In Memory of Us

Tonight I write to bid a fond farewell to something dear. The something in question is us. For so long we’ve been together and shared so many things. Remember the time we played scrabble for hours, just the two of us arguing whether “behoove” is a word or not over a board full of letter tiles? Or how about the hot August afternoon when we walked to the public swimming pool and got caught in a thunderstorm. And there was the Christmas when we sat in the back room while the adults drank coffee and talked until midnight? Remember watching Saturday Night Live together, something we never got to do but on Christmas and New Years when we stayed up late? We have so many memories, so many moments the two of us shared.


I mourn the loss of these little moments, these slivers of time and tiny events. I mourn them because they’ve been wantonly murdered and replaced by a stand in, a doppelganger. The name of the interloper varies. Sometimes it’s IM, sometimes simply text, occasionally Twitter, and in its more formal moments it’s called Facebook. Please don’t think of me as a Luddite and don’t mistake my obituary as coming out against technology or social media. I keep two blogs, have a Twitter account, and maintain no less than two Facebook pages. What I’m mourning is the loss of the face to face, private, relationship between two people with all its depth and nuance. A tweet can’t sign and a Facebook account won’t whisper a secret, you’ll never stay up late comforting a friend via text message.

Over the Christmas holiday, while having a meal at a local restaurant, I noticed a group of friends out celebrating the season together. They sat around a table, half of the celebrants glued to their iPhones texting away while the season spun away from them. As I looked on I wondered what they were missing, what tiny moments came and went without leaving its gift of memory. What connections weren’t made? What could have transpired but didn’t for the sake of a glowing screen and the preference for electronic reality over flesh and blood.

My New Years wish for all my friends is that you find yourself stranded with a long-time acquaintance in some out-of-the-way place without internet and with zero bars of signal strength for every electronic communications device you possess. May you be blessed with dead batteries and no ear-buds for your MP3 player and iPod. May you be temporarily fogged or snowed in, stuck in a quiet, nearly deserted airport lounge together. May you talk for hours, discover new things, share reminiscences, and when you part, may you be much closer than any text or status update can convey.

The International Thriller Writers

Some exciting news! I’ve been accepted into the International Thriller Writers. The ITW is a great organization dedicated to writers of thriller fiction and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to meet some fellow genre writers.

National Novel Writing Month

Have you been sharpening your pencils and limbering up your typing fingers, maybe doing a few keyboard calisthenics to avoid a nasty sprained phalange? November is National Novel Writing Month, a month supposedly dedicated to creating that novel you've always meant to write but have put off for whatever reason. You know how it is with excuses, it seems I remember a saying about excuses…but I digress.

I’m all for people finding their inner novelist and following their muse. There are no barbed wire fences, no passports, and no border guards along the borders of the Land of Creativity. You don’t need to be vetted or qualified to write. Just pick up preferred writing implement and begin. That’s it, just write.

There does seem to be a certain cultural thing about writing. If you’re a published author there’s an easy experiment you can perform to experience this phenomena first hand. Simply choose a group of individuals and casually mention you’re a novelist. There’ll be a few questions about the profession, maybe even some circumscribe words about buying your book, but eventually you will hear “I’ve thought about writing a book…” It seems to be a constant across the conversational landscape. Whether you’re in a restaurant, at a party, or any other get-together formal and informal, the scenario plays out in the same way. Nobody would respond to Bruce Jenner with a “I’ve always thought about winning a decathlon…” or tell a surgeon “Just last week I was saying how I’d like to do an appendectomy” but mention writing a novel and suddenly everyone’s Steinbeck.

Maybe the root lies in the part stories play in everyone’s life. We grow up with them, starting with story time in kindergarten and maturing into the various book circles and young reader contests that have become a part of the grade school landscape. Stories have a place at our hearths too. If you’re like me, you had uncles, aunts, grandparents, parents, and siblings who spun tales that knitted the family together and formed a shared history. I think it’s this second sort of story, the lived story, which convinces everyone they could be a novelist. I break the family-centric story into two classes: the Guess What Happened and the Family Legend.

The Guess What Happened story is, well, exactly what it sounds like. It’s a retelling of an event, usually focused on how dumb/irritating/difficult some person/task/place was and the way the teller brought it to a satisfactory or unsatisfactory conclusion. In my youth these everyday stories were as utilitarian as melmac, they conveyed emotion and explained day to day realities. They lived in our kitchen, around the dinner table, and in the family car, lifted into the back seat on the warm breeze that came in through the driver’s side wing-glass. Looking back I can’t recall any of them in detail, they came and went, beginning as thoughts and breath and then returning to nothingness.

Family Legends are a different class all together. A legend tells of an extraordinary event (at least within the bounds of family life). There are no legendary tales of the price of gas going up or how many people were at the bank. In my family, legends (at least the ones I remember) usually it had a humorous element. I recall stories of exploding rocks, gunpowder rockets, attic ghosts, mousetraps that caught humans, and a dozen others. These stories ritually appeared at the holidays, repeated by their traditional tellers as a way of reaffirming bonds and confirming rank within the pack. To this day I miss the tales of my grandfather and grandmother and a part of the holiday season for me is the anticipation of hearing my father’s tales of his youth. Whenever I hear one of the family legends it makes me feel settled feeling, at peace.

The point I’m trying to convey is that we all have these types of stories and though some of them can translate into key elements of a novel or a short story there is more to being a novelist than having a seed of an idea. Being a novelist is the hard (and often thankless) work of growing and pruning the seeds of ideas into a topiary that can be appreciated by many. The nuance that is easily understood within our families doesn’t always translate to a larger audience who are bereft of the experiences which are integral parts of who we are. Not everyone is a novelist and that’s okay. NaNoWriMo seems to imply all it takes to create a manuscript is time spent in front of a screen or page of paper, sweat long enough and a novel will pop out. There’s also the implication you should be able to complete your manuscript within a month. I suspect that the time limit turns as many (potentially good) writers away from the art as it inspires to “try harder and focus” but I think the concept needs a little analysis. For the purpose of this thought experiment, I’m assuming the author will be writing a pretty basic (possibly even short) science fiction novel of 100 thousand words.

November has 30 days, at least according to the childhood rhyme, and to accomplish our goal we will need to write approximately 3300 words/day in order to be successful. Thirty days comes to 720 hours, however not all of them are available. We’ll assume a healthy 8 hours of sleep a night, taking away 240 hours off the top and bringing the time left to us down to 480 hours. We also have to take out the 8 hours a day spent making money to pay the bills (since the vast majority of authors also hold down a job to support themselves), that removes another 176 hours bringing our available writing time down to 304 hours. Now, if we break down our 100 thousand words over 304 hours we get a rate of approximately 329 words per hour, not an unmanageable wpm even for a one-finger typist. However, you must also remember that you must keep this rate up for every waking hour of every day of every week in the month. I also didn’t take out meals, bathroom breaks, taking the kids to school, grocery shopping, taking a shower, or generally living a life. Oh yes, and let’s not forget Thanksgiving, that holiday where you’ll share the quality time with your family which inspires you with the materials you’ll use to fuel your writing sessions, that will take a day out of your writing schedule too! You probably have caught onto the fact I don’t think this is a reasonable goal. It’s simply my opinion, though.

Many people, authors among them, promote the idea that cramming through NaNoWriMo makes you a better writer. They’re entitled to their opinion; maybe it does help them. Personally I don’t believe cramming equates to an increase in quality. I doubt that there’s objective evidence or statistics showing people who participate in NaNoWriMo are published more often than those who don’t. To me, NaNoWriMo sounds like a gimmick.

You should write because you love it. That should be your only motivation. Sure, you’ll want to be paid but let me assure you there are far more authors out there who aren’t making a living off their work than are. You must love to write, that’s the primary driver. A writing career isn’t a contest and there’s nothing magic about having a taskmaster standing over you as you type. You must love to write because writing the words down is one tenth of getting a novel published.

Getting the Word Out

Dear Reader,

When I started the “life of a writer”, I had imagined it as a life where I’d, well, write. I’d just sit around, writing, story after story and novel after novel. That’s the writing part, you know, creating worlds and peopling them, and then putting life into both. The problem with this idyllic picture of the life is it omits a very key aspect of the author’s existence, selling and promoting your work.

If you’re an author or aspiring author, you know the deal with selling your work. To put it gently, it can be a nightmare. There are probably a thousand blogs, magazine articles, columns, and podcasts offering advice on how to successfully sell your work and I’m absolutely certain I can’t add much to the dialog that hasn’t already been said. It’s all about finding the right place for the right piece at the right time. Though that sounds like a simplification, especially after you’ve had a few disheartening rejections, it’s the unfortunate truth. Sure, you should strive to improve your skills, attend seminars and go to writer’s groups, and find a beta-reader who will give you constructive criticism but in the end its about persistence and research.

The more interesting and difficult subject, at least with novels, comes when it’s time to market your work. If like me you grew up in the Midwest, the thought of self promotion probably carries a less than flattering connotation. You may have the idea that you shouldn’t talk about your accomplishments too much, that it’s conceited or self-important to go around telling everyone “hey, I’ve published a novel!” That’s a feeling that, to some extent, you’re going to have to manage. While major publishers promote their authors, setting up events, running ads, and assisting in getting the word about a new book out to the reading public, small and medium size publishing houses don’t have the funds or personnel to engage in this sort of promotional activity. In short, you’re on your own, my friend.

What to do? There are options. Before your novel is released, I recommend seeking sights that will do pre-release reviews. Publications like The Bloomsbury Review do pre-release reviews of fiction. I suggest doing a web search for similar publications, but be sure to identify ones that accept books that haven’t been released.

Once your novel has been released you have other options available. I recommend approaching local newspapers and local publications. Also, check with local booksellers and independent bookstores to see if they have newsletters and might be interested in reviewing a local author. If your book is being sold on Amazon.com, I recommend reaching out to some of the site’s top reviewers (Amazon even has an article on how to approach potential reviewers). Also, don’t forget to reach out to bloggers, some might be willing to give your book a review.

With reviews, though, you must be prepared to roll with what you get. Certainly, you should address any inappropriate reviews that appear on bookseller sites but be aware that readers have opinions and they are entitled to say what they feel.

Beyond reviews, I recommend you reach out to writer’s groups for your genre as well as local writer’s groups. Just like any other business, it’s important to make contacts. If you write science fiction, look into the SFWA or if, like me, you write thrillers, look into the ITW (a great organization where it’s also free to become a member). Also, look into reading groups and anywhere else you can get your title in front of the reading public. Good word of mouth is your best friend.

My final recommendation comes in the form of a reminder that very few authors have a best seller on their first go. The hard work of promotion isn’t really what you sign up for as an author but it is the reality when you’re starting out. When you hit it big and land a contract with a major publishing house, you’ll have a staff promoting your work. But, I hate to say even then the work won’t end at seeing your book in a bookstore!

Autumn

Dear Reader,

Ah autumn. Autumn is one of my favorite seasons. The heat of summer subsides, the windows are open again, and cool breezes invade the bedroom late into the night. It’s a season of layers and Sunday afternoons, of smoke and fleeing leaves, of purple sunsets and the trembling thought of frosts to come. I love autumn.


Fall is the summing up, the clearing away, the stowing of the freewheeling dreams and aspirations of summer in preparation for anticipated snows. Nobody starts fall with resolutions, nobody says “With the turning of the leaves I’m going to…” followed by a grand statement of renewed purpose or desire. It’s a time of potato soup and warm bread, a natural outgrowth of our agrarian past when that which couldn’t be preserved would be eaten and the heard thinned to make ready for the hard, long cold to come.

I remember clearing out my parents’ garden after the first frost, uprooting the tomato vines and raking the stalks into a heap with dry leaves from the sugar maple that grew in our back yard. Once the heap had been built, a crumpled page of newspaper would be buried in its heart and then the whole thing would be set alight. Clouds of smoke would rise toward the pale blue sky, drifting lazily over the suburbs and heading southward in pursuit of the summer on whose work the fire fed.

Ode to the West Wind
by Percy Bysshe Shelley


 O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,


 Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

 The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave,until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

 Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

 Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

Seven Days to Go

Dear Readers,
In one week, Time of Death will ship to book stores and become available for order online. Is it possible to get stage fright in anticipation of the release of a book?

I’m not sure I’d call the nervous energy I feel, fright. It’s an energy, anticipation and curiosity about what’s to come. I can tell you that I’ve channeled that energy into working on a new novel featuring Melody Rush. I’ll keep you updated on its progress!

Indiana State Fair Memories

Dear Reader,

In 1851 the Indiana General Assembly created a State Fair as “An act to encourage agriculture”, the sixth state to hold an official agricultural fair. Since that date, through times of joy and sorrow, there have been 155 Indiana State Fairs, three wars (Civil War, Spanish-American War, and WW II) intervening to cancel fairs. The fair has roved the state since its creation, initially being held in Military Park (downtown Indianapolis) and visiting, Lafayette, Madison, New Albany, Indianapolis (Camp Morton), Fort Wayne, Terre Haute before finding a permanent home in 1892.

In all this time the Indiana State Fair has remained relatively true to its roots – it is an agricultural festival, a celebration of the people and products that essentially are Indiana. The cattle might no longer arrive via the Monon and fairgoers might not travel to the fair primarily via the Nickleplate or interurban but the heart has remained true. I remember this every time I walk among the prairie style pavilions, smelling the elephant ears, funnel cake, and popcorn and listening to the discord of music combining with distant sounds of the midway.

I think that’s part of the reason I like going to the fair. Yes, I like seeing the animals and I won’t pass up the opportunity to try the latest, deep fried abomination the vendors are hawking but at its root my love of the fair is a love of the past. I like to think about what might have happened there on any particular evening in any particular year. What threads of life intertwined in front of the Coliseum in 1924 with the unraveling of the Teapot Dome Scandal? What about on the midway in 1939 with World War II waiting in the wings and the Great Depression choking the life out of the economy? What about the thousands of other lost moments scattered around the fairgrounds?

I thought about those moments while sitting on a bench across from the makeshift memorial to the victims of the Saturday, August 13 stage collapse. The fairgrounds are no stranger to tragedy; on October 13, 1963 an explosion in the Coliseum killed 74. That loss, like the recent losses, will be incorporated into the grounds; the memories of the departed will mingle with the summer air, remaining as long as memory allows.

So there is a tinge of sadness mingled with music and laughter. Wistfulness seems to be a good part of nostalgia. Pain can color memory. Hopefully those impacted by this latest disaster, once the tears have subsided, can reach back beyond their pain and remember a summer day when they might have walked the midway, laughed, and basked in the humid Indiana heat. If they can capture that moment, jar it like a firefly, then they’ll have its light for the rest of their lives.