emailed me about her own jealousy over the success of someone half her (our) age. Yep, it cuts like a knife. Is it enough to make us abandon writing? I wish.

We may start out in this field acknowledging the dismal statistics against success, conceding as we devote our time to writing and rewriting that we won't have the commercial success we want. We think we've prepared ourselves. Then someone does just that - younger than you, wildly successful. And it never helps if you pick up their book and read a few pages and are left... unimpressed.

Ebooks...

2009-05-13T09:58:00.000-07:00

I was surprised to read in a post on Publisher's Weekly that an industry study negates the popular assumption that ebook sales eat into the print market. Ebooks - particularly etextbooks - were heavily used, but didn't impact print sales. That's good news and bad news. For the promoters of the Kindle, saving trees is a big selling point. But the ebook reader won't necessarily save any trees... instead, there's the additional kilowatts (perhaps just watts) the readers will require. That technically adds to the electrical power we need to generate... so ebooks are hypothetically more convenient (how's the Kindle going to handle getting dropped in sand?), no improvement on saving trees, and another damn battery operated appliance.

So what's the upside? Another gadget, something else to buy. Hmm... do I sense another addition to the junkpile of history where now resides the 8-track tape player?

Literary history

2009-05-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

I was thinking of great literary nonfiction I've read, which includes some of Orwell's work, and others like John McPhee. My favorites have been history titles: Son of the Morning Star and Custer and Sitting Bull, Nathan Philbrick's Mayflower the most recent. I'm currently working through Lepore's New York Burning. The latter is not going to make my list of great non-fiction. Lepore has fleshed out pre-Revolutionary New York City nicely, especially its slave population, but her writing bogs down in the way that academics sometimes do when trying to write for a popular crowd.

The lack of zombie novels...

2009-05-06T07:15:00.000-07:00

Why, oh why, do I enjoy zombie flicks so? A good one is a real treat, as compared to the many very-low budget flicks one can find on Netflix. I have never read a good zombie novel (correction: I have never read any zombie novel). This may be because I don't read science fiction anymore. Or because there's no Mary Shelley of Zombies.

A quick search of Amazon (don't you freaking love the inter-web?) provides four zombie titles, but only one novel. I expect there must be more than one, but Amazon feeds my suspicion that there aren't many.

So I'm going to write one...

George Orwell

2009-05-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

Or Eric Blair. As nonfiction writers go, Orwell is among my favorites. During and after earning my graduate degree in history I found myself reading almost everying he wrote. The one that endures among others is Down and Out in Paris and London. Orwell was a beacon of truth in a time of much bullshit. He favored socialism in postwar England, but he wasn't afraid to take on Socialism, both in the grand and petty forms. In The Road to Wigan Pier he has a famous piece where he's on a bus in the country that stops and picks up two riders dressed - unconventionally - in shorts, with sandals and other accoutrement that elicits the comment from other riders, under their breath, "socialists". Orwell confesses he had the same thought - these geeks are socialists. He goes on to discuss the practical impediments to bringing Socialism to England, but not fatalistically, rather in a way that would ease the transition.
What poverty truly felt like, that was where Orwell excelled as a reporter, in part by living poor. In both Wigan Pier and Down and Out he writes of being poor; in Down and Out he spends months living in flophouses and eating garbage, then returns to England where he discovers the promised job isn't there and once again he is poor. Now he does a tour of the poor houses in England, and one is living again in miserable conditions, living among the unwashed and dying.
Lesser titles: Keep the Aspidistra Flying, which he himself called his least favorite work; again, it focuses harshly on class and economics. Burmese Days covers his early years as a petty bureaucrat in India.
1984 is his best known title, and it is a tour de force, but as a work of ficition left me a little bored. Orwell was at his best writing in the first person, writing about the world he was living in.

Writing about baseball

2009-04-29T16:49:00.000-07:00

Baseball is the only sport I follow at all faithfully, and specifically I follow the Red Sox. I haven't always, but after living in New England for almost thirty years, the bug caught. I remember about twenty years ago, while riding out a stretch of unemployment while earning my MLS, reading a novel I found in the Waltham Public Library, If I Never Get Back. It was a time-travel novel, so if I were cataloging it I'd have to cross science ficiton with sports (not sure how many books span those two). I do not recall the writer, but I remember reading the jacket copy and he was an English teacher from the Left Coast, and the book was a pretty well researched story set in the early years of the game. Instead of being called Sox, teams with that appellation were called 'Stockings'... the Red Stockings, etc. It entertained me, and the main reason it's stuck with me is that it's the only sports title I've ever finished reading.
I keep meaning to read some baseball biographies but I don't consider sports figures ordinarily entertaining enough to justify a book... (some fan, eh?)

Niagara Falls history

2009-04-27T17:58:00.000-07:00

Born and raised in the falls, I have published a historical novel, The Stone House Diaries, in 2005. Sales were disappointing. For a book to be successful one needs good reviews, and then getting to market on time is helpful. For reasons forever a mystery to me, the Buffalo News declined to review it - how many novels about the falls get published any given year, in particular by one born there? The Niagara Gazette was more than generous with good vibes and column inches. The second problem was getting it to the stores for the Christmas rush. The publisher missed the deadline and it showed up two days before Christmas - one might prefer to debut a title on January 23rd. At least it's quiet.

A third issue is that Niagara Falls is a poor city. I call it the Atlantic City of the Great Lakes now. The library bought six or seven copies, and in the summer of 05 all the copies were checked out with a waiting list. That was nice to see, but I also knew every copy borrowed was one less sold. Emblematic of that, I learned that the copy I gave my mother she lent to her friend, and she lent to their minister... lots of mileage on a few copies. Being a librarian I was pleased, but as an author I groaned....

I've written another novel, tentatively called 'Where the gold is buried', based on a family legend set at Old Fort Niagara. I'm working on finding an agent now. 'Muse and the Marketplace' was a very bracing primer for finding an agent. It ain't easy.

All the Pretty Horses and almost anything else by Cormac MacCarthy

2009-04-27T13:18:00.001-07:00

I decided last year to try reading Cormac MacCarthy. After a little research, I decided to start with Blood Meridian. What a ride. At first it reminded me a little of Larry McMurtry, but it gets darker than Larry does, and I finished it and said "give me more." So I read The Crossing, which was set in more recent times - 20th century - but for purposes of setting and character and dialog could have been a hundred years prior. Then I took on All the Pretty Horses, and I realized that MacCarthy, aside from being a supreme stylist, really tells the same story almost every time. It's usually two young guys from Texas that go to Mexico and have (mis) adventures. My other shallow, illiterate complaint with MacCarthy stems from his love of sticking a page or two of Spanish conversation in the book every now and then. Not being bilingual at all, I assumed he was writing for the English reader and the conversations rolled with the story line. Then one day I used an online translator and discovered, damn! the conversations are not MacCarthy showing off his Spanish, they need to be translated. So, being a lazy, pissed-off American, I stopped reading his stuff for a while.

Incidentally, I'm a truly lazy American. If a great book gets turned into a movie, there's a high risk I'll just watch the film and not get around to the book. With All The Pretty Horses, I'm glad I read the book first... so much lost.

Anyway...
Then I read The Road. A sharper turn left literarily speaking I can't image. Suddenly it's a post-apocalytic future with a man and his son trying to reach the South on foot from the Northeast - a long ways from Mexico (still managed to keep any women characters out). I was utterly drawn in before I realized it was science fiction (which I just don't read anymore, college was enough). The Road. No horses, no women, mostly rainy weather, in lieu of a wagon the father is pushing a shopping cart, fortunately not too many barbarians, and a relatively positive ending where MacCarthy finally gives the boy a mother figure. I plan to reread Blood Meridian and The Road, but probably not the rest of them. At least not until I learn Spanish. Which I'm not studying.

Water for Elephants

2009-04-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

I think I first learned of this title on Librarything, and learning that it was a novel set in the Great Depression, and the main character was a veterinarian in a circus, well having been among those who mourned the cancellation of Carnivale, I knew I'd at least try to read it. (I've tried and dropped books in the past; haven't you? You realize there are so many books, so little time, and if the book isn't working for you, put it down.)

It's an easy read, and it shows all the benefits of research, including carnie slang that you've never heard before. It got rave reviews from many of the readers who posted, but I suspect most of those postings were not the most demanding readers. This is clearly and overall a love story. Its setting is rendered well, but the writing is not epic - as I said, it's an easy read. It has effective pace, the characters are not fleshed out perfectly but they don't interfere too much with the story. You won't be rereading sentences twice or more to fully understand them. In fact, after reading it I felt like I'd finished a satisfying soft drink. I was not thirsty anymore and I don't expect to reread this title anytime soon. Probably the best compliment I read about this book, and one I wholeheartedly agree with, is that it has the happiest ending I've read in a novel. Certainly worth reading if you like this period, there are some dark moments but all in all if it is ever filmed it will probably make a PG-13 flick.

When historical fiction is more fiction than history

2009-04-25T15:12:00.000-07:00

I just returned from Grub Street's 'Muse and the Marketplace'. Although I'm a published writer, my novel The Stone House Diaries didn't launch my writing career, leaving me a humble librarian (I don't know any terribly vain librarians). I've attended several writing workshops, focusing on the craft, and they usually sent me home spiritually recharged. 'Muse and the Marketplace' left me feeling like toast. Listening to agents, writers with several titles published who can't get any publicity...

Years ago I wrote book reviews for Library Journal (hell of a segue, eh?). I enjoyed getting the titles, I enjoyed working against a deadline, I enjoyed seeing my name in print. I did this for over fifteen years before I got tired of seeing my name in print (oh, that's a lie, I never tire of that), but I was getting a stale diet of Irish history. They were sending it to me because I had an appropriate graduate degree, but when I asked for more variety... I stopped getting sent any titles.
So I'm hoping this blog lets me do the reviewing again.

A very useful requirement of LJ reviews is that the reviewer is supposed to advise libraries on whether or not to purchase: was it good for public libraries, academic libraries, or just good for a gift? Or was it a sad waste of trees? It required me to objectively decide whether others might not enjoy reading the book whether I'd enjoyed it or not.

During today's 'Muse and the Marketplace' author Kathleen Kent spoke of her debut novel, The Heretic's Child, and answered a question from the audience on historical accuracy that it wasn't that important to get the history down, so long as you've convinced the reader of the setting. I haven't read her book yet, but her comment irritated me. I expect she's correct, because several years ago Joyce Carol Oates wrote a book about Niagara Falls, titled 'The Falls'. She begins at Goat Island and creates a toll bridge in 1964 - there have been no toll bridges since 1880. I don't think anyone called her on it, which is why I suspect Kent is right. She told of getting an email from a historian of the Salem Witch Trials, enumerating her mistakes, and telling the story just made Kent smile in amusement.
For the record, I care about the history...