Author Archives: Murderati Members

The Pace of Prose

Last Friday, Alexandra posted a call to the barricades titled Two Books a Year, in which she referenced a recent and already infamous New York Times article noting that, in the era of ebooks, anything less than two books a year is slacking. (Note: The Times article singled out genre fiction for this rate of productivity.)

I decided to spare my response for today’s post, because I think it’s a very important topic, and one that deserves real consideration by everyone who writes.

I agree with Alex that to write well one must write often. Daily’s not a bad regimen — some might say it’s de rigueur. An ambitious word count is great if you can manage it: say, 1,000 words.

I don’t agree, however, that: “Successful writers write a LOT of books. Tons. Staggering numbers.”

This is no doubt true of many authors, but I know a great number of superb writers for whom this simply isn’t the case. Junot Diaz is one. It took him ten years to write The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I think it was time well spent, and do not mourn the nineteen other books that were hypothetically aborted by his not keeping up a two-book-per-year pace.

I tend to shy away from the phrase “successful writer” because I consider the term loaded. In a letter to H.G. Wells, William James famously remarked:

The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That — with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success — is our national disease.

I could write a great deal more efficiently, and part of my modest output is due no doubt to an obsession with revision that is perhaps, well, obsessive. Charlie Stella, in our recent dialog here, referred to me as a “stone polisher.”

It may well be that this obsession with rewriting speaks not to artisitic excellence but a neurotic fear of being found imperfect. Shame has paralyzed artists far greater than me. On some level, however, I’ve accepted my imperfections and released my ambitious failures into the world. They’ve been four in number, fewer than I perhaps should have written in the same time period.

Am I therefore something less than a success?

I’m sure there are many who think so. And on some days, I’m one of them. Fortunately, those are just the bad days. (Or, as some folks call them: weekdays.)

There are writers who can crank out voluminous material without becoming stale, formulaic, or unintentional self-parodies. I marvel at Ed McBain’s output, for example, to name just one.

But there are others who focus not on overall output but on making each book a great book.

I was perhaps cursed early on in this regard by working with Tom Jenks, who among other notable accomplishments edited the unfinished Hemingway manuscript that became Garden of Eden, and who runs the online literary zine Narrative with his wife, the novelist Carol Edgarian (only two novels, both brilliant).

Tom asked a simple question: “If you’re going to write a book, why not make it a masterpiece?”

This question paralyzed another of Tom’s students, the thriller writer Andrew Gross, and it was only by putting this daunting measure aside that Andrew could write the books he knew he could write. And he is, by many measures, a success.

For whatever reason, I bought in to Tom’s point. And with each book, I’ve tried to write, if not a masterpiece, a book that at least tries to measure up to the greatest books about crime that I’ve read: The Long Goodbye, Cutter & Bone, Bellman & True, Nightmare Alley, Dog Soldiers, God’s Pocket, Clockers, The Long Firm, to name a scant few.

George Pelecanos, after reading The Devil’s Redhead, wrote: “Is this a classic? Maybe not, but I bet Corbett has one in him.”

I’ve tried to live up to that challenge with every book. Perhaps I’ve failed. It may well be that I cannot write a classic, and never will, and trying has simply slowed down my output to the point I’ve crippled my own chances for—pause for emphasis—success.

But I’ve put my heart and soul into each effort in a way I never could have if I were cranking them out at two per year. I simply don’t and can’t write well at that pace. I have and will continue to suffer the consequences.

I need time to sink into my material, to discover, as filmmaker Leslie Schwerin puts it, “The thing beneath the thing.” I need time to catch the clichés in what I at first blush thought was a stellar idea, whether it was a bit of dialog, a description, a premise, a plot turn, whatever.

Writers who do work at the faster clip are often known more for their entire output than a single book, though often a handful of books stand out among the others. (Dennis Lehane, when responding to questions about why he didn’t take the Kenzie-Gennaro series any further than he did, routinely said: “Have you every heard anyone say ‘The seventeenth book in the series was my favorite’?”)

In a recent Jonathan Franzen appearance I attended (you can find his remarks online here), he talked about how much Kafka influenced him, and why.

Basically, especially in The Trial (one of those non-genre crime books that has inspired not a few of us), Franzen admired Kafka’s commitment to teaching us “how to love ourselves even as we’re being merciless toward ourselves; how to remain humane in the face of the most awful truths about ourselves.” For Franzen, this engagement with the paradoxes of our existence, especially through examination of character, is what made the novel the great—and unique—art form it is.

Or, in Kafka’s own words:

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

To anyone who can write two such books a year, more power to them. I can’t.

I think pushing yourself to do more, to do better, is seldom if ever misbegotten. But each of us has to choose the path of our work as we see fit and as our talent provides, whether we embrace the cold hard truth of market forces or dismiss them as anti-art. (My guess is, most of us fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.)

Being creative requires a great deal of resilience, persevering in the face of considerable resistance, frustration, negativity, and criticism—some necessary, some inevitable, some even useful. How you withstand those countering forces while remaining true to the inspirational spark that guides you will, to my mind, go a long way toward defining your capacity for success—no matter how high or low your productivity.

* * * * *

How do you see yourself and your career—as a producer of a steady output of solid work, or someone striving for that touchstone effort that simply requires more time?

Which prolific writer astonishes you with the consistency of his or her greatness?

Which author with only a few books to his or her name do you admire?

What is more important to you, the writer’s complete oeuvre or the individual book?

* * * * *

Jukebox Hero of the Week: Linda Thompson’s production has been limited by stage fright so severe it actually paralyzes her vocal chords. But she’s an artist I cherish, and I particularly love this song, “Katy Cruel” (also a favorite of our former comrade Cornelia Read):

(Making A) Killing

by Tania Carver

A few days ago, Linda and I came to the end of the second series of The Killing. Not the American version that’s attracted so much opprobrium, but the original Danish one, Forbrydelsen. With subtitles, you understand. Neither of us speak Danish. (Which actually is quite a shameful admission to make because the Danes, like so many Europeans, speak perfect English.) To say we loved it is a bit of an understatement. We watched the box set on DVD, trying to ration the episodes over two weeks. It was half the length of the first series but just about as good. It’s one of the few TV shows (possibly the only one) that we both not just watch but become active participants in. When we’re not watching it we’re thinking about or discussing it. Before each episode we put forward theories about who’s done what. Who the villain is, what this character’s real motives are, the significance of what that character did or this one said. Etcetera. And that just adds to the fun.

If you haven’t seen the original then I thoroughly recommend it. Both seasons. And there’s a third to follow. Sophie Grabol who plays the lead detective Sarah Lund is fantastic. The writing is near-perfect, same with the direction and the actors have become household names in our house. It’s one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever seen on TV. I even want to go to Copenhagen for my holidays. (I don’t think Linda’s with me on that one – too cold.)

Coming to the end of the series coincided with the Hay Festival. I’m sure you’ve heard of that – the biggest literary festival in Britain. ‘Glastonbury for the mind’, as Bill Clinton famously called it. I’ve never been, either as punter or participant, but it’s hugely successful. This year Ian Rankin was one of the guests. I’m sure you’ve heard of him too. And, in a well-reported session, he chatted about many things, including the return of Rebus. He was, from all accounts, on top form. But on the subject of TV adaptations he was more disgruntled. He did complain (and I’m paraphrasing slightly here) about his own work on TV saying that Scandanavian crime shows get twenty weeks and the adaptations of his novels get forty five minutes. They take the title and change everything else, he said.

Now I think there are at least two ways to look at this. The first is to ignore it. He’s a very successful writer carping on about something that most writers would give their right arm to be in the position as. Or so received wisdom goes – I’ve had interest in both my own books and the Tania novels. I’ve still got a TV production company handling the rights to the Joe Donovan series. They did a stunning job of Val McDermid’s Wire in the Blood. And if it ever gets made I’d like it to be them that do it. But that’s slightly beside the point.

I’d only be happy if it was a good production. I remember a few years back (quite a few years back now) Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe novels were optioned by ITV. They filmed one of them, A Pinch Of Snuff, starring a British comedy double act, Hale and Pace. Now if you haven’t seen these two, all you need to know is that they were unique in the history of comedy double acts by having two straight men. They filmed it, it was shown and it was universally hated. A couple of years after that, the BBC optioned them again. Having had his fingers burnt, Reg was adamant he didn’t want the same thing to happen again. The BBC cast Warren Clarke and Colin Buchanan, the series ran for twelve years, was a huge international success, critically acclaimed and award winning. So that’s what happens if it’s done right.

I must admit, the Rebus TV series doesn’t really work for me. And it’s for the reasons Ian said: they have the same title as his books and nothing else. Ken Stott is a fantastic Rebus but everything else around him doesn’t work for me. Because it’s not the book. The earlier version with John Hannah was better in many respects because it was an excellent attempt to translate Rebus’s milieu to TV. Unfortunately, John Hannah wasn’t, and never will be, right for Rebus. So if they could have had the actor from the second version in the production of the first one it would have been perfect. In my opinion. As I said.

But getting back to what Ian said, I do think he has a point. And it leads on to a larger one about Scandanavian crime fiction. Crime fiction is the largest selling genre in the UK. The US too, I believe. And of course there is pressure to turn those successful crime novels into TV and movie fodder. (I’m still not sure why – I think a book works best as a book and a movie as a movie. Why take one medium and try to turn it into another? But that’s a discussion for another time.) So they do. And crime series are some of the most consistently high rated shows on TV. So what’s gone wrong with our TV? I don’t know. In the Seventies and Eighties British TV drama was fantastic. But it’s now, for the most part, suffering death by focus group. Death by committee. The creative have been strangled by the suits. There are exceptions such as Doctor Who, thank God, in which a showrunner is entrusted to bring his vision to the screen, but most drama seems to be going the other way while other countries, including the US, have overtaken us.

So to go back to Ian’s point – why will we sit through a twenty episode series examining the criminal and political system in Denmark – with subtitles – and love it? Why won’t we do this with our own TV? Well, I try. But to be honest, it’s just not as good. It’s timid where it should be brave, formulaic where it should be different. There are, as I said, exceptions. But they’re exactly that. Exceptions. A few years ago when The Wire was at its peak, a lot of British writers were asking why there couldn’t be a UK equivalent. A TV series that unfolded over five seasons, each episode like the chapter of a novel, that made no concessions to the casual viewer and that drafted in some of the best US crime novelists around to write it. Why couldn’t we have that over here? Because we couldn’t, that’s what we were told. That’s not how things are done over here. You want to do that, move to America. In the meantime, here’s some more Midsommer Murders. No wonder Ian Rankin is disgruntled.

So the talent’s there, but the will isn’t. And this leads on to a larger discussion about Scandanavian crime fiction. I’m getting really sick of reading pieces by literary editors in broadsheet newspapers who’ve discovered Jo Nesbo or Henning Mankell asking where their British equivalents are? Why can’t British crime fiction have the same sense of contemporary social engagement that the Scandanavians have? Why do we just produce Agatha Christie style whodunnits in this country?

Well, here’s some news. British crime fiction does have that same sense of social engagement. Or at least the best ones do, just like the best Scandanavian ones, the best American ones, the best Italian ones . . . The only difference is it’s not in translation and therefore there’s less snob value to be seen reading it in public. And we don’t produce Agatha Christie style whodunnits. Haven’t done for years. As any crime fiction reader will tell you. After all, crime fiction is the bestselling genre in this country so we must be doing something right.

And there’s an appetite for longer, more complex adaptations of our own crime novels in this country too. That’s why viewers are resorting to watching US or European drama instead.

Linda and I have the first season of The Bridge to watch next, a Swedish/Danish co-production. I’m really looking forward to it. Rationing the episodes, discussing and theorising what’s going on when we’re not watching . . . all of that. And then we’ve got Braquo, a French crime drama with Jean-Hughes Anglade. Really looking forward to that one. So yes, I’ll be watching. But I’ll be wishing we could do something as good here.

The power of understatement

by Pari

With the heat rising and the rain a distant memory, I’ve been spending my non-work, non-parent hours thinking about understatement . . . subtlety. The subject came up the other day when I was taking one of my long weekend walks. There’s a house in a neighborhood near mine that has the most marvelous garden. Whenever I can, I try to walk by to see what’s blooming. The place is magical, glorious, especially in our drought-ridden, high-desert city.

That’s me in the corner taking the photoLast Sunday when I passed the house, I finally spied an elderly gentleman bent over a rose bush and inspecting a perfect lavender bud.

“Excuse me, Sir,” I said, not wanting to startle him.

“Yes?”

When he stood, the man towered over me. A white shirt and khaki pants hung loosely over loose, wrinkled flesh. He used a crinkled handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his flushed, sun-spotted face and looked at me with filmy blue-green eyes that still managed to show curiosity.

“I just wanted to thank you,” I said, suddenly self-conscious. “This garden is a work of art.”

“It’s her garden,” he said, pointing to a wrought iron sign at the top of a trellis covered in climbing pink and yellow roses. The sign had the words Peggy’s Garden on it. “She died two years ago.” The man stared at the sign for a moment before speaking again, his voice soft. “She loved this place.”

His attention returned to our conversation. “That’s why I promised myself I’d take care of it for as long as I’m able.”

The way he said that last sentence really got to me. The man was already old, tired. He seemed so sad, as if the pain of his wife’s death hadn’t diminished from the day she’d left him. The fact that he had decided to dedicate himself to a garden that had brought her so much joy, as a quiet tribute, moved me tremendously.

Often acts of love — or of other strong emotions — are portrayed in literature, movies and television with garish brushstrokes. They demand attention!!!

In the case of the gentleman I met, I didn’t get the sense that his was a loud action at all. He goes into that garden daily to honor his wife and to be near her, near to something that made her happy. And in doing so, he finds meaning and satisfaction.

So my question today is:

Can you share with us an example of a whispered action — real or fictional — that moves you more than a shouted one ever could?

Thanks.
I’m looking forward to a fascinating conversation.

Two books a year

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Okay, I’m sure a lot of you have read this NYT article by now (or at least heard it mentioned here on Murderati) which tells us that the minimum output of books per year for a professional author is now two. Per year. Double what people are used to thinking.

In the E Reader Age, a Book a Year is Slacking

And the article links this new phenomenon to the e book revolution.

Well, I would strongly disagree. MOST of the authors I know who make a good living at just writing books have been writing AT LEAST, at the VERY least, two books a year for longer than I’ve been in the author business. There are very few I know who can afford the leisurely pace of a book per year. (I dream of being able to afford that luxury…)

It was one of the first things I noticed when I moved from screenwriting to the author business in 2006. Successful writers write a LOT of books. Tons. Staggering numbers. Plus stories and any number of other things. (I felt like a total slacker until I realized if I had been writing books instead of screenplays for the last 11 years I would have those kinds of numbers, too.)

Of course, there’s a catch that we all have to be wary of. How long does it take to write a GOOD book? When are you starting to risk, well, dreck?

I wanted to think and talk about that today.

From the beginning of my (still quite short, really) author career, one of the questions I have gotten most often at book signings and panels is, “How long does it take you to write a book?”

My feeling is what’s always being asked is not how long it takes me to write a book, but how long it would take the person asking to write a book. Which of course, I have no way of answering, unless it’s to cut to the chase and shout, “Save yourself! Don’t do it!” But that’s never the question, so I don’t say it.

What I started out answering instead was, “About nine months.” Which, from Chapter One to copyedits, used to be true enough. But I’m getting faster. And the paranormals I write take more like two months. And of course with e publishing, the whole process of publishing has changed, and the time frame has changed, too.

I wrote three and a half books last year. One YA thriller, THE SPACE BETWEEN, one non-fiction writing workbook, WRITING LOVE, one paranormal, TWIST OF FATE (coming out in 2013), and half of my latest crime thriller, HUNTRESS MOON, which will be out next month. (And technically I also outlined another paranormal, KEEPER OF THE SHADOWS, which will also be out in 2013. Outlining is writing, too!).

This year I will have written another four or possibly four and a half. Two paranormals, another thriler and a half, and – either a half or whole other SOMETHING yet to be determined.

So that’s a lot of books. How long did it take me to write any one of those? It’s really hard to say when those projects are constantly overlapping.

But the fact is, in almost every case, the real answer to the question of “How long?” is almost always: “Decades.”

Because honestly, where do you even start? I’m quite convinced I’m a professional writer today because my mother made me write a page a day from the time I could actually hold a pencil. At first a page was a sentence, and then a paragraph, and then a real page, but it was writing. Every day. It was an incredibly valuable lesson, which taught me a fundamental truth about writing: it didn’t have to be good, it just had to get written. Now I make myself write however many pages every day. And now, like then, it doesn’t have to be good, it just has to get written. Some days it’s good, some days it’s crap, but if you write every day, there are eventually enough good days to make a book.

Then there were all those years of theater, from writing and performing plays in my best friend’s garage, to school and community theater, to majoring in theater in college, to performing with an ensemble company after college. Acting, dancing, choreography, directing – that was all essential training for writing.

And then the reading. Again, like probably every writer on the planet, from the time I could hold a book. The constant, constant reading. Book after book – and film after film, too, and play after play – until the fundamentals of storytelling were permanently engraved in some template in my head.

Hey, you may be saying, that’s TRAINING. That wasn’t the question. How long does it take to WRITE A BOOK?

I still maintain, it takes decades. I think books emerge in layers. The process is a lot like a grain of sand slipping inside a clamshell that creates an irritation that causes the clam to secrete that substance, nacre, that covers the grain, one layer at a time, until eventually a pearl forms. (Actually it’s far more common that some parasite or organic substance, even tissue of the clam’s own body, is the irritant, which is an even better analogy if you ask me, ideas as parasites…)

Let’s take a look at Book of Shadows, the thriller I’ve just gotten back from my publisher and put out myself as an e book last week.

When did I start Book of Shadows? Well, technically in the fall of 2008, I guess. But really, the seed was planted long ago, when I was a child growing up in Berkeley. (The Berkeley thing pretty much explains why I write supernatural to begin with, but that’s another post.) Those of you who have visited this town know that Telegraph Avenue, the famous drag ending at the U.C. campus, is a gauntlet of fortune tellers (as well as clothing and craft vendors and political activists and, well, drug dealers.).

Having daily exposure to Tarot readers and psychics and palm readers as one of my very first memories has been influential to my writing in ways I never realized until I started seeing similarities in Book of Shadows and my paranormal The Shifters, and discovered I could trace the visuals and some of those scenes back to those walks on Telegraph Ave.

Without mentioning an actual number, I can tell you, that’s a lot of years for a book to be in the making.

Over the years, that initial grain of sand picked up more and more layers. Book of Shadows is about a Boston homicide detective who reluctantly teams up with a beautiful, enigmatic practicing witch from Salem to solve what looks like a Satanic murder. Well, back in sixth grade, like a lot of sixth graders I got hooked on the Salem witch trials, and that fascination extended to an interest in the real-life modern practice of witchcraft, which if you live in California – Berkeley, San Francisco, L.A. – is thriving, and has nothing at all to do with the devil or black magic. Hanging out at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire (more Tarot readers!), I became acquainted with a lot of practicing witches, and have been privileged to attend ceremonies. So basically I’ve been doing research for this book since before I was in high school.

And my early love of film noir, and the darkest thrillers of Hitchcock, especially Notorious, started a thirst in me for stories with dark romantic plots that pit the extremes of male and female behavior against each other; it’s one of my personal themes. Book of Shadows is not my first story to pit a very psychic, very irrational woman against a very rational, very logic-driven man; I love the dynamics – and explosive sexual chemistry – of that polarity.

So to completely switch analogies on everyone, this book has been on the back burner, picking up ingredients for a long, long time.

Now, what pulls all those ideas and layers and ingredients into a storyline that takes precedence over all the other random storylines cooking on all those hundreds of back burners in my head (because that’s about how many there are, at any given time), is a little more mysterious. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe storylines leap into the forefront of your imagination mostly because your agent or editor or a producer or executive or director comes up with an opportunity for a paycheck or a gentle reminder that you need to be thinking of the next book or script if you ever want a paycheck again. I know that’s a powerful motivator for me. So speed in writing comes partly out of practical necessity.

But the reason a professional writer is able to perform relatively on demand like that is that we have all those stories cooking on all those back burners. All the time. For years and years, or decades and decades. And if a book takes nine months, or six months, or a year to write, that’s only because a whole lot of stuff about it has been cooking for a very, very, very long time.

A long time.

And I’m wondering, lately, if one of the keys to writing faster without killng yourself doing it is to check those pots bubbling back there on the mental back burners more often. Taking the time every few months to just sit quietly and free-form brainstorm on paper or on the screen… and see what ideas might be more done than not. Sometimes random and seemingly separate ideas can suddenly combine to create a full story line. Because I’m quite sure that we ALL have books that have been cooking back there for decades now. Maybe it’s time to take them out.

So writers, how long does it take YOU to write a book? Or your latest? How many stories do you figure you have on the back burner at any one time?

And readers, do you ever notice certain themes – or recurring scenes or visuals – in your favorite authors’ books that make you suspect that story seed was planted long ago?

And here’s one worth discussing: is anything MORE than a book a year cheating the book?

– Alex

————————

All right, Nook people, you keep asking, and for a limited time I’m putting The Unseen, The Harrowing and The Price up at B&N.com for Nook: $2.99 each.

Where’s the sweet spot?

By PD Martin

Looks like we might be having an ebook week here at Murderati (well, two out of five posts)! I’d planned to look at ebook pricing for today’s post and while at first I thought I might scrap it, given the amazing blog of Brett’s on Tuesday, in the end I decided the two blogs would go hand in hand 🙂

I’m also coming at this from a different perspective to Brett—I’m a newbie. While his strategy started last year and, by the sounds of it, in earnest about 12 months ago, mine started this year. So I’m probably about 12 months behind Brett in terms of the learning curve (and sales). Fingers crossed my sales will look more like his in 12 months! I’d also like to say that Brett has been generously giving me some tips via email. Thanks, Brett! He’s a nice guy…you should go buy his books.

Anyway, ebook pricing. One of Brett’s tips was to experiment with pricing and that’s what I’m doing at the moment. There seems to be a few common price points for self-published ebooks, namely:

Free (ahhh!!!)
$0.99
$2.99
$3.99
$5.99

A friend recently forwarded me a great graph that was presented by Smashwords founder Mark Coker. I know we’ve talked about the fact that sales from Smashwords make up an incredibly small percentage compared to Amazon sales, but it’s still interesting to look at this data.

So it seems the sweet spots are hitting at $0.99, $2.99 and another small spike at $5.99. Interesting, huh?

I noticed from Brett’s post that my pricing points seem to be in sync with his for the most part, with shorts at $0.99, my one novella at $2.99 and my full thriller novel at $3.99. But, when I released my Pippa Dee books (YA and much shorter than my thriller novel at 50,000 words) I priced them at $2.99. I thought this seemed fair. Reasonable. Attractive but without de-valuing my work.

However, these books simply haven’t been moving. Was it the new name? Establishing a new brand? Possibly. Or the genre? While they’re books I believe most adults would read and enjoy (and they have), they have teen protagonists and so that ‘officially’ makes them targeted to the middle grade and YA market. Maybe not a good market for ebooks? So as part of my experimentation I’ve lowered the price to $0.99. I should say, this move to the $0.99 was partly because of the above graph, and partly because I have a friend who’s doing well in the ebook business and has priced ALL her books at $0.99. She felt that low price point was a key part of her strategy to build her brand and name. I only reduced the prices a few days ago so it’s too early to tell if this strategy will work or not. But it means I have been thinking of ebook pricing a lot recently and wanted to post about it here, too. Here are the two for $0.99, by the way.

The Wanderer on Amazon

Grounded Spirits on Amazon

So, Murderati, am I making these a great deal for adults and teens alike, or undervaluing my work? What do you like to pay for your ebooks? Maybe the graph above reflects your buying patterns too. Note: I actually asked what people like to pay for ebooks on Facebook and, incredibly, got answers around the $5-10 mark. Then again, I posted during Aussie daytime and so I think all the respondents were Aussies—who are used to paying a fortune for books!

LIES MY FATHER TOLD ME (THAT TURNED OUT TO BE TRUE)

by Gar Anthony Haywood

I know I’m off by a few days, but I thought I’d pretend it’s still Father’s Day and devote this blog post to my late, great old man, Jack Woodward Haywood:

He passed away fifteen years ago, but his impact on my life remains profound. Anyone who’s ever heard me relate my “writer’s story” — the blow-by-blow of how I came to be a professional author — knows that it all started with “Big Jack” (as his cousins liked to call him).

An architect by trade, Dad was a voracious reader of science fiction and fantasy, and you couldn’t take two steps in my parents’ bedroom without stumbling upon a mound of paperback novels by such authors as Isaac Asimov, Robert E. Howard, Harlan Ellison and Ray Bradbury. The covers of these novels always featured fantastic illustrations of spaceships and aliens, Martian landscapes and muscle-bound, loin-clothed giants locked in mortal combat with oversized serpents and spiders . . .

. . . and they were as great a siren call to a seven year old boy as hot dogs on the dinner table. Reading behind my father became my great obsession, and in that obsession I soon found my calling in life: writing.

It was an ambition my father encouraged with a very light hand. Secretly, I think, he wanted me to become an architect like him, but as he would never actually say so, he was content to let me pursue a career in letters instead. This is not to say, however, that he did much in the way of cheerleading. That wasn’t my Dad. His style of parenting demanded he leaven every word of positive reinforcement with three of constructive criticism, and sometimes the former was hard to make out in the forest of the latter, especially for a kid who really only wanted to hear how great his latest story was, not how much better it could have been had he only . . .

My father, in other words, was a difficult man to please. I like to say that had I one day rushed home from school to report I’d just won a Pulitzer prize, Dad’s response would have run somewhere along the lines of, “That’s fine, son, but if you’d really been trying, you would have won two.”

Eventually, I figured out that nothing I wrote or did was ever going to earn his unconditional approval, and so started tuning him out as a Nattering Nabob of Negativism (as Nixon Vice-President Spiro Agnew might have once called him). The old man would say something and I’d nod my head, as if in complete agreement, when in fact I’d be dismissing this latest lesson in life as simply more of his pessimistic nonsense.

Except that it wasn’t always nonsense, of course, and sometimes it took me years to separate the wheat from the chaff. Doing the math now, I’d have to say my father was right more often than he was wrong, and the things he was right about were generally those that really, truly matter. It was with this belated realization that I opened my first novel, FEAR OF THE DARK, with the following dedication:

For My Father
Jack W. Haywood
Whose wisdom I often mistook for raving lunacy.

(Hence the name for my personal blog, Wisdom Mistaken For Lunacy.)

I won’t even attempt a full list, because neither you nor I have the time for it, but here is a partial accounting, at least, of the many lies my father told me over the years that turned out to be not only true, but incredibly valuable for a writer to know:

You can scramble eggs in the frying pan.

Watching him do this for the first time (and probably last, now that I think about it — Dad wasn’t a big presence in the family kitchen), I was absolutely convinced he was nuts, skipping the whip-the-eggs-in-a-bowl step in making scrambled eggs entirely. But hell if the damn things didn’t look — and taste — exactly the same when they were done. Who knew?

The vast majority of published fiction is crap.

The year was 1977 (or thereabouts). He’d taken me to dinner and we were browsing a newsstand afterwards. I asked if he’d be willing to pick up the tab for a paperback and he said yes (miracle of miracles). I chose a Starsky and Hutch novelization:

Just like you are right now, no doubt, he laughed in my face and told me if I wanted him to plunk down his hard-earned cash for a book, I’d have to do better than that piece of crap.

I was appalled. “Piece of crap”? How did he know the novelization was a piece of crap? He’d barely glanced at it, let alone read it. He knew nothing about the author. How could he so casually dismiss a published novel — a book legitimized as genuine literature by its very existence on that newsstand — as crap?

“Because ninety percent of the fiction published in the world is crap,” he said matter-of-factly.

Naturally, this triggered a lengthy and rancorous debate that ended only when I’d capitulated and chosen another book for him to buy for me, which turned out to be THE AFRICAN by Harold Courlander. (Interesting aside: Courlander would later successfully sue author Alex Haley for plagiarism, claiming Haley had based much of his blockbuster novel ROOTS on scenes taken from THE AFRICAN.)

While I’ve since come around to my father’s way of thinking regarding the abysmal quality of most published fiction, give or take a few percentage points, all I could do that night was agree to disagree with him, chalking up his stance on the subject once again to the tunnel vision of negative nabobism.

Weeks later, having read THE AFRICAN, I would refrain from admitting to the old man that he’d been right: Courlander’s book was terrific, and was almost certainly a better read than that Starsky and Hutch novelization — crap or no — could have ever been.

Touch typing is not for sissies.

Boy, did we go around and around over this one. I wanted to take something useful like archery for my tenth-grade elective class, and Dad wanted me to take typing. Typing! What in the hell did the man think I wanted to be when I grew up, a writer or something?

He was relentless. I took the typing class.

I thank God every day of my life I did.

Pizza is to die for.

Another boys’ night out with the old man, and he decides we’re going to have pizza for dinner.

No way, says I, that stuff is nasty. The only pizza I’ve ever tried to this point is that cardboard cheesy crap my mother likes to order between movies at the drive-in . . .

. . . and one bite into such an affront to all that is edible should be enough to put any man off this so-called “Italian delicacy” for the rest of his life.

“Boy,” Dad says — “boy” being his favorite synonym for “you big knucklehead” — “that’s not pizza!” And the next thing I know, I’m at Miceli’s pizza parlor in Hollywood, where my father has to all but force a slice of meat lover’s pie down my throat.

My illumination is immediate.

WTF??? This is pizza?

I guess Jack W’s not such a dummy, after all.

Hyundai is a car company to watch.

It’s a good thing I didn’t have the power to have my father committed when he first suggested this, because he would have found himself strapped into a straight jacket within five minutes if I had. This was back in the Korean automobile manufacturer’s earliest days importing cars to America, and everything they built at the time made a Yugo look like a Rolls Royce by comparison. Hyundais were so bad and ugly, in fact, that I gave my fictional private investigator, Aaron Gunner, one to borrow from a cousin whenever he wants to be all but invisible during stakeouts and surveillance runs.

But look at Hyundai now. Kicking mucho Toyota ass and taking names. How Dad could lay eyes on this . . .

. . . and see this in Hyundai’s future . . .

. . . I’ll never know. Maybe he was just lucky?

It’s for sure I was. He wasn’t the perfect father, by any means, but he got enough right as a parent and mentor to earn my enduring love and respect.

Thanks for the education, Big Jack. We miss you.

Questions for the Class: What “lies” steeped in truth did your parents teach you?

BATTLES REPORTS FROM THE FRONT LINES

A Stephen Jay Schwartz Exclusive

Many authors kvetch and scream and cry about the changing world of publishing. They worry about the shrinking market for hardcover and paperback releases, the reduction in the number of publishing deals, the reluctance for publishers to support an author’s desire to deviate from the strict guidelines of their genre, the shrinking size of their advances. Many authors, myself included, seem stuck in a quagmire between old world tradition and new world opportunity.

There are also a number of authors who push forward, paving the way for the rest of us to proceed. They put in the hard, hard work necessary to take control of their careers, freeing themselves from the rules and restrictions placed on authors since the first days of publishing.

Brett Battles is one of these authors. What Brett has been able to accomplish in just a year’s time has given hope to all of us. In my opinion, Brett is one of the leaders of the new age of self-publishing, and he comes to it after a successful (and frustrating) career as a traditionally published author. Brett speaks from experience and he speaks from the heart.

I am honored to reintroduce my good friend and fellow Murderati, Brett Battles…

Hello Murderati! Nice to pop back for a visit.

It’s been an interesting year since I was last here. I call it my Wild eBook Adventure, and Steve thought you might like to hear about it and what I’ve learned along the way.

Twelve months ago, I had one simple goal: To continue to be able to write full time.

Looking at the publishing landscape, it was clear that if I was going to accomplish that, it wouldn’t be by the same means I’d used in the past, i.e. via a traditional deal. The dollars were getting smaller, and who knew how long it might take to hook up with a new publisher (assuming I could.) As I saw it, ebooks could provide me the opportunity I was looking for. No, I didn’t think it was guaranteed, but I felt it was well worth the try.

When I left Murderati last June, I had just released my first three self-published titles: LITTLE GIRL GONE, SICK, and HERE COMES MR. TROUBLE. Thankfully, they began selling right away, and I was actually making some decent money. It wasn’t enough to live on though. To do that, I needed to have more titles for sale, and I don’t mean just one or two.

Putting the old nose to the grindstone, I set a schedule that has seen me release six more novels between last June and today (my latest, PALE HORSE, came out over the weekend). Yes, that’s a lot, but it plays directly to what I’ve learned about the ebook world.

And what would that be you ask? Here you go, the top six in no particular order:

• Nothing is more important that writing a good book. That sounds obvious, but it needs to be said.

• Editing, especially copy editing, is not a step to ever be taken lightly. Pay the money. It’s worth the cost

• Covers are incredibly important. A cover should look like it could be on a book out of one of the Big 6. Pay the money. It’s worth the cost.

• Your virtual bookshelf is forever. The more (quality) work you get up there, the better you’re going to do. A book in a brick and mortar store is lucky to stay on a shelf for more than a month. In cyberspace, it never goes away, so if someone stumbles upon one of your books, likes it, then wants to buy more, they can do it immediately. AND they do.

• Your virtual bookshelf mean your books have the ability to sell month after month after month. My books that have been out over a year still sell at a steady monthly rate.

• Experiment: with promo opportunities, with pricing, with covers, with product descriptions. A tweak to a book not selling this month, might help it sell well next.

For the rest of last year, as I worked to build up my virtual shelf, I struggled financially month-to-month. I mean really struggled. The ebook money was coming in at a nice rate, and was even increasing each month, but it was not enough yet to make my monthly nut, so I was using what savings I had to cover the difference. There was one month in the fall that was I down to less than I would need for rent, but the ebook month came in at the end of month and I squeezed by.

But then last November, I actually made more than I needed for the first time. I was numb when I realized this. Maybe, just maybe, this was going to work, and I would be able to keep doing what I loved full time.

December was down just a bit, but not much. Then came 2012.

To say this has been a better year than 2011 would be a massive understatement. I attributed that to a few things. The first and foremost: having more books up that people can purchase. This way no one title has to carry the load. Think of it as a small snowball rolling down the hill that is slowly growing and growing. The father it goes, the more formidable it becomes, taking on a life of its own. Second: changing my novel prices from $2.99 to $3.99. Both are low prices and there has been absolutely no fall off from the increase. Third: giving books away through the Kindle Select Program. This method has become a little more iffy lately, but what basically has happened in the past is that once you put your book in the program (giving Amazon a 90 day exclusive), two important things happen: one, Kindle Prime members can now borrow your book for free while Amazon will pay you an amount that is usually somewhere between $2.15 to 2.50 per book; and two, you can give your book away for free to anyone for up to 5 days during the 90 day period. If you’re able to give away a ton of copies (I’m talking 30 grand or more), and you can get in the top ten or so on the free list, there’s a good chance your book will go pretty high when it goes back on sale.

Sample: BECOMING QUINN. I gave it away for three days in early March, ending up with about 32,000 takers. By the end of the month I had sold over 6,000 copies, for which I make a little more than $2 a copy. You can do the math. Also note that my other titles continued to sell.

March was a very good month for me. As was April. As was May.

I mentioned that the giveaway seems a bit iffy now. In the last month or two, the giving away option isn’t always seeing quite the success on the selling front as it had before. Two exceptions to this are our own Rob Browne’s first self-published title TRIAL JUNKIES, and Ann Voss Peterson’s PUSHED TOO FAR. They’ve both done very well.

Because of this, I’ve decided to try it again. Blatant self promo part here: I’m giving away the Kindle version of my novel SICK, the first of my Project Eden Books, today through Thursday. You can click on this link and download it for free, no strings. I would actually appreciate it if you would. Every free download helps, and—BONUS—you’re going to get a book I think is one of the most suspenseful I’ve ever written.

I’m sure a lot of you are saying “I can’t write six books in a year.”

Don’t worry, we all write at our own pace (a pace that should not sacrifice quality). Just write at the pace you can and see if you can pick it up a bit. Instead of one book a year, try one and half or two.

Others might be saying, “But you already had a following, so you had a leg up. Didn’t you read that article where a majority of self-published authors aren’t even making $500 a year?”

Let’s talk about a following first. Yes, I do believe mine has helped, but I also know I have gained a ton of new readers I never had before who knew nothing about me. Also there are plenty of examples of authors who had no following and are now doing well. And I did see that article, and it didn’t surprise me. It depends on the genre someone’s writing (thrillers and romances do better than a lot of other areas), the quality of the work (refer back to the what I’ve learned list above), and how many titles they have available (same note).

“What about luck?”

Yeah, there’s probably some involved. But I believe we make our own luck. You’ve got to keep plugging away even if it’s not working right now, because I can guarantee one thing, if you don’t work hard at it (or whatever it is you want to do) you WILL fail.

Me, I’m still plugging away. Yes, I’ve had a few very good months, but I can’t just sit back and expect that to happen all the time. I need to continue to expand my virtual bookshelf. To that end, I’m in the middle of a personal three year plan where I’m trying to release at least four books a year. At some point in 2013 I’ll assess where I’m at and see if that pace needs to continue, but, no matter what, I still plan on putting out at least two or three a year for the rest of my life.

It’s kind of weird to just discuss this in financial terms, because I’m not doing it just for the money. I’d write whether I was getting paid or not. I can’t not write. Of all my (limited) skills, writing is what I do best. I’m not trying to claim I’m the best writer, just that when measuring my strengths, it’s at the top.

Okay, here are a few things I love about self-publishing in the new e-reality:

• Writing what I want to write. No one is telling me my idea won’t sell, or isn’t big enough, or anything like that. If I want to write a story that I know will have a limited audience? So what? I will. If I want to write a book in a different genre? Same answer.

– A series never has to end until the AUTHOR wants it to. In the past my popular Quinn series would prbably have died after I parted ways with my old publisher. Now I can continue writing it as long as I want. Case in point: I’ve released BECOMING QUINN and just this last spring THE DESTROYED myself.

• The ability to release a book as soon as it’s ready. My books usually come out a day or two after the copy edit is done, and within a few months of when I actually started writing it in the first place. I love that.

• The ability to release as many books as I want in a given year. The only limitation is my own abilities.

• Controlling all the creative aspects of my book. Cover, editing, formatting, print versions, I either hire the people to help me or do the items I’m capable of myself (specifically formatting for ebook and print).

• Getting paid every month. Amazon and Barnes & Noble pay every month with a two month delay, meaning at the end of June I’ll receive the money I made in April, end of July the money from May, and so on.

Here’s the bottom line. I am the small business owner of a small creative business. I work everyday like all small business owners—even on weekends and vacations. But, my God, I’m writing. Nothing else makes me as happy.

Let me be clear. I don’t think everyone will be able to write full time, but I think this new world means that there will be more of us who can. And even those who aren’t able to achieve full-time status, a writer who puts out a good book or two a year could still make a nice extra income. Will some succeed and others fail? Yes. But, let’s be honest, that’s the same in traditional publishing.

eRead on everyone! And don’t forget to download SICK, it’s free! Who doesn’t like free?

To Hull And Back

by Tania Carver

The title says it all, really. This week I went to Hull. And came back again. The end. Well no, not quite. Obviously it wouldn’t be much of a blog post if that was all I was going to write so there’s more to it than that.

I was there to chair an event called Crime On Tour, on offspring of the Harrogate Festival, in which a more established writer would introduce a couple of newer writers, chat, hopefully be entertaining and then hopefully sell books which we would then happily deface. That was the idea. My event was the fourth out of five, the others being chaired by Steve Mosby, Peter Robinson, Chris Simms and Ann Cleeves. The two writers I chatted to were David Mark and Steve Dunne. And I thoroughly recommend the pair of them. OK, it wasn’t a hugely attended event but it was an enjoyable one. I hope the audience liked it too. And then it was home again on the train the next morning, job done.

Now, originally, this blog post was going to be about writers having to make personal appearances. You know, even though an event is only for an hour or two it might take a day to get there and a day to get home again, and there might only be two people who turn up. That kind of thing. But I’m not. Because while I was travelling backwards and forwards I realised that there was something more interesting to talk about instead of writer who’s lucky enough to be able to write full time whingeing about what a hard life he’s got. ‘I had to leave the house and no one turned up and I lost two days work and they may have been two brilliant days and I’ll never get them back again . . .’ Yeah, whatever. Let’s talk about Hull instead.

Oh God, do we have to? says anyone who’s ever been to Hull. Well yes. But let’s look at Hull in metaphysical terms, as what it represented to me. Or used to. You see, one of the main selling points of Crime on Tour was the fact that it would be someone with a connection to the area it was taking place in, introducing two new writers who also wrote about that area. Handing on the baton, in a way. Except I’m not from Hull. Nowhere near it. The other writers are all either living in the place where the event took place or they base their work there. I do neither. But I did used to live in Hull. And that was the connection.

As I’ve mentioned before, I used to be an actor. I trained at the Birmingham School Of Speech and Drama. Now for those of you unfamiliar with British geography, that’s right in the middle of the country. The most inland part of the UK. And miles away from where I was born, in the North East of England. Most of the drama schools are in London but I decided not to go there. However, when my year all graduated, most of them headed off down to London to take the West End by storm, star in a BBC series, use it as a stepping stone to Hollywood, etc., etc. I didn’t. I went in the opposite direction. I went to Hull.

My first acting job was with a company called Remould Theatre Company and it was a play called Steeltown, an oral history play, a semi-devised piece based on the lives of the people who worked at the nearby steelworks. With music. Folk music. Oh yes, I play a mean bodhran. And consequently Hull became my home for a while. While I was there, I thought Hull was the most exciting place on Earth. Now, obviously I was younger and could be forgiven for being a bit naïve but I was being paid to do what I loved, working on a show that I really enjoyed and getting to tour it round the region then the country. It was what we’d all dreamed of doing in drama school and for me it was a reality. So consequently everything about it was great. The pubs were fantastic. The restaurants too. I lived in a great area. Hull’s one bookshop was brilliant. Likewise its comic shop. The people were wonderful, especially the ones I was working with. Wow. I couldn’t have been happier.

So that was why, when I was asked if I had any connection with Hull and would I present the Crime On Tour event I jumped at the chance. I had nothing but positive memories of the place and was looking forward to renewing them. Obviously, it didn’t turn out that way.

Everything was where it used to be, by and large. But things had changed. I walked down streets expecting the present to fall away and the past to reveal itself once more: There was the café I sat and read the new JG Ballard novel in, there was the pub the cast used to drink in, there was the restaurant we would treat ourselves to dinner in on payday. There was our old rehearsal room. And yes, they were all still there. But they were all out of step with my memories. The café had been renovated. The pub still looked the same but I doubted it would be from the inside. The restaurant was being pulled apart. The rehearsal rooms were there but were now a marketing company and looked decidedly the worst for wear. Wherever I went, the city refused to allow its present to fall away for me. It refused to let me see its past. It had changed. And I expected it to – the last time I was there Sylvester McCoy was Doctor Who. But I also expected to see what used to be there as well as what was there now. And I found it difficult. Because it had gone on without me, and I without it. I saw it as it is now. And it didn’t mean anything to me any more.

It’s always strange to go somewhere that was once familiar but you’ve put distance between for a few years. It’s like meeting an old girlfriend who you were once intensely involved with and finding out they got old. And in their eyes you can see them thinking the same thing about you too: ‘Do I look like that? Really? And Have I always looked that? What was there that I liked about this person in the first place?’

And the answer is obvious. I was in my twenties, I was immortal. The films were brilliant, the music was brilliant, whatever I was doing and wherever I was doing it was brilliant. Truly, it was the best time to be alive. And it was. For me, at that time. Because, and I truly hate this phrase, it was my era. Why do I hate that phrase? It’s what people use when a certain piece of music comes on the bar juke box and sends them back over the years. Like looking into an old lover’s eyes. Like a trip to Hull. That was from my era. What they really mean is this is something from when my self-defining memories were being formed. From our mid-teens to our mid to late twenties, we’re physiologically and psychologically programmed to experience things with some kind of intensity. We can’t help it, it’s the way our bodies are. We experience what makes us. And we carry that with us through the rest of our lives. Love punk rock but hate prog rock? That was your era. Love David Lynch movies but not Wes Anderson? That was your era. You get the idea. But I do hate the phrase because it assumes your experiences are more valid than other peoples and also precludes anything that came before or after having as profound an effect on you.

Which brings us – or at least me – back to Hull. I went round all my old haunts, or at least what was left of them. But nothing took me back to the past. Nothing physical, anyway. I didn’t gain anything by walking the streets because I carry it with me anyway. My memories, my feelings, my experiences. We all do. We’re all the sum of our memories. And it made me think that this is what we do as writers. We can honour the past,recreate it, make it live again. Just as we do the present. How? Through ourselves, our experiences, by invoking and evoking them. By putting them down on the page we work out what those experiences mean to us, good and bad, and we hope by doing so to share them with readers, to experience some kind of commonality. To share some kind of truth about who and what we are as people. It sounds pretentious but really, what else are we doing but telling others what defines us and hoping we strike a chord with them?

So you can never go home again. But that’s OK. Because I am home. Here. Now. And you can bring the past to life again if you want to. But only in your own head. You don’t actually need to revisit the physical locations to do so, you carry it with you, always. But the one thing that you mustn’t do when referring to the past is call it your era. Because it isn’t. It wasn’t. This is our era. Here. Now. This is all of our eras. By all means look backwards. But don’t get stuck there. Get stuck here. And now. Because as that great philosopher Elvis Costello once said, ‘We’re only living this instant.’

How true.

BEAUTIFUL CORPSE

by Stephen Jay Schwartz

I’ve passed another birthday and there are lyrics in my head:

“…another day older and deeper in debt…” Tennessee Ernie Ford

“What a drag it is getting old” – Rolling Stones

“Old man, look at my life, I’m a lot like you were…” – Neil Young

“Hope I die before I get old” – The Who

“Too old to rock n’ roll, too young to die” – Jethro Tull

And don’t those artists just scream AARP?

I’ve decided it’s my last chance to put a choke-hold on youth. I’ve got a bit of a paunch and some high blood pressure and a cholesterol issue and why the fuck does it take so long to pee and I’m certainly not the guy I thought I’d be when I was looking forward at age sixteen. In high school I lifted weights. I did a few body-building competitions, but was never serious enough to shave my chest and arms. Or work my legs, for that matter. Too much effort. I looked great down to the hips and then you saw a pair of Big Bird legs. That hasn’t changed. Fortunately, sweats cost about $14.99.

Our author brother Brett Battles proved it could be done. He lost all his weight in just a few months and now he’s the Marlboro Man. Thank you, Brett, for the inspiration.

It helps that I just got a gym membership for the entire family. Now I don’t have to choose between spending time with the wife and kids and spending time alone with the dumbbells. I’ve worked out twice now, with my older son, Ben. It’s a bonding experience, like what I had with my dad when we went to the racquetball courts when I was twelve. He was a pediatrician and a kind and gentle soul until he lifted that racquet and I witnessed the kind of competitive nature that gets a guy through medical school.

I didn’t realize how my body has been starved for pumping iron. Last night I found that familiar rack of pulleys and push-yous that form the lat and triceps arena. Lats and triceps – two of my favorite muscle groups. You work the lats and you get that nice “V” shape and since the triceps are a large muscle they grow fast and make the arms look twice their size in a very short time. I need visual incentive – I don’t really get hooked until about eight work-outs in, when my body begins to show me the money.

It was great walking my son through the exercises, teaching him how to isolate the muscle using lighter weights, focusing on form and technique, seeing him “get it.” So many lifters go for the heavy weights because they look good, then end up hurting themselves from trying to heft all the weight using the wrong sets of muscles.

Mind you, I haven’t worked out seriously for over twenty years. I’ve been going to pot daily, one Kit-Kat at a time.

But God, it feels good. That ripping sensation in the back of the arms, that tearing of the pecs. I look from one machine to the next – “Oh, I remember that! I gotta get over to that machine NOW!” I have to be careful to pace myself or I’ll find my next set of machines in the ER.

It ain’t easy, this path I’m taking. The belly’s a real challenge. I’ve grown accustomed to my diet of daily pasta. And desserts are a magnificent invention. I’m their greatest admirer.

I’ve been blessed with youthful hair and the ability to stand erect. It seems a shame not to give it a go, to try to capture my youth in a bottle, if only for a moment, before the thyroid and ulcers and enlarging prostate have their way with me. When I go I want to go like Jack Lalanne, pulling twenty boats across the English Channel with my teeth. Or maybe it’s the River Styx I’ll be crossing.

I was actually rather relieved when I stopped the body-building some many years ago. In case you haven’t heard, I’ve got a bit of an addictive personality, and weightlifting can get addictive. It ruled my life for a time and it felt nice to finally break free. Now that I’ve had a chance to let other addictions rule my life I don’t mind turning things over to a little obsessive exercise again.

You know, we writers sit on our cans a lot. We give ourselves the big guilt trip about what it takes to be a professional. Our communal motto is “Put Butt in Chair.” In other words, no excuses, sit down and write. I’ve taken that to heart, and my heart just won’t take it anymore.

The truth is I’m starting to resent the writing. Just a bit. You see, I gave up so much to get those books written. Every day after the day job, I’d arrive at the cafe at 6:00 pm, stay until it closed at 10:00. Or I’d go to the all-night cafes and push on. Every weekend, another ten, twelve hours a day. Every sick day. Every holiday. All my vacation time. I did this for years. Disconnected from the family. Drifted away from my friends. Writing was all-consuming, there wasn’t room for anything else.

I pushed hard and produced two novels, all while I had the day job. So I took a year off just to write. I wrote a screenplay on assignment and most of novel number three. More time sitting on my butt. Watching that waist-line expand. And the money didn’t come and I’m back to having a day job while I write.

I don’t want to be a slave to my writing. I want to spend my vacation time doing vacation things. I want to go dancing with the wife. I want to help educate my kids. I don’t want to be remembered as the dad with his nose in the laptop, seen only in the moments before he goes to work and when he returns late at night. Unfortunately, my writing often takes me away from the OTHER things I love.

It’s odd when people ask me about my hobbies and all I can say is “writing.” I write, I read. I write more. I’m compulsive about writing. Most authors are. We are fanatic in our discipline. We write eight thousand words a day and raise our fists to the Gods.

I’m tired of sprinting. I’ll do the long-distance marathon for a while. So, I won’t be a one book-a-year kind-of guy. The books will come when I finish them.

I’m seeking balance.

I’ll start the normal lifestyle by getting back in shape.

I remember this kid in high school. A power-lifter and body-builder. He had an incredible body. He died suddenly our junior year. I heard he had some kind of condition, a ticking bomb in his head and he knew it. I remember the rest of us saying he’d left a beautiful corpse behind.

We admired what he’d accomplished.

I hope this doesn’t come off as a vapid, superficial post about physical beauty trumping the virtuous human mind. Then again, I am the guy who turned an alter-ego sex-addict into a franchise hero. Can’t do that without objectifying the mortal coil.

And that ends the thought of the day.

Never give up! Never surrender!

Zoë Sharp

Rejection is a constant part of life. And we writers have to face more of it than most. In fact, I read somewhere recently that authors take more criticism in a year than do most ‘normal’ people in a lifetime. And while that may be an exaggeration, so often it doesn’t feel like it.

As Bruce DeSilva pointed out in his Wildcard interview on Tuesday: “The great James Lee Burke’s first novel, THE LOST GET-BACK BOOGIE, was rejected 111 times before it was finally published—and then went on to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Rejections have more to do with whether agents and publishers think a book will sell than about whether they think it is good.”

I came across a recent article in the Huffington Post about famous rejections—or rejections of the famous. Because it’s not enough to be simply turned down, but sometimes an author receives such a damning comment about their work that they could be forgiven for throwing in the towel.

It’s only later, after their books have become prize-winning bestsellers, that these rejections stop stinging and become rather funny. So, here’s some of the best of the bunch:

Anne Frank’s THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL

Anne Frank’s diary only found a publisher successfully after being featured in a newspaper article. Before this, the famous memoir was rejected repeatedly, with one publisher saying, “The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.”

William Golding’s LORD OF THE FLIES

Presumably not foreseeing Golding’s classic novel becoming a schoolroom staple, 20 publishers rejected it. One with the damning comment, “an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.” Try writing that on a GCSE English paper.

Vladimir Nabokov’s LOLITA

Eventually published in Paris (where else?), LOLITA was rejected by Viking, Simon & Schuster, New Directions, Farrar, Straus, and Doubleday. Originally cast away as, “overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.” The American version of the novel went on to be a bestseller, selling 100,000 copies in the first three weeks.

John le Carré’s THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD

It’s not unusual for first novels to be rejected, but John le Carré’s went on to make TIME Magazine’s All-Time 100 Novels list. The publisher who passed on the author with the comment, “You’re welcome to le Carré – he hasn’t got any future,” presumably didn’t imagine this.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY

Fitzgerald’s principal character is arguably as famous as the novel he appears in, yet one publisher advised the author in a rejection letter, “You’d have a decent book if you’d get rid of that Gatsby character.”

For myself, I had the usual run of rejections for the first novel in my series. One publisher told me that although they very much liked Charlie Fox, they “didn’t see where you can take this character to get more than one book out of her.” Book ten, DIE EASY, comes out in October (UK—Jan 2013 US).

And when I was contemplating bringing out my backlist last year in e-book format, I was strongly advised by one publisher against going the indie route. “She will sell 17 copies to friends, and that will be it.” The books sell more than that every hour of every day since.

So ‘Rati, want to share your best/worse pieces of criticism or rejection with us? And all the sweeter if they’ve subsequently been proved wrong!

This week’s Word of the Week is elocution, which when coupled with lessons is often taken to mean to learn to speak without an accent, or to mask one’s original accent, but it actually means the art of effective speaking, especially public speaking, in terms of enunciation and delivery; eloquence.

Oh, and if anybody is near The Gallery at Bank Quay, Warrington on Friday evening (7-9pm) I shall be giving a talk hosted by Wire Writers and the Warrington Writers’ Group. Hope to see you there!