Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room

As I'm sure you're all aware, the LEGO Harry Potter game was recently released.

Wait, you don't follow LEGO videogame releases as closely as I do? Well, ok. Here's a look:

AWESOME, right?

Right. So my fiance and I grabbed up a copy for the Xbox 360 the other day, and we've been dedicating our late evenings this week to some serious witchcraft and wizardry. (You know, I wasn't really allowed to play video games as a kid, and I don't consider myself good at them by any means, nor do I like to play the games with lots of guts or zombies or whatever, but the LEGO games are pretty awesome, and I also enjoy the puzzle-y ones, like Braid and Portal. I guess there is just no nerd pastime I can't get behind!)

But this post isn't about LEGO Harry Potter, not really. Nor is it about my inability to stop myself from speaking the spells out loud as my LEGO character casts them. "Wingardium Levio-SA!" This post is about the dual purposes an author faces when writing series novels.

Besides the video game, I've also had the opportunity to enjoy the audiobook of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. (Thanks, Mom!) It astounds me how different the experience of listening to a book is from reading that same book, and I've been completely delighted at rediscovering the story -- and specifically the funny lines -- due to Jim Dale's brilliant readings.

And then, of course, we own all six movies so far, so there's that form of Potter-digestion as well.

All this has gotten me thinking about the various audiences who must be satisfied by each new form. As an avid fan of the books, I watch the movies knowing how they'll end. I get a huge amount of enjoyment from watching it all unfold on screen, but I get maybe more enjoyment from seeing specific props or characters or moments -- the realization of a vibrant, important element of the book, right there in front of me in the movie. Or, as I mentioned above with the audiobooks, Jim Dale's satisfying reading of one of my favorite lines, or the unique voice he brings to a small but important character.

But if I hadn't read the books, if I didn't have a knowledge of the world and the characters and the text, I would watch the movie for plot. The individual moments that give a book-reading-movie-watcher joy would not signify the same thing for a viewer not already conversant in the context. So the movie has two purposes: to satisfy and appease book-reading-movie-watchers, and to introduce and explicate the story in a way that inspires the same kind of appreciation in a non-book-reading-movie-watcher.

So then I got to thinking about series. Because if you're writing a series with characters who change and grow book-to-book, who don't just reset Simpsons-style to their baseline at the start of each new book, then you need to be aware of readers who may start in the middle, or skip books, or read the series out of order. How can you create emotional resonance for a reader who hasn't been with the character every step of the way? Without, you know, having a chapter dedicated to "Here is who these people are and what they've been through and why you should totally care about everything that's happening!"

That kind of chapter never works. Well, it never works for me. I am a highly emotional person (I find myself crying just a movie previews these days. Stop making me cry, Zach Efron!!!), and I'm susceptible to subtle emotional suggestion, but an info-dump catchup version of a series's previous titles gets on my nerves. Because in life there's no catchup chapter. If a character goes through an intense series of events (like solving a murder or being targeted by a killer or etc etc etc), that character's life will have changed. Those events will color the way that character behaves and thinks -- a smell could trigger a memory, or a dark alley might inspire a second thought in the fifth book when in the third the character would have walked down it unperturbed.

Keep in mind that your new readers can catch up without a summary, and though their emotional engagement with the character will necessarily be less than that of your loyal series reader, each book in your series should have enough emotional intensity to satisfy regardless of what came before.

For a wonderful example of a series arc being resonant as a whole and as each piece, check out John Galligan's Knot series: The Nail Knot, The Blood Knot, The Clinch Knot, and coming in March, The Wind Knot.

p.s. Today will mark a page-view milestone here at Dead Guy, and we want to say thank you so, so much to all our wonderful readers and comment-leavers. And a special thanks to Jeffrey Cohen, who got us all together to post here.

Crossing the lines

A fat envelope arrived in the mail a few days ago – even fatter than the small pile of moderately plump envelopes containing submissions which arrive on a regular basis.

 

This one contained a submission too – but it wasn’t the usual synopsis-plus-three-chapters, or even synopsis-plus-complete-novel.

 

It was a movie script.

 

I scanned the covering letter to find out which Hollywood studio had snapped it up, and when the movie starring George Clooney was due for release, but, well, I suppose I’m just not that lucky. The author clearly knew what he was doing; the script was laid out properly, and had big action scenes, car chase with streetlights making silvery trails on wet roads, great showdown involving a rooftop, a suitcase full of money and a very large gun. But no one had snapped it up; he thought it would have more chance if it came out as a novel first, and wondered if I knew anyone who could turn the script into bestselling fiction.

 

I returned it with a polite note suggesting he find out exactly what it is that publishers do. But I guess we can all dream.

 

It did get me thinking, though, about why some crime novels are snapped up for TV and film, others get optioned several times but never go into production, and yet others don’t attract any attention at all.

 

I get the impression that movies are mainly about bestsellers, but TV is a different matter. It’s not unusual for a little-known author to make it on to the small screen. The most successful and long-running examples I can think of here in the UK are Morse and Midsomer Murders. Colin Dexter is much-feted and a keynote speaker at conventions these days, but when the lovely and lamented John Thaw first breathed life into Inspector Morse back in the 1980s, only aficionados were aware that the books came first. And Midsomer Murders took off and developed a life of its own, several counties and a whole sub-genre away from Caroline Graham’s original concept.

 

The question everyone asks, of course, is which actor do you see playing your character?

 

I got involved in a discussion with a couple of crime writers at a festival a few weeks ago. One has a page on his website inviting readers to suggest actors to play his characters. The list is getting quite long, and includes George Clooney, Tom Cruise and ‘that guy who played the baddie in, you know, the one about the undercover cop and the kidnapping.’ I don’t think Clooney or Cruise do a lot of British telly work, but the series has been optioned a few times so who knows, maybe the third guy may get a look in at some point.

 

The other author was one of our own: Maureen Carter. She keeps getting reviews which ask when the adaptation is going to hit the screen, and Bev Morriss would be certainly the making of a bright young actress with Guinness-coloured hair and plenty of attitude, if only someone had the vision. Producers please note… OK, so I’m heavily partisan on the subject. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

 

Two of my favourite crime writers are about to hit the small-screen big-time, and they both feel they’ve scooped the jackpot with the actors they’ve attracted. Mark Billingham’s Tom Thorne will be played by David Morrissey, who was Mark’s first choice back in the days when TV was just a dream for him. And the prodigiously talented Brenda Blethyn will be Ann Cleeves’s Vera Stanhope. Looks like I’ll be enjoying a few cosy nights in this autumn.

 

None of which answers my original question: why do some books make it on to TV and not others? Answers on a postcard please… Or a comment will do just fine.

Don’t It Make My Blue Eyes Red

by Barbara Poelle

In the last nine hours I have been on a boat, a plane and a funicular, and so a lot of me wants to barf right now. Okay, not so much from the funicular, but you get the idea.

Why don’t I remember how awful red eyes are? Bluurg.

Anyway, Husband and I were on vacation with some dear family friends- we’ll call the Hersheys. We always have a blast with them and 4^th of July weekend was no exception- especially as we got to be in a parade! I love a paraaaade! We putt-putt-putted down main street, throwing handfuls of Hershey Kisses to the masses, and shouting “Happy Birthday, America!” (After about a half mile at .07 miles an hour, I ran out of steam just repeating that, so I began yelling out things like “sloppy joes”  “the Brooklyn Bridge” and “childhood obesity”-  all things you must agree that are inherently American. )

Husband and I did some wickedly grueling hiking and also enjoyed a frothy delight known as a “buffalo milk”, which is every bit as fabulous as it sounds, as it boasts a whoooole lotta rum. My total delight in consuming buffalo milk daily was met only by my total horror when I found out that each one comes in at around TWELVE HUNDRED CALORIES. But thank goodness calories don’t count when you’re on vacation.

I behaved myself as best I could, what with all the rumming and funicularing, and was only admonished for working on vacation twice. And OMG! Who here has read the latest Reacher novel from Lee Child? Was your mind not BLOWN!?!? Don’t say anything about it here as I would never want to ruin the read for the other kids, but sheeesh- that man is the master.

Speaking of which- I need to make this short and sweet and go get my game face on as this week NYC will be hosting ThrillerFest- cumulating with the ceremony that will hopefully see Jamie Freveletti’s RUNNING FROM THE DEVIL crowned best debut thriller. (fingers crossed!) I am doing a panel with the ever-delightful Sophie Littlefield on Wednesday and Agentfest on Thursday so if you are in the city for the conference, make sure to give a little wave.

Ooo, just think! My next brilliant thriller author may have been on the same flight as Husband and I this morning! If so, uh, that belligerent woman shaking her plastic cup at the flight attendant and bellowing, “I don’t KNOOOOW what’s IN IT! Just maaaaaake me a buffalo milk” was not me.

 

Cohen's Not-So-Famous Quotations

Jeff Cohen

"We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them." --Evelyn Waugh.

"He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh." --The Koran

"A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to." --Granville Hicks

"There is only one success--to be able to spend your life in your own way."  --Christopher Morley

"The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn't." --Joseph L. Mankiewicz

"Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything."--Charles Kuralt

"One day the people of the world will want peace so much that the governments are going to have to get out of their way and let them have it."--Dwight D. Eisenhower

"A conservative is a person who does not think anything should be done for the first time."--Frank Vanderlip

"In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular."--Kathleen Norris

"The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable."--Paul Broca

"Never mistake motion for action."--Ernest Hemingway

"Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?"--Stanislaw Lem

"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."--Sacha Guitry

"When the writer becomes the center of his attention, he becomes a nudnik. And a nudnik who believes he's profound is even worse than just a plain nudnik."--Isaac Bashevis Singer

"'The freedom of any society varies proportionately with the volume of its laughter."--Zero Mostel

"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing."--Oliver Wendell Holmes

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do."--Bob Dylan

"If criticism had any real power to harm, the skunk would be extinct by now."--Fred Allen

"Boredom is rage spread thin."--Paul Tillich

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying."--Woody Allen

"Television--a medium, so called because it is neither rare nor well done."--Ernie Kovacs

"If I was two-faced, would I be using this one?"--Abraham Lincoln
 

"Don't listen to those who say, 'It's not done that way.'... Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor, and it would surely be rubbed out by today."--Neil Simon

"Style is self-plaigirism."--Alfred Hitchcock

"The difference between reality and unreality is that reality has so little to recommend it."--Allan Sherman

"My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably."--George Bernard Shaw

"I think, therefore Descartes exists."--Saul Steinberg

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."--Jeannette Rankin

"A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down."--Edna St. Vincent Millay

"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say."--Marshall McLuhan

"I quote others only the better to express myself."--Michel de Montaigne

"Whatever it is, I'm against it."--Groucho Marx

LP-to-Digital Conversion Project Update: This week began with a task I'd been dreading--the two-disc set of the Star Wars soundtrack by John Williams. As with most film soundtracks, this sounds like more fun that it actually is, and in this case once again, it was proven that the only music with the power to surprise after all these years is the whacked-out jazz number played in the Cantina by an all-alien band. Fun stuff. The rest? Just exactly what you remember, for two discs.

Later, things got more interesting. A strange coincidence of the alphabet determined that Star Wars would be followed by Stealers Wheel, the duo of Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan (along with various side musicians) best remembered for "Stuck In The Middle (With You)," lovingly resurrected by Quentin Tarantino as the perfect music by which to cut a man's ear off in "Reservoir Dogs." Stealers Wheel had itself some catchy little hits (notably the aforementioned "Stuck..." and "Star"), and paved the way for Rafferty's solo career, during which he would periodically dust off one of the old standbys from his days with Egan and speed it up, slow it down or change the key. Interesting, but hardly rousing. Stick with the greatest hits album, if you can find it. Shockingly, it's called "Stuck In the Middle (With You)."

A quick side trip into comedy followed, with two albums by David Steinberg, an aggressively intelligent comedian who nonetheless has made a tidy living for himself directing television sitcoms. Steinberg made references to great philosophers, foreign filmmakers and the Old Testament, but wasn't above the occasional sex joke. Not a great ad-libber, his delivery relied on his reciting each line exactly as he'd rehearsed it, but more often than not, it worked. Good luck finding anything but "Booga Booga" still in print.

And if that weren't weird enough, the next stop was with Cat Stevens, (born Steven Giorgiou, later Yusuf Islam), who went from the top of the pop charts to the top of the no-fly list in only a couple of decades. Stevens, who had a lot of interesting hits in the folk/rock area in the Seventies, converted to Islam, dropped out of the music business, and even after expressing shock and sorrow at the 9/11 attacks, was denied entry into the United States in 2004 when on his way to meet with the suspected terrorist Dolly Parton (?). The list was subsequently reviewed and he was allowed into America in 2006, although one assumes Dolly had moved on to something else by then. Musically, he's a sort of one-note songwriter who does manage to grab the attention, a singer with an unusual scratchy voice that somehow works, and a lyricist who, well, probably should have collaborated with someone else. Stick with the Greatest Hits.  

The week ended just starting in on the career of James Taylor, which might take a while. But since much of Mr. Taylor's work already exists in my collection on CD, we might breeze through a little quicker than one might suspect. Stay tuned.

There's light at the end of the tunnel, kids--only 36 albums remain!

One last quote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident--that all men are created equal."--Thomas Jefferson. Seemed appropriate, although I'd amend that to "all people." Even Jefferson can benefit from a good editor.

Hell's Writing Room?

I don’t have a TV or any desire to make watching one a regular habit, so I don’t usually catch even the high buzz shows like Hell’s Kitchen. But a couple of local chefs are on it this season, which made me a bit curious about the show itself and how they’d cope, sending me off looking for the online stream to check it out. As the saying goes, it always helps to have a personal interest.

It was, as expected, colorful and dramatic and loud and profane and ugly (all the backstabbing and whining) and beautiful (the food!!! although in between screaming sessions, a soft voiced Ramsay doesn’t make bad eye candy either). But mostly, it was about excellence and how you get the brilliance of a perfect diamond through unbelievably intense pressure followed by refusal to settle for anything but the best out of the results. So many of the failures had to do with sloppiness and settling and inability to deal with pressure once it got past a certain point or if it came from too many directions at once. Ramsay's methods certainly aren't the only ones that can work, but the bottom line is that they do work, with spectacular results, and they're not boring.

Which got me thinking about some of the weaker books that are getting published and some of the better authors who have stopped being published, and the possibilities in a Hell’s Kitchen approach to creating some rational balance there. Think about it: to get a cozy manuscript even considered, rather than having a marketable hobby / shoppe hook, you have to have enough writing chops to win a competition that involves dashing out a short story using fixed ingredients and a time limit. Half baked characters? Boring presentation and bland story? Stale dialogue? An unbalanced seasoning of violence or romance? Thanks for trying, but this point goes to the blue team.

Think your hero is a tough guy and can take all sorts of punishment and come out of it with a smirk, a handkerchief staunching the bullet wound and a wiseass quip on his lips? Try getting him there with the editorial equivalent of Chef Ramsay kicking over your computer at every clichéd metaphor, taking a lighter to your thumb drive whenever the prose starts to drag, using a knife instead of a comma to break up run on sentences. Then try pulling your writing group together into a team that can work together to create the character and backstory that will take down someone else's tough guy. Man, Dash Hammett never had to get it done this way.

And of course there would be the special challenges, like the writing equivalent of Hell's Kitchen having a fine dining restaurant switch to serving up burgers and fries to the USC school band, such as forcing your gritty noir writer to satisfy picky and delicate Aunt Dimity-level cozy tastes if he wants to advance.

We haven’t even gotten into the punishments for losing. Having the team of gritty noir realism writers whose pages weren't dark enough to hide the reality about their writing spend a day writing Hello Kitty ad copy? Force the no onstage gore or violence cozy team, whose manuscript induced a response similar to the one A. A. Milne elicited from Dorothy Parker, to write a scenario with some fresh ideas about Freddie Kreuger showing people what cutting edge can mean? Set the Mickey Spillane wannabes who turned out to be all wannabe and too little Spillane to entertaining everyone else with Karaoke in drag, starting with strictly falsetto versions of “I Am Woman” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”?

I'm starting to like this idea the more I think about it, and that's before we even get to finding the best looking name writer available to fill the Ramsay role. Any volunteers?

The woman you don't want to sit next to on a train . . .

Sharon Wheeler

Coooo-eeeeee! *Sidles in and has a look around*. Ooh, I might have guessed that standing in for a bookseller would be very civilised – comfy chairs to slob out on, and books everywhere . . . I could get used to this.

So how have you all been since I last saw you? Me, I've had a rollercoaster few months. My mum died in February, so I'm still dealing with the aftermath. I finished my playwriting course and got a good grade, so I'm happy with that and currently trying to shape a full-length play out of the extract I submitted for assessment. My PhD pootles along and I'm hoping to get to London over the summer to see lots of plays. And the deadline for my journalism book is the end of September . . . Ahem, yes, moving swiftly on . . .

It's that time of the year again when I criss-cross the UK by train and when I spend longer choosing the books to take with me that I do selecting smart(ish) clothes to wear to meetings!

As per usual at this time of year, I had new offerings from Peter Robinson, Mark Billingham and Peter James to accompany me on my way. I also took a handful of new faces along. David Barrie's rather classy Night-Scented, set in Paris, is well worth tracking down if you can from a small UK indie publisher. One of the others, though, which will remain nameless until I decide how much of a hatchet job to do in the review (suffice it to say it's a cosy set in the Cotswolds), was very lucky not be heaved out of a train window somewhere around Nuneaton. Damn good job some of these trains are sealed units with air conditioning and non-opening windows these days! So I contented myself with imagining the pleasing smack the book would make as it connected with the head of the 'too cool to care' wanker opposite, who blathered loudly into his mobile phone all the way from Birmingham to Leicester.

The book brought to mind that old chestnut of murdering your darlings. The moment a writer falls in love with their creation, that's when I bunk for the door. Oh, OK, PD James put Adam Dalgliesh on a pedestal aeons back, but she can write – and she makes me care about him.

Our cosy writer, though, was so besotted with her lead character, a woman of a certain age who was supposed, I think, to be the sort we all want as a friend, but was in fact a tactless and simpering bore who any sane person would run a mile to avoid. Sadly said writer didn't take the murdering your darlings maxim to heart and bump her off for good. I was attracting some strange looks from fellow passengers as I chuntered under my breath at the character's breathtaking stupidity. At least it guaranteed no one sat next to me!

I then came home and started on the new Susan Hill – and wondered if anyone would notice if I recycled my review of her previous book, with just the title changed. I find it increasingly difficult to care very much about Simon Serrailler and his sister Cat, particularly when the whole thing appears to be based around how saintly they both are and with Hill sighing loudly about how vulgar these low church sorts are and how Fings Ain't Wot They Used To Be.

I'm endlessly fascinated by how different readers interpret characters differently. I wonder sometimes if I'm just being contrary – OK, so I can hear my friend Linda saying yes, but then she is still looking smug at the fact she can obey instructions and count bricks in a wall better than I can… The more perfect and saintly a character is, the less likely I am to believe in them. In fact, it reminded me just why one of the most compelling characters in crime fiction is Patricia Highsmith's murderous Ripley . . . And he's hardly on the side of the angels.

PS: For those of you who adored the Stieg Larsson trilogy, take a look at The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut in the New Yorker. Spot-on!

In Defense of Libraries - a Chicagoan's take

By Dana Kaye

 

Logged on yesterday to read Alison’s blog post, and today I feel compelled to follow up. I’m sorry to say that while she was shocked and outraged, my response was, “typical Chicago”. As much as I love my fair city, I’m also a Chicago-lifer where I know Daley is king, the government is corrupt, and the words “budget cuts” are announced on the news at least once a day. Is it surprising that they want to cut funding? Absolutely not. Am I shocked that the libraries are the target? Not at all. Librarians can’t line anyone’s pockets, why should they get funding? And although it’s horrible that our local news station aired such a misinformed and ignorant post, it’s far from surprising.

 

What surprises me is that the concept of supply and demand is being completely ignored here. In only an hour, the news report stated over 300 people walked through the doors. Library use is increasing, and yet, the budget is decreasing? If the Harold Washington library was completely empty and there was a ton of excess staff, fine, cut the budget. But people are using this service more than ever and your reaction is to cut?

 

Since this is a problem plaguing much of our nation’s cities, here are a few things you can do to help:

· Write your alderman or city representative. Tell them the importance of libraries.

· Contact your local news station. They may be aware of the prospective budget cuts, but they don’t know how the community feels. Let them know.

· Donate. Most local libraries have fundraisers and ask for donations. Just as you would donate to NPR or PBS, give a little to keep libraries in your community.

· Talk to the librarians. Find out what they need more and help them get it. Whether it’s volunteering once a week or donating books for their used book sales, every little bit helps.

 

Meanwhile, I’m going to begin drafting my letter to the producer of Fox Chicago and find out why such an ignorant, horrible report made it on air. I suggest you do the same.

 

In Defense of Libraries

by Alison Janssen

OH MY GOD FOX NEWS ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!*

You guys, this is probably going to be a completely reactionary post, so consider yourself warned.

So I just watched this video (via Galleycat) and got Hulk-smash-type angry.

Listen, I don't pretend to be an expert (or even a dabbler) in economics. And budgets? Ha! When I was growing up, my mom had my sisters and me keep a series of labeled jars and coffee cans into which we had to split up our allowance money. Something like 20% for Long Term Savings, 30% for Short Term Savings, 40% for Living Expenses, and 10% for Offerings. I think that's right, but I feel like I forgot one of the jars. Anyway, we got paid as many dollars as we were years old, and then we had this clickety-clackety old Mickey-Mouse-wearing-a-graduation-cap calculator to figure out how much money went into each jar. It was a painstaking process, and one that involved my stepdad having a huge supply of change for us, since we couldn't just get fourteen dollar bills and be done with it. We kept the jars in the upstairs room that used to be an office but got turned into my little sister Rachel's room, on a shelf with the change buckets and the calculator. I will say, the Offerings jar was a cool idea and I still remember deciding which charity to donate to which month, and I'm happy and proud that my mom taught us to give like that. But the budgeting lesson? Lost, when we discovered that my sister Rachel had been dipping in and out of everyone's jars for her own purposes.

So OBVIOUSLY I can be forgiven for not being good at budgets and savings. OBVIOUSLY, RACHEL.

But FOX News, you guys are a bunch of weenies for airing that story. The answer to the Illinois state (or any state's) budget crisis is not to single out a service/program/what-have-you, scare up a bunch of percentages of how much it costs to keep that service/program/what-have-you running, and then camp out with a secret camera to see if people are using that much money's worth of service/program/what-have-you!

And really, FOX News, you're going to say that since the majority of the people you observed spied on in the library were using the internet, then ... well I'm not clear what you conclusion is here. It somehow turns into "Are LI-braries NECESSARY!?" but what I think you're implying is "Are BOOKS almost EXTINCT?! Does ANYONE even READ anymore?!"

Yes, FOX News. I do. And so do all of my friends.

And sometimes we get our books at the library.

Other times, we go to the library to look things up on the internet.

I get that there are limited resources and lots of jars to fill. I get that there's not enough to go around. But I take huge, massive, awesome-in-its-enormity issue with the suggestion that it might be a solution to cut funding to public libraries.

I'm bolding this next part because I'm afraid if I put it in all-caps it'll be hard to read, but know that it feels all-caps in my heart:

Education is vitally important. Schools need funding. But education doesn't -- shouldn't -- stop when you graduate. Education is a lifelong pursuit, and we as a nation have a responsibility to ensure that our populous has access to free information, no matter the age (or income or etc, etc, etc) of the individual.

Nowhere but at a public library can a person walk in off the street, consult a card catalog or librarian, and begin to learn about any topic of their choosing. Public libraries are amazing, vast, sacred places. Hands OFF.

And stop f*#@ing hiding in libraries with spy cameras! It is not up to you, or to ANYONE, to judge how an individual uses the resources available at a public library. If I want to look up ancient looming methods, as (apparently) useless as that information may be, it is up to me to decide to learn it.

We trust our librarians to curate helpful, enriching, culturally significant, entertaining, varied collections, and they're also there to aid us in searches that go beyond the books on library grounds. It's a vital public service, and I can't stand anyone suggesting otherwise.

* Well Fox News, I was hurting for a blog post topic, so, I guess, thanks for that? Weenies.

Hearts and heads

Earlier this week an e-mail popped into my in-box from a student on a Masters course in publishing. A questionnaire was attached; she was researching editors’ attitudes and motivations, and how much we’re influenced by commercial considerations when we commission a book. Or, to what extent we think with our hearts, and how much with our heads.

 

She caught me at the right moment: partly because things are quiet around here as we move towards the end of 2010’s list, and partly because I was starting to think along those lines anyway as I look towards 2011’s. In fact, she asked some questions which I have to ask myself when I’m planning for a new year. So, since that’s where I’m at at the moment, here are my answers to some of those questions – though not entirely the ones I gave the student.

 

What do you feel has the most influence on your decision to commission a book?

That one’s easy – I have to fall in love with it. Crème de la Crime doesn’t publish many titles in a year, so I have to believe totally in the ones I take on. I can only feel enthusiastic about a book that makes my skin prickle with excitement. I suspect the same goes for any editor whose job includes commissioning new work.

 

Would you commission a book by an author whose previously published title had not reached a high sales figure?

That’s a tricky one, especially over the past couple of years. The short answer is probably, if I believed strongly in the author.

With very few exceptions, first-time authors don’t hit the bestsellers with their debuts. With that in mind, if the sales figures after a few months make it plain that I got it very wrong indeed, the answer is no, I wouldn’t commission a follow-up – but in my defence that’s only happened once in six years. And sometimes there are other reasons for not following up a debut.

 

In a post-recession climate, is the commissioning editor under increased pressure to solicit manuscripts on their profitability alone?

The answer I gave to this one was not in my case; and in larger publishing houses, where there is rarely one commissioning editor with control over all titles that are taken on, editors fight a constant battle against that pressure whatever the economic climate.

But here in the real world, how on earth is an editor meant to make that profitability judgement? Even products of that great cash cow the celebrity biog have been known to bomb. And who would ever have guessed that a much-rejected little book about wizards (which 20 years ago were a big no-no in children’s fiction) would kick-start the biggest phenomenon in publishing history?

In the end whether a book gets published is all down to someone’s gut feeling.

Then there was a quote from some pundit or other, about the need for the profitability factor to pervade every function of a publishing house all the time if a spiral downturn is to be avoided. Well, duh! Isn’t that a basic principle of running a business? The ones that don’t watch the pennies don’t last long.

 

The next question was an interesting one:

In your decision to commission a book, which of these factors are most important?

The book’s literary merit            

How the book contributes to your list

How the book fits into the current market

The potential sales of the book            

The author’s notoriety                          

For literary merit I’d substitute brilliant example of the genre, and for potential sales I’d prefer proactive author prepared to pull his/her weight with promotion, but the principle holds.

For the questionnaire I did list them in an approximate order of importance, but with the exception of the last one (badly chosen word – celebrity would be better, and in any case it doesn’t cut it at all for us unless the book’s brilliant), I’d have to give them all pretty well equal weight.  

 

Taken overall, this was one of the more sensible and businesslike questionnaires I’ve been asked to complete. They come up now and again. It’s good to know the students are being encouraged to look beyond the lecture theatre and seminar room and find out how things work in the real world. And it helped me focus my thoughts.

This is Dedicated to the One- Okay, the Seven- I love.

By Barbara Poelle

You swipe a hand over the mirror to clear the condensation and run a hand over your face. You are a tough yet attractive detective creased with the kind of wrinkles that give you character definition rather than age description. Pulling on a pair of familiar trousers you realize you have to inhale a bit before looping the button through the eyehole. You may not be able to run a mile in under 6 minutes anymore, but that layer of thickness around your waist somehow adds to your allure. And let’s be honest. You can’t live on seltzer water and celery sticks unless you’re trying to book Hollywood talkies rather than perps.  

The car smells like burnt coffee. Unopened mail slides across the backseat as you pull out of the drive. You beep once to the love of your life, who raises a coffee cup in salute through the kitchen window as you shift and accelerate towards the end of the block.

This morning you have a rookie scuff shoe riding with you. A newbie. Despite being told the rook’s name once in the office and again when strapping into the car, you can’t remember it.   

“Newb” seems to serve both of you just fine.

Newb seems nervous, but it’s laced with a focus and a vibration. Like the kind of energy Gordie Howe would radiate. You remind Newb that today is a day for watching and listening.

The first call seems straight forward enough; the blues have already been to the scene, looks like a nondescript domestic abuse taken to the next level.

The house, squat and drooping.  The victim, still.  The husband, MIA.  

Newb is the only one having an original experience today.

You remind Newb to watch and listen.

There is the squawk and static of police radios. There are too many people in a small room. There is blood. You step to the center of the room, and confer with the first officer on site. Out of the corner of your eye you can see Newb looking at the entertainment unit.  Newb should watch and listen. Newb has been told this, but no one can control Newb but Newb. You turn back to the cop, Grady. You have been on scene with Grady before.

Without warning, Newb crouches against the entertainment unit and pushes. A man in a blood stained Old Milwaukee t-shirt and ripped sweatpants explodes out of an impossibly small hiding space behind it. He is wild eyed, and cornered. He is clearly on something.  There is maybe a millisecond where you all stand gaping at each other. Until you see the gun.

You are able to cross the small room faster than the husband can get the gun up, but not fast enough to take it away. You launch yourself in front of Newb as an explosion rocks the room and you are aware of the wetness before the pain.

The husband is down. There are a lot of men’s voices raised in only the way men’s voices can be raised in a small room where something animal and base has happened. Someone is rolling you over. It’s Newb.

You close your eyes.

Newb was only supposed to watch and listen today.

And that, my friends, is EXACTLY what it’s like when you read a brand new debut novel submission in its entirety and write a comprehensive, constructive pass letter citing both subjective opinions and industry tides, and wish the author the best of luck on their journey, and then receive something nasty, aggressive and even profanity-laced in response.  

Newb? Today? You just Watch and Listen.

***This post is dedicated to my lovely, amazing colleague, The Beantown Baddy. Just hit delete and keep on trucking sister!