Author Unknown (Pt. 4)

Promoting yourself made you as many enemies as fans. Haters relentlessly trolled you online calling you untalented, vainglorious or worse. Colleagues wondered if you were paying more attention to your novels than your job. Your wife thought you were chasing windmills. To some extent they all were right. But the genie was out of the bottle; you simply had to keep trying. Something would click. You would have the last laugh.

One morning, you saw a complete stranger reading your novel on the “El” in Chicago. Small sample, but no less thrilling, it was all you could do to keep from introducing yourself to the reader. In terms of validation this rare sighting would have to do.

Much later, your daughter’s high school art teacher read two of your novels, one after the other. During that relatively long period of time, he had constantly told her how good they were. Your daughter respected her teacher and by him praising your work you knew she respected you. Any glimmer of awe she had towards you was significant. Especially given how you’d fallen from her pedestal. This would have to do.

The accolades you received for copywriting, the wealth it provided, ego trips. For many, that would have done quite nicely. For you it wasn’t enough. Like Icarus you’d reached sublime heights, until your wings got clipped and you fell to earth.

In the end as in the beginning, a writer writes. Writing for its own sake, without the obsession for income or outcome. A writer writes. This, too, will have to do.

(If you’re interested in any of my books please click on the links right side of this blog. Thank you!)

Author Unknown (2)

Pencils down.

Eventually, you had to call each book finished, regardless of blemishes. But you were not done working… and writing. Not by a long shot. One required representation, an agent. In order to get one you had to find one. There are many journals and websites devoted to these people. You must start at the beginning, with “A.” It is like reading a phone book. Other than a famous few, one cannot tell the crackpots (bored housewives, failed authors, drunkards) from the magicians, the one who will be your champion. After curating a list of too many names, you then wrote each a personalized query letter, including synopsis and biography. Unless it was perfect, this may be the only thing you write that your prospect ever reads. Most replied via form letter or a quick scribble: Not for me. Thank you! You used to save these rejections. When it became morbid you threw the entire stack in the trash. The few agents that expressed interest always had “notes.” One suggested you rewrite a certain character. Another wanted a new ending. And so on. Saying no wasn’t an option for an unknown commodity. So you rewrote the character, with all that that entailed. You created a different ending, not sure if you even liked it or, moreover, if your patron would let alone a reader. In the end, you were rejected anyway.

Multiply this by three novels, two screenplays and dozens of short stories. Then divide it by a wife and three children. Subtract it from your real job, the one that is paying you.

This was your life. This is your life. Author unknown.

To be continued…

(If interested in any of my books please click on the links right side of this blog!)

 

Rolling Stone magazine cover glorifies Boston bomber like a rock star.

Publicity stunt, onerous mistake or both?

By now you’ve seen the new cover of Rolling Stone magazine, featuring the photographic portrait of Boston bombing terrorist, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Look again. It’s not just a picture of the killer but a kind of brooding, sexy one. The kind this magazine has been putting on its covers for decades. He looks more like a member of Maroon 5 than a despicable murderer of innocent people. The indie scruff of beard. The Jim Morrison hair. Are those bedroom eyes?

My god, they’re treating him just like a rock star.

My jaw drops at the audacity of it. It’s like a bit out of Oliver Stone’s controversial film, Natural Born Killers, where two killers become celebrities. But that was satire. A statement about society’s fascination with fame, our gullibility for people with much charisma and zero morals. Fiction. Until now…

Of course, I’m not going to buy the magazine. Ergo, I’m not going to read the article. But I’ll guess what the editors were thinking: super provocative image equals scary amounts of buzz. Sigh. Is Rolling stone so hard up for relevancy it would stoop to glorifying a cowardly terrorist to move its product? Apparently.

I can hear the brave editor now: “We are an icon of the sub-culture. Our mission is to stir the pot. We start brave conversations about challenging topics.” Or maybe he points to Time magazine’s consideration of Osama Bin Laden for “Man of the Year.” Or the New Yorker’s controversial cover featuring Barack Obama fist pumping his gun-toting wife. There are other such examples.

But I say bullshit. Time ultimately did not choose Bin Laden, dismissing him as a “garden variety terrorist.” The New Yorker’s cover was, in my opinion, legitimate satire. I would also argue they have poetic license. By showing the right wing’s fantasy of the Obama’s they were demonstrating its ludicrousness.

The Rolling Stone cover is wrong. Calling it “too soon” is too small an accusation. It’s worse than that. Rolling Stone covers are iconic for one thing: glorifying rock stars and celebrities. While they have featured controversial figures before, this portrait crosses the line. Not because of who Tsarnaev is, or even for what he did, but because of the romantic way he is being portrayed.

They want to do a story on him, fine. But if they’re going to put him on the cover don’t portray him as a lovely man. He is anything but.

Early returns from my new novel slash social media experiment, “Sweet by Design.”

We’re a month into my “novel slash social media experiment,” Sweet by Design. So far the project has exceeded my expectations. More people have logged on to read the novel’s chapters, submit covers and leave comments than bought and/or read my other two books combined: Some 10,000 people in 25 days, several hundred following the story, with more new ones every day. And while that number won’t get me on any best-seller lists, for me it’s a dream come true.

Thank you.

You should know I’ve not made money on any of my books. Financially speaking they have all been disasters. Ask my accountant! But I don’t care. I’m not in it for that. As I’ve said in previous posts, I’m in it primarily for the audience. This, more than cash, more than anything, is what motivates me to write. I don’t believe much in diaries. I want readers. If a tree falls and no one is there to hear it…

The other thrilling aspect about ‘publishing’ my book via blog is how successful the social media component has been. Not only have I been able to add pictures and links but I can also adjust the story as I go –correcting errors, changing details, adding lines. None of that would have possible had I gone right to paper. Neither could I have done any of it without you. Just as I have become a publisher, you have become editors. This is the frontier for new authors, maybe all authors; I’m convinced of it.

Sweet by Design has 48 chapters, which means we are about a quarter the way through. By early to mid fall it will be completely published. At that point a cover design will be chosen, with my barely used, top-of-the-line Ipad going to the winner. As of this moment there are thirty covers posted. That means the odds are only 30 to 1 to win it all. Pretty good odds.

I’ve included 11 randomly chosen covers, above and below. It’s a lovely display. Done right crowd sourcing really does work. Moreover, it’s fair and it’s fun. As of now, I see no downside.

I hope by reading this and seeing the work that your compadres have done more of you will be motivated to participate. For those keeping up with the novel, chapter 11 arrives shortly.

Again, thank you.

Once considered a writer’s last resort, online publishing has many advantages.

Stay new forever…online!

While major publishing deals with big NY imprints are still the fantasy of every author (including this one), using the Internet to publish one’s content has become almost as fashionable as it is common. A sea change has occurred. Pre-Internet, publishing your own words (be they editorial or fiction) was considered the hallmark of charlatans, dubious gurus and bored housewives. Self-publishing was like a drain trap, keeping you from the bottom, yes, but hardly up on top.

Blogging changed all that. We are nowhere near as fringe as we were ten years ago, last year, or even last week. Every day new creators and aggregators emerge while preexisting ones get better at their craft and grow audiences doing so.

Blogs and other self-published material are an exploding part of popular culture, whether the old-line entertainment, journalism and publishing entities like it or not.

Focusing on book publishing, I’ve unexpectedly discovered aspects to online publishing that actually trump the old-fashioned variety. Though seemingly obvious now, they first came as pleasant surprises.

A major bonus with online publishing is that authors can continuously update and correct their content. Get a fact wrong you can amend it. Lord knows this will prevent countless apologies and lawsuits.

But what about fiction? Since I started publishing chapters of Sweet by Design, several readers have discovered typos and reported them to me. Had this happened with a real book I’d be SOL. But in this case I merely went into my blog’s dashboard and edited the manuscript. No fuss. No muss. It’s like the mistake never happened.

In some respects readers are becoming editors much the way authors have become publishers. That’s a level of interactivity I hadn’t anticipated. At first scary (OMG, someone found a mistake!), I now find it to be a privilege. So, before I write another word: Thank you, Gentle Readers slash Editors. You know who you are.

Another cool variation is updating content for cultural or temporal reasons. For example, in Sweet by Design I mention numerous people, places and things indigenous to Chicago and parts of Wisconsin. Well, since writing the novel one or two of these places has gone out of business, with more undoubtedly to follow. (Thank you recession.) Nothing dates fiction more than passé references. But now, when I’m uploading text and notice such an occurrence, I can edit or do a quick rewrite. My content never gets old. (Be nice, people.) It’s like having the Picture of Dorian Gray for your novel. Stuck up on a shelf, a book gets older and older but online it’s forever young!