BEAT ON

By Stephen Jay Schwartz

 

Have I made it perfectly clear yet that I’m obsessed with Jack Kerouac?

I think I mention Kerouac and the Beats every time someone asks about my literary influences.  But I don’t really think of myself as a guy with obsessive tendencies.  I don’t have a thousand lunch pails sporting images of Superman or characters from The Andy Griffith Show.  I don’t paint tiny army figurines and play them one against the other on a giant, Styrofoam battlefield in my garage. 

But the way I feel about the Beat Generation…kinda sounds like obsession.

I’m not alone.  There’s a something somethingness about these folks that translates into every language, crosses every border, travels the world and appeals to millions.  I remember feeling crushed when I discovered there were others like me.  The relationship I had with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs felt personal, like I rode shotgun at their side through all the adventures.  I didn’t like the fact that my feelings were not special or unique.  And, when I finally accepted that I was not the reincarnation of Jack Kerouac (every Beatnik goes through the phase where he insists he’s Jack reincarnated), I learned to enjoy sharing the Beat universe with others. 

How do I explain the appeal of the Beats?  

It starts with Kerouac.  He’s the center of the storm.  I posted a blog a little while ago with a link to Kerouac reading from On the Road.  My blog was about the musicality of his writing, the fevered saxophone solo of his words, his syncopation and meter and rhythm.  That’s the first thing that got my attention.  Just hearing Jack read his own work took me to another place.  It was the marriage of music and literature, poetry and jazz.

Last week I was in San Francisco for a too-brief moment and I visited one of my favorite places in the world, the Beat Museum.  

There’s a TV monitor near the entrance playing a continuous loop of Kerouac, with the sound turned off.  It was playing the same segment I mentioned above, the one I have linked to my previous blog.  I watched it again, silent, observing Jack’s body language as he read, hearing the words memorized in my head, knowing every camera angle, expecting the crescendo of music and words as the sequence came to an end and the lights came up and the camera pulled out to a wide shot, in total silence.  And I noticed something I had always seen but hadn’t really acknowledged.  It was a look in Kerouac’s face, a reluctance to let it go, to leave the place in his head where he’d gone while reading his work.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Nirvana, where he’d gone.  It showed in the way he seemed to grapple for something lost, something held for a moment in the palm of his hand, before the music ended and the lights went up and the camera pulled back and out.

In that moment I saw Kerouac’s vulnerability.  His complete and total honesty, open for the world to see.  And I think that’s the real appeal, that’s what draws so many millions into his orbit. 

The Beats were nothing if not honest.  They lived lives of chaotic adventure, documenting everything they did, felt and saw.  They weren’t ashamed by their actions.  Their lives were their art, America the canvas. 

Now, remember, this was the 1950s.  Before reality television brought media-starved souls into our bedrooms to entertain us with the wreckage of their lives.  This was before Andy Warhol gave every American permission to seek fifteen minutes of fame.  People didn’t expect to receive instant adulation on a worldwide stage.

It was the era of “Leave it to Beaver,” the Marlboro Man, the Red Scare.  A Post-War America with a black-and-white setting.  Shades of gray didn’t exist until the 1960s.  In the 50s you were either perfectly good or…perfectly bad.  And, if you were just a little bit bad, you were perfectly bad.  If you smoked a little weed, if you liked to listen to jazz…you might as well shoot heroin, pop speed, have sex with your neighbor’s wife and rob your friends.  All of which the Beats excelled at.

So, is there anything to admire about that?  Is that heroic? 

The fact is, they lived, man.  These cats were full of life.  They did not compromise in their search for meaning.  They blew through this land, rolling across our virgin highways, searching out America, testing the caliber of their souls along the way.  Their message was peace and friendship and love.  They lived their lives fully, whatever the cost.  And the cost was high, in the 1950s.

Kerouac was talented and sensitive and vulnerable and he ultimately killed himself with booze.  Frustrated, he drank because he was misunderstood.  His publishers and the media and the critics sold him as America’s “bad boy.”  They didn’t look at his writing, didn’t acknowledge the value of his fresh, new style, didn’t hear the questions he posed about the meaning of life.  He was cast as the harbinger of restless meanderings and delivered to a hungry, eager youth ready for action, encouraged to use On the Road as their map into naughty new places where sex, drugs and jazz defined the essence of cool.

While Kerouac was the match that lit the flame, he was not the whole movement.  One man does not a Generation make.  A number of colorful cohorts traveled at his side, folks like Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Carolyn Cassady, Gregory Corso, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, to name a few.  Their writings challenged the conventions of the day, setting the stage for an even greater revolution yet to come.  These were the original road-trippers.  The first hitchhikers.  Doing it all before the hippies hit puberty.

I have a pretty significant collection of Beat literature in my library.  Sometimes I stand in front of the shelves and stare at my copies of On the Road, The Subterraneans, Big Sur, Naked Lunch, Queer, Junky, Howl, Kaddish, Memory Babe, The Town and the City...just being near the stuff connects me to my core.

Whenever I’m in San Francisco, I visit the Beat Museum.  It’s a place where I can talk with other obsessive beatniks about the minutia of Beat life.  I also chat with folks who come in off the street, come in from all over the world, really.  Some know their shit while others are taking their first Beat-baby steps.  I love introducing Kerouac to a new generation of readers and fellow road-trippers.

Last week I had nowhere to stay and no money for a hotel and I didn’t want to bug Louise or Allison Davis or anyone I knew and what I really wanted to do anyway was beg Jerry Cimino, owner of the Beat Museum, to let me spend the night in the museum.  Yes, IN the museum.  I’ve known Jerry for a couple years now, ever since he introduced me to the San Francisco beat cop who would become my main source for research on BEAT, my sequel to BOULEVARD. 

Jerry, being the cool cat that he is, let me stay.  I slept in a period chaise-lounge beside a jacket once owned by Kerouac, in front of a collection of one hundred copies of On the Road translated into 25 different languages.  I was like a Beat Generation centerpiece.  I was like a Kerouac collectible. 

 

(Yes, I slept here)

 

(Right next to Jack Kerouac’s jacket)

 

(Next to 100 copies of On The Road from around the world)

 

It was a Friday night and the world outside the museum walls was a-rockin’.  I was in the center of North Beach and from inside the museum I could hear the wild raucous live music of nearby clubs, the screaming and yelling and laughter of twenty-somethings let loose for the weekend, the crash of beer bottles, the sirens from police cars and ambulances, the hushed sounds of hoodlums smoking pot just outside the door, the call of barkers from Big Al’s strip club across the alley.  And me, stepping softly barefoot on the wood floor, looking at photos of Kerouac and the gang, reading titles from their books, letting their history engulf me.  I felt like a bridge between the San Francisco of their era and the San Francisco that screamed and danced on the other side of the wall.

It doesn’t get much better than that for a Beat junkie.  Except maybe to lie down on Kerouac’s grave in Lowell, Massachusetts.  Which I’ve done.  Twice. 

Jerry Cimino also honored me last year when he let me have my San Francisco launch of BOULEVARD at the museum.  This year will be even better, since I’m launching BEAT, which is set in San Francisco, from the Beat Museum, the night before Bouchercon.

Can you beat that?

Serendipity.

When I saw Jerry last week I read a section of my book to him, which includes the following lines:  “They passed the Beat Museum with its mural of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady standing arm-in-arm.  Hayden saw a man inside waving a copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl before a group of Japanese tourists.”

When I asked Jerry to send me a few photos for this blog, he sent me this one, which was taken at an event two years ago…

Come on now.  I knew nothing of this event.  The book I referenced in my excerpt could have been anything, I could’ve written that he was waving a copy of On the Road or Naked Lunch.  I could’ve said the tourists were from Sweden.

Is this a sign of some sort?  Am I supposed to drop everything and move to San Francisco, work the register at the Beat Museum for the rest of my life?

When you’re channeled into the Beat thing, well, shit like this just happens.  I invite you all to join the ride.  Get on the bus.  Drink the Kool-Aid.

Beat On.

Everyone who’s going to Bouchercon is invited to join me at the Beat Museum for the SF launch of BEAT on Wednesday, October 13, 2010, at 7:00 pm.  We’re going to have a nice crowd of Bouchercon attendees, and we’ll hit the North Beach restaurants and bars directly thereafter.  Special Guest Kim Dower (Kim-from-LA) will be reading from her newly published book of poetry as well.  Kim is a wonderful poet and the Beat Museum is a perfect venue for her. 

And next week BOULEVARD comes out in trade paperback, with a fancy-schmanztie new cover.  Tell the friends, and thanks!

 

PHOTO CREDITS:  beat-museum-front.jpg  –  “Helder Ribeiro”  Site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/obvio171/3261609437/
chaise-lounge.jpg  –  “Sara Stell”  Site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scorpiosphynx/3770357809/in/photostream/
jacks-jacket.jpg –  The Beat Museum
jerry-talking-to-students.jpg  –  Sean Stewart  Site: http://babylonfalling.com/blog/?p=251

A LITTLE BIT OF THIS, A LITTLE BIT OF THAT

Boy do I have a blog post (multiple actually) for you! The unfortunately thing is I probably need to wait until 2012 or later before I actually post them. Curious? Wish I could write them now, but sometimes you just gotta wait.

The problem is, the subject of these potential posts have been occupying much of my mind this summer, and, even more so, the past couple of weeks. So coming up with a topic for today has been difficult to say the least.

So this is going to be a bit of a scatter shot of things, hope you don’t mind.

1. I’ve never been to COMIC CON in San Diego (hope to one day), but a few weeks ago I did get to go to the Anime Expo in downtown Los Angeles with my daughters. To those unfamiliar with Anime, it is basically the Japanese form of film and television animation, and Manga (also part of the expo) is the Japanese form of comic books. Think Speed Racer and Pokemon, though there are TONS of other, darker examples. Like what I’ve heard about COMIC CON, many of the attendees at Anime Expo dressed up in their favorite character outfits. There were ninjas and school girls, and pokemon characters, and characters from Shugo Chara just to name a few. It was…fascinating. My youngest daughter is totally into anime (she dressed up in a school girl outfit.) She’s so into it, in fact, that she wants to go to Japan and work as an anime artist when she grows up. So to say she was in her element would be an understatement. My other daughter came along because otherwise she’d have to spend a boring day at home. Anime and Manga are decidedly NOT her element. It was humorous watching her reactions to all the costumed people. Did I say humorous? I meant hilarious. Anyway, tons of fun.

2. Having your transmission go kaput on the freeway 20 miles from home is not fun. Finding out how much it will cost to replace it, even less fun.

3. Walking around Las Vegas people watching (with very little money in your pocket…see item #2) is at times even more entertaining that attending the Anime Expo.

4. If you’re ever in L.A. in the summer, you MUST make time to spend an evening at the Hollywood Bowl. Even the cheap seats are fine. Bring your wine and something to eat, and you’ll be in heaven.

5. I’m now at the beginning again. Time to start writing a new book. For me, this is often the hardest part. I have that opening which I wrote months ago, and now I have to get back into that frame of mind. At the moment, I’m looking for the rhythm. In fact, I had planned on writing all day, but when I woke up this morning, I was still not feeling it completely. I’ve written enough books now to know that it’s ok if I give in to that feeling. What I need is more stimulus…maybe catch a movie (did you all see INCEPTION? Awesome), or read a book (current read THE GODFATHER OF KATHMANDU by John Burdett, so far excellent), or watch TV (reruns Perry Mason play on a local channel here at noon everyday, I’ve grown a whole new appreciation for the series) or…who knows?

 

So what’s going on with you this summer?

Fat City

by Rob Gregory Browne

I am so fucking fat.

Yes, it’s true.  I’ve put on at least forty pounds in the last four years.  That’s ten pounds a year folks. Disgusting.

This really hit home when I was in Hawaii last week. You see, going to Honolulu is kind of a free-for-all in the food department.  Even though we rent a house, we usually dine out every meal (although breakfast is often just a cup of coffee).

And when I say dine out—you gotta understand.  Hawaiians (meaning people who live in Hawaii, not just the native Hawaiians) REALLY know how to eat.

Here’s the typical plate lunch, which is a staple over there:

Three hamburger steak patties, two scoops of white rice, A scoop of macaroni salad and one honking shitload of gravy.

Substitute chicken, fish, teri beef, tonkatsu for the hamburger on subsequent days of the week.

And that’s just lunch.

Anyway, after eating like that for a week and a half, you tend to walk around feeling like you’ve been vacationing on a cruise liner and hitting the buffet every ten minutes.

Don’t even ask me about undressing in front of a mirror.  Burn that image into your brain folks—it’s certainly burnt into mine.

Around about day six, I could barely walk.  I was dragging my fat around like a pregnant otter.  I took a look at myself and said, “Rob, this is ridiculous.  You’re turning into a blimp.  Seriously, you’ve gotta do something about it.”

I think I can safely say that my wife agrees.  And I don’t blame her.

So now I AM doing something about it.  Ever since we got back, I’ve begun watching my calories again—which is how I lost 50 lbs back in 2005.  (Can anyone say YoYo?)

I find that if there’s actually low cal food around—meaning fruit and veggies and other goodies—I don’t have a problem eating right.  But if there’s nothing in the house… ugh.  I’m tempted to grab a tortilla and a pound of cheese and make a half dozen quesadillas.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to resist such temptation so far.  And every day, I enter my consumed calorie count into my little iPhone Lose It! app (thank you, Brett) and watch my progress.  In fact, in just a few days of not eating heavy island-style food, I’m already feeling lighter on my feet.

Go figure.

The great thing about Lose It! is that you can enter you current weight, your target weight and a few other factors, along with the date you’d like to achieve that target, and it’ll tell you how many calories you can consume a day.

Currently, I’m at 1,869.  Which isn’t bad, considering the average is 2,500 for males.

As of this writing, after breakfast lunch and dinner, I’ve only consumed 1,416 calories.

ICE CREAM!!!

But I think I’ll go for a walk, first.  That’ll subtract a couple hundred calories from my count.

Nothing like food for incentive, eh?

So the question today is, do you ever diet?  And what diet plan do you use or recommend?

 

Hollywood as bookseller

I am now the subject of my own study.

I’ve long been fascinated by the effect that Hollywood has on book sales.  Fourteen years ago, I was advised to write only stand-alone novels because it allowed each book to be an individual property for sale to the movies.  If you linked the books as a series, when you sold just one of those books, the producer would own the rights to the characters — and to that whole string of novels.  Feature film deals were the gold standard, and John Grisham’s career was the ideal.  We all wanted to see our books on the big screen.  TV deals might be nice, but they just didn’t have the same cachet.  From my conversations with authors whose books did make it to the big screen, I learned that a feature film could net some pretty nice book sales.  One author told me that when his book was adapted into a modestly successful feature film, it translated to an extra 750,000 paperback sales of his book.

And as authors, that’s what we really care about.  Not the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, but the tangible reward of book sales. 

For a few years, I followed the advice of sticking to stand-alone novels.  I sold the feature film rights to HARVEST and GRAVITY, but those projects went nowhere.  Then I ended up writing a series when my character from THE SURGEON, Jane Rizzoli, went on to appear in the next book and the next.  I learned to ignore Hollywood and I simply wrote the books that I wanted to write.

I began to notice that feature film might not always be the best vehicle for selling books.  I saw what the TV series “Bones” and “True Blood” did for the book sales of Kathy Reichs and Charlaine Harris.  Their sales were going through the roof.  One bookseller told me that while feature film can boost the fortunes of a relatively unknown author, it might actually undermine the sales of a novel that’s already a bestseller.  He’d watched the sales of one very popular novel collapse within a few weeks of the movie version’s release because people who watched the film felt they knew the plot and didn’t need to read the book.  “But a TV series is all about characters,” he said.  “When viewers become engaged with characters, there’s no end of plotlines they’ll come back for.  And that helps drive book sales.”

Two years ago, Hollywood came knocking again at my door.  They wanted to option the TV rights to the Jane Rizzoli series.  The project seemed to be sprinkled with fairy dust because the option turned into a pilot, and then into a TV series, and on July 12, the debut of “Rizzoli & Isles”on TNT was watched by nearly eight million viewers — the highest-ever ratings for a premiere on ad-supported cable.

So … what will a TV series do for book sales?  

It’s a bit too early to tell, but but I’ve already noticed a few changes.  During my recent book tour, at least half of the questions from the audience were about the TV show.  How did I feel about the cast? (Swell!)  Will the show change my future books? (No.)  Did I have anything to do with writing the show?  (No.)  

I’ve discovered that I’m now one of those lucky authors whose books are shoplifted.  A phenomenon that may signal good things ahead.

I’ve noticed the sales of my latest hardcover ICE COLD (which went on sale two weeks before the show’s debut) haven’t dropped quite as rapidly as you’d normally see after two weeks.  In fact, my USA Today ranking actually blipped up a bit between weeks two and three.

 I’ve noticed a big change in Amazon index for my backlist Rizzoli series.  Before the show’s debut, THE SURGEON sales index was in the tens of thousands.  Now it’s in the hundreds.  How many copies does that translate to?  I have no idea, but the trend looks good.

I’ve always been interested in numbers and marketing and consumer behavior.  If this were happening to another author, I’d be taking notes too.  And I’m curious about the experiences of authors and publishers.

If you’ve had a book turned into a movie or a TV show, how did it affect your sales?  How was that link marketed?  How did it affect your career?

 

 

 

 

Who am I?

by Pari

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go all existential on you. Leave that to Camus . . .
But I have been thinking a lot lately about what I write and why I write it.

Up until the Master Class, I always introduced myself as a mystery writer. End of story. Let people draw whatever conclusions they wanted. I knew what that meant. However, a weird thing happened during those two weeks in Oregon. All of us wrote well more than 30,000 words. And guess what? Of the three short stories, the ten or so book proposals, and all the other assignments, I came up with exactly one thing that had to do with the mystery genre. Yep. One measly four-page book proposal.

Of course, I didn’t write anything funny either. But that’s probably due to the fact that I was so tired I skipped over being slaphappy and went straight into morose.

What the hell?

The mystery thing, the lack thereof, seriously messed with my mind. I’d established myself with writing traditional mysteries. That’s where I’d garnered nominations, met other writers, relished spending time with readers. And I was abandoning all of that?

Skip forward nine months. I’m writing daily again. Short stories for now. The pieces I’ve worked on so far are all over the place – in terms of genre – horror, fantasy, mainstream, literary. Notice anything missing?

It seems that my identity as a mystery writer has somehow morphed into something far simpler but much more problematic.

I’m a writer.
C’est tout.

From a marketing/public relations perspective, this is a disaster. Conventional wisdom dictates that once you’ve established an audience, you should keep writing works that audience expects/wants. That way your readers can find you. But screw that!

I don’t want to be consistent right now. I don’t want to shove myself into any category – not even fiction vs. nonfiction. I just want to write, damnit! I want to have fun, to explore where my creativity wants to go next, to see what’s around all those twisty turns in my mind.

So where do I go from here?

Hell, I don’t know.
I’m just going . . .

(More food for thought: Toni Causey’s excellent exploration about writers and joy and joy in writing from yesterday — right here in the ‘Rati. Go there immediately if you didn’t read it. Go on. I’ll wait . . .)

My questions for discussion today:

1. For everyone: Has your personal myth, the one you repeat to yourself and the public, ever changed unintentionally?

2. Readers: Should writers stick to their successes, write what they’ve written at least some of the time, to keep growing audience? Is it a betrayal when they don’t? Should they use pen names to give readers/editors a clue that they’re going in new directions?

3. Writers:  Have you ever had these moments of redefinition? How have you handled them? Have they brought you joy (thanks, Toni) or caused misery?

there is joy

by  Toni McGee Causey

I can tell you up front, I know no secrets about writing. I had sort of hoped that, by this point, I would have found the mysterious code, the secret handshake, the door in the back that opens with just the right combination of knocks and pauses. There may be such things; I don’t know them.

I’ve thought about that a lot this last year. When I knew that I was going to write something else besides a Bobbie Faye novel, I felt a sense of exhilaration, followed almost immediately by a sense of terror. I’d been hostess to that set of characters for almost seven years, at that point. It was a bit like growing up with the same friends, going to the same school, living in the same house in the same small town; at some point, you yearn to see what the rest of the world is like.

That series started off as a script, and then after deciding to adapt it to a novel, I had to work long and hard to break myself of a bunch of script-writing habits and re-learn how to write fiction. The whole ability to show internal thoughts? wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Seriously. That was a trip and a high after years of having to keep everything external and yet somehow physically convey the internal, or use dialog, without getting to dip even a toe into the interiority of a character. (The exception, of course, is voice-over, and I’m not a fan. I think it shows a weak script, most of the time.)

It was time for a change, though, and the problem with suddenly having that freedom is that there were too many options. 

For the first couple of months, I thought I’d develop something funny, since that seemed to be my “niche.” The oddity about that as my niche is that it’s really not what I first loved to write. Everything I’d written in the early script years had been very dark, psychologically. The humor was something I didn’t think I could write. Oh, I was a natural smartass, and I learned early on to curb that online (bit me in the ass a few times, it did)… but conveying humor on paper? I hadn’t really planned on it, and yet, my screenwriting agent at the time felt like I should give it a try. [And that script still gets calls, almost 14 years later. It’s been optioned and re-optioned. I refer it as the script that refuses to die.] 

Funny became my bailiwick. I loved it, it was a joy to get letters from people who were going through really crappy days or months, and learn that I’d helped them through it. There’s just nothing quite like that feeling, when you read those letters. So I thought I’d do that again, just set in a different world.

I brainstormed the world, had the characters, and tried to write. And a frustrating thing happened: it went dark. Not just a little dark. Not like mildly slate gray when you were aiming for the whitewash of dawn. It went very dark. Bleak in places.

The story and I had a talking to–a come to Jesus meeting if you will. It seemed to agree to shape up, to do what it was told, so I would throw out the pages and start over, and try to go back to the lighter side. It curved on me, swerving back. Nothing I did worked.

I got a lot of well meaning advice at the time about sticking with what I was known for, keeping my fans happy, and so on, and every single bit of that is valid. People who have built amazing long-term careers said these things to me, so there was no doubt they were speaking from experience.

And the more I tried to pretzel that story, the more miserable I was. I sort of hated writing there for a while. In fact, we kinda broke up. I didn’t mention it here, but I had started to wonder if I was a writer, you know? I couldn’t get that damned story to work, and I couldn’t leave the idea behind. It had grabbed me by a chokehold and I was squirming away. 

It was back in October and early November when several friends said a few things to me. I would like to think it was provenance, fate. I hope it wasn’t because I was whining incessantly. [I was whining, people.] 

That’s when I had the realization that I hadn’t gotten into writing to do just one thing. I get bored easily. I hadn’t become a writer because I thought I’d be famous. (The Naked Cowboy is famous. These days, you can do the stupidest thing on the planet, and be famous. Thinking you’re going to write a book, one among hundreds of thousands and suddenly be famous? Not likely.) And nobody sane gets into writing for the money. Just look at the flux publishing is in today–nobody really knows what the hell is going to happen two years from now. Two years ago, e-readers were the clunky dim future and nothing worth worrying about. Now? The percentage of ebook sales is rising, fast, and there are all sorts of quakes ripping through the industry. It’s going to change by next month, and definitely by next year, so writing for the money is fairly laughable. The majority of writers either have a job to support them, or are lucky enough that a spouse can handle the bills while they toil away, hoping to create something that will sell.

So, then, why the hell write?

Because I can’t not write.

I quit fighting the story.

If it was going to go dark, then fine, we’d go dark. If it wanted to be told in first person, then dammit, we’d do first person. (Scared the living hell out of me, that one did. I had never written a first person story. Ever. Thought I never would.) If it was going to break my heart a dozen times over how hard the main character’s life was, well, then, fine. 

I would simply tell the story.

And it started working. 

I’m here at a point in the story where today felt like I was carving each word out of my own skin, syllable by bloody syllable, because the scene was painful. People lose things, in this scene, that cannot be recovered. It changes everything for them in this story. And as painful as it was, as scared as I had been to go here, I have to tell you, I sat back at the end of this day, and there was joy.

I am so grateful I didn’t listen to the peer pressure of doing the same sort of thing I’d done before. I will go back to lighter stories–I have another one I already know I want to do, eventually. But I am so grateful that my friends–several ‘Rati members included–encouraged me to go with my instincts. I can’t write that to you as someone who sold this thing–I’ve held it back, with the blessings of my agent–because I didn’t want it out there until it could be a whole book. If I do it right, if I pull it off, it will be heartbreaking, but the end will be worth it. So when I tell you that there is joy, it’s a joy of the writing. There is no other reward, here, than that, because everything else is fleeting. 

The first couple of years of being a writer, there is so much pressure to promote. No one really knows what works; it’s all a guess. I’ve tried a lot of stuff, because people said I needed to, and some of it might’ve helped, and a lot of it was completely useless, as far as I could tell. The first couple of years, you spend a lot of time suddenly caught up in the spin cycle of publishing–writing as fast as you can, sending things off, getting the next book started or the next proposal done, proofing copy edits, writing a bit more on the current one, starting up promotional stuff, proofing the galleys, frantically writing more of the next one, trying to squeeze living and family in there, having very little time to breathe, much less enjoy.

None of it matters more than the work.

At the RWA conference last year, I went to an early morning no-holds-barred chat giving by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. (She’s got a gazillion NYT bestsellers under her belt and is gorgeous and nice. You kinda want to smack her for being perfect, except she’s funny and disarming and you end up liking her a lot before you know what happened.) She said a lot of useful things, but at one point late in the hour, she said, “Whatever you do, protect the work. The work is all you have.”

There is a joy in that. I honestly know that I am writing far far better than I did before. Everything about how I write has changed with this book. That part is neither better or worse–just different, I suppose. What’s important is that I didn’t keep thinking, “Well, I should do it this way or I should do that other thing, because that’s what’s expected.” Instead, I said, “What does this story want to say?”

I love what I do. I am so incredibly grateful I get to do it. I may never sell again, and I will be bummed, if that happens, but I’m here to tell you that this part? This writing what is gut-wrenching and honest and letting the story stay true to itself?

Pure joy.

Sometimes, it’s going in the complete unexpected direction that will break you free of the chains, and bring you joy.

And speaking of joy, I could not end this post without giving you the Jane Austen Fight Club. 

What brings you joy, my friends?

(By the way, I’m woefully behind on updating my website, through no fault of my excellent webmistress, Maddee, so if you want to follow me, it’s easier to find me on Twitter or Facebook.)

Separated at birth

 

By Cornelia Read

So I’m sitting there watching Lord of the Rings on TNT last night, and I just can’t help thinking that a lot of the actors look like other actors, in this Spy Magazine kind of way. (God, how I miss Spy! Especially the headlines… like the time they did an article on Charlton Heston at an NRA rally and called it “Guns ‘n’ Moses.” I mean, how great is that, right?)

I had never seen LOTR before, other than the Hobbit doors on an episode of America’s Next Top Model when they all went to New Zealand this one season. So maybe it was because the whole thing was kind of fresh to me, but it really started to get weird after a while.

I mean, doesn’t Saruman

Look an awful lot like Uncle Junior?

And Boromir…

Totally look like Terry on True Blood?

And I know it’s kind of a cheat to compare LOTR with Harry Potter, but still… Legolas…

And Mr. Malfoy?

And then of course there’s Frodo…

and Susan Boyle…

A hairy Orc…

And this guy leaving voicemails for his girlfriend?

Well, and Galadriel…

And Stevie Nicks is just too easy…

And then of course my mind started to wander, and I matched Kendra…

with Dr. Cornelius

 

McNulty…

With Geico…

These guys…

And these guys…

Rahm Emanuel…

With Joe Piscopo…

 

Journey…

With the Bay City Rollers…

And Daniel Day Lewis…

With Robbie Benson…

Last but not least… Donald Trump

And a day at the county fair…

How ’bout you guys, thought of any unlikely twins lately?

 

and…

 

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

By JT 

I started writing my seventh Taylor Jackson novel this week. This is cause for great rejoicing on many levels, obviously, but the process of beginning a novel is only part of the fun. It’s not as simple as opening a Word file and starting to type. Oh, no. There are steps that must be taken, superstitions adhered to. Some would call this throat clearing, will admonish me to just get to work already. There’s something magical about this time, and I like to keep it sacred.

While the actual book writing started this week, the story has been brewing for quite a while. Since I heard this song on my radio September 14, 2009, to be exact.

 

I went home and downloaded it, wrote myself a note: “Welcome to London” Memphis Book. That was it. The page was turned and the idea went … not all the way away, but out of sight, into the wilds of my mind. It had a cozy home, obviously well nourished, because everything that happened in THE IMMORTALS and SO CLOSE THE HAND OF DEATH lead to this story. My mind did all the work, subconsciously driving the gossamer threads of my Muse into a cohesive form. In other words, the idea stewed.

Books are strange beasts, and the concept of ideas even more fantastical. Whatever process exists in the creative mind that allows an author to hear a song and almost a year later realize that song forced itself into the very psyche of the stories that were being created and developed into a story in its own right… well, I’ve never been one to sneeze at our minds’ capabilities, that’s for sure.

So back to the process. I revisited the idea several months ago as I was finishing SO CLOSE, knowing I’d have to do a bunch of research to make it work. That research involved going to England and Scotland if I had any hope of the book playing out the way I envisioned. Plus, the book is a Gothic, so it needed all the correct elements to come fully alive, elements that can’t be readily found in my leather chair in my living room in Nashville. I broached the idea to my better half, who is always up for an adventure, bless him. And then serendipity appeared in the form of my debut novel, ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS, which was slated for an August 20 release date in the UK. At BEA, I mentioned to my publisher that I needed to go to the UK to do research for book 7, and they thought it would be a super idea to combine that trip with media for the debut.

Which is how Randy and I found ourselves standing at the top of Edinburgh Castle last week.

We had a brilliant trip. Following Thrillerfest in New York, which was amazing (Stephen’s post captured the spirit quite well – I’m just glad there wasn’t a full moon over Manhattan, the energy in that crowd would have turned erotic – and this was without our Alex!) we headed to London, hopped the train to Scotland, spent two days touring the countryside – all of it, from Edinburgh to St. Andrews to Inverness to Loch Ness and back, taking page after page of notes, over 600 pictures and three hours of video – then headed to London for the launch party, signings and radio interviews. The trip was only marred by the bronchitis that felled Randy when we arrived in London and followed us home (yes, I’ve caught it and am on antibiotics too. Major bummer.)

The London media machine is a little different than what I’ve experienced thus far in the US. Mira UK threw a Launch Lunch for Paul Johnston (MAPS OF HELL, a fabulous book!) and I that would be more aptly named a party. Wine and champagne flowed freely. We talked about books and life and constitutional Britain and Viscounts and more books. Old friends Ali Karim and Mike Stotter were there, which added to the celebratory atmosphere. There was no expectation of performance that I so often feel here – we were there to celebrate, and celebrate we did. It was very, very cool. Top it all off, we were lunching at The Luxe, which was literally catty-corner from Ten Bells, a Jack the Ripper haunt. Slick! Then we headed to Cambridge, to sign at the legendary Heffers. That’s where Zoë and I found each other.

That’s Henry Sutton in the background, of The Mirror, and a novelist in his own right – GET ME OUT OF HERE releases in the US in February, plus he’s got several other titles in the UK. How fun is that?


Back home, marginally recovered, I set about putting all that I had in order – marking up the pictures, uploading the video, pulling togther the remainder of the research, and building my box.

Yes, the book officially exists, because it has a box. It’s labeled with the title (one I really hope stands, WHERE ALL THE DEAD LIE) I’m doing the Art Fact Sheet so we can have the perfect cover. Thanks to the fine folks at Exaclair, I have my purple Clairefontaine notebook, already full of notes, just waiting for more ideas. I pulled the stack of books that I need to read to get in the right frame of mind, I’ve started laying out the characters. I’m using Scrivener, and while I’m not outlining per se, I am doing a bit more planning, simply because I think I have 4 POV characters and I’m moving between countries again, and I find it easier to at least give myself a map if I’m going to do that.

I got so caught up in the excitement that I went so far as to take a quick try at an opening line – that’s when everything came to a screeching halt. It came out in first person. All stop. I don’t think I’m ready to conquer a Taylor novel from her POV in first. We’ll see what happens.

I’m keeping a book journal on this one, so I can see how I feel, what’s working and what isn’t. I’m curious to chart my course more fully than I have in the past – I look back on the previous six books in sheer wonderment. Did I really write them? Or was it some gremlin with blond hair who sits in my chair at night while I’m asleep and slings words onto the page? Sometimes that feels like a real possibility.

A few months ago, I also bought myself a Five Year journal so I can start keeping better track of what’s happening at any given time. I’m not good at journaling, but I think I owe it to myself. This blog has always been a journal of sorts for me, but I want to start keeping better track of what’s happening in my crazy life.

Do any of you journal? Book journal or regular daily journal? Do you have any tips to share that will help those of us lately come to the process?

Wine of the Week: Shared at a fine pub called The Queen’s Arms in Edinburgh – goes well with fish and chips – Perrin Cotes du Ventoux 2005

Time and Space

Zoë Sharp

I have always viewed myself not as an artist, but a craftsman.

I take an enormous amount of care over my work, and yes, pride in it. I’m constantly striving to improve and hone what I do, but the word ‘artist’ always conjures up images of ego and eccentricity. I just can’t take myself that seriously.

I can never forget that I am asking people to buy into a myth, a dream, a jumble of thoughts and ideas that have been tumbling around inside my head, and have finally made it out in some semblance of order onto the page.

The fact that anyone wants to read them often frankly astounds me.

And yet, I had an email from someone recently who told me that she cried while reading the ending of FOURTH DAY. Having that happen at all is pretty humbling for a writer, to be honest. But the fact she cried while reading the book in the airport is even more so.

The power of words on a page, in a public place with all the distraction that entails, actually reduced someone to tears.

Other people’s books make me cry, I admit. And soppy movies, and heroic rescues, and onions. But writing doesn’t.

Having said that, to write dark emotional scenes, I need a dark and emotional atmosphere. I find it much easier, for some reason, to write in the winter, with just a desk lamp providing a pool of light around my keyboard and screen, and moody broody music playing in the background. The volume has to be right, though. If it’s too loud I just listen to the music. What I want is for it to manipulate my feelings on an almost subconscious level.

I’ve written on planes, ferries and automobiles. Not so much on trains, but that’s only because I do find it off-putting having the stranger sitting next to me reading over my shoulder. Same goes for planes. I’m fine if Andy’s next to me, but I struggle if I’m in the centre of a row. Of course, I don’t have that problem at all if I’m in the comfy seats up front, which sounds like a damn good reason to upgrade right there!

I write in the car – a LOT. Maybe this is because we spend a lot of time on the road, but making notes on sheets of scrap paper on a clipboard while we’re motoring along is often my most productive time. I once wrote an entire short story on a car journey to a bookstore event. And while I can hear some lip-curling comments being muttered about the quality of something dashed off in such a fashion, can I just say that story was long listed for a prestigious award and turned into a short film?

I write in doctor’s waiting rooms, even in hospital, in hotel rooms, in friends’ kitchens while everyone else is sleeping during a weekend visit. If I have a pencil, and paper, and enough light to see one joining the other, and I’m awake, I write.

I write at my desk both early in the morning and late at night, often on the same day, which can be a bit of a problem, even though I’ve known for years that sleep is very overrated. Sometimes I write until I start producing utter gibberish because I’m nodding off at my computer. Often when I open the file up the following day, the final paragraph from the day before needs a lot of tweaking because of this. In fact, on Tuesday I found I’d managed to insert half a dozen completely extraneous words into a sentence – correctly typed but utterly meaningless. Thank goodness for the delete key…

But, the long and the short of it is, I don’t care where I write. The writing is the thing. If I had to wait for the perfect moment, I’d still be working on my first novel.

The perfect moment, like tomorrow, never comes.

I was at the Bodies in the Bookshop event at Heffers bookstore in Cambridge last week – with fellow ‘Rati, JT Ellison, as it happened – and found myself buttonholed by a successful writer for whom the perfect moment was something of a necessity.

He could only write, he told me, in a cabin in the wilds, miles from anywhere, with no phones or anything else to take away from the prose.

And I know there are going to be those who would wholeheartedly agree with him. To create, they require a level of tranquillity and isolation not available in their normal surroundings. So, they borrow friend’s beach houses, or go on writers’ retreats.

Equally, there are others who regularly go and sit in noisy, crowded cafés and quite happily lose themselves among the places and people they’re creating. And, in some ways, I can’t help thinking that if the story is strong enough to suck you in to the exclusion of all else while you’re writing it, then surely it will suck you in while you’re reading it, too?

I know it’s a constant refrain of mine that there are as many different methods of writing as there are writers. There is no wrong way to do it, providing you get the words on the page. You can do it one word at a time while bungee jumping from the landing if it gets the job done. But which method do you favour?

And are you one of these readers who gets emotionally invested in the book you’re reading? Have you ever cried in an airport at the ending of a book?

This week’s Phrase of the Week is having your leg pulled meaning to be on the receiving end of a deception or joke. It’s thought to originate from a Scottish rhyme of the 1860s, in which old Aunt Meg was hanged and the preacher pulled on her legs to ensure she died quickly and without too much pain. Aunt Meg was probably innocent of the crime for which she was hanged, but was known to have been the victim of much deception and trickery, for which having her leg pulled was the result.

I’m off to the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival at Harrogate today, so please excuse erratic response to comments, but I’ll get there eventually!

Who Cares If It’s Well-Written?

by J.D. Rhoades

Does good writing even matter?

I’ve been  thinking about this question for a couple of weeks ever since our  discussion of the TWILIGHT books. You may remember that  commenter KarinNH mentioned that her students were reading the books and that:  

…one ventured that I wouldn’t like the series because “it is really poorly written.” Interestingly, the ones who were recommending the books all agreed. Emphatically. However, they were willing to look past that because they liked the story.

I found this interesting for a couple of reasons. One, my daughter, who’s read all the books and seen all the movies, says exactly  the same thing: the writing’s really bad, but you care about the story. Two, I felt the same way about the last book that everyone I know purported to despise, but which I found quite entertaining: Dan Brown’s THE DAVINCI CODE.

The prose in TDVC is, in a word, atrocious: clumsy sentences (starting with the first one); infodumps; word choices that leave you scratching your head. If you want more explanation, go here.

And yet, when I took it to the beach with me, I I couldn’t put it down. Neither, apparently could millions of other readers. Why? Because the story hooked me and dragged me along. Oh, I was rolling my eyes and occasionally wincing at the prose, but there’s no denying, it had me.

Just a couple of weeks ago I read another technothriller from another well-known author. The dialogue was  unbelievable, the hero was  just a little too perfect to get next to as a character, and sometimes the set-ups for the action scenes sounded like a catalog put out by the guys who manufacture military gear (when the hero and his buddies are getting ready to  kick bad-guy ass, do we really NEED to know who made their gloves?) But once again, I read it cover to cover, because the aforementioned  bad-guy asses were kicked, names were taken, and the story was just fun to read.

I think all of us can describe books we’ve read where the prose was gorgeous, but we eventually put the books aside, because nothing really happened to any of  those exquisitely described people in their gorgeously described setting. I once described a friend’s book to another friend thusly: “it’s literary fiction, but don’t worry, stuff actually happens.”

On the other hand, we can all reel off long lists of bestsellers, going back years, where the prose ranged from barely serviceable (early Tom Clancy) to  pretty much god-awful (VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and all  of Harold Robbins). And yet, we read them. Cover to cover and often more than once.

Which brings us back to our main question: does good prose even matter? Why do we bother? Why spend all that time looking for just the right word, paring down the adverbs, repeating to ourselves “show, don’t tell, show, don’t tell,” etc, if all the majority of readers care about is the story?

I‘ve thought about it quite a bit, and I know what my answer is. I’ll reveal it in the comments, after I hear some of your thoughts on the matter. And while we’re at it…share some of your favorite badly written novels you couldn’t put down.