Tag Archives: writing

A Vote For Ebooks

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Last weekend, I attended the monthly meeting of the local branch of the California Writer’s Club. The meetings feature introductions, socializing over a buffet lunch, and a speaker. This month we tried something new. Members were invited to throw out a question or concern. The rest of the group had five minutes to offer suggestions.

A man at my table had finished writing a fantasy novel and was wrestling with whether to try to get it traditionally published or go the self-publishing route in ebook format. Quite a few members weighed in, including unpublished, traditionally published, and self-published writers. Several others present provide marketing and design services for writers. What struck me was that everyone who spoke, without exception, urged the questioner to go the ebook route.

Several people pointed out that nowadays, successful ebook sales are an alternate route to acceptance by traditional publishers, a message we heard at an agent’s workshop last winter, and one that is underscored by the deal Amanda Hocking made with St. Martin’s Press. Others mentioned the amount of time it takes to see one’s work in print even after winning acceptance by one of the big six publishers. This underscored the author’s comment that, “At my age, I don’t have unlimited time.” One of those who provide marketing services for writers emphasized the need for a plan to publicize one’s work regardless of how your book gets published.

Even ten years ago, “self-publishing” was synonymous with “vanity press.” No longer. Not one person in the room raised the issue of “legitimacy,” one of the draws of traditional publishing before the recent spate of ebook success stories. Now, to paraphrase The Godfather, everyone who spoke felt the decision was, “just business.”

The Hamish MacBeth Mysteries, by M.C. Beaton

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“I was at a fishing school in Sutherland in the very north of Scotland, and I thought, what a wonderful setting for a classical detective story, 11 people isolated in this Highland wilderness. So Hamish Macbeth was born.” – M.C. Beaton

M.C Beaton is the pen name that Marion Chesney, a prolific Scottish author, uses for her mysteries, which include 28 titles featuring Highland constable, Hamish MacBeth, and 22 staring Agatha Raisin, a retired, middle-aged public relations agent who solves murders in the Cotswolds.

Beaton at her 75th birthday party this year

The first MacBeth mystery appeared in 1985.  Agatha made her debut in 1992.  Beaton, 75, has not slackened her pace; she released new titles in both series this year.

Hamish MacBeth is likable constable in the village of Lochdubh (which means, “black lake,” in Gaelic and is pronounced Lokh-DOO).  Hamish loves the town, raises sheep and chickens, and occasionally poaches salmon.  He has a well earned reputation for laziness, and several times works to avoid promotion which would force him to move to the dreary industrial town of Strathbane.  For this and other reasons, his superior, Chief Inspector Blair, despises him and threatens to close the Lochdubh station.  MacBeth must often work around “proper” channels.  Sometimes he plies Blair’s subordinate, Jimmy Anderson, with whiskey to gain information and help.

In the early books, MacBeth had an on-off relationship with Priscilla Halburton-Smyth, but their engagement ended, and Priscilla, who is more ambitious than Hamish, moved away to become a newscaster.  MacBeth’s love life foundered, and now his closest companions are Lugs the dog (the word means, “ears” in Gaelic), and Sonsie, a “domesticated” wildcat whose name means, “cheeky.”

Robert Carlyle played MacBeth in a BBC Scotland adaptation that ran from 1995-1997

MacBeth solves crimes through intuition, curiosity, and an ability to charm various locals.  There is Angus MacDonald, and old man with a reputation as a seer.  Hamish thinks he’s a fraud, but a useful source of gossip.  Nessie and Jessie Currie, twin sisters and village spinsters are also a sources of gossip, though MacBeth must sit through their strange habit of repeating each other’s phrases – repeating each other’s phrases.

The MacBeth novels are proverbial beach reads, engaging escapism, starring a likable rascal who may poach salmon now and again, but restores the balance of justice to his little world of wild beauty and engaging eccentrics.  These books are perfect for rainy weekends, or any other time when you want to leave the modern world behind and root for a man who knows how to game the system, or at least the pointy-haired bosses within it.

Literary Indigestion

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This won’t be the first time I’ve said I love fantasy and have since I was a kid.  During the ’80’s, I read scores of fantasy novels, but the day finally came when I couldn’t anymore.  One too many recycled plots, wise wizards, crusty dwarves, plucky youths, heroic thieves, feisty tavern wenches, and so on.  I developed acute genre indigestion and have only recently started reading adult fantasy again.

History repeats itself.

A dozen years ago, I discovered young adult fantasy and delighted in some of the characters and stories.  Inspired by these, I even wrote my own first novel in just six months, in 2005.  Recently, however, YA fantasy has been “discovered.”  Now I find I can’t read this genre either; bandwagons and the perception of money and names to be made don’t lead to books with much imagination or heart.

A glut of vampire romance was followed by a glut of stories of Faerie and zombies.  After the success of The Hunger Games, “dystopian” tales became the theme du jour.  Now stories of were-beasts are all the rage.  I sometimes wonder if I am a snob or too harsh in my judgements, so I yesterday I took a look at the YA fantasy titles featured on Amazon.  Here are some descriptions I found in the blurbs:

“A lyrical tale of werewolves and first love.”  – I gotta say it, “Awwww!”

“explodes onto the YA scene with a brilliant nail-biter of a dystopian adventure.”  –  Think about the phrase, “YA scene.”

“A kidnapped wolf pup with a rare strain of canine parvovirus tuns regular kids into a crime solving pack.”  –  I’m a sucker for dog stories, and I like wacky superheroes, so this one sounds like the best of the bunch.

“Can a prim young Victorian lady find true love in the arms of a dashing zombie?”  –  I would have said “dashing zombie” is an oxymoron.

“A timeless love story with a unique mythology that captivates the imagination.” – The blurb didn’t say what this unique mythology might be, so you have to take the publicist’s word.

This book is “generating a Twilight-level buzz.”   I’ve never heard of it.

OK, I guess I’m being a little snarky.  It seems that today’s YA represents a successful move by writers and publishers to attract a new demographic of younger readers to what is essentially, romance.  On one hand, this largely excludes me as a reader and writer, because while I think romance is fine, it’s not my thing.   I also find it sad to think that over the near term, we’re going to have zombie love instead of books like A Wrinkle in Time, The Earthsea Trilogy, and The Golden Compass.

So what am I doing about it?  Kicking back with literary comfort food, otherwise known as light detective stories, stories with fun characters you just want to trail along with as they bring justice into the world.  In the past, I’ve devoured stories by Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Tony Hillerman, and Elizabeth Peters.  Now, thanks to my wife, I have a new main-man – Hamish MacBeth, the constable of the village of Lochdubh, Scotland, who, with his dog, Lugs, and his cat, Sonsie – and wee dram now and again – excels at solving murders.  Hamish is the creation of M.C. Beaton, the pseudonym used by author, Marion Chesney, for her mystery stories.  Born in Glasgow in 1936, she has also written 100 historical romances under a different names.

M.C. Beaton

My wife has collected a bookshelf full of MacBeth stories, and I’ve only started.  My current read is, Death of a Chimney Sweep.  In one passage, Hamish is driving an author to meet her publisher. He says to her,  “Angela, you’re taking this all to seriously.”

“What would you know?  You haven’t a single ambitious bone in your body.”

“Aye, and I like it that way.”  Hamish suddenly wished the evening was over.

I love these stories!   I will have more to say about Hamish MacBeth in my next post.

Celebrate Banned Books Week

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Banned Books Week, Sept. 24 – Oct. 1 is our only national celebration of the freedom to read.  The event was founded by the American Library Association in 1982, in the face of a surge in “challenges” to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools.  The ALA reports more than 11,000 challenges since then, and estimates that 70% are never reported.  At least 348 books were challenged in 2010.  http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/.  In whatever ways we find suitable, this is a wonderful occasion to celebrate books that somebody, somewhere, did not want us to read.

Huckleberry Finn was banned by the Concord Public Library in 1885 as “trash suitable only for the slums.”

In addition to “sexually offensive” passages in Anne Frank’s diary, some readers complained that the book was “a real downer.”

The Arabian Nights, was banned both by Arab governments and the US, under the Comstock law of 1873.  (Hint – get hold of an unexpurgated edition of Burton’s translation).

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.  It “centers on negative activity.”

When I found Catcher in the Rye at sixteen, I was no longer alone.  More than one generation had this experience.  The most widely banned American book between 1966 and 1975, people complained it had “an excess of vulgar language, sexual scenes, and things concerning moral issues.”

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. Parents in Kansas objected to “vulgar language, sexual explicitness, and violent imagery,” in this autobiography.  The author mentions being raped as a girl.

A Light in the Attic supposedly,”glorified Satan, suicide and cannibalism, and also encouraged children to be disobedient.”

Of Mice and Men A second winner for Steinbeck.

The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, a Nobel Laureate.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle. This award winning favorite was on the ALA most challenged list from 1990-2000 for, “offensive language and religiously objectionable content (for references to crystal balls, demons and witches).”

Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.

Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.

Ulysses by James Joyce. The US Post office burned 500 copies in 1922.

This book has frequently been banned for the abuse James suffers. “Others have claimed that the book promotes alcohol and drug use, that it contains inappropriate language, and that it encourages disobedience to parents.”

***

I find it easy to roll my eyes and assume that the bad old days of suppressing Mark Twain are behind us.

Unlike the good people in the American Library Association, I’m not on the front lines, seeing the constant attempts to limit what we can read and think.  Banned Books Week is a perfect time to reflect on our freedoms and pass the word of this celebration to others.  And read or reread a book that someone, somewhere, tried to keep out of our hands!

Petroplague by Amy Rogers: A Book Review

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Dr. Amy Rogers

Dr. Amy Rogers

Neil, a disaffected eco-activist, meets an explosives expert at 2:00am.  They drive to a deserted gas station in south-central LA.

Christina Gonzales, a PHD student at UCLA, volunteers at the La Brea tar pits.  After monstrous gas bubbles burst over the tar, Christina and her co-worker smell vinegar, which doesn’t make any sense.

An elderly woman spots a huge puddle of “drain cleaner” in the alley behind her house.  She blames the neighbors and calls the police because this could injure her cats.  A moment later, explosions rock the entire block.

Christina learns that an apparent methane explosion at a deserted gas station has ruined her PHD project, an attempt to use genetically altered bacteria to break down heavy crude oil into easy-to-harvest natural gas.

If you think these events are coincidence, you have probably never watched a disaster film.  Like the best movies in the genre, or the novels of Stephen King, Amy Rogers takes a mixed group of people, with their individual hopes, plans, secrets, and strengths, and puts them in an impossible situation.  By the time I had read this far, I was hooked.  From here, Petroplague just gets better and better – meaning the tribulations of Rogers’s characters get worse and worse.

Imagine Los Angeles, or the largest car-dependant megalopolis you know.  Imagine a mutant bacteria in the underground oil supply and the local refineries that breaks down hydrocarbons, reducing petroleum  into acetic acid and highly flammable hydrogen, among other things.  Cars stall on the freeway.  Airplanes fall from the sky.  The acid corrodes gas tanks and lines, releasing hydrogen that the smallest spark can ignite.  Nothing that runs on gasoline moves:  no firetrucks or ambulances or police cruisers.  No food deliveries or garbage pickups.  The looting begins.  Instability under the Santa Monica fault leads to bigger and bigger earthquakes.  The La Brea Tar Pits “erupt.”   When Christina and her PHD supervisor discover an antidote for the plague, both an eco-terrorist network and ruthless corporate interests are willing to go to any lengths to suppress it.

Are you scared yet?  If not, as Yoda told Luke, You will be!  Because this is just the beginning.  Now that we care about Christina, the real chills and thrills begin.  Eco-terrorists smuggle the petroplague out of the LA quarantine area and plot to release it worldwide in a matter of days.  Christina and her allies face virtually every danger you can think of as LA spins into chaos – and some you can’t.  Think of all the seat gripping you do watching James Cameron movies like,  The Terminator and Titanic.  This is what Amy Rogers does; she throws the good guys into a tight situation and keeps cranking up the pressure.

I read lots of thriller/action adventure stories.  When you become familiar with a genre, you begin to recognize conventions and trends.  As anyone who has glanced at this week’s movie listings can attest, epidemics are a standard disaster scenario, but as far as I know, Rogers’s story question is unique – what would happen in our oil-dependant world if a petroleum-destroying plague got loose?

A lot of books in this genre suffer from forgettable heroes and two-dimensional villains.  Psychopaths are a dime a dozen these days, but not in Petroplague.  Several of the bad guys are idealists-gone-wrong, sometimes-conflicted fanatics of conscience, who you cannot hate even as you cringe at their actions.  One of the evil-doers is a corporate higher-up, willing to screw anyone or everyone in the name of profit.  Even if that is a stereotype, it is not hard to imagine in our post-economic meltdown world.

We bond with the heroes of the story because they are very human, even as events evoke courage they didn’t know they had.  When Christina first learns of the plague, all she can think of is her ruined dissertation, but her circle of concern and her actions rapidly grow beyond self-interest.  Her cousin, River, and River’s boyfriend, Mickey, are ready to run when things get tough – but they don’t.  A politician who survived a helicopter crash in Iraq, finds the courage to pilot another chopper filled with fuel that might have been compromised by the plague.

It’s always a pleasure to post here about a book I really enjoyed.  I couldn’t put this one down.  I urge you to stop by Amy Rogers’s web site to learn more about the author and the various formats in which you can read Petroplague.  http://www.amyrogers.com/

A Science Thriller by Amy Rogers

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I met Dr. Amy Rogers at the Sacramento branch of the California Writer’s Club where she is Web Site Coordinator, and an author of science thrillers. What is a science thriller? Think of Frankenstein, Jurassic Park, and Contagion, coming soon to a theater near you. You can learn a lot more about the genre and read a number of reviews at Roger’s blog, http://www.sciencethrillers.com.

Dr. Amy Rogers

Dr. Rogers just published her debut thriller, Petroplague, in ebook format, with a paperback release due in November. She sent this synopsis:

UCLA graduate student, Christina Gonzalez, wanted to use biotechnology to free America from its dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Instead, an act of eco-terrorism unleashes her genetically-modified bacteria into the fuel supply of Los Angeles, turning gasoline into vinegar.

With the city paralyzed and slipping toward anarchy, Christina must find a way to rein in the microscopic monster she created. But not everyone wants to cure the petroplague – and some will do whatever it takes to spread it.

From the La Brea Tar Pits to university laboratories to the wilds of the Angeles National Forest, Christina and her cousin, River, struggle against enemies seen and unseen to stop the infection before it’s too late.

A former professor of microbiology, with a PHD from Washington University, Dr. Rogers has the background to make such a story plausible. In addition, Petroplague is one of two of her novels picked up by New York agents who were then unable to sell them. At this point, Rogers mentioned self-publishing, and her agent directed her to Diversion Books, which she says, “lies somewhere between self-publishing and a traditional Big Six contract. Diversion Books is loosely associated with a traditional literary agency – the first such publisher, though others have sprung up since.”

I plan to review Petroplague here, but you don’t have to wait for me. Click on the book cover photo above to go to the authors website, http://www.amyrogers.com, to view a trailer and read the first two chapters for free.

In addition, Amy has said she’ll be happy to write a guest post or answer interview questions here. So stop back soon, and visit Amy Rogers’ website and blog, for information on publishing, on scary microbes, and to check out what promises to be an exciting read!

Truth(s) in Blogging

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Ever since I posted some notes on Anne Lamott (August 29), I’ve been mulling over her comments on the importance of truth in writing, and how that relates to blogging.  Overtly, her words do not have to do with the online world.  Bird by Bird, Lamott’s book on writing, was published in 1994.  By then, a few people had learned not trust everyone in a chatroom, but we were still years away from the need to decide what sorts of truth to reveal to what sorts of people in our Facebook profiles.

Conclusion 1:  If we didn’t know it before, we have learned online that there are many kinds of truths.  Some are for Friends and some are for Everyone, and it’s good to know the difference.

I don’t think I’m being picky; it’s just that when someone talks about “truth” I am never quite sure what they mean.  “Truth or reality, or whatever you want to call it is the bedrock of life,” says Lamott.  Hmmm.  Well we all agree that the sun sets in the west, but luckily for us bloggers, there is little consensus on truth beyond such “obvious” things.  If there were – if we learned any final realities in school, there would be little for us to write about.

Conclusion 2:  According to biologists, the cells in our bodies renew themselves in seven year cycles, and experientially, my beliefs/truths transform in a similar time frame.  I no longer believe several key stories I was convinced of just five years ago.  Even people’s core beliefs, often matters of faith, are subject to alteration:  the Jesus someone believed in at 3 is not the Jesus they know at 30 or 60.

To be fair, I think the kind of truth Lamott points to in her book on writing is “gut level honesty,” but still, what is that?  In her essays she uses a lot of self-revelation.  She walks that tightrope successfully because her personal stories fit and illustrate the points she is trying to make, but it’s one of those “don’t try this at home” kind of things.  Luckily, most bloggers I follow use self-revelation appropriately too.  Perhaps it’s because we know a post goes to Everyone, and that understanding makes us circumspect.

Conclusion 3:  I was lucky enough to find a reliable standard for self-revelation in writing when I came upon Black Elk Speaks, by John Niehardt when I was 18.  Though I may not always live up to it, I have always aimed at the standard set by the great Lakota medicine man.  If anyone had an interesting story to tell, it was Black Elk, who knew Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, and witnessed the Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee.  Yet he begins his historic account with these words:

“My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it; for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when they bend him like a heavy snow? So many other men have lived and and shall live that story, to be grass upon the hills. It is the story of all life that is holy and good to tell.”

For me, “truth in writing” is one of those abstractions, like “voice,” that it’s better not to worry about.  We may “know it when we see it,” but operationally, it’s better to simply write, then post, then write again.  If I “set out to find my voice,” I am guaranteed to be silly at best.

At least that is my truth for today.  Next week or next month it may be something different, but that’s ok.  Pretty natural, I believe.  When you really think about it, most “truths” do not have a very long half-life.

Bird by Bird and Other Writing by Anne Lamott

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“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day…he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.  Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.” – Anne Lamont 

While hunting for something else, I came upon my copy old of, Bird by Bird:  Some Instructions on Writing and Life,” 1994, by Anne Lamott.  Those who appreciate Natalie Goldberg’s reflections on writing will enjoy Lamott.

“I dropped out [of college] at nineteen to become a famous writer.  I moved back to San Francisco and became a famous Kelly Girl instead.  I was famous for my incompetence and weepiness.  I wept with boredom and disbelief.”

Two things strike you right away about Lamott on writing:  she is very funny and she is a firm believer in telling one’s own unique truth.  This is a theme she returns to again and again.  Lamott has been telling her truths since her first novel, Hard Laughter, 1980, a largely autobiographical portrait of her eccentric family as her father was dying of a brain tumor.

Getting published was something Lamott had dreamed of since she realized as a child, that her father, the writer, was neither “unemployed or mentally ill.”  When Hard Laughter was published, three years after her father’s death, Lamott realized that public success was not what nourished her:

“I believed, before I sold my first book, that publication would be instantly and automatically gratifying, an affirming and romantic experience…this did not happen for me.  The months before a book comes out of the chute are, for most writers, right up there with the worst life has to offer.”

“I…try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be.  But writing is.  Writing has so much to give, so much to teach so many surprises.  That thing you had to force yourself to do – the actual act of writing – turns out to be the best part.  It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony.  The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.” 

Lamott has taught writing at UC Davis and at various workshops.  Bird by Bird mirrors the advice and methods she gives her students.

Anne Lamott

I have not read all of her sections on the mechanics of writing.  Suffice to say that I find her introspective style better suited to illuminating the twists and turns of the process itself than conveying nuts and bolts information.  Like Goldberg, I think the essay is the medium where Lamott really shines, and in another parallel, her most recent writings on spirituality are what I value most.

In Travelling Mercies:  Some Thoughts on Faith, 2000, Lamott holds nothing back in describing how her alcoholic bottom led her to Christianity – the last place, as a life-long bohemian, that she wanted to be.

“I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone.  The feeling was so strong I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there…after a while, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus…and I was appalled.  I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends.  I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian…I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”

I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squished my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with.”

Travelling Mercies relates how Lamott, as a newly sober alcoholic and single mother who had never been to church, sets out to follow her truth where ever it may lead.  People raised as Christians may not have wrestled with all the questions Lamott has to face, beginning with how she’s supposed to find a church to nourish both her and her son.  It continues with all the issues we face in living day to day.  What do we make of the death of friends, of loss, of a son who doesn’t want to go to church, or announces, “I wish I had never been born?”  These and other questions about living her faith seven days a week have led Lamott to write two other books on spirituality, Plan B:  Further Thoughts on Faith, 2006, and Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, 2007.  My wife is reading that one now, and I’ve flipped through the contents and may borrow it when she is done.

In a prophetic passage in Bird by Bird, Lamott laid out a credo for her writing students that she continues to follow:

“Truth seems to want expression.  Unacknowledged truth saps your energy and keeps you and your characters wired and delusional.  But when you open the closet door and let what was inside out, you can get a rush of liberation and even joy.  If we can believe in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas…Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you don’t bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth can destroy you.”

If you haven’t discovered Anne Lamott’s work, I suggest you sample her titles in a bookstore or on Amazon, and see what she has to offer.  Her unique take on the life around her can bring you up short and shift your perspective on where you are and what you are doing.