Now Presenting . . . Who?

It never gets easier this whole networking, socializing to sell books thing. I wonder how authors did it a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago? Oh, right, people bouught books, read the books, talked about the books and more people bought the books. Of course, there weren't millions of people writing millions of books then. Only a few ever got through to the gatekeepers. The few who could afford it and paid to have their own books published had some success, depending on how good the books were. That's the real trick. Not socializing or networking but writing really good books.

I read George R. R. Martin's Live Journal blog and I was struck by the surprise that he is having such success now, especially since his ice and Fire series has been out since 1996, except for the new one coming out next week. A Dance With Dragons took about eight years to write and finish. George admits he's a slow writer and doesn't do deadlines very well.

George garnered a lot of fans, as he should since his Ice & Fire series is amazing. The writing is accessible and not overdone or heavy with description, although there is sufficient description to put you right in the action at the right time and place. Each character is unique and flawed in some way, but eminently memorable, from the Imp (Tyrion Lannister) to Eddard Stark, Jon Snow and Danaerys Targaryen and Khal Drogo. The books have been translated into several different languages and Vietnamese may be next. What George has created in Winterfell and the world where it is set crosses all boundaries and touches something inside us that believes in magic and demons and in the strength of men and women to combat anything that comes down the Kingsroad.

A recent article cited sales in one day that exceeded all of 2010 before HBO picked up the series and shoved the series to the top of all the best seller lists here and abroad. I wouldn't mind selling 40,000 books, but I'm new at the game and don't have George's track record in movies, television and books. I'm working my way up, but I do wonder what it would take to get people talking about my book the way they talk, dissect, and love George's books. Probably stop writing about relationships and the evil that men and women do in the real world and take the same elements and place them in a world of my own creation like Middle Earth and Westeros. I love fantasy and dragons and everything that goes with them, but find it difficult to write fantasy. I work best in the real world where the harms we do each other are next door and the next town over. I'd do well to create a world, set the rules and let my imagination run wild -- right after I finish the current trip into Victorian England where Jekyll, Hyde and Jack the Ripper put Whitechapel and serial murder on the map.

There is a world -- this world a few hundred years hence -- that lies under the curse of man's technology and Mother Nature's ire where vampires rule, not the vampires currently known and written about, but vampires of a different breed at war with each other and king of a world locked beneath dark skies where the sun doesn't shine and glaciers creep ever closer to the equator. It is a world where domed cities protect the ragged remnants of humanity cloned to near extinction, a shadow of itself, and ruled over by vampires who breed the humans for food and to run the machines their ancestors built.

The mother lode of humanity's best and brightest live underground safe from the ravages of nature, nurtured by vampires who archive their memories and protect what the shadow humans in the domed cities can no longer remember after generations of cloning. The underground humans and vampires protect technology, books and memories of what went before, what caused and perpetuates the season of Ragnarok that reigns on the surface, and these two worlds are about to clash over the precious seeds of life as it once was left behind that will soon be resurrected as the world rebounds and begins to bloom again. Memory will guide the way.

If I'm very lucky, then the novels I write, in the real world and in a world of fantasy, will start the buzz and word of mouth will sell 40,000 or more books. It's my dream, and one that isn't out of reach -- so far. In the meantime, I need to work more on socializing and networking because I'm not sure I could handle any more book signings where no one shows up or a dozen people stop by on their way up the aisle to join the hundreds waiting to see the author of Clifford the big red dog's adventures. George can tell you how that one goes. There's nothing like holding a book signing where everyone forgets to come.

Now, about that socializing. Do I really have to? Can't someone just start talking, someone with a big mouth and a bigger audience full of big mouths? I can only hope.

 

Technology: Making Life More . . .

Technology has its uses, but there are times the old fashioned way is easier -- and better.

I've been preparing a package for mailing that needs to be out by June 15. Unfortunately, my laptop did not recognize my printer and every time I deleted a job it hung the computer up for about 24-48 hours. I had to delete the printer and re-install, something I've had to do three times with regard to this particular package. I won't even go into printing the proper postage so I can send the package. It would have been easier to type out a label and take the package to the post office to be mailed, except that since I pay for being able to print my own postage and labels with my laptop it seemed such a waste of money. It was also a waste of time.

So much is made easier by technology and so much has been made more complicated by relying on technology. Heaven forbid we should have to go back to the old days when manuscripts were handwritten and posted to publishers in brown paper tied up in string. There are far too many wannabe and actual authors to have to go through each handwritten manuscript one at a time. The luck of the leprechauns was with you if you received a typewritten manuscript since so few people owned typewriters and knew how to use them. Reminds me of the dark days when the average person couldn't read, and then the printing press made printed books available and then everyone had a better chance to learn to read and decide things for themselves.

Now that I have that last task completed, I think I can move on, but technology may get in the way again. This time the technology is my job, which I do from home and which requires the bulk of my time, leaving little time for reading books to review, or for entertainment, and writing, not if I plan to bathe, do laundry, cook meals, wash dishes, clean house, run errands, buy food, vacuum and garden. No wonder people feel they need servants. There aren't enough hours in the day.

Technology helps with the usual household tasks, like washing dishes and clothing, vacuuming, etc., but the tasks still take time. Machines have to be set up, primed with the right kinds of liquids and powders, loaded and unloaded only to load and unload another machine. Then there's the folding, putting away and hanging up of clothing, and the putting away of dishes to take up more time. And then it's time for shopping for food to prepare for cooking, actually cooking and then eating, creating more dirty dishes, and often dirty clothes when food is spilled, and we're back to the laundry and dish washing again. There are some items that have to be hand washed (dishes and clothing) and that requires more time. I need a housekeeper, and I'll hire one as soon as I can afford it, which I cannot do on the salary I earn with my day job, and there's not enough time to write so I can get another book published and begin earning money on it. It is a vicious circle.

Virginia Woolf was half right. A woman needs a room of her own and sufficient monies to support the writing, but she also needs servants and money to pay for them and technology that doesn't require too much time and energy to work and keep working. I don't want much, just a cabin high up in the Rocky Mountains with a good bit of land, no neighbors, a town that is not too far away nor too close, a guest house and a sturdy lock on the door to keep people out when I'm creating. I also need a housekeeper. Now all I need to do is write more books, publish them and begin to build a recognizable name so people will buy lots of my books and help me afford my decadent lifestyle. I won't even go into the social and business online networking time that needs to come out of the writing, chore, and day job time because it's the reason I am deep into sleep deficit already.

No Rhyme or Reason

Everyone offers advice on how to get published and how to market and network and it's beginning to get a little confusing. Use Twitter and Facebook to talk about your book. Don't talk about your book so much on Twitter and Facebook. Be interesting, but not too interesting. Don't let everyone see how bad the days get sometimes. Sparkle, Neely, sparkle. It's just like the five rules for writing. According to Somerset Maugham, no one knows what they are, but they'll try to tell you the only way to do it is their way. More one size fits all and never fits anyone. The three bears all over without the baby bear. It's too big. It's too small. It's never just right. What works for one author may not work for another and seldom works for everyone even though they sell millions of books telling you just that: it works for everyone because it worked for me.

When I was studying art -- the painting and drawing kind and not the art history kind -- my teachers taught me to do it the way they had been taught. I followed their instructions and got good results, but I was never quite happy until I could do it my way. Instead of roughing out the face and placement of ears, eyes, nose and mouth and sketching in the hair, I began with the eyes and worked out from there. For me, everything started with the eyes. I guess that's why people always said the eyes seemed alive. In a way, and especially for me, they were.

I am more than willing to try it someone else's way, just like I've tried nearly every diet I've ever come across, but eventually I fall back into old habits and do it my way.

Write large and add all the details and then pare it down. Instead, I write tight and expand on that once I've finished the book.

Edit once or twice and leave it in a drawer for a week, then go back, read it, made small adjustments and send it out. How about I edit it as many times as I like, forget about it for a couple of years while I work on something else, and then come back, decide I did it right and then send it out, all the while tinkering away at it even up to publication? That works for me. Some stories are easy and come out fully formed and some take time to hone and for me to get into the right frame of mind to hear the voices and get them down. That's what's happening with Whitechapel. I couldn't hear the voices for a while, couldn't get the sound of their voices and their syntax, and so I put it away -- for years. I won't say how many years, but my mother keeps saying she wants to see it in print before she dies. She'll outlive me, but I doubted the book would be finished in my lifetime.

And then it happened. I opened up the file, took a look at the outline, put my fingers on the keyboard and suddenly I knew just where I was going. I heard Delilah's voice again, the way she speaks, the way she engages the world, that special sense of derring-do and vulnerability she keeps hidden from everyone, especially Henry. I have it now and I should be able to keep going. I know where I'm going at least.

In the meantime, I've written two other books, seen both published and am being buffeted by the networking and marketing gurus pulling me this way and that. I don't know if book trailers work, but there was a sale, so why not? I don't know if I should talk about my weird reading habits, like reading three or four books at a time and keeping them separate and distinct. I never mix one with the other. How could I? I'm reading a book about Van Gogh and his last doctor, who wasn't really his doctor because he couldn't practice medicine in his home town; he has an office in Paris and comes home to Auvers three days a week to be with his family and paint. I'm also reading a murder mystery set during the time of Henry II of England and it's really fascinating. I love historical novels that carry me away and put me in the time period without effort. I'm also re-reading Salem's Lot just because I had a hankering for Stephen King and that particular story. Maybe it's a way for my creative brain to tell my scientific brain that it soon will be time for me to get into post apocalyptic vampire fiction, which is what I planned anyway. I usually have to slide in sideways.

There is no rhyme or reason, at least not looking from the outside, to the way I work, but it works. I can juggle three or four (or in my case, twenty) stories at the same time and not lose touch with any of them -- if I hear the voices. No, I'm not schizophrenic; I'm a writer. It goes with the territories. If the characters aren't real to me, they certainly won't be real to the reader. I'm sure about that side of the business, just not the marketing and networking side. I'm more interesting -- and more exasperating -- in person (at times). Just ask my friends. And I leap from subject to subject without the least hesitation. It's my way.

I follow Scott Eagan, partly because I submitted Among Women to him, and this morning his advice was that he looks at the whole writer. He said he liked my story and the writing was good, but it wasn't right for him at this time. I wonder if he found my writings on dismembering corpses or the slashing prose I used when I was battling a cyberstalker? I didn't mention names -- or grave sites -- so it wasn't obvious, but maybe my bounding from subject to subject gave him the idea that I was quixotic or undependable. Could be.

My art teachers told me it was wrong to start with the eyes when painting or drawing a portrait, but I still did it. It worked for me. Don't try this at home. It might not work for you. No one wears my size any more.