Mementos of Dreams

There's something special about an old letter found in a shoebox or trunk or between the pages of  a book, like the letter from my grandmother to Little One Finger Jo. It's not a nickname I ever remember Gram calling me, but the letter was to me, as were several other letters written to One Finger Jo. I assume it was because I was always pointing when I was a baby, right index finger held up for silence or pointing to whoever was in my sight while I laughed or spoke as babies often do. Pay attention. This is important stuff.

I treasure those letters and the letters from my father to me when he was stationed overseas without my mother and me or waiting until we could join him in Germany or Panama or any of a dozen places where we followed him. The letter I treasure most is a letter that in some ways launched my writing career -- my professional writing career. It was a letter from Amelia May Connolly to her children. I originally called the story I wrote about that letter and what it meant to be adopted, Anna's Seeds, and that was my first major publication. It wasn't my first professional publication. That honor went to a story about a photo I treasured of my father writing a bucking bronco, hat flung high and legs clapped tightly to the rearing stallion and how I found that same furious rearing stallion when my new husband and I traveled to Utah when we were on our way to his next base in Utah.

We had stopped just inside the Colorado border at a little spot off I-70, got out, and walked around. I was tired and our son was fractious, so a walk was the only thing I could think of to clear the cobwebs and get out into the fresh air. As I walked down a street toward a tourist trap, there it was, forelegs pawing the air, muscles locked in mid jump, and a line of fathers and brave teens waiting their turn to ride the bucking bronc. I knew my father had worked in a circus and a rodeo at some time in his early years, but I thought he had ridden wild stallions in the ring. Not so. He had ridden a stuffed stallion for a photo op and yet, to some childlike part of me deep inside, my father was still a hero and the wild bucking stallion he had ridden for that creased and dog-eared photograph was the real thing and not the tourist attraction I had found.

Looking back over the years there were many old letters and photographs that have sparked stories and articles and more paper journal posts than I can remember. Each one is capture in print, the emotions and thoughts still raw as I read them now and then. As letters and photographs capture the thoughts of emotions of the moment, so does writing illuminate those frozen bits of life and time, and writing is all I ever really wanted to do, besides read. The letter from my adopted mother's grandmother reminded me that I was a part of a family where writing and words were important and that by my desire to write I was part of a much bigger family, a family as confused and dysfunctional as any nuclear family, a family of writers.

I can trace my origins back through Shakespeare, Michael Montaigne, Jacqueline Susann, Stephen King, and Alexander Dumas, among others. I am one of generations of writers that stretch back to the beginnings of storytelling and the spoken word, and there are more coming as the dream of telling stories and putting life into words is born in a new generation of writers that will create their worlds with words rearranged and reworked and published in new ways we have yet to dream or realize.

Photographs and letters, mementos from the shadows of time and space, spark memories and dreams, create legends and become legend, as long as there are people that care enough to stop and become immerse in a moment held still and taken out of time's endless stream. A photograph became the basis of the cover of my next novel, Among Men, a sequel to Among Women, and the beginning of a series of books drawn from life and photos and letters that begin with me and become something more on the page, rather like the photograph of my father riding a wild stallion. It is the dream that comes from the image and the memories we create and send on leaves of paper into the winds of change and life that become books and stories, the truth of which is not always in question because they become a truth of their own, mementos of dreams.

Happy Independence Day

I often wonder whether or not the Founding Fathers had fireworks to celebrate the first 4th of July after they declared this country free of British rule and an independent country. Probably not. We do celebrate this day of independence from foreign rule and fireworks are the usual visual celebration of that anniversary.

As a child, my parents bought sparklers for us to whirl around as dusk arrived and the sun went down in a fiery blaze on July 4th. It was the preamble to the fireworks that awaited us once the night had fully descended. The excitement was palpable in the air and my brother and sisters and I, and all our neighborhood playmates, were hopping with anticipation. We piled into the car and drove to the prearranged site to pile out, lay down blankets, and set out the drinks and nibbles. The parents sat down and chatted and we children ran around with sparklers whirling like dervishes, spilling sparks onto the ground with a whiff of burning, playing tag, and showing in whirling spirals and loops of short-lived spitting fire our happiness.

And then the show began and more quiet and biddable children you wouldn't find. We stared rapt into the black sky and oohed and aahed while brilliantly colored fires sparkled and danced above our heads, mouths open, and hearts beating wildly to the rhythm of the music and the whump of the rocket launchers that sent the fireworks into the sky to explode into stars that trailed into fire and smoke.

Since this year fire is such a hazard here in Colorado, I offer a video display of Independence Day fireworks over our nation's Capitol. Enjoy. Celebrate. Stare in rapt wonder at what man has devised in celebration.

Review: Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures by Emma Straub

Colorado Springs has been plagued by wildfires and I almost missed it because I was immersed in Hollywood during the Depression when the studio system was alive and well and running people's private and public lives. Emma Straub is the culprit and Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures is the reason.

I often begin a book with the hope that it will be good. Straub exceeded my hopes and I was reluctant to return to the real world where Laura Lamont is only a literary character. I was quite simply bewitched by Straub's writing and seduced by Elsa, and Laura Lamont the movie star, in a time when movie stars were always well dressed, smiling or bravely holding back the tears, and their lives were not cheap fodder for the masses. I miss the mystique and Straub brings that back in style.

Straub does a great job of recreating the studio system. She does an even better job of illuminating the path of glamour and fame young Elsa travels to become Laura Lamont and how that affects her life, her thoughts, and her family.

I miss the mystique that surrounded movie stars, never wanting them to be too real or too much like me. I sometimes long for Hollywood royalty with their tinsel and paste crowns on perfectly coiffed heads wearing designs by Edith Head and Adrian living in the magical world of make believe. I love fairy tales, too, and Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures shares some of that fairy tale magic, the kind that doesn't turn to rocks and dust when the last page was read. Emma Straub has penned book crack of the best kind.

Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures will be available September 4th. Make sure to reserve your copy now.

Facing the Fire

It's 3 a.m. and I still can't sleep. The smell of burning wafts through the window at the foot of my bed and brings a whiff of ash and death with it. It's no wonder I cannot sleep.

The fire marches ever closer, a dim glow on the western horizon that flares against the clouds of smoke obscuring my usually clear view of Pikes Peak. There are no clouds in the sky, except for a few mare's tails and ghosts of smoke traveling on the winds. There will be no rain today. At least yesterday was a bit cooler.

We are urged to stay inside because the air quality is bad outside and yet I am drawn outside to breathe in a whiff of a cool breeze that dies as quickly as it came before the stench of burning fills my nostrils again. I have to go outside to look over the hedge and past the rooftops to see whether the glow is bigger, if the fire is marching relentlessly closer. The wind changes and the stench is back. I retreat into the house where fans keep the warm air flowing, offering little relief unless I am still dripping cold water from the shower. Another day of work and waiting, the western slopes of the mountain ever on my mind, the glow a demon of devouring fire that could run the ridge and sweep down on the town to sweep over me and past me and on to the rest of the city. And I just paid to have the honeysuckle bush ripped out and 4 years of growth chipped and shredded and carted away with the leafy debris and muck that hid beneath the flowing skirts of old canes and new leaves sporting burgeoning red berries that will sow the fertile ground and breed more canes and leaves.

I will miss the moths that arrive around sundown to dip into the fading trumpet flowers and sip nectar turning the honeysuckle bush into a living tableau of green, yellow, gold, and purple surrounded by the shadow tinted moths and their dangling bits dipping and hovering and soaring to the top of the bush that nearly obscures the living room window.  I will miss the nightly show but not the messy honeysuckle bush and its sweet fragrance that fills the night with sweet perfume that lasts a month and then is gone. At least there will still be lilac even when the 3/4 block hedge is trimmed and neatened to within an inch of its vibrant life. A month of lilac scent and then the green hedge that glistens darkly with rain when the rains finally come.

There is still the fire chewing, breeding, snarling, and growling its way through the valleys and canyons of the mountain, relentless in its pursuit of food and air and more territory to reduce to ash. Someone once asked if fire was a living thing. Anyone who has stared into the heart of the fire knows that it is. It eats, breeds, and thinks, moving left and up a brittle limb, sneaking around its opponents to encircle and devour him when the opponent is careful enough, doesn't have enough respect for the fire. Of course fire lives. It's what keeps the sun shining and the uncountable billions of suns alive and spreading warmth and even destruction in its wake. Fire keeps the hearts of planets churning and moving the fragile mantle of earth and rock of its skin while it creates more rock, energizes more life, and spawns disasters with fiery hearts and molten streams that devour everything in its path.

And the fire waits beyond the ridge of hills, glowing in its ferocity in the darkness, and devouring, always devouring, day and night without cease until the rains come or firefighters gain the upper hand. The fire waits until hot, dry winds stoke its blazing heart and it moves onward, upward, forward, and down into the city where I wait and hope and fight the burning edge of fear, waking in the night to smell smoke and ash and the hot breath of destruction.

Today will be a better day.

Or it won't.

Review: A Gift for my Sister by Ann Pearlman

Sibling rivalry never goes away.

Sky and Tara have the lives they want.

Sky has a job, a baby, and a husband she loves. She has everything she has ever wanted, everything she dreamed.

Tara has a man, a baby, and the career she wants as a rap artist. Her crew is her family and she is on the road to fame and fortune. She could not ask for more.
At the height of their happiness, the world falls apart and the half-sisters find themselves at odds over their choices and old hurts that never went away. Finding peace is hard and finding forgiveness and love even harder.

A story that begins with an unwed white rap artist living with her son’s father in a crumbling Detroit is a bit far-fetched, but not unheard of, and Ann Pearlman makes the story timely and real. It is easy to like Sky with her conventional life, her homemade granola, and even her penchant for pouring five artificial sweeteners in her coffee; liking Tara is a bit harder.
 
A Gift for My Sister begins with Sky’s perfect life, her love for her husband Troy and their daughter Rachel and a sense of impending doom that descends with decisive force. Sky’s life was settled, her path clear, and Tara’s career is just taking off. The trouble comes not from Tara’s pipe dream coming true, but from old wounds and the different choices they have made. Suddenly, Sky’s life turns out less than perfect and Tara, against all the odds, is getting everything while Sky’s world crumbles to ash.

Countering Sky’s voice with Tara’s in separate chapters is done with deft skill and makes both women’s stories come alive. Their voices are preserved and still move the story swiftly toward confrontation and conclusion, giving each time to voice each woman's anger, confusion, and love. I thoroughly enjoyed A Gift for My Sister.

My only complaint is the way Pearlman leans so heavily on the black man’s plight in society, giving only a quick nod to the rapid changes made in the last 50 years. Stereotypes appear through Sky’s eyes, stereotypes that have no weight from the poignant characterizations so carefully constructed, and are dealt with swiftly. I would go with the belief that 70% of all statistics are bogus and forgive Pearlman’s soapbox grandstanding and focus on the very real and very wonderful story she has written.

The Social in Social Networking

One Note Ronnie and Tessie Tunnelvision are coming. Time to hide. They have photo albums, videos, and voice recordings of their babies and are about to bore you to death with their prattle.

Ronnie and Tessie used to be such interesting people, full of opinions and views on current events, and they always remembered birthdays and anniversaries. Now all they do is talk about their babies—in detail, excruciating, mind numbing detail. Ronnie brings charts that show his baby’s milestones and Tessie is obsessed with her baby’s intake—and output. What happened to them? Do Ronnie and Tessie really believe they are the first people to have babies and must regale the rest of the world with their excitement?

Substitute book for baby and the result is the same, if the statistics and conversation are a little different.

With the rise of social networking and email, writers now have the opportunity to inform friends, family, and strangers with the latest news about their book. It could almost be tolerated if it is a first book and the author is unsure of how to go about social networking, believing that more is better, but more and more authors, determined to become the next Amanda Hocking or John Locke. What most writers do not understand about social networking is the social part and how annoying they become when they forget that being a person is as important as being a writer.

One writer complained on Facebook earlier this week that another writer he barely knows bombarded him with email advertisements to buy his book. The writer didn’t bother to get for duplicates on the email list and sent out the email blast to quite a sizable list, irritating a healthy segment of the indie publishing community with the thoughtless marketing strategy. That writer is one of thousands engaged in the same kind of guerilla book marketing that is heavy on the hammer and light on any kind of personality or common courtesy.

Like One Note Ronnie and Tessie Tunnelvision, both of who are happy to discuss the contents, quantity, and quality of baby’s diaper, too many writers treat social networking with a cavalier attitude, sure that more is better and hitting people hard and often is the trick to selling a million books. Not so. If only authors would remember how fast they run and hide when the Ronnies and Tessies appear, they would treat social networking with a little more respect, and their targets with a great deal more courtesy.

One thing I noticed about Amanda Hocking’s blogging and tweeting is that she talks about herself, and not just the writing process or her new books. She did unconsciously what more writers should do—get to know people and keep it real. Hocking wrote about movies, books, and music she loved and she tweeted about her favorite movie stars and places to eat, all the while continuing to write and throwing in information about her books from time to time. She also wrote every day, treating writing like a job, which it is—or at least should be. Tweeting and blogging were ways to get to know people and to market her books, even to the point of talking about what she did wrong and when she decided to go with a traditional publisher.

That is what most writers fail to realize. People are interested in other people because they want to get to know them, to find out what commonalities are shared, and what it is like to publish a book, traditionally or by self-publishing. Social networking should be as much about the personal touch as it is about books being published. The key is people.

There are companies that specialize in email blasts and marketing strategies that will do the work for you, but if your budget doesn’t extend to cover such expenses, there are plenty of books on how to—and how not to—market books. They are affordable for everyone, since the prices range from free to about $10. There is a price for every budget.

What social networking comes down to is common sense, which is—or at least should be—at the heart of everything we do. Treat people the way you want to be treated. Get to know your readers. Talk about yourself, but only what is comfortable for you, and keep the book talk for important occasions, like a new cover, the debut of a new book or a new book in a series, and getting that one millionth sale. Make a big deal out of that one millionth sale because it is a big deal, but don’t forget to give readers and other authors a chance to put in their two cents’ worth. Promote other writers, books you like, and even talk about books you don’t like and why, but treat your audience like real people—because they are.

Advertising is important, but if all you can talk about is advertising, think how many people will hide when you come visiting. Remember Ronnie and Tessie and keep them firmly in mind when you get read to press the button to send out another email blast with nothing to say but another sales pitch about your book. Save it for later when you have something new to talk about. In the meantime, how are your friends doing and what happened to you today away from the keyboard? People want warts and all, but especially warts.

Afternoon Delight

Just have time for a quickie post, but I wanted to share the finished cover for my novel. This is the cover without the logo in case I cannot convince Jerry that my book will do his business good.

This cover, as are several other covers, is due to the very talented Michael R. Reighn, who does beautiful work and puts up with my futzing around with things. I give him a little grief and he gives me beautiful covers.

I would also like to mention that Among Men is the sequel to Among Women and is the 2nd book in a series about Pearl Caldwell and her misadventures. If you want to be up to date, read Among Women first, so you'll be ready for the big showdown.

Thank is all. Disperse.

Every word you say

I feel sorry for Frasier Crane. He had a cranky day because of all the rain and he said so, but the whole of Seattle was angry at him for telling a woman to change her life, get a new job, a different apartment, get a hobby, make friends, find a boyfriend, or move out of town. Everyone picked up the move out of town and bashed poor Frasier until he had to agree to appear at a charity event for a Catholic hospital. Big mistake.

While in the bathroom getting rid of the butterflies in his stomach, Father Mike tells the audience that the bishop, who was supposed to introduce Frasier, is lost at sea. Frasier comes in late without hearing about the bishop, and begins telling his jokes, to no avail. He continues to alienate everyone.

That's the thing about situations like that. It doesn't always matter what you say or how you say it because someone, and often a lot of someones, are bound to pick up on one small item and beat you over the head with it and blame you while they're doing it. After all, it's your fault no matter what you do.

The torches have been lit and the pitchforks are out and no one is going to stop the mob now. They have it in their heads that you are the devil and nothing will do but having you on a spit over a hot fire while they cheer.

It's the same the world over because of the people and that herd mentality. You're entitled to your opinion as long as it doesn't conflict with the prevailing opinion. You're entitled to your life until someone decides that you've lived it too long without being punished for enjoying it. When it comes down to it, you're entitled to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune because you make such a nice target.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not having a bad day, but I do understand how poor Frasier felt. I've been there. I usually walk away, except for those times that I've had enough bashing and decide it's time for me to speak out. It's always a chancy act, speaking out, because someone is bound to get angry and take offense, even if all you said was that pink bunnies aren't natural. Get used to it. No matter what you say or how you say it, no matter how eloquent you are, you're going to rub someone (a lot of someones) the wrong way. Keep the running shoes handy and the car idling so you can make a quick getaway. You'll need them.

Remember. You're entitled to your opinion as long as it doesn't conflict with anyone else's. Try that one on for size.

Review: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

A discontented, talented, but unfocused Harry Potter goes to college – sort of.

Julia walks best friends Quentin and James to a college interview and leaves them at the door. Inside, Quentin and James find their interviewer dead and call 911. One of the paramedics, a beautiful woman, hands Quentin a manila envelope with his name on it and inside he finds a copy of a sixth Fillory novel, one that was never published, and a piece of paper that the wind snatches out of his hands. He chases the paper along the cold Brooklyn streets and ends up struggling through a hedge into a sun-washed green expanse of lawn. Quentin has arrived at Brakebills College of Magic. His life will never be the same.

Quentin Coldwater, amateur magician, wanders into a world where magic is not practiced sleight of hand but real, magic that can be measured by physics and science. As a young man who keeps looking for the next best thing and finding he already has it and yet looking still, Quentin Coldwater is a wimp with occasional flashes of gumption and passion. He floats along on the tides of life waiting, always waiting, in Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. He is no Harry Potter. There is no doom hanging over his head and no powerful dark wizard to battle – yet.

Quentin is a complex, facile and infuriatingly frustrating character that walks numbly through a world of possibility and beauty never satisfied with what he has. He is not willing to plumb the depths of his intelligence and ability. Still, Quentin is mesmerizing, and The Magicians is an intricate and complex story with a simple theme: Be careful what you wish because you are about to get it.

Grossman is no less frustrating because he deliberately leaves the tag ends of information dangling. That is not to say that The Magicians or Grossman are disappointing—quite the reverse. Lev Grossman is a wizard of words and worlds deftly weaving a spell with familiar tools. The story is familiar: A youth trembling on the verge of adulthood unsure of the worth of learning and his path. It’s a situation many young adults raised on a diet of fantasy and Dungeons & Dragons face in the 21st century.

If you’re expecting a more adult version of Harry Potter, you’re out of luck. If, however, you’re willing to follow wimps and slackers sharing moments of brilliant insight and brutal honesty between bouts of drunkenness, fights, magic and sex, The Magicians is where you’ll find it. You won’t be disappointed. You’ll leave Grossman’s tightly crafted world with a growing sense of wonder and a question: What is Quentin’s discipline?

Say What?

I was minding my own business, playing games online and looking through the most recent Facebook comment when I saw this:  "[S]ome authors, like myself, have their own style of punctuation and capitalization. It's a matter of preference." 

Uh, no, punctualization is not a matter of preference. It a matter of rules.

Make up words for your science fiction and fantasy novels and stories. Make up names. Don't make up words; there are rules in place for a reason.

Communication, especially in writing, has rules for a reason, so that we are all, in a manner of speaking, on the same page. I've edited work where the writers decided that the day the wrote chapter 10 was a day without commas, the next day it was a day without periods, or making up sentences that had no subject or no verb or were all subject or all verb. Not only was their work incomprehensible but the writers' explanation of being above the stupid rules of grammar and punctuation made me see red -- and so did the writers when they read the edits -- blood all over the page.

While there are some rules that could use some revising and some well know writers, like E. L. Doctorow and some UK writers, that decide that quotation marks around dialogue is a waste of time or, at best, a silly convention, at least they stick to the hard and fast rules like ending sentences with periods, capitalizing proper names, and putting in commas so their page long sentences can be read once and understood. Putting a comma between too and the rest of a sentence is a bit archaic and I have flirted with leaving out the comma, but I have never had an editor or a reader ask me what I was writing about because it wasn't clear. I write the way I speak and I edit my work by reading aloud. My background in theater has a good deal to do with where I place commas, but that is why commas were invented -- so actors knew when and how long to pause (semi-colons and colons have a different pause length than commas and periods) and so they wouldn't run out of breath reading a speech that went on for a page or two. It just makes common sense as well as grammar sense.

The current trend among younger writers who believe that grammar is optional I think is pure laziness. They didn't learn the rules of grammar, can't remember learning the rules of grammar, or thing that their work is so artistic that the rules of grammar don't apply (it's still called being lazy). The rules aren't difficult and there is a slim volume by Strunk & White, The Elements of Style, that every writer should have either on their computer or on their desk, but definitely prominently displayed and well thumbed. Writers should buy more than one copy if they don't have a special place to write all the time and because consistent use of the book will wear it out. Grammar and punctuation won't be worn out, but reviewing the rules and reasons for the rules is something that should be constantly studied and applied.

I met a man many years ago who had decided to write a book about his experiences about healing himself using the energy of the earth. He had been unable to walk at all and had crawled out into the back yard to lie on the grass in the sun and wait to die. After several hours of lying there, when it got dark, he got up and stumbled back into the house. He hadn't died but he did feel better. He repeated the same process every day until soon he was able to walk out and sit on the ground to meditate and walk back into the house without a walker, cane, or other assistive device. He was on his way to be healed.

What struck me wasn't his story of how he healed himself but what he told me about wanting to write about his experiences. "My grammar was rusted beyond use and school was too many decades behind me to remember what I had learned, so I hired a teacher to teach me the rules of grammar and sentence construction. It took a long time, but by the end of it, I diagrammed complex sentences and my grammar was flawless." I asked him if it was worth it just to write his story and he said, "Yes, of course it was. I want everyone to understand me."

That's what grammar and punctuation are all about, rules that everyone takes for granted, but not when they're reading. They may not be good at spelling, but they know when something doesn't look right. The lazy reader will keep on reading and the rest will look up the word to find out how the word is spelled.

We live in a world of convenience where text messages (c u ltr = I will see you later) are commonplace and the people who write them too lazy or far too busy and important to write it all out. Well, there is the whole issue of going over the text message limit on the cell phone, but people who write more than a 1000 text messages a day aren't worried about limits, just making things easy.

While we can understand, after a fashion, such shorthand, and shorthand is great for taking dictation when someone speaks quickly or jotting down notes that are written out later, grammar and punctuation should not be optional.

Grammar and punctuation rules were written in a time when understanding each other was paramount and having a common ground, especially for foreigners learning a new language, made communication much easier. English is hard enough to learn because it is a polyglot of words borrowed from other languages, but grammar and punctuation in writing make understanding the writers' meanings much easier.

Doing things the easy way seems the best way to go, but when it comes to writing, expressing oneself clearly and concisely is more important than ignoring punctuation and grammar rules because it's a matter of preference. I prefer not to read books that can't follow the simple rules of subject, verb, and predicate with the requisite period at the end and commas used where appropriate so I don't have to read and reread the sentence a dozen times to figure out what the writer is saying. A writer whose preference is for ignoring the rules that make communication rich and expressive -- and understandable -- will not get my hard earned money for their failed attempts to communicate or entertain, but they will get a review that will let everyone else know to avoid them as if they have the plague -- the same plague that struck those working on the Tower of Babel when the common language was suspended and no one understood what anyone else said. It put an end to the building of the tower and the beginning of setting down common rules so that a meeting of minds would occur and people would be able to communicate and understand each other.

As far as I am concerned, I prefer not to have to work that hard to understand a writer's story. I'd rather laugh, cry, get angry, or be entertained and informed. That won't happen if the rules are broken because it's a good day to leave out verbs or periods and punctuation.

Just so you know, yes, I am the person who called a local radio station and told the manager that it was FEWER commercials and not LESS commercials.

No Pictures, Please

Imagine my surprise when my cover artist reminds me that we need permission from a vendor prominently displayed on the cover of the new novel, Among Men, and in the bulk of the story, much of which happens around a hot dog cart in New Orleans. I found a great picture and negotiated with the photographer for its use as the background for the cover, which is coming along beautifully, thanks to Michael R. Reighn, my cover artist, and now I might have to take out the hot dog cart.

I'm a take the bull by the horns kind of writer, so I took the bull by the horns, looked up the number, and called the vendor. I asked to speak to the manager and ended up with Jerry, who I assume is the manager. I can't possibly be the guy I worked for over 30 years ago because he was probably 40 or 50 then and Jerry didn't sound that old. He sounded positively friendly -- at first -- when he said, "Sure, go ahead and use it. It will be great advertising for us." When I responded in a similar friendly manner, his tone changed immediately. "We need to deal with this in a more professional manner," he said, a note of we are not going to laugh and have a good time in his tone. And he got professional on me.

He said I could not use the logo or the cart or mention the company after he found out it was for a novel, a fictionalized version of my own experiences in New Orleans and working for the company 30 years ago. He suggested I fictionalize the name as well, as John Kennedy Toole did when he called the company Paradise Dogs in his novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, which, Jerry told me, is being made into a movie with a sequel already planned. I began to see what was really on Jerry's mind.

Jerry wrote a book about the company in Managing Ignatius, which was published in February 1999, and is now experiencing a resurgence of sales due to the focus on Confederacy, which is why he is coming out with a sequel to his own nonfiction offering about the company. I own the book, by the way, as I also own a copy of Confederacy. I bought my copy of Jerry's book for a penny and there are lots more available for a penny, too. I imagine the price will go up once the movie and the sequel to Jerry's book are released. I wish him luck with his second book. 

At any rate, we settled on a compromise of sorts. I will send him a finished copy of the novel and a copy of the cover so he can look it over and decide that my use is in no way defamatory and I can continue with it as planned. I do not foresee any problems and I hope I won't find the photo I bought royalty-free rights to isn't a costly mistake, though not as costly as it could have been. The photographer and I were able to negotiate a compromise that benefited us both and I will rely on my talent with talking my way out of or into whatever crops up in my path. I do not want to have to change the book that drastically or dilute the story, especially since I may have mentioned the company in the first novel, a copy of which I have sent to Jerry to scan for defamatory remarks and misuse of the company's good name.

I know one thing. The company is as much a part of New Orleans and the French Quarter with the carts on nearly every corner up and down Bourbon Street and along the Riverwalk. They can be found all over New Orleans and everywhere there is a gathering of hungry people, each vendor in the red and white striped shirt that marks him or her as a vendor for the company and purveyor of 8 inches of meat in a bun with whatever condiments will draw the hungry crowds. I ate a few of them before and after I worked for the company, but never when I was working with the company. Here's to indie publishing, even without lawyers and a high powered publisher's name to shock and awe companies willing to have their logo displayed prominently in novels the world over.

 

For Fame& Fortune - Write Here

Turn over a rock or open a Writer's Market and find writing contests. All over the Internet the word travels at the rate of speeding electrons about the latest and greatest writing contest. Plunk down the money, write a story, and grasp fame and fortune -- and publication.

Why not enter a contest, throw a story into the ring, and take a chance on what you know you do better than anyone else -- write? It is that easy -- and it is that hard. Is it worth it?

I remember the first contest I entered in a writer's newsletter I subscribed to. Short story, any genre, and, while sitting in the bathroom, I came up with what I felt was the perfect story. I dashed to the computer and wrote it down, checked it twice, and sent it off speeding along the electron highway to its final destination. I went back to work and back to writing and completely forgot that I had entered. I didn't haunt the email box hitting the button and hoping the news was good. I simply forgot about it. I was after all writing my first novel, a romance because the odds were better of getting a romance published, and there was more money to be had. Mostly, I just wanted to be published, to know that I had made it.

As I got to the middle of the novel, an email arrived. I had won the contest with a first person vampire story that was like no vampire story out there. I had won.

It took a few moments for the squee of joy to rise up through my shocked body and emerge out my mouth, terrifying children and pets and sending birds racing for the skies to get away from whatever was making that obnoxious and loud noise that sounded suspiciously like a jaguar making a monumental kill for the first time. I had won.

I don't remember the prize, but I do remember the feeling -- and the story -- and the knowledge that dawned that day. It was satisfaction and pride and not a little shock.

I've entered writing contests since then and I always get a frisson of fear/pride that shudders through me and a smile that stretches from ear to ear as I read the email or open the envelope with my certificate, check, whatever inside. It feels good to win, but that isn't the reason I do it. I enter contests with the hope of being noticed by the publishing industry and readers, mostly by readers. It doesn't hurt to have a string of awards to add to my writing resume either, or to my biography.

Since I am an indie published writer you may think that entering a contest with the hope that I will end up in the contest seems disingenuous. Not at all. I would accept a contract from a publisher, but it would be on my terms and have all the things I deserve and need to make my books a success. After all, all roads lead to Rome. In this case, all roads lead to readers, and readers buy anthologies with contest winners, the best of the best. I have a few on my bookshelves. It's nice to know the competition and what kinds of stories are considered the best, if only as a measuring stick. I also enjoy reading contest anthologies because I often find a writer I didn't know about or a story that delights and surprises me for a few moments, takes me out of the working day and the struggle to string together enough words to create a story or novel. Besides, I love to read.

Why, you ask, do I mention contests today? What is the big deal? There are new contests and old favorite contests every single day of the year. Why now?

Because I came across a contest looking for the next J. K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer. Whether you like or don't like the named authors (I like one of them), you cannot dismiss the fact that these writers, these women writers, are successful. On that score alone, being chosen as the next writer to step into the limelight is worth the effort. At the end of the contest, the winner will be published in an anthology and get a publishing contract with the bells and whistles the likes of which turned Amanda Hocking's head when she signed on the dotted line. That kind of treatment would turn anyone's head.

So, without further ado, on to the contest. Click the link, read, and then write your own prize winning story. And, if you don't win the contest, you will have at least written something you can publish indie style. There are no losers, except those unwilling to place their tuchus in a chair and write. Good luck and good writing.

Writer's Toybox Contest

Deadline:  September 30, 2012

Netherworld Books: Horror, science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal romance

The End of Feudaism

Insight often comes from strange places. At least it does for me.

I was watching Cranford and one of the characters, Lady Ludlow, was opposed to young Harry being taught to read and write. She didn't want to end up like her cousins across the channel in France with her head lying in a revolutionary's basket beneath a guillotine because she had allowed her serfs, or retainers, to learn to read and realize they could have a better life with an education. Slaves, serfs, peons, and servants who could read could topple her from playing Lady Largesse, the magnanimous and gentle tyrant that allowed then to work for her for tuppence and have regular meals, wear nice clothes, and wait to serve her at her pleasure -- or be dismissed to a life of poverty without a reference.

Of course, all of this is going on in my head in about 2 seconds and I realized how much like feudalism is publishing, especially now that the masses who want to publish their own books have gained control of the presses --  virtual and real. How the aristocracy must have cringed when the printing press became a reality and religious institutions no longer had to illuminate manuscripts and keep safe the written word, often for monarchs and landed gentry that couldn't read. They had servants to do that sort of thing in the good old days.

As books became cheaper and easily available, revolutions began. The Catholic church, once a nearly global power and anxious to convert newly discovered savages to the worship of the Trinity and Jesus Christ, began to topple as people learned to read and question the status quo. Why should the clergy be the last word on who does and does not go to heaven? Why should the poor pay the wealthy to pray for their souls and sell candles to light so a loved one would spend little time in purgatory and ascend to heaven?

Feudalism is built on the backs of the working classes, the serfs, peons, and slaves, a lesson that Rome learned at the point of a sword when Spartacus, and several other slave leaders, rose and threw off their chains. Even when a slave is treated well, he remains a slave, the person who does all the work and gets none, or few, of the benefits. How is that different from publishing? Oh, that's right. It is no different.

Publishing has been the gatekeeper for centuries, built on the words and hard work of every person who ever wanted to write a book and was found worthwhile to promote. It's much like allowing a slave to serve in the main house instead of in the fields, as long as the slave learned his place -- beholden to the whims of his master.

Publishing is feudalistic. Think not? The feudal system is based on a 3-tiered pyramid. A lord, king, or ruler is at the top and determines the fate of everyone beneath him. Knights, mercenaries, and retainers keep the peace and protect the lord. Serfs, servants, and peons, the poor working class, do all the work and tend the land, livestock, and businesses that supply the lord; they are the base of the pyramid, without which the lord would be a deluded aristocrat ruling nothing and unable to work for his bread or even know how to mill and bake it into cake or bread.

In publishing, the publishers are the lords. Agents are the knights, the strong arm of the lord that protect the publisher's business and vet the more acceptable serfs (writers) to work as servants to the publisher, those chosen from among the poor who have some talent and ability that can be exploited to make more money for the publisher. And then there are the remaining slaves/serfs who buy the books produced by the servants for the publishers and pay for the lavish lifestyle to which the publishers have become so accustomed. Better to live on Park Avenue with a view of the park than to live in Alphabet City or Harlem among the poor.

Contracts that keep the lion's share of earnings in publishers's pockets so they can maintain their vast wealth polished and intact, are part of the chains that bind the writer in servitude. There are certainly writers that have made millions, even hundreds of billions, but who has stopped to ask how much the publisher made on the deal. If a writer is worth $200 billion and they get 12-15% royalties on net profit, what the publisher keeps is an obscene amount of money, even after they pay employees, marketing staff, and the cost of creating books, something much more profitable since the advent of pulp wood paper instead of the more expensive and longer lasting rag and hemp paper. Paper that crumbles and turns to dust in 5 years means selling more copies as readers replace worn out books. More books means more sales and more profit for the publisher, most of which the writer will never see.

With the introduction of POD (Print On Demand) publishing and electronic books, the game changed. Publishers continued to denigrate the vanity presses, but e-books changed things forever. A book that never goes out of style, takes up no warehouse space, and can be kept virtually forever undermines the whole structure upon which publishing was built. Writers finally had control and could strike out on their own and rise above the masses by writing and selling good books that had a shelf life beyond 3 months. No more remaindering. No more binding contracts to greedy publishers. No more supporting someone else's lavish lifestyle when a lavish lifestyle, or at least publication of books publishers turned down. The gatekeepers are out of a job, which is why publishers and Apple decided to fix prices on e-books at near or above the cost of paperback books. If a paperback book is cheaper or the hardback, when discounted, was not much more expensive, then books were safe and the e-book revolution would go away. Writers would get tired of doing all the work of producing a book, from cover art to marketing and sales. I'm sure the aristocrats felt the same way before the French revolutionaries arrested and led them up to Lady Guillotine. Look where it got them.

The revolution has come and the class war between the people who produce the books -- writers -- and the people who have profited the most from books -- publishers -- are at war. What we need is a truce and a coalition of forces that benefits everyone, just not with the 90/10 split that has ruled publishing for so long, or 88/12 split that currently passes for business as usual. Not everyone is J. K. Rowling or Danielle Steel. Most people have been relegated to the middle ranks, writers that produced good quality books in genres that sold well, but not spectacularly, the mid list writers that have been the bread and butter of the publishing industry, writers that never got fabulously wealthy but were upper middle class with a solid back list that still sold books decades after they were published.

Instead of struggling to the bitter end, publishers would be better served to give a hand up and offer their services as book packagers, marketing specialists, and sales teams to up and coming writers instead of trying to maintain a crumbling edifice. Publishers have vast resources that could benefit revolutionaries without all the rancor, price fixing, and game playing that currently exists. It's a choice of adapting or dying, and dying is a distinct option right now as more and more published authors are fleeing publishers for more lucrative deals that offer better benefits and more freedom creatively and financially. It's the choice of 12-15% or 35-70% of sales, and not net sales but gross sales.

The class war is waging with no end in sight. Emotions are high and at this point the results are volatile. Better to work with writers, those hard working people who dream in prose and are the only reason for publishers to exist, than to fight to maintain a system that no longer works.

The slaves, serfs, and servants have learned how to read. They have educated themselves and now know the score. I wonder if publishers have gotten the message yet or if they are still in denial as they climb the stairs to the guillotine while the masses surrounding them howl for blood and their heads.

Got Story?

Some books are a breeze to read, even when they run over 800 pages, and some books, no matter how long or short, are more like slogging through muddy clay wearing lead boots. Books like that often have excellent grammar, wonderful similes and metaphors, and the writing is sublime, but something is missing. An important ingredient didn't make it into the final product, like leaving the chocolate out of a hot chocolate. All that's left is hot milk and that is just gross. A little vanilla would help the taste, but chocolate makes it tasty.

Finding the reason why the book plods instead of zooms along has been the focus of my review work for the past 9 years of my professional reviewing life. After a box full of such books, I long for Stephen King, Dan Brown, or even an old favorite like Andre Norton. The genre doesn't make nearly as much difference as the writer. Stephen King loads on the horror, and I'm not averse to that. Dan Brown's technique leaves a lot to be desired and he loves information dumps, but he makes it all seem so effortless, if a bit facile at times. Andre Norton wrote what would now be considered YA (young adult) novels, but to me they were passports to worlds of magic and warfare and the stuff of dreams.

I recently read Moonfire by Marion Zimmer Bradley, whose Darkover series I devoured whole. The short story was disappointing and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. I'd loved so many of her other short stories and novels, and series, so why wasn't it jelling for me? Why did I feel like I was plodding through that muddy clay pit in leaden shoes again?

I've been switching between E. L. Doctorow's All the Time in the World and The Flatey Enigma, both books that I have to review, and the leaden boots were getting heavier. A few of the stores in Doctorow's anthology were interesting but most seemed pointless. I chalked up having trouble getting through The Flatey Enigma as a fail in translation between Norwegian, the author's original language, and English. It happens sometimes, but then I enjoyed
Juan Gomez-Jurado's The Traitor's Emblem, despite a few plot inconsistencies. Maybe translations problems were not the source of my struggle with the book.

I put both books down and decided to read Charlaine Harris's Grave Sight, the first book in the Harper Connelly series. I have to force myself to put down the book so I can get some sleep or write for a while. It's that good. I have had the same reaction to most of the Sookie Stackhouse series by Harris.

That's when it hit me. I couldn't put the heavy plodding down to lack of characterization, bad grammar, horrid sentence structure, no technique, or being so in love with the words and creating beautiful and memorable passages. It's much more basic than that. There is no story. That's why I had to put A Dance with Dragons aside for a while and why Terry Pratchett's Pyramids got stuck going on the downslope. The authors did what so many authors fall prey to; they forgot the whole point of writing is to tell a story. Among all the witticisms, great battles, wonderful characters, and marvelous prose, the story was lost, and a good story is the only reason for a book to exist.

That's what Dan Brown, Stephen King, Andre Norton, and even Marion Zimmer Bradley when she's on her game, do so well. They tell great stories. The genre isn't important; that's a matter of taste. Story is important.

Literary, horror, adventure, thriller, science fiction, fantasy, romance, mainstream, none of that matters if the author keeps to the whole reason for books, if they tell a good story. Scheherazade would have been killed long before she got through her first night of storytelling for the king if she had been dressed it all up with fancy words and intelligent technique and forgot to tell an entertaining story that was so good the King had to keep listening, needed to know what happened next.

I read a considerable amount of literary novels but some authors leave me cold, no matter how many awards they win. I enjoyed Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending and couldn't get through John Banville's The Sea. Banville left me cold and Barnes's almost novella enticed me with wondrous prose, detailed descriptions, and a memorable character. Barnes's story was worth the read. I still can't get through The Sea.

Jasper Fforde's Thursday series has caught my interest and his stories are stories within stories, as has Ian McEwan's Atonement. I still haven't gotten to read any more of his books, but there are plenty in my to be read pile. Salman Rushdie enchants me with exotic fare and Terry Pratchett almost always makes me laugh while the tale ends far too quickly. Pyramids was an aberration -- or at least I hope so.

We are all children putting off having to go to bed, wanting to stay up just a little longer as our parents read just one more chapter of Peter Pan or Wind in the Willows or even Harry Potter. We want to hear a story, even a made up story, as long as it is a good story. Forget all the pyrotechnics, academic prizes, and prose stylings. All of those are as satisfying as a masterful and artistic wrapping job on a box that contains the good, in this case a story. Just tell me a story and make it a good one. I can live without the trimmings as long as there is sufficient meat on the bones. Books like that take no time at all to read because a wondrous story is at the heart of it.

When a writer forgets the basic premise of putting together a book, none of it matters if the story is not there or only half there. If you've got story; you will have readers, faithful readers who will snap up everything you write.

Charlaine Harris is not a prose stylist and her books are a joy to read most of the time because she tells fascinating stories. Harris unlocked the mystery that I have struggled with for so long, reminding me of what is important and why I write. It's all about the story. Where would Scheherazade be without a compelling story? As a storyteller, without listeners, but as a woman trying to save her life . . . dead.

Give them story.

To DRM or not to DRM.

It was Helen Ginger's post about DRM this morning that made me think seriously about book piracy, and piracy in general.

I used DRM on my first foray into self-publishing, but I no longer use it. The bottom line is that there will always be pirates, so why not make it easy for them. It's not just about pirates, though; DRM is about making life better for publishers and less so for the people who read. That's why Benjamin Franklin created the library system in the first place, a system that is in dire straits in the United Kingdom where libraries are being closed faster than a publisher's purse strings. 

DRM or Digital Rights Management keeps, as Helen writes, people from sharing a book between devices. You can create a Cloud as Amazon did or as Apple did with iCloud. Without DRM, a file sharing application isn't needed and you won't need a cloud just a connection between devices to share a book with a spouse, child, or friend, or even with someone you don't know. That's how libraries do it. No cost. No fuss. No membership. Go to the library, pick out a book, movie, CD, or magazine and take it home. You have to take it back to the library so someone else can borrow it, but that's a small price to pay.

I remember reading how Paul Coehlo, author of The Alchemist pirated his own book and uploaded it to BitTorrent to beat the pirates at their own game. The pirated copies were dreadful and had lots of errors. Coehlo uploaded a clean copy of his novel. His publisher was incensed, but the author felt it was the right thing to do. His magnanimous gesture didn't kill his book sales either. With more than 7 billion people on the planet, many of reading age, it's a big pool to fish for sales.

After I read what Coehlo had done, I decided to do the same with my novel, and I often hold promotions to give my first self-published novel, Among Women, for free. What I was surprised to find was that people continued to buy the novel after it was no longer free, even from as far away as Estonia. Of course I've sold more copies of my novel in Estonia than I have in the UK, but it's a beginning, and sales in the US have exceeded my expectations, both as free books and books sold. 

DRM is more a benefit for publishers than it is for authors or readers. DRM means you cannot share your book and another copy must be bought. That's short sighted, but publishers aren't known for their long game or for thinking beyond today's sales. If they did, books would be available, marketed and advertised for more than a few months. Instead, publishers end up dumping millions of books into landfills and selling them to remainder businesses. Very short sighted indeed.

If I can sell more books by giving away a few thousand, that should be enough evidence that removing DRM will not hurt book sales. Like I said, there are 7 billion people on this planet. That is a very big pool of potential readers and book buyers. Even if 1 billion people get the book for free, there are still 6 billion people left, some of which would be able and willing to buy a copy.

There is an old saying that you have to spend money to make money. In this case, it could be said that you have to give books to get book sales. If my recent experience is any indication of what is possible, I'll be giving away more free ebooks. The odds are in my favor, and you can be certain there will be no DRM. I invite readers to share and share alike. There are plenty of electrons -- and ebooks -- left.

In the end, I have to ask, what is the difference between DRM and censorship. What do you say?

Publishing Portents

Everything changes and yet everything stays the same. Seems like an oxymoron. In publishing, that is exactly what it is -- an oxymoron. The more things change, the more publishers seek to maintain the status quo, scaring authors into believing there are nothing more than an unimportant cog in the vast machinery of publishing.

I began writing about the truth in publishing years ago -- 8 years ago -- when a writer I knew set down the path with a specific agent in mind. The writer was determined to have this one agent and approached the agent to take her on as a client. The agent refused; the  writer had no backlist and no publishing credits to speak of. It didn't matter that the writer had more than 10 years of experience writing articles and blogs and had co-written a book on writing; she didn't have enough experience -- or income -- to interest the agent, not even with a book that had series potential.

The writer went out and got a contract with a publisher through unusual channels and went back to the agent, newly signed contract in hand, and begged to be taken on as a client. The agent said yes and took her 15% off the top for doing nothing. The writer had done the hard work and, hat in hand, was shark bait.

I was outraged that the writer had so little faith in herself and couldn't see what was happening, but when the agent's contract, which the writer asked me to read, included an annual fee for the cost of doing business, I begged the writer to look for another agent or at least tell the agent to forget about the contract unless the annual fee was deleted. The writer signed anyway, consigning 15% of the hard earned royalties to agent for the life of the book, and the planned series. I wrote about it in 2004, but it was merely a portent of the coming storm. Other writers with a wider readership and more years in the publishing business began writing about what was going on behind the scenes.

Since the Dept of Justice case against 5 of the Big 6 publishers and Apple hit the news, Joe Konrath has written extensively about what is happening, and he continues to inform the reading and writing public exactly what it all means. It's all about who has the power.

Writers do not seem to understand that they have the power. Without the words, publishers have nothing to publish. Readers don't generate books. Publishers merely print what authors write and without the words, there is no business. As I explained to my writer friend 8 years ago, a conversation that ended our friendship, the writer has the power, not the agent. An agent might have great contacts, but those contacts exist because the agent is representing the writer. No writer, no words, no contract, and no money, despite the fact that agents are determined to bite the hand that feeds them.

Agents may believe that publishers feed them, but that's only because publishers take agents out to lavish lunches and dinners, give them booze, invite them to launch parties where the food and booze flow freely, and sign the check made possible by the author who put the words together so a book was possible. It's hard to see who is really paying the bills when the publisher's name is on the check, a check that wouldn't exist without the writer. It's called exploitation and agents and publishers have been exploiting writers since the first mass market book rolled off the Gutenburg presses.

When workers, in this case writers, are exploited, they form unions that bargain for the collective power of the workers (writers) and strike if necessary until terms are met and conditions changed. Writers have a union of sorts in the Authors Guild, but that union hasn't been doing much to help out the people (writers again) that make the Authors Guild possible. Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler hit it out to the cheap seats. Once again, people, even authors, forget who has the power.

That writer friend I mentioned told me that refusing to sign the agent's contract, annual fee and all, was not an option since the writer was a small fish in a very big ocean. I still believe that someone must take a stand and put a stop to the exploitation of writers. I would have refused to sign, but then I wouldn't have chosen that agent in the first place. The agent has done little for my writer friend's career except collect her 15% and she still charges for the cost of doing business, rather like the phone company or the utility company adding an annual fee for the paper clips, ink, paper, and postage necessary to send you a bill. Those charges, overnight mail fees included, should come out of the 15% the agent already gets. Thinking that only a Stephen King or J. K. Rowling could stand up to the agent and get the annual fee rescinded is wrong thinking. Every writer, every author who writes a book that is published is powerful enough to say NO very loudly and be heard -- and heeded.

There will be scabs who will work during a strike because they have no other choice, but Joe Blow who has never written a book before cannot replace a Barry Eisler or Ted Dekker, and that will become obvious when sales fail to make it possible for publishers to take agents out to lavish lunches where the martinis and whiskey flow so freely.

The signs are obvious. Pay attention. Writers have the power. They always did. It's time to use that power. We are authors, hear us roar.

 

As in Cross-Stitch, so it is in Writing

One of the things I love most about cross-stitch is the way the picture emerges from tiny stitches and colored threads.

It begins with a blob of color that grows with each stitch and each new color from nothing special to something quite beautiful -- if I do it right. I have moments when I get frustrated and tear out stitches because I've counted wrong or read the wrong part of the pattern, but mostly I get it right and can't resist stopping to unroll my work just to look at what emerges.

I'm working on Xmas stockings for my grandchildren this year. It's different than what I've given them in the past and I hope it will be something they will treasure and use each year, remembering that it was made especially for them.

I'm working on a cute pattern that is much prettier as it emerges from the amorphous collection of stitches and colors. I have just finished the bottom half of the stocking and am now working on the top, finishing off stray stitches and making sure the back is as neat as the front with no loose threads. The cat and kitten's eyes are finished and I'm moving on to the rest of the tree and ornaments.

Cross-stitch is calming, despite scattered moments of frustration, and reminds me of how I feel when I paint or draw -- and especially when I write. I begin with an idea, begin writing, and from the words and sentences, paragraphs and pages, emerges a book complete and far more inventive than what it was when I began. That is true of all the creative projects I have done and continue to do.

I feel best and happiest when I'm creating and, for a while, cross-stitch has fulfilled my need to create. I will continue with the stocking and the last 2 I need to make for this year well ahead of schedule, and I will also continue writing, exorcising the dreams that plague me with snatches of conversation, plots, description, and the urgency the dreams fill me with when I'm not writing. There is room enough for more than one creative art in my life and I must have writing or be caught in an endless cycle of realistic dreams that invade my waking and sleeping worlds. At least with cross-stitch there is an end and with writing there is always one more thing to add, one more paragraph to trim, and a few more words to choose to exorcise or leave.

In a couple more weeks, I will have another Xmas stocking for one of my grandchildren, and maybe a new book to begin fleshing out and preparing for publication. It is the journey I love with a goal at the end that never fails to make me smile.

Review: Vestal Virgin by Suzanne Tyrpak

Rome and Nero are fascinating subjects, as are the vestal virgins, women who are educated and held sacrosanct, priestesses of of the goddess Vesta who are responsible for all the legal documents in the Empire. Matching a vestal virgin with Nero, throwing in a Sibylline prophecy, and fleshing out the story with details of what it was like to live in Rome during the time of the rise of Christianity and Nero's excesses is what Vestal Virgin is ostensibly about, and the author, Suzanne Tyrpak, has done her homework, evoking a Rome in all its glory and squalor.

What Tyrpak fails to do is flesh out her characters sufficiently and keep the plot moving, finishing up with a bang that fizzles around the edges. However, Vestal Virgin is a good first effort and and intriguing story that offers an intimate look at what Rome was like in the first century.

The story centers around Elissa Rubria Honoria, taken at the age of 9 to serve for 30 years as a vestal virgin. She is dark and beautiful and considered incorruptible by her younger sister and another vestal virgin, both of whom are ready to take her down, charging her with violating her vow of chastity, a charge that will end with her death by entombment.

Nero is fascinated by Elissa and he wants her. Unable to corrupt Elissa, he instead corrupts her younger sister, appointing her a vestal virgin though she is 14 and too old to be considered. Nero changes and violates the rules to get what he wants.

Elissa is, however, in love with a Roman soldier who has become a Christian, studying under Paul of Tarsus, who is under house arrest in Rome. Elissa and the soldier exchange letters but they are not of a sexual nature, and yet their content could condemn Elissa.

While Tyrpak weaves a spell with her words, she loses focus in the middle of the story.  The ending does have moments of high intrigue but loses power and leaves the fate of Elissa's younger sister in question. Vestal Virgin begins strong and ends with fizzled satisfaction.

While I did enjoy the novel, I found it weak and unfocused and erratic at times. Vestal Virgin is a good first novel from a talented author who needs a bit more experience and a good editor to help her tighten the plot and flesh out the characterizations. It's almost there, but not quite.

RATING:  A solid C

Review: White Horse by Alex Adams

There's nothing worse than getting to the end of a book and reading the author bio on the back flap of the dust jacket to find out what you thought was over has just begun, that it's the beginning of a trilogy.

There's nothing better than finding out a story will continue, that it's the beginning of a trilogy.

There are few serial novels that have sparked my interest as much as Alex Adams's White Horse. In short, it's Alex Adams's debut novel and the book is good. The girl can write. No doubt about that, not after being lured into accompanying Zoe on her journey through the landscape of hell and out the other side into a whole new kind of Gehenna.

Zoe is a reluctant heroine, a Pandora who resists the urge to open the box full of disease and pain and loss -- and the gentle spark of hope at the bottom of the jar. She begins by seeking help from a therapist, Nick Rose, who is attractive and dark. Zoe can resist opening the ancient sealed jar in her apartment as easily as she resists Nick's charms. She is a girl with a mission, a janitor working for a pharmaceutical company so she can afford to go to college and get a better education so she will have a better life. Hers is a life on hold while she keeps her eyes on the future, a future that quickly slips through her grasp.

Zoe's colleagues, friends, and family die one by one as a disease cooked up in some lab and dubbed White Horse by a southern minister decimates the population, leaving 90% of the world dead and the remaining 10% either immune or genetically changed into abominations. Zoe is immune, although why she is immune is anybody's guess, and there is no one left to strap her to a table and dissect her to find out.

What begins with an ordinary woman on an ordinary day quickly becomes a juggernaut that barrels through the barren landscape of the present while trying to find meaning from the past. White Horse isn't talented, it's brilliant in concept and execution. Alex Adams has hit on something that could be lurking around the corner waiting to pounce tomorrow or next year and woven a spell of seductive power that has long, strong legs.

And there's a website with all kinds of goodies just waiting to be devoured until the 2nd installment of this promising trilogy is released.

I can hardly wait.

That's the problem with trilogies -- waiting.

Behind Your Back

While you've been toiling away on your next novel, your agent has been busy, but not in the usual sense. Your agent has been colluding with the Big 6 publishers in their struggle with the Dept. of Justice (DOJ) over ebook pricing. Your agent has been working to shore up the Big 6 publishers' case while stabbing you in the back. Your agent. Your voice in the marketplace. The person who is supposed to be looking out for your interests. Think I'm kidding? Check it out.

Joe says it better than I can.

He also allowed Ann Voss Peterson to have her say about publishing with Harlequin, something I have known about for years, which is why I never went after a Harlequin contract. I don't believe in slavery or serfdom.

Are you done yet? You should be.

Decades ago, when I first began writing seriously for publication, I met my first real live published author. I was thrilled that she deigned to sit down and talk to me. Having lunch was icing on the cake, but the cake had a bitter taste.

The author was a best selling novelist under the Harlequin imprint. I had read several of her books back in the days when I was doing research to become the next Harlequin publishing find. She still had her day job, not because she loved it (although she did enjoy the job) but because she couldn't live on what she made with Harlequin. Huh? She couldn't live on her earnings from the publisher, not even with 60 books in print? How is that possible? She explained, forgiving my shocked outburst and my rude questions.

After 60 novels, she still never got more than an $8000 advance, all of which she earned out, and she made pennies where I thought she was making tens of thousands. She made more money with her day job and she had three children to support, three children she hoped would go to college.

"Sixteen tons and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt."

She owed her soul to the company store. E-books had not been heard of and millions of homes didn't have computers. She (and I) were still typing out manuscripts on typewriters. Electric typewriters, but typewriters not computers.

My dreams of having dozens of books published by Harlequin were shattered and my hopes that I could quit my day job died that day. I still wrote but focused my sights on something achievable. I became a stringer for local newspapers and concentrated on writing articles for magazines and writing speeches and PR work. I still worked on my novels and stories and kept my eye on the trades for an opportunity to break in, one that didn't come for another decade, and several computers later.

I made my break with my first solo novel with a traditional publisher, one that sends me annual earnings statements and under reports ebook sales, paying quarterly royalties every 12-18 months. I've been published in several anthologies but decided to self-publish my second solo novel and I get paid every month on books I sell. The vendors don't cheat me on points and they don't under report my ebook sales. I get every penny. I'm still not ready to quit my day job but it's coming within the foreseeable future.

I don't have an agent and I'm glad now I don't. When agents collude with publishers to cheat their clients out of earnings just to line their pockets and keep the publishers rich, I know I chose right when I chose not to have an agent. Check out Joe's article and read the signatories on the letter the Association of Authors' Representatives (AAR) sent to the DOJ. If your agent is one of the 13 out of the 462 who supposedly represent you, it's time to make a tough decision. It shouldn't be too difficult since the only question you need to ask is: Whose interests does my agent represent. If the answer is the Big 6 publishers, it's time to make a change, or hire a lawyer and do without an agent. There are other options. Work for yourself or be a cog in the wheel not getting any grease.

What is your agent doing behind your back when s/he is supposed to be representing you?