Hello World.
We writers constantly shortchange ourselves. We seldom read for pure enjoyment or to escape daily tedium. Instead we ' research, ' hoping facts will gave a book credibility, OR we surgically dissect a runaway bestseller to 'see how the author did it,' OR we read the classics year after year (Tolstoy, Faulkner, Hemingway...yawn) hoping their brilliance will rub off on us. I can quote ANNA KARENINA and ABSALOM, ABSALOM backwards and forwards, but I am not any wiser about human nature than I was at university. And I still don't know why we are programmed to remember pain, (except that without it, we would not have Art.) Consequently, I am learning that...
At some point in life we wise up. We LIGHTEN up. With ebooks now so accessible and reasonably priced, I've begun to read authors I never heard of, because they were recommended and I might enjoy (!) them, or their titles are intriguing, or because I'm curious about an unfamiliar culture, or medical term. And I read as a way of supporting and cheering on the new digerati, self-publishing pioneers.
Here are a few books I read in 2011 that I enjoyed and recommend. They might shock you, make you laugh, make you cry. They might enlighten you. They might make you want to forgive your father, your mother, your ex-wife-or-husand, your ex-partner, and maybe even look for love again.
DO TAMPONS TAKE YOUR VIRGINITY? by Marie Simas. Kindle, $4.99 (The sequel is entitled DOUCHEBAG ROULETTE!) I bought it because the title is outrageous, but the downloaded sample showed there was good writing here. ( An perennial Amazon bestseller.) A gut-wrenching memoir about a Catholic Portuguese-American family in California's Central Valley. A dysfunctional family with a brutal father. With jaw-dropping candor, Marie describes her youth: a headstrong daughter who refused to bow down to a sadistic, sociopathic father who beat her frequently, relentlessly kicked her, even broke her tailbone, and who continually raped her mother even when she was dying of cancer. This was a man beset by demons, who obviously needed psychiatric help. The Catholic church with its misogynistic preachings and double standards only further fed his sociopathy.
Yes, rough stuff, here. But as I read I saw this memoir as a catharsis, a purging of the rage and sorrow Marie held in as a girl. Somehow she kept her mordant humor. There are hilarious passages, and tender ones, too. At 15 she loses her virginity to a boy who then deserts her. Her heart-tbreak is 'worse than all the years of beatings.' She matures into a foul-mouthed waitress, who uses and abuses men. Surprise. But there is a strong will to survive and achieve embedded in this girl. After years of struggle, on her own she earns a college degree. She becomes a respected professional, eventually a successful mother and writer. In the end you want fireworks and marching bands for her. In simple, powerful prose Simas has given us a tale of survival, of triumph over tragedy. It's shocking and poetic and tragic, and finally uplifting. You might weep, you won't forget it.
UNRAVELING ANNE. by Laurel Saville. Amazon Encore. Kindle $7.99. (Also on the Amazon bestseller list). A memoir of a beautiful, brilliant woman whose downward spiral led her to a violent death. Saville's mother, Anne Ford, was a ravishing beauty queen, model, actress, fashion designer in Los Angeles, who dated Marlon Brando. Through bad choices, booze and possibly creeping schizo-phrenia, she threw her talents and looks away in the hippy 60s and 70s of L.A. Saville and her brother were raised in near-degradation, subjected to their mother's daily abuse, exposed to a nightly parade of strange men, and left to clothe and feed themselves for years.
Living back East with her father, Saville learned her mother was now living in the streets in empty lots. Finally she was found strangled and stabbed to death in a burnt-out hovel. After her death she discovered clues to her mother's past. An emotionally starved childhood with unloving and unforgiving parents. At nineteen when Anne came home pregnant, her father punched her in the stomach. Saville slowly began to grasp who her mother really was: a sensitive, possibly schizophrenic woman, rejected by parents who had primed her for success, then shunned her as a failure, an obscenity. She finally understood that though deeply flawed, a cruel and competitive mother, Anne Ford was also a human deserving of love. This is a tale of surviving and healing, a testimony to the generosity of a daughter who could finally understand, and even forgive, her mother.
SHOES, HAIR, NAILS. By Deborah Batterman. Kindle. $4.99. A collection of stories set in New York, Las Vegas, and life in post-9/11, about relationships between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, lovers and friends. On the surface they seem to be about the day to day, but then evolve into stories of human frailty, male and female sexuality, and how we handle longing and rejection. Each story starts simply, then sideswipes the reader with heart-rending takes on morality, mortality, and all the epic mishaps in-between. The writing is elegant, restrained, often satirical.
"Shoes" explores a mother's addiction to pricey shoes, then the authors hijacks us from shoes to desire to sex to adultery to a character's death. Shoes as metaphor. In "Hair, ' a mother cold-bloodedly abandons her young daughter to a friend, then, out of dim-wittedness, sadism, or some form of sociopathy, through the years writes letters to her daughter about her fashionable life in Paris, her every-changing lovers, and hair-styles. When the mother finally disappears, nothing found but her wallet, this reader stood and cheered. So we are swept along with Batterman's gleaming little gems of poignant, heart-breaking, laugh-out-loud stories that address the universals of love, death, birth, loss and our against-all-odds human will to survive. Brilliant stories to cherish & reread.
DELIGHTFULLY DIFFERENT. By D.S. Walker. Kindle $7.99. (Pricey, but an important book.)
Much more than fiction, an award-winning educational novel aimed at 9-12 YA readers. But adults should read too. Especially those with children on the autism spectrum. Its deals with ASPERGER'S SYNDROME, one of those medical conditions most parents are not aware of - until their child is afflicted. This is a lovely work of fiction that also educates, and tells the truth. And most importantly, it teaches Tolerance. Its told from two different perspectives, the mother's and the afflicted daughter's. Mia Lung, a young girl with Asperger's Syndrome, allows us into her life and mind so we 'personally' experience her life of deep sensory sensitivity, her 'differentness' from other children, her pain from their bullying.
Walker, a registered nurse of 25 years, studied sensory processing and knows of what she speaks, so there is a beauty in how she translates Mia's 'affliction' into more of a personality replete with 'quirks,' as all human have. Its hard to do this book justice. Walker dispels much of the mystery of AS, as she gently advocates Tolerance as a humane treatment. She also emphasizes how drastically teachers and guidance counselors need to be re-educated about AS, since they handle these children everyday. DELIGHTFULLY DIFFERENT is also important because it deals with ASPERGER'S SYNDROME in a female child, whereas most literature deals with AS afflicted males. I thank Walker for writing this important book. More people should be aware of it. It needs vigorous marketing by the publishers!
THE OLD MERMAID'S TALE. By Kathleen Valentine. Kindle, $3.99 A lavish, sweeping saga of maritime history, myth, and an all-encompassing love. A coming-of-age tale set in the Great Lakes region, rough, bustling waterfronts of the early 1960s. Clair Wagner, a modest Ohio girl, enters college at nearby Port Presque Isle and is drawn to the unknown, even the forbidden, in the waterfront grog-shops of Lake Erie where she is ultimately exposed to seamen, poets, harlots, musicians, to phantoms and legends that step fully-fleshed into her life.
Valentine's writing is so sensuous and graphic, it resurrects the lusty, maritime smells and tastes of that bygone era. Clair is initially swept off her feet by the dashing seaman, Pio, but finds a deeper love in Baptiste, the hypnotic Breton, a seaman and musician of tragic, aching vulnerability who harbors a dark secret from his past. While exploring this complex and doomed love, the author transports us to other eras: shipwrecks on the Great Lakes, Native American legends come alive, the boomtown years of prosperity in these slowly fading waterfront towns. There are scenes where the book's depth approaches the Biblical, the epiphanic, as her characters contemplate the meaning of love, and of existence. The writing is on an epic scale such as Fielding and Melville. A nourishing novel, a great journey. I loved it.
*****
Its sheer coincidence that these books were all written by women. I hope men will read them, too. In a forthcoming post I will list books authored by men that I read in 2011 and enjoyed and recommend.
What is great literature, we ask? The answer is still the same: books that last down the centuries. Alas, the classics don't always give us answers to contemporary life. The world is moving fast, each day it's transformed by coding gurus. And so are we. As we march inexorably toward a radically greater degree of transparency in our personal lives, perhaps what we look for in a good book is empathetic characters who make us feel less alone, less naked.
Even if they start out as fascinating psychopaths who run on all fours, in the end we want our characters rehabbed. We want to relate to them, want them to make us laugh and cry. We want high-low humor, secret vices, acts of contrition. In short, we want books full of characters like us: Fearful, questing, excruciatingly complex. Losers who morph into heroes. And heroes who morph into everyday humans searching for love.
( Martin Luther King Day.)
Monday, January 16, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
STEVE JOBS: ACROSS A CROWDED ROOM
Xmas/New Year - When God gave man hyperbole.
Hello, World.
How good to be able to blog again, to slog around in syntax and subtext. In fact, I have been muzzled for several months. Forbidden by legal counsel to blog or give interviews because of a legal
contretemps with a publisher. (See earlier blog: SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY.) But soon there will be closure, all will be well again.
Although a hairy, little seer in diapers has recently stepped from a cave on some far mountain-top and announced that the world will end in May. Oh, really? In fact, the world as we know it ends every day, is radically transformed with each birth, each death.
In 2011, we were radically transformed when we lost a force, a Messiah, for which the obituarial scribes are still scrambling to find adequate language. I met Steve Jobs some years ago before he was diagnosed with cancer. You might say he was in his prime. He had already magisterially transformed major industries, like computing. But there was still the iPod, iPhone, iPad to come. He had not yet altered the entire planet.
He was still black-bearded then, not gray, semi-virile looking in that perennial tight turtleneck. Eternally Goth in black. I hadn't seriously crossed over yet to electronic publishing, I was hanging with a Big 6 print crowd. So I had only a vague idea who Steve Jobs was. Some genius hacker-inventor. Another 'nerd.' But even across the room, across that vast reception-crowd, one could feel his intensity, so strong it was like the pull of gravity. It looked like men were spilling blood trying to get next to him.
I remember his face. Even when he smiled it was like he had two faces, a stern, bespectacled, intell-ectual's face, superimposed over a wider, sort-of-handsome, sort-of-sexy face. But even then, surrounded by ecstatic fans, he seemed not fully focused on the here and now. His brain perhaps at play in more celestial spheres - mobile-computing, the coming cyber-wars.
By 2011, I had become a cross-over, a hybrid-writer still published by one of New York's big publishing houses, but - as the Big Malaise set in, and print-income drastically declined - I was now also dipping my toes into electronic self-pubbing. And slowly I came to appreciate and revere Steve Jobs, the semi-sexy 'nerd' across the crowded room, the man they were now comparing to Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. The man they say will be forever unmatched in the modern history of innovation. (For starters, think how he has affected computing and telephony.) Again, there is not yet an adequate language to describe his feats.
But what Steve Jobs did for me, and you - for all writers - is something much more personal. He invented our freedom. He created the means by which we are each in charge of our destiny. As self-published authors - ebook and print - we are the uber-independents, high plains drifters of the digital age, high-tech entrepreneurs answering to no one. A natural progression. Jobs was the role model and reigning avatar for a whole generation of entreprenurial rookies - Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc. ( many of whom became million-and-billionaires. )
Addressing a college-graduation class, he spoke of the period when he was fired from Apple and spent more than a decade in the wilderness, battling depression and trying to stay afloat. He described how, after the 'heaviness' of being successful, he eventually experienced the pleasure, the 'lightness' of being a beginner again, less sure of everything. "It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." He was eventually rehired by Apple, the rest is history.
By the time of that graduation-day address he was losing the battle with cancer, and he told the audience that "Death is the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old, making way for the new." In the years since his cancer diagnosis, he had pushed himself harder than at any time in his life. He warned them, "Don't be trapped by dogma. Dogma means living with the results of other people's thinking. "
Jobs' parting words that day were: "Stay hungry! Stay foolish! I have always wished that for myself. This is what I wish for you."
We had a conversation that long-ago night at the reception. He asked what I did, what my life-goals were, and how I planned to achieve them. After I responded, he scowled and said. "Never, NEVER ask permission. Just do it."
My New Year's wish for all of us. That we stay curious, stay foolish, even hungry. That we dare everything. That we continue to leap, knowing somehow a net will appear. That, in short, we just roll up our sleeves and Do It. And that, finally, in our warp-speed, digitized and networked world we take time to remember, and sit back in awe.
Steve Jobs.
Hello, World.
How good to be able to blog again, to slog around in syntax and subtext. In fact, I have been muzzled for several months. Forbidden by legal counsel to blog or give interviews because of a legal
contretemps with a publisher. (See earlier blog: SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY.) But soon there will be closure, all will be well again.
Although a hairy, little seer in diapers has recently stepped from a cave on some far mountain-top and announced that the world will end in May. Oh, really? In fact, the world as we know it ends every day, is radically transformed with each birth, each death.
In 2011, we were radically transformed when we lost a force, a Messiah, for which the obituarial scribes are still scrambling to find adequate language. I met Steve Jobs some years ago before he was diagnosed with cancer. You might say he was in his prime. He had already magisterially transformed major industries, like computing. But there was still the iPod, iPhone, iPad to come. He had not yet altered the entire planet.
He was still black-bearded then, not gray, semi-virile looking in that perennial tight turtleneck. Eternally Goth in black. I hadn't seriously crossed over yet to electronic publishing, I was hanging with a Big 6 print crowd. So I had only a vague idea who Steve Jobs was. Some genius hacker-inventor. Another 'nerd.' But even across the room, across that vast reception-crowd, one could feel his intensity, so strong it was like the pull of gravity. It looked like men were spilling blood trying to get next to him.
I remember his face. Even when he smiled it was like he had two faces, a stern, bespectacled, intell-ectual's face, superimposed over a wider, sort-of-handsome, sort-of-sexy face. But even then, surrounded by ecstatic fans, he seemed not fully focused on the here and now. His brain perhaps at play in more celestial spheres - mobile-computing, the coming cyber-wars.
By 2011, I had become a cross-over, a hybrid-writer still published by one of New York's big publishing houses, but - as the Big Malaise set in, and print-income drastically declined - I was now also dipping my toes into electronic self-pubbing. And slowly I came to appreciate and revere Steve Jobs, the semi-sexy 'nerd' across the crowded room, the man they were now comparing to Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. The man they say will be forever unmatched in the modern history of innovation. (For starters, think how he has affected computing and telephony.) Again, there is not yet an adequate language to describe his feats.
But what Steve Jobs did for me, and you - for all writers - is something much more personal. He invented our freedom. He created the means by which we are each in charge of our destiny. As self-published authors - ebook and print - we are the uber-independents, high plains drifters of the digital age, high-tech entrepreneurs answering to no one. A natural progression. Jobs was the role model and reigning avatar for a whole generation of entreprenurial rookies - Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc. ( many of whom became million-and-billionaires. )
Addressing a college-graduation class, he spoke of the period when he was fired from Apple and spent more than a decade in the wilderness, battling depression and trying to stay afloat. He described how, after the 'heaviness' of being successful, he eventually experienced the pleasure, the 'lightness' of being a beginner again, less sure of everything. "It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." He was eventually rehired by Apple, the rest is history.
By the time of that graduation-day address he was losing the battle with cancer, and he told the audience that "Death is the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old, making way for the new." In the years since his cancer diagnosis, he had pushed himself harder than at any time in his life. He warned them, "Don't be trapped by dogma. Dogma means living with the results of other people's thinking. "
Jobs' parting words that day were: "Stay hungry! Stay foolish! I have always wished that for myself. This is what I wish for you."
We had a conversation that long-ago night at the reception. He asked what I did, what my life-goals were, and how I planned to achieve them. After I responded, he scowled and said. "Never, NEVER ask permission. Just do it."
My New Year's wish for all of us. That we stay curious, stay foolish, even hungry. That we dare everything. That we continue to leap, knowing somehow a net will appear. That, in short, we just roll up our sleeves and Do It. And that, finally, in our warp-speed, digitized and networked world we take time to remember, and sit back in awe.
Steve Jobs.
Monday, October 3, 2011
BREAKING BAD: TRASHING OLD TABOOS
Hello World.
Today is Sunday, 'BREAKING BAD' day. I have loved this AMC series since day one. Brilliant, shocking. Hilarious. Television as God meant it to be. Alas, this fourth season is a drag, no philosophical dialogues, no heart-wrenching moral decisions. Just good-guy, bad-guy meth cookers and dealers. And Walter White, former hero, becoming the creep you love to hate. Still, there is Walter White's son, a handsome boy impaired by teenage angst and celebral palsy. The dreamily handsome young actor, RJ Mitte, who plays the son does, in fact, have cerebral palsy.
This is innovation: The first major television series featuring an actor with a genuine disability. Watching the show each week - RJ Mitte struggling with his crutches, his slow walk, his hesitant enunciations - we become aware of a huge demographic missing in the media. Where are the physically and/or mentally challenged people that are so much a part of our society?
Though I loved Tom Hanks in 'FORREST GUMP,' the retarded Gump was super-sized, a Disney-like character who made millions of dollars, publicly mooned LBJ in gratitude for Vietnam, and married the girl of his dreams. A fairy tale.
But, remember 'I AM SAM' starring Sean Penn? A beautiful Oscar-worthy movie, about a retarded man fighting for custody of his child. Perhaps it too bordered on the fairy tale with its happy ending. But here is the difference... the cast was made up of real, mentally-challenged men who played Sam's buddies. Their halted speech and sly, tender taunts, made the movie memorable, human, deeply touching.
So now we turn to books: Jo Nesbo, author of international bestsellers, THE SNOWMAN, REDBREAST, DEVIL'S STAR, is currently the reigning bad boy of Norwegian crime fiction. His body of Nordic Noir is based on highly creative serial killers, much blood and gore. Nesbo is good, he's excellent. But here is what lures me into his books. In each novel, Harry Hole, the alcoholic detective- hero visits his sister, Sis, who has Down's Syndrome. Sis is functional, she has a boyfriend, she babysits, she makes meatballs. But, of Sis, that is all we ever know.
I am curious about Nesbo's nod to Down's Syndrome, how in each book he dutifully mentions 'Sis,' her boyfriend, her little accomplishments, all whittled down to one meager paragraph. Then back to the serial killers. As a reader, I find this puzzling, even gratuitous. As a person with Down's Syndrome, I would find it insulting. Perhaps it is an acknowledgement to someone the author knows and loves. (As Walter White's son is an acknowledgement to someone the series creator knew and loved.) So I wonder why then Sis can't be a fully fleshed-out character in Nesbo's novels, one who happens to suffer from a congenital disorder caused by the presence of an extra chromosone, which causes a mild to moderate mental retardation. If such a sister functions in real life, why can't she function as a character in a novel?
I don't know, perhaps I am reaching. What I would like to see is more media, especially novels, involving characters with real disabilities. If we write bestsellers about apocalyptic wars, ethnic cleansing, mass mutilations, how is it we cannot write books featuring main characters with disabilities? Last week in a small Texas town, a girl named Marian Slick was crowned Homecoming Queen at half-time during a football game. Cheerleaders wept with joy. Thousands of spectators stood and cheered as she steadied her crown and waved to her fans. Marian Slick has Down's Syndrome.
All right, maybe that's too feel-good for a novel, or movie of the week. But I'm thinking of all the other millions of people in the world with various disabilities, who manage to function and even procreate as normally as their lives and society allows them. What are their stories, their comedies and tragedies? If they are characters in their daily lives, may they not also be characters in literature?
My cousin Malia feels I am going to extremes, that I am taking a Diane Arbus approach in my writing, only highlighting society's misfits. In my first story collection, HOUSE OF SKIN, I wrote about skinned, tattooed humans, drug addiction, paraplegics, dysfunctional families. In the second collection, CANNIBAL NIGHTS, I write about assassins, mass rape, incest, fetal alcohol syndrome. (I also write about love, the loss of it, the search for it, the human need for it, which is how humans transcend themselves.)
I argue that these are real stories, about real people, I cannot write fairy tales. And so we come to my dear friend, Andre, whom I have written about earlier in these blog-postings, and who has given me permission to write a fictionalized version of his life. Andre is a handsome man, a world-class online poker player. A lover of books, an FBI profiler. He also suffers from the condition known as albinism. The lesser-prefered term is albino. Andre is uniformly pale almost to transparency. His eyes are pale, his thick hair the color of butter. In grade school his nickname was Vanilla.
In writing a novel about Andre am I being opportunistic? Sensationalistic? No. My hope is that I can introduce readers to a sympathetic yet fascinating character who suffers from a condition most people don't understand, and maybe along the way educate them to what albinism is: the inheritance of two recessive genes that prevent the body from changing the amino acid tyrosine into pigment.
I can think of old-fashioned novels with disabled characters, a congenitally blind detective, a surgeon born without a leg. An autistic soldier-hero. But I can't think of many contemporary novels with such characters. I would love to see more. If they exist, I hope readers will bring me up to date in your comments. There a millions of stories waiting to be told, based on lives of people who, because of their disabilities, remain invisible in society. We see them, but do not really SEE them. We do not record them. Because of this our literature, and our society, suffers. And readers are left less enriched.
Our lives are just a moment in time, a quick little dance of particles. The beauty of humans is our infinite variation. Our abilities, inabilities, and disabilities. Perhaps its time to step out of this mental Ice Age of fiction and let our characters reflect real people, all the spurious and genuine and tragic facets of each life.
Herman Melvile said, "What shall be Grand in thee must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in our depths, and featured in the unbodied air."
We are in a creative universe. Let us then create.
Thank you.
Today is Sunday, 'BREAKING BAD' day. I have loved this AMC series since day one. Brilliant, shocking. Hilarious. Television as God meant it to be. Alas, this fourth season is a drag, no philosophical dialogues, no heart-wrenching moral decisions. Just good-guy, bad-guy meth cookers and dealers. And Walter White, former hero, becoming the creep you love to hate. Still, there is Walter White's son, a handsome boy impaired by teenage angst and celebral palsy. The dreamily handsome young actor, RJ Mitte, who plays the son does, in fact, have cerebral palsy.
This is innovation: The first major television series featuring an actor with a genuine disability. Watching the show each week - RJ Mitte struggling with his crutches, his slow walk, his hesitant enunciations - we become aware of a huge demographic missing in the media. Where are the physically and/or mentally challenged people that are so much a part of our society?
Though I loved Tom Hanks in 'FORREST GUMP,' the retarded Gump was super-sized, a Disney-like character who made millions of dollars, publicly mooned LBJ in gratitude for Vietnam, and married the girl of his dreams. A fairy tale.
But, remember 'I AM SAM' starring Sean Penn? A beautiful Oscar-worthy movie, about a retarded man fighting for custody of his child. Perhaps it too bordered on the fairy tale with its happy ending. But here is the difference... the cast was made up of real, mentally-challenged men who played Sam's buddies. Their halted speech and sly, tender taunts, made the movie memorable, human, deeply touching.
So now we turn to books: Jo Nesbo, author of international bestsellers, THE SNOWMAN, REDBREAST, DEVIL'S STAR, is currently the reigning bad boy of Norwegian crime fiction. His body of Nordic Noir is based on highly creative serial killers, much blood and gore. Nesbo is good, he's excellent. But here is what lures me into his books. In each novel, Harry Hole, the alcoholic detective- hero visits his sister, Sis, who has Down's Syndrome. Sis is functional, she has a boyfriend, she babysits, she makes meatballs. But, of Sis, that is all we ever know.
I am curious about Nesbo's nod to Down's Syndrome, how in each book he dutifully mentions 'Sis,' her boyfriend, her little accomplishments, all whittled down to one meager paragraph. Then back to the serial killers. As a reader, I find this puzzling, even gratuitous. As a person with Down's Syndrome, I would find it insulting. Perhaps it is an acknowledgement to someone the author knows and loves. (As Walter White's son is an acknowledgement to someone the series creator knew and loved.) So I wonder why then Sis can't be a fully fleshed-out character in Nesbo's novels, one who happens to suffer from a congenital disorder caused by the presence of an extra chromosone, which causes a mild to moderate mental retardation. If such a sister functions in real life, why can't she function as a character in a novel?
I don't know, perhaps I am reaching. What I would like to see is more media, especially novels, involving characters with real disabilities. If we write bestsellers about apocalyptic wars, ethnic cleansing, mass mutilations, how is it we cannot write books featuring main characters with disabilities? Last week in a small Texas town, a girl named Marian Slick was crowned Homecoming Queen at half-time during a football game. Cheerleaders wept with joy. Thousands of spectators stood and cheered as she steadied her crown and waved to her fans. Marian Slick has Down's Syndrome.
All right, maybe that's too feel-good for a novel, or movie of the week. But I'm thinking of all the other millions of people in the world with various disabilities, who manage to function and even procreate as normally as their lives and society allows them. What are their stories, their comedies and tragedies? If they are characters in their daily lives, may they not also be characters in literature?
My cousin Malia feels I am going to extremes, that I am taking a Diane Arbus approach in my writing, only highlighting society's misfits. In my first story collection, HOUSE OF SKIN, I wrote about skinned, tattooed humans, drug addiction, paraplegics, dysfunctional families. In the second collection, CANNIBAL NIGHTS, I write about assassins, mass rape, incest, fetal alcohol syndrome. (I also write about love, the loss of it, the search for it, the human need for it, which is how humans transcend themselves.)
I argue that these are real stories, about real people, I cannot write fairy tales. And so we come to my dear friend, Andre, whom I have written about earlier in these blog-postings, and who has given me permission to write a fictionalized version of his life. Andre is a handsome man, a world-class online poker player. A lover of books, an FBI profiler. He also suffers from the condition known as albinism. The lesser-prefered term is albino. Andre is uniformly pale almost to transparency. His eyes are pale, his thick hair the color of butter. In grade school his nickname was Vanilla.
In writing a novel about Andre am I being opportunistic? Sensationalistic? No. My hope is that I can introduce readers to a sympathetic yet fascinating character who suffers from a condition most people don't understand, and maybe along the way educate them to what albinism is: the inheritance of two recessive genes that prevent the body from changing the amino acid tyrosine into pigment.
I can think of old-fashioned novels with disabled characters, a congenitally blind detective, a surgeon born without a leg. An autistic soldier-hero. But I can't think of many contemporary novels with such characters. I would love to see more. If they exist, I hope readers will bring me up to date in your comments. There a millions of stories waiting to be told, based on lives of people who, because of their disabilities, remain invisible in society. We see them, but do not really SEE them. We do not record them. Because of this our literature, and our society, suffers. And readers are left less enriched.
Our lives are just a moment in time, a quick little dance of particles. The beauty of humans is our infinite variation. Our abilities, inabilities, and disabilities. Perhaps its time to step out of this mental Ice Age of fiction and let our characters reflect real people, all the spurious and genuine and tragic facets of each life.
Herman Melvile said, "What shall be Grand in thee must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in our depths, and featured in the unbodied air."
We are in a creative universe. Let us then create.
Thank you.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY: A CAUTIONARY TALE
Hello World.
It is four weeks since my last posting. I have been adrift in the ethers, learning first-hand how deeply this digital revolution affects our lives, right down to our DNA depths. As an author struggling to survive in these recessionary times, I made a decision eight months ago. I joined the legions of writers who are now electronically self-publishing backlogs of their writing. I did this in innocence and exuberance, and a need for income. And yes, I did it out of ignorance, never dreaming that the reverberations of that decision would cost me my credibility in whatever is left of the world of print publishing.
In January, 2010, I signed a contract with one of the Big 6 publishers in New York for my next novel. I understood then that I, like every writer in the business, was being coerced into giving up more than 75% of the profits from electronic sales of that novel, for the life of the novel. But I was debt-ridden and needed upfront money that an advance would provide. The book was scheduled for hardback publication in August, 2012, and paperback publication a year later. Recently that publisher discovered I had self-published two of my story collections as electronic books. To coin the Fanboys, they went ballistic. The editor shouted at me repeatedly on the phone. I was accused of breaching my contract (which I did not) but worse, of 'blatantly betraying them with Amazon,' their biggest and most intimidating competitor. I was not trustworthy. I was sleeping with the enemy.
My lawyer quickly pointed out that the first collection, HOUSE OF SKIN, PRIZE-WINNING STORIES, had been e-published in December, before I signed the contract with the publisher, so they immediately targetted the second collection, CANNIBAL NIGHTS, PACIFIC STORIES, Volume II, published recently in July.
Most of the stories in both collections had each been published several times before, first in Story Magazine, then again in The O'HENRY AWARDS PRIZE STORIES anthologies, the PUSHCART PRIZE stories anthologies, and THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, 2000, anthology. And, over several years both collections had been submitted to each of the Big 6 publishers in NY. I still have their rejection letters, including one from the house I was now under contract with. So you might say these stories were, in a sense, recycled, sitting in my files rejected. Yet, as published collections, this Big 6 publisher suddenly found them threatening.
So, here is what the publisher demanded. That I immediately and totally delete CANNIBAL NIGHTS from Amazon, iNook, iPad, and all other e-platforms. Plus, that I delete all Google hits mentioning me and CANNIBAL NIGHTS. Currently, that's about 600,000 hits. (How does one even do that?) Plus that I guarantee in writing I would not self-publish another ebook of any of my backlog of works until my novel with them was published in hardback and paperback. In other words they were demanding that I agree to be muzzled for the next two years, to sit silent and impotent as a writer, in a state of acquiescence and, consequently, utter self-loathing.
The vice president and publisher of that house called my agent, offering extra little sweetmeats if I would just capitulate and 'adopt the right spirit going forward.' This somewhat sinister and semi-benevolent attempt at mind-control fascinated me. It became crystal-clear to me that the issue wasn't a supposed 'breach of contract,' on my part, but the publisher's fear and loathing of the profoundly threatening Goliath, Amazon. Since CANNIBAL NIGHTS in no way 'resembles' or would 'injure' sales of the book I had sold them (an entirely different subject matter) I was not in breach of my contract. I stood firm, and refused to capitulate.
Last week, I received from their lawyers an official letter terminating my contract with them, "...for permitting Amazon to publish CANNIBAL NIGHTS, etc...." and demanding back the $20,000 they had paid me as part of their advance. Until then, this publishing giant is holding my novel as hostage, a work that took me five years to write. My agent assures me I am now an 'anathema' to them.
I sit back and view this fiasco in two ways. CANNIBAL NIGHTS is my best, best writing. Perhaps it's worth $20,000 to finally have it published and presented to the world. For that, I thank Amazon. Or, perhaps it's worth $20,000 for a writer to discover who she's really in bed with. Sleeping with the enemy? Perhaps. But now I know who the enemy is.
This is not a tale of woe. Its a cautionary tale, a warning to other writers. I welcome your comments.
It is four weeks since my last posting. I have been adrift in the ethers, learning first-hand how deeply this digital revolution affects our lives, right down to our DNA depths. As an author struggling to survive in these recessionary times, I made a decision eight months ago. I joined the legions of writers who are now electronically self-publishing backlogs of their writing. I did this in innocence and exuberance, and a need for income. And yes, I did it out of ignorance, never dreaming that the reverberations of that decision would cost me my credibility in whatever is left of the world of print publishing.
In January, 2010, I signed a contract with one of the Big 6 publishers in New York for my next novel. I understood then that I, like every writer in the business, was being coerced into giving up more than 75% of the profits from electronic sales of that novel, for the life of the novel. But I was debt-ridden and needed upfront money that an advance would provide. The book was scheduled for hardback publication in August, 2012, and paperback publication a year later. Recently that publisher discovered I had self-published two of my story collections as electronic books. To coin the Fanboys, they went ballistic. The editor shouted at me repeatedly on the phone. I was accused of breaching my contract (which I did not) but worse, of 'blatantly betraying them with Amazon,' their biggest and most intimidating competitor. I was not trustworthy. I was sleeping with the enemy.
My lawyer quickly pointed out that the first collection, HOUSE OF SKIN, PRIZE-WINNING STORIES, had been e-published in December, before I signed the contract with the publisher, so they immediately targetted the second collection, CANNIBAL NIGHTS, PACIFIC STORIES, Volume II, published recently in July.
Most of the stories in both collections had each been published several times before, first in Story Magazine, then again in The O'HENRY AWARDS PRIZE STORIES anthologies, the PUSHCART PRIZE stories anthologies, and THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, 2000, anthology. And, over several years both collections had been submitted to each of the Big 6 publishers in NY. I still have their rejection letters, including one from the house I was now under contract with. So you might say these stories were, in a sense, recycled, sitting in my files rejected. Yet, as published collections, this Big 6 publisher suddenly found them threatening.
So, here is what the publisher demanded. That I immediately and totally delete CANNIBAL NIGHTS from Amazon, iNook, iPad, and all other e-platforms. Plus, that I delete all Google hits mentioning me and CANNIBAL NIGHTS. Currently, that's about 600,000 hits. (How does one even do that?) Plus that I guarantee in writing I would not self-publish another ebook of any of my backlog of works until my novel with them was published in hardback and paperback. In other words they were demanding that I agree to be muzzled for the next two years, to sit silent and impotent as a writer, in a state of acquiescence and, consequently, utter self-loathing.
The vice president and publisher of that house called my agent, offering extra little sweetmeats if I would just capitulate and 'adopt the right spirit going forward.' This somewhat sinister and semi-benevolent attempt at mind-control fascinated me. It became crystal-clear to me that the issue wasn't a supposed 'breach of contract,' on my part, but the publisher's fear and loathing of the profoundly threatening Goliath, Amazon. Since CANNIBAL NIGHTS in no way 'resembles' or would 'injure' sales of the book I had sold them (an entirely different subject matter) I was not in breach of my contract. I stood firm, and refused to capitulate.
Last week, I received from their lawyers an official letter terminating my contract with them, "...for permitting Amazon to publish CANNIBAL NIGHTS, etc...." and demanding back the $20,000 they had paid me as part of their advance. Until then, this publishing giant is holding my novel as hostage, a work that took me five years to write. My agent assures me I am now an 'anathema' to them.
I sit back and view this fiasco in two ways. CANNIBAL NIGHTS is my best, best writing. Perhaps it's worth $20,000 to finally have it published and presented to the world. For that, I thank Amazon. Or, perhaps it's worth $20,000 for a writer to discover who she's really in bed with. Sleeping with the enemy? Perhaps. But now I know who the enemy is.
This is not a tale of woe. Its a cautionary tale, a warning to other writers. I welcome your comments.
Monday, July 25, 2011
"CANNIBAL NIGHTS, PACIFIC STORIES." THANK YOU, READERS!
Hello World,
This posting is a heartfelt thank you (Mahalo!) to the readers who have so generously purchased my latest ebook, CANNIBAL NIGHTS, Pacific Stories Volume II, a sequel to my first collection, HOUSE OF SKIN PRIZE-WINNING STORIES. Since so many of you are curious about the genesis of these stories, I hope to give you a little insight into how I researched and wrote them.
CANNIBAL NIGHTS is a darker collection than HOUSE OF SKIN. The stories range from Navy SEALS (and the women who love them) and Al Qaeda terrorists, to a father's adultery, to slave-ships roaming the Pacific in the 18th and 19th centuries, kidnapping and enslaving hundreds of thousands of natives. A story set in the Marquesas Islands deals with Paul Gauguin in his last days, riddled with syphilis and morphine addiction. In other stories, a modern-day Tahitian girl searches for her biological father, a French Foreign Legionnaire. An Australian Aborigine exacts payback from white men who gang-raped her. And a brother and sister struggle to find normalcy and even happiness, while burdened with life-long affects of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Do I create these tales from scratch? No. But I build, I construct one story out of maybe three or five that I have heard, or personally experienced. My cousins in Honolulu know several retired Navy SEALS. Sometimes we sit and listen, stunned, to the stories they tell of their combat experiences. I knew the parents of several college students killed in the Al Qaeda nightclub bombings in Bali in 2003. I tried to merge all these stories until 'ASSASSIN ORDERS PEKING DUCK' evolved, a tale that is tragic but somehow ends hopefully. The narrator is a young woman forever searching for her father who abandoned her. Readers have pointed out to me that this is a theme that runs through earlier stories. Even my novels. I was not aware of it during the writing. But in fact, I never knew my father well. After my Hawaiian mother died at a young age, my father left our islands. Growing up, I saw him only intermittently. Perhaps it is what we most long for that circumscribes our lives, and ultimately becomes the running subtext of our work.
For three months I lived in Tonga, setting of 'GEORGE BUSH AND PAPA AT THE PARADISE.' During that time one of the maids at the Paradise hotel discovered her father was having an affair with a tourist. It broke her heart and she spent months thinking of how she could make her father pay. (There really was a life-size portrait of George Bush in the lobby!) I left Tonga before the story resolved itself, so I orchestrated an ending. Tongans are such a warm and beautiful people, so deeply dedicated to their children, that I wanted to ennoble both the wife, and husband. I wanted them to have a happy ending. And I wanted the young girl to mature and learn to forgive, and come to understand the imperishability of love. That it can be tested and survive.
'MYSTERIES OF RAPA NUI' is based on the tragic history of Easter Island. The ecological devastation and the unspeakable tragedy of how their male population was nearly wiped out by slave-ships roaming the Pacific. I have visited Easter Island and heard stories of huge sacrifices the women made, attempting to hide their men from the notorious Blackbirder slave ships. This 18th and 19th century practise of kidnapping and slave-trading was rampant in the Pacific, coinciding with the slave-trade flourishing in the Atlantic, yet so little has been written about it.
'CANNIBAL NIGHTS, COLONIAL AFTERNOONS' is based on the last year of Gauguin's life in the Marquesas Islands after he had been deported out of Tahiti, a French colony, as a drug-addled rake and libertine. In that period he was in a morphine-induced stupor, yet he managed to paint some of the most magnificent portraits of his life. There has always been the question of who helped him complete the last canvases as he began to fail and death approached. I took 'authorial license' in portraying these last days and who might have helped him and even, in some instances, repainted his portraits completely. More importantly, I wanted to portray how in the colonialist period of that time - when the Church over-ran the islands and taxed the natives to near-starvation - a young clergyman befriends Gauguin, sees through his eyes the bigotry of the Church, and learns how Art, true Art, goes deeper than religion.
We come to 'THE FRENCH FOREIGN LEGIONNAIRE'S BATARD,' and again, it is a story comprised of several stories. During my many trips to Tahiti (culturally, they are very close cousins to Hawaiians) I met several 'fatherless' women born to mothers who had had affairs with French Foreign Legionnaire's during their military duty in Tahiti. Several women had actually lived in France and spent years trying to locate their Legionnaire fathers. I began to wonder what would happen if one of them found her father. How the drama would unfold. My biggest challenge was the ending of the story. I struggled to make the characters sympathetic, but was the ending plausible? Only, you, the reader can tell me. I am anxious to know from your responses if this story works. I hope so! For, during the writing, I fell in love with both characters. They are each damaged, and lonely, and searching.
' FLASHNESS,' set in Australia, is based on a story I heard while traveling there a few years back. It happened after the Columbine High School tragedy in the U.S. I knew the background of how Aborigines were massacred when England deposited boatloads of its convicts on their shores, and so the story automatically fell into place in my mind. It is a dark, harsh tale of payback, but I hope readers will also remember the suffering and wholesale slaughter of Australia's Aborigines by white convict-settlers, that continued for two hundred years
The last story, 'CELL FATIGUE, ' was very difficult to write. Like Native Americans, and many other under-represented minorities, Native Hawaiians have an extremely high percentage of alcoholism, and thus, their children suffer from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. I have seen people struggling all their lives with this condition. The story was initially so dark and potentially hopeless, I revised it least 20-30 times. It began to depress and defeat me, and I put it aside for weeks. Then one day, epiphany! I began to see it as a love story between a brother and sister trying to save each other's life. Then it became instantly deeper, more meaningful to me. The characters slowly transcending from victims to survivors. I now saw them as heroes, and when I finally wrote the last page, I was overtaken with emotion. (Only when I completed this story did I realize it was also a kind of memorial to my dear brother, Braxton Rowan, a soldier and hero, who died too young. )
Looking over the entire body of CANNIBAL NIGHTS, I see that what I have written is a collection of love stories. Though dark, and often violent, they are tales of people searching for the love of a father, or brother, or the love of women sacrificing their lives for their husbands. There is the love of a clergyman for an artist, and the love of that artist for his Art. The love of an Aborigine for her tribe, and for her ancestor, cold-bloodedly murdered. Finally, the deep love of a brother and sister, trying to survive.
I hope these stories will speak to anyone who has suffered the confusion of being a mixed-blood, or to anyone, male or female, who has served in the military and suffered Post-Traumatic Stress. I hope they will speak to anyone who has ever lost a child, or betrayed or abandoned a child, or, conversely, anyone who has ever searched for a parent who abandoned them. Lastly, I hope they will remind you that our fate is not determined, that we each have choices. And that, after all, especially in these cataclysmic times, love is still the basic need that drives us, that renders us still-noble, still-supremely human.
Again, thank you, mahalo, for your support. I sincerely hope you enjoyed CANNIBAL NIGHTS, and I look forward to your questions and comments.
With aloha, Kiana
This posting is a heartfelt thank you (Mahalo!) to the readers who have so generously purchased my latest ebook, CANNIBAL NIGHTS, Pacific Stories Volume II, a sequel to my first collection, HOUSE OF SKIN PRIZE-WINNING STORIES. Since so many of you are curious about the genesis of these stories, I hope to give you a little insight into how I researched and wrote them.
CANNIBAL NIGHTS is a darker collection than HOUSE OF SKIN. The stories range from Navy SEALS (and the women who love them) and Al Qaeda terrorists, to a father's adultery, to slave-ships roaming the Pacific in the 18th and 19th centuries, kidnapping and enslaving hundreds of thousands of natives. A story set in the Marquesas Islands deals with Paul Gauguin in his last days, riddled with syphilis and morphine addiction. In other stories, a modern-day Tahitian girl searches for her biological father, a French Foreign Legionnaire. An Australian Aborigine exacts payback from white men who gang-raped her. And a brother and sister struggle to find normalcy and even happiness, while burdened with life-long affects of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Do I create these tales from scratch? No. But I build, I construct one story out of maybe three or five that I have heard, or personally experienced. My cousins in Honolulu know several retired Navy SEALS. Sometimes we sit and listen, stunned, to the stories they tell of their combat experiences. I knew the parents of several college students killed in the Al Qaeda nightclub bombings in Bali in 2003. I tried to merge all these stories until 'ASSASSIN ORDERS PEKING DUCK' evolved, a tale that is tragic but somehow ends hopefully. The narrator is a young woman forever searching for her father who abandoned her. Readers have pointed out to me that this is a theme that runs through earlier stories. Even my novels. I was not aware of it during the writing. But in fact, I never knew my father well. After my Hawaiian mother died at a young age, my father left our islands. Growing up, I saw him only intermittently. Perhaps it is what we most long for that circumscribes our lives, and ultimately becomes the running subtext of our work.
For three months I lived in Tonga, setting of 'GEORGE BUSH AND PAPA AT THE PARADISE.' During that time one of the maids at the Paradise hotel discovered her father was having an affair with a tourist. It broke her heart and she spent months thinking of how she could make her father pay. (There really was a life-size portrait of George Bush in the lobby!) I left Tonga before the story resolved itself, so I orchestrated an ending. Tongans are such a warm and beautiful people, so deeply dedicated to their children, that I wanted to ennoble both the wife, and husband. I wanted them to have a happy ending. And I wanted the young girl to mature and learn to forgive, and come to understand the imperishability of love. That it can be tested and survive.
'MYSTERIES OF RAPA NUI' is based on the tragic history of Easter Island. The ecological devastation and the unspeakable tragedy of how their male population was nearly wiped out by slave-ships roaming the Pacific. I have visited Easter Island and heard stories of huge sacrifices the women made, attempting to hide their men from the notorious Blackbirder slave ships. This 18th and 19th century practise of kidnapping and slave-trading was rampant in the Pacific, coinciding with the slave-trade flourishing in the Atlantic, yet so little has been written about it.
'CANNIBAL NIGHTS, COLONIAL AFTERNOONS' is based on the last year of Gauguin's life in the Marquesas Islands after he had been deported out of Tahiti, a French colony, as a drug-addled rake and libertine. In that period he was in a morphine-induced stupor, yet he managed to paint some of the most magnificent portraits of his life. There has always been the question of who helped him complete the last canvases as he began to fail and death approached. I took 'authorial license' in portraying these last days and who might have helped him and even, in some instances, repainted his portraits completely. More importantly, I wanted to portray how in the colonialist period of that time - when the Church over-ran the islands and taxed the natives to near-starvation - a young clergyman befriends Gauguin, sees through his eyes the bigotry of the Church, and learns how Art, true Art, goes deeper than religion.
We come to 'THE FRENCH FOREIGN LEGIONNAIRE'S BATARD,' and again, it is a story comprised of several stories. During my many trips to Tahiti (culturally, they are very close cousins to Hawaiians) I met several 'fatherless' women born to mothers who had had affairs with French Foreign Legionnaire's during their military duty in Tahiti. Several women had actually lived in France and spent years trying to locate their Legionnaire fathers. I began to wonder what would happen if one of them found her father. How the drama would unfold. My biggest challenge was the ending of the story. I struggled to make the characters sympathetic, but was the ending plausible? Only, you, the reader can tell me. I am anxious to know from your responses if this story works. I hope so! For, during the writing, I fell in love with both characters. They are each damaged, and lonely, and searching.
' FLASHNESS,' set in Australia, is based on a story I heard while traveling there a few years back. It happened after the Columbine High School tragedy in the U.S. I knew the background of how Aborigines were massacred when England deposited boatloads of its convicts on their shores, and so the story automatically fell into place in my mind. It is a dark, harsh tale of payback, but I hope readers will also remember the suffering and wholesale slaughter of Australia's Aborigines by white convict-settlers, that continued for two hundred years
The last story, 'CELL FATIGUE, ' was very difficult to write. Like Native Americans, and many other under-represented minorities, Native Hawaiians have an extremely high percentage of alcoholism, and thus, their children suffer from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. I have seen people struggling all their lives with this condition. The story was initially so dark and potentially hopeless, I revised it least 20-30 times. It began to depress and defeat me, and I put it aside for weeks. Then one day, epiphany! I began to see it as a love story between a brother and sister trying to save each other's life. Then it became instantly deeper, more meaningful to me. The characters slowly transcending from victims to survivors. I now saw them as heroes, and when I finally wrote the last page, I was overtaken with emotion. (Only when I completed this story did I realize it was also a kind of memorial to my dear brother, Braxton Rowan, a soldier and hero, who died too young. )
Looking over the entire body of CANNIBAL NIGHTS, I see that what I have written is a collection of love stories. Though dark, and often violent, they are tales of people searching for the love of a father, or brother, or the love of women sacrificing their lives for their husbands. There is the love of a clergyman for an artist, and the love of that artist for his Art. The love of an Aborigine for her tribe, and for her ancestor, cold-bloodedly murdered. Finally, the deep love of a brother and sister, trying to survive.
I hope these stories will speak to anyone who has suffered the confusion of being a mixed-blood, or to anyone, male or female, who has served in the military and suffered Post-Traumatic Stress. I hope they will speak to anyone who has ever lost a child, or betrayed or abandoned a child, or, conversely, anyone who has ever searched for a parent who abandoned them. Lastly, I hope they will remind you that our fate is not determined, that we each have choices. And that, after all, especially in these cataclysmic times, love is still the basic need that drives us, that renders us still-noble, still-supremely human.
Again, thank you, mahalo, for your support. I sincerely hope you enjoyed CANNIBAL NIGHTS, and I look forward to your questions and comments.
With aloha, Kiana
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BIRTH CONTROL. HELLO INFERTILITY.
Hello, World.
Remember that ad for Ultra-Slim cigarettes, targetted at women? "YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY, BABE!" Even then the tobacco industry knew cigarettes were killing us. But, hey. It was a multi, multi-billion $dollar business. And it was run by men. (Of course, cigarettes were killing men, too.)
Well, recently I came across a similar ad in an old Glamour magazine from the 1980s. Half of the photo showed a turn-of-century chrone with six kids hanging on her apron. The other half showed a girl driving a Porsche convertible, hair flying in the wind. Caption? "CELEBRATE YOUR FREEDOM!" It was an ad for Birth Control pills. Those little miracles that wiped out centuries of female oppression, allowed women sexual freedom, and a way to finally chart their own reproductive kismet. The Pill, which celebrated its 50th birthday in October, created the most radical change in human history. It was of course manufactured by colossal, multi-billion $dollar drug companies, an industry run by men.
Enter a new era, "The Age of Infertility." An age of bestselling books entitled EVERYTHING CONCEIVABLE. TAKING CHARGE OF YOUR FERTILITY. A world of Fertility Centers, ovulation kits, infertility shots, and bioethecists telling women they should have planned ahead. A new kind of medical and bureaucratic Hell of doctor's waiting rooms and insurance companies that are lasar leaps away from the Liberation we thought we had achieve with the Pill.
Hello? Did I miss a segue? Yes, I'm afraid millions of women did. Now younger women in their 30s who've been on the Pill for 10 or 15 years, refer to the pills as 'Death Pods.' Because those 10 or 15 years were their prime child-bearing years. Now that they want to have children their bodies are in REPRODUCTIVE BACKLASH. Inadvertently, infertility has become the Pill's primary side effect.
Why does this suprise us? Because in our eagerness to be stand-alone human beings, empowered with our reproductive rights, women forgot basic biology: fertility is an offering of Youth. The body we woke up with after 10 or 20 years on the Pill is, putting it mildly, not the one we started out with. Body rhythms change, so do organs, and cells. Our stockpile of eggs becomes depleted, what's left is not exactly prime quality.
(Let me say that I was one of the lucky ones. The Catholic Church forbade the Pill, so I got pregnant instead. Only after my child was born, and I rebelled and left the Church, did I go on the Pill. So in some wacky, Byzantine way, the Church may have saved me from being childless.)
Now, granted, the Pill did not directly create the field of infertility medicine, but it has turned it into a gigantic multi multi-billion $dollar industry. Run by men. (Sound familiar?) Childless couples and single women are now depleting their savings accounts investing in in-vitro fertilization, or test-tube babies, which has been the last word in infertility treatment since the late 70s. But only now has the attempt at IVF become almost epidemic, a last ditch-try at biological parenthood. Success rates are dismally low if you're over forty. Mid-forties only a 12% success rate. Over forty-five the odds, less than 2%.
And with IVF we have the risk of birth defects especially with women over forty. Worse, insurance companies will not cover costs, which range from $12,000-15,000 per cycle. When IVF fails, there is grief and mourning, and women berating themselves for their lack of foresight. And only now, after the fact, are doctors telling women, "Oh! You should have frozen your eggs in your twenties." In fact, young women in their teens and twenties ARE now freezing their eggs for future fertilization. But for the infertile over-30s and 40s and evern 50s that information comes too late.
(Yes, there is always adoption, which I wholeheartedly endorse. But we are talking about the Pill and infertility here.) What I want is someone to tell me that the geniuses behind the research and develop-ment and marketing of the Pill, DID NOT KNOW, or anticipate, a future of infertile women. I want someone to tell me that women were not used as guinea pigs. And that even now, they are once again being used as guinea pigs in this latest tango with infertility shots, and infertility pills, and the whole new cornucopia of medicalized technology promising to produce viable fetuses, but not guaranteeing children born without defects.
I want someone to tell me, fifty years after the advent of the Pill, why even Margaret Sanger's grandson publicly demands to know "WHERE IS THE BIRTH CONTROL PILL FOR MEN?" It would be so easy. But, again, the drug companies, those Goliaths profitting so magnficiently from women, ARE RUN BY MEN. When confronted by legions of women demanding the Male Pill, drug company spokesmen turn coquettish and shy. The cost of clinical trials ' would be astoundingly high.' 'The impact of upending cultural norms would be global, and would reverberate for generations.' They have not yet found a male pill with 'zero side effects.' After fifty years? Oh, ladies, lets face it. The real rock-bottom truth is the same as it was in the Bible. Men don't want their reproductive organs fooled around with.
Yes, the Pill saved our lives. I embraced it. I embrace it now. Yes, it brought women's rights out of the Dark Ages. The right to serial sex partners, equal pay, the right to run for President of the United States. But, look. Our bodies are still under the control of the Goliaths - the drug companies. Who, by the way, long ago perfected the Male Birth Control Pill. They just won't release it. Think of the billions and billions of $dollars LOST if, finally, the Goliaths allow women to have drug-free bodies. If, finally, they give us back the right to our reproductive selves. The Pill took a certain biological control away from us, and that control was Empowerment.
Release the Pill for men. Freeze their young, unadulterated sperm, and then let them deal with potential sterility for a few decades. IT'S THEIR TURN.
Last month we watched a movie about a Pill-taking career-wife who has been rendered infertile. Her husband divorces her for a younger woman who can give him children. She drives herself off a cliff. A few nights ago we watched an old Turner Classic from the 50s, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING. An unmarried woman becomes pregnant and, out of shame, suicides with sleeping pills. Oddly, the theme song of both movies was something sentimental called, "Its a Woman's World..."
Oh, really?
Remember that ad for Ultra-Slim cigarettes, targetted at women? "YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY, BABE!" Even then the tobacco industry knew cigarettes were killing us. But, hey. It was a multi, multi-billion $dollar business. And it was run by men. (Of course, cigarettes were killing men, too.)
Well, recently I came across a similar ad in an old Glamour magazine from the 1980s. Half of the photo showed a turn-of-century chrone with six kids hanging on her apron. The other half showed a girl driving a Porsche convertible, hair flying in the wind. Caption? "CELEBRATE YOUR FREEDOM!" It was an ad for Birth Control pills. Those little miracles that wiped out centuries of female oppression, allowed women sexual freedom, and a way to finally chart their own reproductive kismet. The Pill, which celebrated its 50th birthday in October, created the most radical change in human history. It was of course manufactured by colossal, multi-billion $dollar drug companies, an industry run by men.
Enter a new era, "The Age of Infertility." An age of bestselling books entitled EVERYTHING CONCEIVABLE. TAKING CHARGE OF YOUR FERTILITY. A world of Fertility Centers, ovulation kits, infertility shots, and bioethecists telling women they should have planned ahead. A new kind of medical and bureaucratic Hell of doctor's waiting rooms and insurance companies that are lasar leaps away from the Liberation we thought we had achieve with the Pill.
Hello? Did I miss a segue? Yes, I'm afraid millions of women did. Now younger women in their 30s who've been on the Pill for 10 or 15 years, refer to the pills as 'Death Pods.' Because those 10 or 15 years were their prime child-bearing years. Now that they want to have children their bodies are in REPRODUCTIVE BACKLASH. Inadvertently, infertility has become the Pill's primary side effect.
Why does this suprise us? Because in our eagerness to be stand-alone human beings, empowered with our reproductive rights, women forgot basic biology: fertility is an offering of Youth. The body we woke up with after 10 or 20 years on the Pill is, putting it mildly, not the one we started out with. Body rhythms change, so do organs, and cells. Our stockpile of eggs becomes depleted, what's left is not exactly prime quality.
(Let me say that I was one of the lucky ones. The Catholic Church forbade the Pill, so I got pregnant instead. Only after my child was born, and I rebelled and left the Church, did I go on the Pill. So in some wacky, Byzantine way, the Church may have saved me from being childless.)
Now, granted, the Pill did not directly create the field of infertility medicine, but it has turned it into a gigantic multi multi-billion $dollar industry. Run by men. (Sound familiar?) Childless couples and single women are now depleting their savings accounts investing in in-vitro fertilization, or test-tube babies, which has been the last word in infertility treatment since the late 70s. But only now has the attempt at IVF become almost epidemic, a last ditch-try at biological parenthood. Success rates are dismally low if you're over forty. Mid-forties only a 12% success rate. Over forty-five the odds, less than 2%.
And with IVF we have the risk of birth defects especially with women over forty. Worse, insurance companies will not cover costs, which range from $12,000-15,000 per cycle. When IVF fails, there is grief and mourning, and women berating themselves for their lack of foresight. And only now, after the fact, are doctors telling women, "Oh! You should have frozen your eggs in your twenties." In fact, young women in their teens and twenties ARE now freezing their eggs for future fertilization. But for the infertile over-30s and 40s and evern 50s that information comes too late.
(Yes, there is always adoption, which I wholeheartedly endorse. But we are talking about the Pill and infertility here.) What I want is someone to tell me that the geniuses behind the research and develop-ment and marketing of the Pill, DID NOT KNOW, or anticipate, a future of infertile women. I want someone to tell me that women were not used as guinea pigs. And that even now, they are once again being used as guinea pigs in this latest tango with infertility shots, and infertility pills, and the whole new cornucopia of medicalized technology promising to produce viable fetuses, but not guaranteeing children born without defects.
I want someone to tell me, fifty years after the advent of the Pill, why even Margaret Sanger's grandson publicly demands to know "WHERE IS THE BIRTH CONTROL PILL FOR MEN?" It would be so easy. But, again, the drug companies, those Goliaths profitting so magnficiently from women, ARE RUN BY MEN. When confronted by legions of women demanding the Male Pill, drug company spokesmen turn coquettish and shy. The cost of clinical trials ' would be astoundingly high.' 'The impact of upending cultural norms would be global, and would reverberate for generations.' They have not yet found a male pill with 'zero side effects.' After fifty years? Oh, ladies, lets face it. The real rock-bottom truth is the same as it was in the Bible. Men don't want their reproductive organs fooled around with.
Yes, the Pill saved our lives. I embraced it. I embrace it now. Yes, it brought women's rights out of the Dark Ages. The right to serial sex partners, equal pay, the right to run for President of the United States. But, look. Our bodies are still under the control of the Goliaths - the drug companies. Who, by the way, long ago perfected the Male Birth Control Pill. They just won't release it. Think of the billions and billions of $dollars LOST if, finally, the Goliaths allow women to have drug-free bodies. If, finally, they give us back the right to our reproductive selves. The Pill took a certain biological control away from us, and that control was Empowerment.
Release the Pill for men. Freeze their young, unadulterated sperm, and then let them deal with potential sterility for a few decades. IT'S THEIR TURN.
Last month we watched a movie about a Pill-taking career-wife who has been rendered infertile. Her husband divorces her for a younger woman who can give him children. She drives herself off a cliff. A few nights ago we watched an old Turner Classic from the 50s, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING. An unmarried woman becomes pregnant and, out of shame, suicides with sleeping pills. Oddly, the theme song of both movies was something sentimental called, "Its a Woman's World..."
Oh, really?
Saturday, July 2, 2011
PRINT-OR-EBOOK: WORKING BOTH SIDES OF THE STREET
Hello World.
Today I need to address an important question that writing-students keep asking me. They have completed their manuscripts after dozens of revisions and my modest input. But now they are reluctant to approach agents, hesitant to move forward and submit their books to print publishers. Why? Because the world of print-publishing is foundering. many publishing houses have folded. Bookstores are closing left and right. Why should writers bother with submissions?
Now world-class writers like J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter) are going independent, self-publishing their books electronically. Rowling recently made global headlines with this news. She will not have to share royalties with a publisher on her ebooks. She is her own corporation now. She might be a billionaire, if not she's close. But her basic motivation in launching into ebooks is not necessarily MORE ACQUIRED WEALTH. "I want to reach young readers who have never read a book in print, who were born in the digital age. All they know are ereaders, so that is how my Harry Potter books will reach them." Simple, logical. She's planning ahead for the looming generation.
Then there are brilliant, literary writers like John Edgar Wideman whose books I love, his novels are set primarily in Philadelphia and deal with the tragedies, high drama, sacrifice and stateliness of working-class African-American families. Wideman recently became a 'cross-over' author, still writing his brilliant novels for print publishers, but also uploading his first collection of short stories as an independent ebook. He will undoubtedly produce more ebooks.
In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Wideman talked about the frustration of waiting a year, even two years, for his books to be published by established print publishers. He talked about the sense of empowerment of choosing one's own cover, one's own font, of the thrill of having one's work published and offered to reader's within a month of completing the work. I, too, am now a cross-over author, or as some of my colleagues say, 'a defector.' With three novels print-published, I am now also an indie ebook author of a short-story collection (HOUSE OF SKIN, PRIZEWINNING STORIES) and another on the way.
I do have another print novel coming out next year, THE CHINESE SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER, but after that, who knows? I may be dropped by the publisher as a 'defecting author,' another 'rat deserting the ship.' Unlike Rowling and Wideman, my motivation to turn to indie ebooks was pure economics. I am trying to save my own life. Books are my only source of income, prices of my novels are set too high by the publishers. With the recession, sales of those books have dropped considerably. My ebook is currently outselling all of them.
But when writing-students ask if they should cut to the chase, forego the rounds of expected rejections in the print world, and go straight to the independent-ebook route...MY ANSWER IS NO. Writers like Wideman and, to a more modest degree, myself, already have a reader-following from our print novels. In other words, a 'fan base.' Its a snap of the fingers to upload your book onto Kindle, Nook, and other ebook platforms. But it is a tedious, energy-sapping, confidence-draining task to go online for hours everyday to promote your ebooks, to attract readers, to beg them to buy copies.
Not all ebook writers are successful, some sales are dismally low. These authors have not edited sufficiently, their writing is sophomoric at best. Many of their facts and locations are wrong, lack of research, their book-covers are amateur and dismal. Or, more often, they simply don't yet have a reader-following. This is where established print publishers have the advantage. In the best of all worlds, they buy your book, they edit the manuscript professionally, they check your facts, and discuss cover-concepts with art departments. They decide how to market you. They make you an author, a bona fide pro!
BUT...Here is the downside: They take a huge percentage of the profits from your book sales. For every $15 trade paperback sold, the author earns only 8 or 10 percent. On your ebooks, print publishers will try to take more than 75% of each book. Think of that. Plus, fewer and fewer books are being bought by print-publishers. They want big names, guaranteed bestsellers. They don't have time to take risks on first-time authors because the print-world ...again...is foundering, figures from FORTUNE AND FORBES suggest it is dying. We are definitely in an evolution, and ultimately the digital world will prevail. Ebooks are already far outselling printed books. The world of books will never die. Intelli-gent humans must always and forever feed our imaginations! But the book-world as we knew it 10 even 5 years ago is evolving into something new. We have yet to know what that 'new' will ultimately be.
Back to my writing-students. Should they (And maybe you, a first-time author?) forego the usual print-route, and proceed directly to electronically publishing your book yourself? Again I SAY NO... that is...NOT YET. It has always been my belief that in this brief flicker of time we are each allotted...we should dare everything. At least once. If you jump into self-publishing your books, you will never know the thrill of submitting your work to print publishers. Of maybe having conversations with editors, of hearing suggestions from them. Of knowing that euphoric sense of feeling drunk with Hope. Nor will you experience the massive deflation of a rejection letter, and the grief and despondency of a 12th and 20th rejection letter. Or the final heart-stabbing realization that no one wants to publish your book.
Conversely, if you go directly to self-publishing you will never know if your book MIGHT HAVE BEEN BOUGHT and published. Might have gotten good reviews. Might have sold a decent amount and even earned you a second book-contract! You will simply never know. In advising you this way, I'm going diametrically against the sage advice of the Grand Guru of bloggers, Joe Konrath, whose blogsite THE NEWBIES GUIDE TO PUBLISHING, was voted one of the best 100 blogsites in the country by NEWSWEEK. (I urge you all to read all of his blogsite from beginning to end...it took me several days to complete it. I don't agree with all of his theories, but the man's instructions on self-publishing saved my life.)
Now, Konrath believes print publishing is in a MAJOR DEATH SPIRAL, that no sane writer should think of approaching print publishers today, that we all should be self-publishing and uploading our books for ereaders and keeping, not sharing, our profits from book sales. He's 95% right. But I keep thinking of my writing-students, the hope and joy and probable grief that they will miss out on by not giving print publishing a try. We're writers, we've should experience all emotions, hope, fear, dejection, rejection, all-out grief. We should take chances. If you choose to go directly to self-publishing you may always wonder "should I have tried the other first...?" "What if...what if...?' You will have deprived yourself of the gift of that experience.
So again here is my recommendation to my writing-students and any first-time authors. If you're undecided, and still leaning toward print-publishing, give yourself the opportunity to submit your work to print publishers. But also...GIVE YOURSELF A TIME-LIMIT!! Give it six months, a year. If you have not sold your book by then, I would definitely switch tracks and go to indie ebook publishing. Digital is the new norm. And the competition is growing. Hundreds of thousands of out-of- print books are now being revitalized through ebook publishing. Estate/trust heirs of famous dead authors will soon be rich.
Okay. So, you don't have a reader-following yet. Well, neither did John Locke. No one had ever heard of him. He's a mystery writer who cleverly prices each of his dozens of ebooks at .99. Locke has just become the first indie author to sell ONE MILLION books as ebooks. He has been at it less than a year. Joe Konrath, the myster/thriller writer will sell about 500,000 ebooks this year. These are the uber-sellers. Yes, they're the exception. But there are dozens of first-and second-time ebook authors, many women, who are writing genre books, sci-fi, vampire, thrillers, romance, who are selling several thousand copies of their books each month. Each book ads to their fan-base.
And don't forget Amanda Hocking, a twenty-something author who just reversed gears. After self-publishing for several years (MY BLOOD APPROVES) and gathering a huge following of readers, she recently sold her next couple of books to St. Martins Press for several million dollars. You see where this cross-over thing is going. Authors who couldn't originally get print-published, self-published their ebooks, and when those books become bestsellers, the print-publishers come courting! Its not an ethical pickle, its that right now there are no hard and fast rules. There is only which decision you make.
The important thing is to...GET STARTED NOW. Set up your time-limit if your going the print-route.
One year of your life won't kill you. While your sending out queries to agents and/or publishers and waiting, waiting, waiting, you will NOT be wasting time. You will be working on your next novel. Or, you will be learning all about self-publishing ebooks, knowing if you go that route, whatever profits you earn will be yours. All yours!
Thanks. Anyone with suggestions or opinions on this subject, please chime in!
*****
Another thing I want to touch on here is: AUTHOR BABBLE. Too many beginning writers and established writers and in-betweens forget that once we begin writing for an audience, which is what we all aspire to...we become public figures. Whether you're a bestseller, or your audience so far only extends to your immediate family, you are inviting public scrutiny.
A twenty-five old in unitards and combat boots, raking in major bucks from her bestselling Zombie series, a suburban mom who pens bodice-rippers, or a Nobel Laureate all have this in common: they are being scrutinized. And in this age of instant media-access, our voiced opinions and behavior seriously affect how readers read us. Or, if they will read us at all.
One night in a dreamy, highbrow mood, I misperceived the exclusivity of a limited audience on a late-night talk show. The host and I were relaxed, wandering from the 'meaning of literature' to silly, existential things - like how can authors make a living without turning commercial and selling out their souls? Somehow we drifted into loneliness, and how dogs make the best companions for writers. A man was in the news that day for having beaten his dog, then set it on fire. I, a dog-lover, said the man should be taken out and shot in the head. I volunteered to do it. Shoot him in the head. That late-night interview went viral. Months later at a book festival, a woman walked up to me and said, "Oh, you're the writer who wanted to shoot someone in the head. Joking or not, I found that offensive." She did not buy a copy of my book.
The scrutiny grows exponentially with every book your write. Every appearance you make. A close friend Anna, appears at dozens of booksignings every year, and dozens of writer's conferences. She's obsessively driven to promote her books and refers to herself as a 'book-whore' even in interviews. Anna has published five novels, one a bestseller. In a review of that bestselling novel, the reviewer (of a major suburban newspaper ) referred to her as a self-described 'book-whore. ' That word still follows her across the Web.
Writing is solitary, sometimes excruciatingly boring. At times we yearn to be cutting-edge comics, or political hipsters, or big-mouth do-gooders, and we forget. We forget the perils of verbal dilettantism, or verbal abuse, or publicly outting our biases and hatreds. And it comes back to haunt us. Readers are loyal, or frivolous, but they will always react. What I'm suggesting is, however little, or however much, you think of yourself as an author, there is now a part of you that should live up to those readers' expectations.
Writing is a lofty endeavor, even if its about inter-galactic infanticidal maniacs. People assume, like idiot savants, we're touched by the hand of god. So. Divorce your spouse, elect to have trans-gender surgery, become a born-again Mormon polygamist - whatever your particular quirk or deviation, try to articulate/execute it with a touch of class, that is, with restraint, and preferably in private. No matter how successful a writer becomes, we are not exempt from the higher civilities of accepted human behavior.
I know what you're thinking. Writers are supposed to be renegades, anarchists, blowing up the barriers of societal norms. Telling the high-priests to f-ck off. How to be that and still be palatable, and inoffensive? How to link our tiny selves to our giant narratives, so that our private grievances and struggles seem universal? Its difficult, we're complex. Complexity seems to be the ultimate ingredient in art. Complexity and ambiguity, what Keats - that poet of cognitive dissonance - called 'negative capability.'
Here is a prime example of what I'm trying to say: Patricia Highsmith, that elusive mystery writer of the 1950s was almost forgotten for several decades. But with the endorsement of Graham Greene and other such luminaries, her novels were resurrected, so there has been a frenzy of posthumous adulation since the late l980s. Even movies have been remade of her novels, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, more recently in the 1990s THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (Jude Law, Matt Damon). Her literary forte was how she wrote about cold-blooded humans, stylish murderers who got away with it.
I have found her writing rather bloodless, nevertheless fascinating. Not a writer you could love, but one you might respect. But recently as I was finishing THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, I discovered that in later life, Highsmith repeatedly and publicly proclaimed herself rabidly anti-black, anti-semitic, an outspoken hater of gays. (This from a woman who came out as a lesbian in the 'silent 50s.') Such blatant racist hatred does not pop out of one's forehead overnight. It had been seeding all those years of her writing. After I read that profile on her, and similar others, I flipped back through STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. I reread sentences and dialogue, and saw more clearly the repugnance of the subtext. The reverberating lack of humanity in her characters. The lack of regret or grief, or heart.
Now I understand that Patricia Highsmith will not endure as other than a dated, genre writer. She does not address or explore the depths of our human emotions. She did not feel them. As an author, and a human being she is/was predictably repulsive. She wrote about nineteen novels after the two above. Two is enough. She has lost me as a reader. I think of Highsmith now with great distaste. A mediocre writer who went in and out of vogue, and ultimately should have kept her mouth shut.
Thanks. Comments? Chime in.
Today I need to address an important question that writing-students keep asking me. They have completed their manuscripts after dozens of revisions and my modest input. But now they are reluctant to approach agents, hesitant to move forward and submit their books to print publishers. Why? Because the world of print-publishing is foundering. many publishing houses have folded. Bookstores are closing left and right. Why should writers bother with submissions?
Now world-class writers like J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter) are going independent, self-publishing their books electronically. Rowling recently made global headlines with this news. She will not have to share royalties with a publisher on her ebooks. She is her own corporation now. She might be a billionaire, if not she's close. But her basic motivation in launching into ebooks is not necessarily MORE ACQUIRED WEALTH. "I want to reach young readers who have never read a book in print, who were born in the digital age. All they know are ereaders, so that is how my Harry Potter books will reach them." Simple, logical. She's planning ahead for the looming generation.
Then there are brilliant, literary writers like John Edgar Wideman whose books I love, his novels are set primarily in Philadelphia and deal with the tragedies, high drama, sacrifice and stateliness of working-class African-American families. Wideman recently became a 'cross-over' author, still writing his brilliant novels for print publishers, but also uploading his first collection of short stories as an independent ebook. He will undoubtedly produce more ebooks.
In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Wideman talked about the frustration of waiting a year, even two years, for his books to be published by established print publishers. He talked about the sense of empowerment of choosing one's own cover, one's own font, of the thrill of having one's work published and offered to reader's within a month of completing the work. I, too, am now a cross-over author, or as some of my colleagues say, 'a defector.' With three novels print-published, I am now also an indie ebook author of a short-story collection (HOUSE OF SKIN, PRIZEWINNING STORIES) and another on the way.
I do have another print novel coming out next year, THE CHINESE SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER, but after that, who knows? I may be dropped by the publisher as a 'defecting author,' another 'rat deserting the ship.' Unlike Rowling and Wideman, my motivation to turn to indie ebooks was pure economics. I am trying to save my own life. Books are my only source of income, prices of my novels are set too high by the publishers. With the recession, sales of those books have dropped considerably. My ebook is currently outselling all of them.
But when writing-students ask if they should cut to the chase, forego the rounds of expected rejections in the print world, and go straight to the independent-ebook route...MY ANSWER IS NO. Writers like Wideman and, to a more modest degree, myself, already have a reader-following from our print novels. In other words, a 'fan base.' Its a snap of the fingers to upload your book onto Kindle, Nook, and other ebook platforms. But it is a tedious, energy-sapping, confidence-draining task to go online for hours everyday to promote your ebooks, to attract readers, to beg them to buy copies.
Not all ebook writers are successful, some sales are dismally low. These authors have not edited sufficiently, their writing is sophomoric at best. Many of their facts and locations are wrong, lack of research, their book-covers are amateur and dismal. Or, more often, they simply don't yet have a reader-following. This is where established print publishers have the advantage. In the best of all worlds, they buy your book, they edit the manuscript professionally, they check your facts, and discuss cover-concepts with art departments. They decide how to market you. They make you an author, a bona fide pro!
BUT...Here is the downside: They take a huge percentage of the profits from your book sales. For every $15 trade paperback sold, the author earns only 8 or 10 percent. On your ebooks, print publishers will try to take more than 75% of each book. Think of that. Plus, fewer and fewer books are being bought by print-publishers. They want big names, guaranteed bestsellers. They don't have time to take risks on first-time authors because the print-world ...again...is foundering, figures from FORTUNE AND FORBES suggest it is dying. We are definitely in an evolution, and ultimately the digital world will prevail. Ebooks are already far outselling printed books. The world of books will never die. Intelli-gent humans must always and forever feed our imaginations! But the book-world as we knew it 10 even 5 years ago is evolving into something new. We have yet to know what that 'new' will ultimately be.
Back to my writing-students. Should they (And maybe you, a first-time author?) forego the usual print-route, and proceed directly to electronically publishing your book yourself? Again I SAY NO... that is...NOT YET. It has always been my belief that in this brief flicker of time we are each allotted...we should dare everything. At least once. If you jump into self-publishing your books, you will never know the thrill of submitting your work to print publishers. Of maybe having conversations with editors, of hearing suggestions from them. Of knowing that euphoric sense of feeling drunk with Hope. Nor will you experience the massive deflation of a rejection letter, and the grief and despondency of a 12th and 20th rejection letter. Or the final heart-stabbing realization that no one wants to publish your book.
Conversely, if you go directly to self-publishing you will never know if your book MIGHT HAVE BEEN BOUGHT and published. Might have gotten good reviews. Might have sold a decent amount and even earned you a second book-contract! You will simply never know. In advising you this way, I'm going diametrically against the sage advice of the Grand Guru of bloggers, Joe Konrath, whose blogsite THE NEWBIES GUIDE TO PUBLISHING, was voted one of the best 100 blogsites in the country by NEWSWEEK. (I urge you all to read all of his blogsite from beginning to end...it took me several days to complete it. I don't agree with all of his theories, but the man's instructions on self-publishing saved my life.)
Now, Konrath believes print publishing is in a MAJOR DEATH SPIRAL, that no sane writer should think of approaching print publishers today, that we all should be self-publishing and uploading our books for ereaders and keeping, not sharing, our profits from book sales. He's 95% right. But I keep thinking of my writing-students, the hope and joy and probable grief that they will miss out on by not giving print publishing a try. We're writers, we've should experience all emotions, hope, fear, dejection, rejection, all-out grief. We should take chances. If you choose to go directly to self-publishing you may always wonder "should I have tried the other first...?" "What if...what if...?' You will have deprived yourself of the gift of that experience.
So again here is my recommendation to my writing-students and any first-time authors. If you're undecided, and still leaning toward print-publishing, give yourself the opportunity to submit your work to print publishers. But also...GIVE YOURSELF A TIME-LIMIT!! Give it six months, a year. If you have not sold your book by then, I would definitely switch tracks and go to indie ebook publishing. Digital is the new norm. And the competition is growing. Hundreds of thousands of out-of- print books are now being revitalized through ebook publishing. Estate/trust heirs of famous dead authors will soon be rich.
Okay. So, you don't have a reader-following yet. Well, neither did John Locke. No one had ever heard of him. He's a mystery writer who cleverly prices each of his dozens of ebooks at .99. Locke has just become the first indie author to sell ONE MILLION books as ebooks. He has been at it less than a year. Joe Konrath, the myster/thriller writer will sell about 500,000 ebooks this year. These are the uber-sellers. Yes, they're the exception. But there are dozens of first-and second-time ebook authors, many women, who are writing genre books, sci-fi, vampire, thrillers, romance, who are selling several thousand copies of their books each month. Each book ads to their fan-base.
And don't forget Amanda Hocking, a twenty-something author who just reversed gears. After self-publishing for several years (MY BLOOD APPROVES) and gathering a huge following of readers, she recently sold her next couple of books to St. Martins Press for several million dollars. You see where this cross-over thing is going. Authors who couldn't originally get print-published, self-published their ebooks, and when those books become bestsellers, the print-publishers come courting! Its not an ethical pickle, its that right now there are no hard and fast rules. There is only which decision you make.
The important thing is to...GET STARTED NOW. Set up your time-limit if your going the print-route.
One year of your life won't kill you. While your sending out queries to agents and/or publishers and waiting, waiting, waiting, you will NOT be wasting time. You will be working on your next novel. Or, you will be learning all about self-publishing ebooks, knowing if you go that route, whatever profits you earn will be yours. All yours!
Thanks. Anyone with suggestions or opinions on this subject, please chime in!
*****
Another thing I want to touch on here is: AUTHOR BABBLE. Too many beginning writers and established writers and in-betweens forget that once we begin writing for an audience, which is what we all aspire to...we become public figures. Whether you're a bestseller, or your audience so far only extends to your immediate family, you are inviting public scrutiny.
A twenty-five old in unitards and combat boots, raking in major bucks from her bestselling Zombie series, a suburban mom who pens bodice-rippers, or a Nobel Laureate all have this in common: they are being scrutinized. And in this age of instant media-access, our voiced opinions and behavior seriously affect how readers read us. Or, if they will read us at all.
One night in a dreamy, highbrow mood, I misperceived the exclusivity of a limited audience on a late-night talk show. The host and I were relaxed, wandering from the 'meaning of literature' to silly, existential things - like how can authors make a living without turning commercial and selling out their souls? Somehow we drifted into loneliness, and how dogs make the best companions for writers. A man was in the news that day for having beaten his dog, then set it on fire. I, a dog-lover, said the man should be taken out and shot in the head. I volunteered to do it. Shoot him in the head. That late-night interview went viral. Months later at a book festival, a woman walked up to me and said, "Oh, you're the writer who wanted to shoot someone in the head. Joking or not, I found that offensive." She did not buy a copy of my book.
The scrutiny grows exponentially with every book your write. Every appearance you make. A close friend Anna, appears at dozens of booksignings every year, and dozens of writer's conferences. She's obsessively driven to promote her books and refers to herself as a 'book-whore' even in interviews. Anna has published five novels, one a bestseller. In a review of that bestselling novel, the reviewer (of a major suburban newspaper ) referred to her as a self-described 'book-whore. ' That word still follows her across the Web.
Writing is solitary, sometimes excruciatingly boring. At times we yearn to be cutting-edge comics, or political hipsters, or big-mouth do-gooders, and we forget. We forget the perils of verbal dilettantism, or verbal abuse, or publicly outting our biases and hatreds. And it comes back to haunt us. Readers are loyal, or frivolous, but they will always react. What I'm suggesting is, however little, or however much, you think of yourself as an author, there is now a part of you that should live up to those readers' expectations.
Writing is a lofty endeavor, even if its about inter-galactic infanticidal maniacs. People assume, like idiot savants, we're touched by the hand of god. So. Divorce your spouse, elect to have trans-gender surgery, become a born-again Mormon polygamist - whatever your particular quirk or deviation, try to articulate/execute it with a touch of class, that is, with restraint, and preferably in private. No matter how successful a writer becomes, we are not exempt from the higher civilities of accepted human behavior.
I know what you're thinking. Writers are supposed to be renegades, anarchists, blowing up the barriers of societal norms. Telling the high-priests to f-ck off. How to be that and still be palatable, and inoffensive? How to link our tiny selves to our giant narratives, so that our private grievances and struggles seem universal? Its difficult, we're complex. Complexity seems to be the ultimate ingredient in art. Complexity and ambiguity, what Keats - that poet of cognitive dissonance - called 'negative capability.'
Here is a prime example of what I'm trying to say: Patricia Highsmith, that elusive mystery writer of the 1950s was almost forgotten for several decades. But with the endorsement of Graham Greene and other such luminaries, her novels were resurrected, so there has been a frenzy of posthumous adulation since the late l980s. Even movies have been remade of her novels, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, more recently in the 1990s THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (Jude Law, Matt Damon). Her literary forte was how she wrote about cold-blooded humans, stylish murderers who got away with it.
I have found her writing rather bloodless, nevertheless fascinating. Not a writer you could love, but one you might respect. But recently as I was finishing THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, I discovered that in later life, Highsmith repeatedly and publicly proclaimed herself rabidly anti-black, anti-semitic, an outspoken hater of gays. (This from a woman who came out as a lesbian in the 'silent 50s.') Such blatant racist hatred does not pop out of one's forehead overnight. It had been seeding all those years of her writing. After I read that profile on her, and similar others, I flipped back through STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. I reread sentences and dialogue, and saw more clearly the repugnance of the subtext. The reverberating lack of humanity in her characters. The lack of regret or grief, or heart.
Now I understand that Patricia Highsmith will not endure as other than a dated, genre writer. She does not address or explore the depths of our human emotions. She did not feel them. As an author, and a human being she is/was predictably repulsive. She wrote about nineteen novels after the two above. Two is enough. She has lost me as a reader. I think of Highsmith now with great distaste. A mediocre writer who went in and out of vogue, and ultimately should have kept her mouth shut.
Thanks. Comments? Chime in.
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