Great Books, Part II

I'm going to riff on Joe Moore's existential blog from yesterday (and I'm usually the beach-bum philosopher of the group) and go concrete on y'all.

Name me the greatest book you ever read. The book that made you want to write. That made you dream. That made you weep. That made you scream. That made you soar. Ah, back to the beach-bum philosopher.

I'll start the game with my favorite book, Far Tortuga, by the great author Peter Matthiessen.

Known more as a naturalist and a non-fiction writer, Matthiessen's fiction is top notch. And Far Tortuga is my favorite of his - and that's a tough choice for me. It's a very difficult book to read style-wise, but if you can get into the rhythm and you love the sea as much as I do, this book will reward you with a singular reading experience. But I say that having recommended the book to several people and they hated it. Which leads me to the extra credit portion of the game.

Extra points if you love the book and everyone else hates it. Now that's a great book, eh Joe?

What Makes A Great Book?

by Joe Moore
How often have we heard someone say, "I don't understand why my book is being rejected while so many bad books are published?" Here's my spin: there's no such thing as a bad book. The reason I feel that way is I believe that all books are considered good or even great by someone.

No publisher will intentionally release a "bad" book. Doing so would be a stupid business plan. Their goal is to find the best written manuscript, give it the most professional editing possible, promote it within budget limitations, and work closely with the author to raise the awareness of the book in the marketplace. But no publisher has a plan that is immune to failure. Not all books appeal to enough readers to make back the original investment. The trash pile is full of great books that did not make it into the hands of enough readers. And we have all come across books that we personally didn't like or thought were "bad". That is individual preference, not quality of writing. If they are truly written poorly--spelling errors, typos, incorrect punctuation, etc.--that would be the failure of the editor.

I have never met an author who said, "Today I'm going to write a mediocre book." I've never dealt with an agent who was looking for writers with minimal talent. There are no publishers out there willing to risk their money on a sure-fire loser. All books are considered great by someone. That's why they were written, represented, and published. Did enough readers agree? Better yet, did enough readers even get the chance to agree. That's the battle we all face in trying to make money writing.

But even if we write a great book, there's no guarantee that we will ever be published, much less sell enough copies to make any money. Don't get me wrong, we do have to write a great book. But there are more great books that fail than succeed. Greatness is subjective, elusive and ambiguous.

I think all books are great to someone. What do you think makes a great book?

Blogito, Ergo Sum

Why do we blog?

Let me tell you why that question has been rolling around the inside of my skull. Tuesday night I went to the Giants game to see Barry Bonds hit a home run or two. A failed mission. But between innings, the scoreboard had a quiz. Who is first baseman Ryan Klesko's favorite actor: A) Tom Hanks, B) Mel Gibson, or C) Jim Carrey? Then on came a video of Mr. Klesko in which he declared for B. The entire episode was sponsored by Hebrew National Kosher Hot Dogs. That seemed a little incongruous to me, given MG's anti-semitic rant of last year. So I blogged about it over at Dot Dead Diary.

Thanks to some instigation from my godson, defamer.com and deadlinehollywooddaily.com linked to my posting. Holy mackerel! I had more hits on my blog Thursday than I typically get in a month. Thousands.

But so what? Did it mean I was selling more books? I don’t think so, at least there was no effect on my Amazon ranking. So I started to wonder whether my more typical postings did anything for sales. Do I myself buy the books of the bloggers I read every day? Yes, but largely because they are friends whose books I’d buy anyway, not because they blog.

If blogging doesn’t lead to more sales, then why blog? As Dr. Johnson once famously said, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."

Maybe we blog because it’s a way to keep in touch. When I lived in England years ago, I corresponded with friends via airmail. Blogging gives me the same kind of feeling of keeping in touch, but it’s more efficient since one posting goes to everyone I’d write to.

Or maybe we blog because writing is a solitary vocation (except for Joe and Lynn) and this is our way of crying out, “Hey out there. We're alive.” Descartes wrote, “Cogito, ergo sum,” or “I think, therefore I am.” Maybe we’re saying “Blogito, ergo sum” or “I blog, therefore I am.”

I’d like to know why my fellow bloggers blog. And I’d like to hear from readers what they get out of this blog or the individual blogs of any of us Inksters. Finally, if any reader has bought a book – even one – because of the witty prose that shows up here five days a week, please let us know via a comment.

Hearing Words

As a young child, my mother the consummate reader, would gather the four of us around and read Golden Books and Aesop's Fables to us and whatever else we begged her for. There was a particular luxury in not only hearing great stories, but having someone else do the reading.

Recently, both of the public libraries I have accounts with began participating in Overdrive, a nationwide program of free downloadable audio books. Free, that is to patrons, but libraries pay a fee to participate. With my .mp3 player in hand, I began to rediscover the joy of having books read to me. What brings me the biggest thrill is that I am able to listen to wonderful stories while doing ordinary tasks like cleaning, laundry, yard work and commuting to and from work. The only time I can't listen and absorb audiobooks is when I'm reading anything else.

I have to admit I'm becoming "narrator-sensitive," especially if the book is set anywhere in New England. I cringed while listening to Anita Shreve's Light on Snow when the narrator pronounced "Concord" like the plane with an "e" instead of its regional "Concahd."

The other curiosity I've discovered is that listening to the book read to me is a very different experience than holding it in my hands. The words reverberate dead center in my brain and seem to linger longer than when I'm reading in hand.

I'm curious if anyone has had their work produced on audiobook and what their experience has been? Is this a marketing venue worth pursuing? Does the author have any say in the narrator?

- Felicia Donovan

Bookstore Signings - The Good and the Bad

by Deb Baker

Some booksellers go out of their way to make an author feel welcome. They’re the ones who realize we’re traveling on our own buck, and that a good turnout will reap benefits for both of us.

You know you’re in trouble when:

The bookseller forgets you’re coming.
The store doesn’t have any of your books, or
They dig around in the storage room and produce some. This means they haven’t done squat before you walked in.
The posters and bag flyers you sent aren’t anywhere in sight.
There isn’t a table set up or a chair and there aren’t any available. You’ll be standing with your books in your arms for two hours.
They put another author by the door and set you up in the back room with the used stock.
They want to know if you brought all your friends to buy books.
You arrive for a Sunday signing in a downtown bookstore and everything else in town is closed for the day.
The only employee in the store is a college kid who leaves you in charge while he goes out for pizza.


Yup. It’s all happened to me.

On the bright side, many booksellers are excited to meet us, they have our books displayed in the window and around the counter, they’ve sold them for several weeks before we arrived and will continue to promote them after we leave, they appreciate the promo we sent and even added their own touch, they talk you up.

I’ve discovered that the store owners who do events routinely have the best turnouts. And a mystery talk goes over better than a plain old signing.

Here are my favorite bookstores in alphabetical order.

Books and Company – Oconomowoc, WI
Booked For Murder – Madison, WI
Book World – Escanaba, MI
Martha Merrell’s – Waukesha, WI
McLean & Eakin – Petoskey, MI
Novel Ideas – Baileys Harbor, MI
Poisoned Pen – Scottsdale, AZ
Well Read Coyote – Sedona, AZ


Now, of course, I still have plenty of states to visit. So add to my list. Who are your favorites?

No Talking!

by Joe Moore
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed how hard it is to talk after spending so much time in front of a computer writing thousands of words? It seems that the longer I spend writing, the more my ability to speak with others has diminished. When I'm at a social gathering or pretty much any situation where I try to communicate verbally, I tend to open my mouth and stammer or stutter as fragments of thoughts shoot out like shrapnel. Talking with others in real-time doesn't allow me to craft my speak with first drafts, second drafts, rewrites, spell check, and thesaurus comparisons for alternative words. After all, I've spent hundreds of hours in a dark room with my eyes going buggy from the glow of my monitors while I labor over choosing just the right verb, avoiding passive voice, trying to catch myself from falling into the trap of using useless adverbs and flowery adjectives, over-writing, under-writing, starting my thoughts in the wrong place, line editing, plotting, split infinitives, dangling--well, you get the idea. As a writer, talking to others has become hard for me.

I find myself ordering pizza on the Internet from Papa Johns and Dominos so I don't have to talk to the person at the store. I send faxes, emails, text messages, IM, anything to get out of talking to someone. Talking has become painful. It seems that the more I write, the worse I speak. I open my mouth and people give me a pitiful, "I hope he writes better than he talks" stare.

Is this a byproduct of writing novels or is it just me loosing my ability to communicate with my mouth? Maybe I should consider voice recognition software. I wonder if those programs can interpret verbal gibberish? So, is it just me or what?

An Interview with Tess Gerritsen

Tess Gerritsen is one of the headliners who’ll be appearing at the 10th Anniversary Love is Murder on Dark and Stormy Nights Conference in Chicago, Feb. 1 through 3, 2008. To learn more about the conference, go to http://www.loveismurder.net/.

JCS: Tess, you wrote on your blog “…the less impressed I am by the culture of empty celebrity, and the more I value the chance to sit and talk with someone like Robert Edwards (former president of Bowdoin College. I want to know his journey. I want to know what propelled him through life.”

What propelled you through life? You write about being the daughter of immigrants, but you also note that they worried you couldn’t support yourself by writing. You already had a degree in medicine—a degree that would make any parent both proud and confident you wouldn’t starve—so why then did you want to write books?

TG: I always knew I wanted to tell stories, and I knew I was a storyteller by the time I was seven years old. But as for what propelled me through life, I think it was a drive that comes out of being an immigrant's child. I grew up understanding that my position in society was insecure, that I would have to work hard to be accepted. That insecurity seems to be an almost universal characteristic of successful people. We worry that we're not accepted. We worry that we'll starve. We worry that we're not "measuring up". And that's what makes us try so hard. Of course, it just so happens that I'm trying hard at something I really wanted to do anyway, which is tell stories.

JCS: You started writing when you had children. How did you juggle your work and being a mom? Did you ever feel stressed over the choices you made?

TG: Motherhood alone was hugely stressful! But I was blessed by having babies who took very nice long naps, and who went to bed by 7 PM, and that was my signal to start writing. Before then, I'd been working 80 hours a week as a doctor, so I was used to "double" shifts -- which is what I had as a mom. Taking care of the kids by day, writing by night.

JCS: In your blog, you wrote: “Before I became a thriller writer, I wrote eight romantic suspense novels for the huge romance publisher, Harlequin Intrigue.” A lot of successful authors start by writing romances. What did you learn from writing romances and how did that influence your work today?

TG: Romance novels taught me a number of really important principles of storytelling: Get the story launched at a full gallop. Introduce characters who are, if not completely likable, at least people who have a core sense of integrity. Keep the plot complex enough so that there's always a twist coming. Pay attention to your characters' emotional lives, which is exactly what every good romance novel does. Learn to introduce conflict in every chapter. Those principles end up being important to every genre. Finally, of course, I learned a lot about the writing business, from meeting deadlines to evaluating cover designs. Romance writers are the most savvy in the industry, so no wonder many of them go on to become bestselling authors in other genres.

JCS: You’ve written that the most important thing a writer can do is to keep the story moving forward while writing a first draft. And you’ve written about the worries you face when contemplating a second draft. (I call that the “crap” moment. You look at what you wrote and think, “Oh, crap. I picked the wrong idea. The wrong characters. And this is all just…crap.”) How do you get through the “crap” moment?

TG: I don't know that there's any good way to get through it except to just forge ahead. I have that "oh, crap" moment with every single book. Which means I have to figure out how to fix the problems, and it usually means tightening the plot and getting rid of extraneous details that are only distracting. The difference between an amateur and a pro is that the amateur doesn't think he has a problem, and the pro sees problems everywhere -- and proceeds to fix them!

JCS: Tess, what do you know now about writing that you didn’t know “then,” when you began? How would you counsel a “young” author? What nuggets of wisdom would you share?

TG: I would tell writers that if they know which genre they really, really want to write, they should just start right off and write in it and not waste their time doodling around in short stories or so-called "easy" sells. I know several novelists who think, "oh, I'll just try to sell a romance because it'll be easy to publish, and then I'll write what I really want to write." Don't waste your time. If it's not a genre you love, the editor will be able to see that. I also would counsel new authors to not give up on a book until the first draft is completed. Too many of them get halfway through a book and give up. And start the next one, and give up on that one, too. They end up with stacks of half-finished novels. If they only realized that getting discouraged midway through a book is normal, they'd understand they have to just keep on writing.

JCS: You teach a writing class. Is there anything you see that your more successful students have in common? (Besides the fact that they actually do READ books as well as want to write them?)

TG: The most successful students write using their emotions rather than with pure logic. They understand that the most interesting stories grow from the conflicts we have with other people, and not from who shot whom, and what kind of gun he used. The worst writers over-explain, and the number one problem I find among beginning authors is the "info-dump", where I get a character's entire biography in the first chapter.

JCS: You’ve also blogged about how some women won’t read books about “guy topics,” and you explain you weren’t very tempted by Myron Bolitar, Harlan Coben’s protagonist. Did you worry that men wouldn’t read your thrillers? Did it take a lot of courage to write under your own—obviously feminine—name?

TG: I know that I have a hard time getting some men to read me. It's just the way the world seems to work -- many men aren't interested in what women do or how women think, and I've learned to live with that. On the plus side, the vast majority of fiction buyers are women. Most of my male readers were introduced to my books through their wives, and once they've found me, they discover that, yes, a crime novel written by a woman can be interesting. The odd thing is that I've found my male/female reader ratio depends on which country we're talking about. In the UK, for instance, I've found my bookstore signings have attracted nearly 50% men -- does that mean Englishmen are more open to female authors? I don't know. But it certainly seems that way!

Visit Tess Gerritsen at her blog http://www.tessgerritsen.com/blog/ Her most recent novel is The Mephisto Club. The Bone Garden: A Novel will be released September, 2007.