Book Review: Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Where I got the book: ARC from LibraryThing Early Reviewer Program

A good biography needs to be chunky, informative and as exciting as a novel. Massie does well on all three counts. Catherine The Great is a lively account of both Catherine's life and the slice of European and Russian history into which she was born, and I greatly enjoyed it.

Catherine, I learned, began life as a princess in an obscure German minor royal household. By the time she died, she had achieved great things for her vast Russian empire, introducing a much higher level of education and artistic achievement and furthering the social and political ideas of the Enlightenment (although, terrified by the French Revolution, she eventually reined back some of the freedoms she had encouraged). Even the lovers for which she was famed were sometimes given opportunities to serve their country in admirable ways (and when you read about her marriage, you understand the lovers).

I knew very little about Russian history, but by the time I finished this biography I felt I had a reasonable grasp of the period, aided by Massie's habit of reminding the reader who a character is in a brief sentence, every time we encounter him or her after an absence. Some may find that annoying--and sometimes I did--but for the general reader, it's helpful.

Less helpful, I found, was Massie's arrangement of his material into topical, rather than chronological, chapters. I did understand why he would want to do this; when you're describing the life of a head of state it's inevitably mixed up with the history of the time, and history has its themes. Still, it was disconcerting to have a character die in one chapter and then suddenly be alive again in the next.

There was also the chapter on the French Revolution, which contained very little about Catherine and Russia. Still, I'll forgive it because it's one of the most succinct and elegantly written accounts of the Revolution and Terror that I've ever read.

Although this biography is obviously aimed at the general audience rather than historians, I did wish the publisher had waited to include the index in the ARC so that I could judge it (it's rather an important factor for me in deciding whether to buy a history book).

On the whole, very good stuff, although I'd have liked just a tad more description of costume and manners. But that might have padded a book that's already nearly 600 pages long. I ended up considerably more interested in Russia than before, and a fan of this great ruler, so I'm satisfied.

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Playtime!

I've been attending a couple of writer workshops this week, taught by author Rebecca Johns (I bought The Countess and will review it when it works its way through my mountainous TBR pile). It was fun, as these things are, and we got to do some little writing exercises.

Do you like just being asked to write something off the top of your head? I do, because you can be as bad as you like. Unless you have one of those teachers who gets their jollies from destroying students' self-esteem, which can keep you quiet for years afterwards (as I know from my own experience). You can also write differently from your usual style, because it's just a few words on paper, not the Great American Novel. It's throwaway writing.

So what I thought I'd do today is put down something that came out of one of those exercises, and let you play with it. Do what you want - write your own piece in the comments, critique the heck out of the thing (I have grown a thick skin since my early days) or steal it and sell it on the Kindle. It's a bit different from my usual writing voice, but I had fun with it. If you're shy, you can send your piece to keepgoingyoufool(AT)gmail(DOT)com.

There is no right answer. This is raw, unedited writing, and what you do with it is your business.

The writing prompt was to write a scene where a character talks politely but thinks quite differently. So here is Mr. Hoop (and sorry about the lack of indents, but that's difficult to do in html):

*****

She had a mole on her chin. The kind with the hairs, and as she yapped it jumped up and down until I was sick to my stomach.

". . .of course," she was saying, "the wages are slightly less than you'd asked for. But these are hard times, aren't they?" She pursed her thin mouth and the mole stuck out an inch, I swear.

"They are indeed, ma'am. And I'm just ready and willing to work." I'll get to work all right. Wait till I find out where they keep the cash box. I smiled. "I'm really so grateful, ma'am."

Her lips stretched and I could see little jagged teeth. She fingered her ring, a big one with a diamond that made my mouth water.

"That's a pretty ring you got there. If you don't mind me getting personal, ma'am. You've been so kind I feel like we're friends already."

She simpered. "Mr. Binks--my fiancé, you understand--is a jeweler. He only gives me the best."

I'll bet. "I can see he's a good man too, ma'am. I hope I get to meet him." I hope I get to meet the keys to his store.

The mole jumped. "Well then, Mr. Hoop, shall I show you where I keep my little treasures?"

*****

So what happened next? Who or what were the little treasures?

Photo credit: Veo at Stock.xchng.

My Dad Just Bought 11,000 E-Books

No, it's not a new mnemonic (I'm thinking of My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas, which doesn't work any more because Pizza is not a planet), but a story. Settle down, children.

I wish I had taken a screen capture of the envelope my 80-year-old Dad held up to his webcam today. "Kindle: 11,000 Books" was scrawled across the front in Sharpie and presumably the envelope held a DVD. I sighed. A new obsession has been born.

Felsted and I introduced Dad to computers when he was 62. He was staying with us and bored without his friends and his daily routine. So Felsted gave him an old Atari games machine to mess around with. We barely heard a peep out of him for the next few days, and weeks after returning home he bought a PC. A year or two later he was the local computer guru. This has been a great boon to me, as they live 3,900 miles from Chicago and Skyping each other allows for much better interaction when we're chatting.

Mum, who is still afraid to turn the computer on lest it explode or something, nevertheless seemed quite happy to read a preview copy of The House of Closed Doors on Dad's latest toy, an Android-based tablet  (can't remember its name) that is a popular buy in the UK. Dad read it first, of course, and now the tablet has been lent to one of my sisters so she too can read my chef-d'oeuvre.

Anyway, back to the 11,000 books. They cost the equivalent of $5 or so. "But Dad," I expostulated, "they'll all be books that you can get for free on the Kindle anyway. You've been conned."

"Doesn't matter. Anyway, now I have them all here." Dad loves, LOVES, buying stuff online. Ebay is his playground. If it's a bargain, he's all over it - mercifully it's usually small electronics that don't take up too much room (we have small houses in England). I get blow-by-blow accounts of the interesting people he meets on Ebay, and so far he's not been suckered into anything worse than the digital cameras with the battery flap case that broke after a week's use (he gave me one - it didn't focus too well either).

So I jumped on Ebay and found the DVD he'd bought. Yep, all public domain books, and of course it's perfectly legitimate to package and resell them in any form you want. Yes, Dad could have gone online and got those books free, one at a time. Yes, even if he reads ten books a week he will need to live to 101 to get through 11,000 books (and he just might, you know - he neither looks nor sounds 80).

But: he owns 11,000 books on a DVD. When he was born in 1931, shiny silver disks holding massive amounts of information were the province of stories like The Time Machine and The Machine Stops (both must-reads, and both available for $0 on the Kindle. What are you waiting for?) People were still listening to stories on big old radios with huge glass valves inside them. THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE PAPERBACK BOOKS IN THE UK (they didn't come to the US until 1939).

Think about it. 21 years of reading in your hand, and a little machine for reading the 11,000 books. And I was able to send my parents a copy of my book for them to read (I am now "our daughter the author," even though I'm not published yet. I just love that.)

And you have to realize that my parents are not big readers of fiction. Books take up room that they don't have, and thus much of my at-home reading came from plundering my grandmother's large collection of Mills & Boone romances. They did read some notorious novels like The Exorcist, and then hid them in the back of their wardrobe, in which I rummaged from time to time to find out what I wasn't supposed to be reading. Naturally, I read those books.

So who am I to begrudge Dad his joy in his DVD? He was describing the book he'd just finished reading to me today, and I suspect I'm going to be treated to a Skype book review every time I talk to him. I couldn't be happier.

Photo credit: juliaf at Stock.xchng.

Scoop.It! for Writers - A User Review

I'm not sure how I came across Scoop.It! but I'm glad I did. I'm a big collector of information - I read a lot of blogs, in other words. MUCH more fun than actually working, don't you think? Of course I'm doing the Big Important Job of keeping myself up to date, and seem to have a reputation, in my closest circles, for always knowing what the latest thing is in geekery. So I suppose that if my aim is to make myself look knowledgeable, I'm succeeding.

OK I just nearly threw my computer out the window - defenestrated it as the Blond Knitter would say. The last thing I'd want as an epitaph would be "She Knew About Geek Stuff." So let's just avoid the topic of the almost-certain futility of gathering information, and cut to Scoop.It! I've mentioned it before, but I want to give an impartial (they're not paying me, honest) outline of how I think this handy-dandy little web app could be useful for writers.

You may have heard of Paper.li - well, Scoop.It! is similar. Both apps allow you to pull content you come across on the interwebz into a "newsletter". Paper.li is geared more toward schmoozing your Twitter friends, sort of like a big retweet as explained on Molly Greene's blog. I haven't used it because it sounds a bit too automated for my taste. I'm often mentioned in Paper.li newsletters as a contributor, but the whole process seems a bit random and impersonal.

When I find something interesting or well-written in blogs or otherwise, I tend to tweet the link because I think somebody else may be interested too. What I was looking for was a way to gather the best stuff into topics - I was doing this with Evernote, but Evernote feels a bit like throwing stuff into a big shoebox, never to be looked at again. I've gradually moved away from the shoebox model - pictures are going onto Pinterest, and I wanted to do something with all the written material I find. There's something addictive about being able to share what you find with people - I wanted someone to open that shoebox and go "OOOO look at all this great stuff!"

Bouquets: I like Scoop.It!'s big, bold default post style. I like that you can "rescoop" posts from other people's Scoop.It! newsletter into your own, giving them the credit. I like that you can star one post to stay at the top - guess what, I do it with my own blog posts, which is called Blowing Your Own Trumpet. I like the fact that you get basic stats to watch your followers grow with the free version. I am very happy that there is no advertising on my free newspaper, although I'm sure it'll come eventually. The blog plugin (see below) is uber-cool.

Brickbats: The free version lacks the ability to format or insert links in your own comments. It also lacks anything beyond basic analytics. The paid versions start at a horrendous $12.99 per month, and then jump to $79/month for the business version (which is the one with the analytics). I just don't think the app's useful enough, in our impoverished writer world, for that kind of money. After all, the incredibly informative Publisher's Marketplace only costs $20/month. And last but not least, the Scoop.It! interface is not that intuitive. It still has a beta-ish feel to it. And the default background is black, shudder shudder.

Still, this could be a useful tool for a writer. Say you were researching Abraham Lincoln - you could collect all the articles you find on the internet into a Scoop.It! topic. And then you could link to that topic on the page that talks about your book, in addition to providing a select bibliography (leaving people to buy your book to get the full bibliography). Better still, Scoop.It! will create a snippet of code for you that you can use to create a slideshow on your blog for your topic (see top right for mine). And I can confirm that the slideshow works on an iPad, which means it is not created in Flash and therefore Apple-friendly (from what I can see, it's a javascript widget).

And although I'm not crazy about the user interface, it's early days and I really didn't have that much trouble finding my way around.

What do you think? Would you want to use something like this?

Machinery

I have a machine in the bedroom.

I hope you just went 'huh?' because I had a lot of fun thinking about titles for this post. You can take the Brit out of Britain, but you can never remove my love of double entendre.

Alas, it's not nearly as exciting as it sounds. Felsted, who is in great health generally, is nevertheless pushing sixty (he's seven years older than me) and has been diagnosed with severe sleep apnea.

This comes as no surprise to me. Felsted is a positive orchestra of snores, grunts, whistles, burbles, rasps and wheezes when he sleeps. The absolute WORST is the huge SNNRRRK (often accompanied by a jerk liked a galvanized frog) caused by his brain desperately telling his body to reboot because he stopped breathing for a moment.

I completely failed to convince him that this was not normal until, one day, our dentist--of all people--decided to screen his older patients for the disorder. Two surveys, one home test and one hospital test later, enter the Machine.

Do you people have any idea how OLD it makes me feel to have medical machinery in the bedroom? The Machine is quite small and fits neatly onto the nightstand, but still. And it seems like only yesterday that we were young lovers with very few cares in the world...

Aging is a funny process. When you're young, you can't wait to be older. Then at some point in your life (around the time you have kids, I think) everything accelerates, and suddenly there are wrinkles and flabby bits where once there was smooth young skin.

It certainly doesn't bother me to be getting on (although I could do without the sore knees and ankles, but serves me right for doing karate in my 50s). About six or seven years ago I had a dream that I remember very vividly. I woke up and I was a young woman again, and it felt so REAL. I remember looking at my smooth, slender arms and thin hands - I always rather liked my hands. My stomach was flat again - oh joy! But then I realized that what I had lost in the transformation was Felsted and the girls. If I was young, they could not be there.

This was one of the rare occasions when I woke up crying, and that dream still haunts me and brings a tear to my eyes. If I ever look at the aforesaid wrinklyflabby bits and sigh, I recall the dream and feel much better. Who needs mirrors anyway?

And being older is a great thing for a writer. The perspective that you get from having experienced the good and the bad--triumphs, childbirth, breakups, weight gain, weight loss, the death of loved ones--makes it much easier to put yourself into the head of your protagonist. In addition, you've hopefully read a ton of books in your long life, which is a guaranteed way to learn how to write well.

Quite a few writers don't reach their prime until well into middle age, and some make their debuts in publishing at an age when many are thinking of retiring. Younger writers, it seems to me, are often more insecure about their abilities.

And for good reason, I think. Despite the thoughts that frequently pop into my head about how, if I'd started writing fiction sooner, I would have a whole pile of books published by now (my inner dialogue lacks modesty), in truth I know that my writing now is considerably better than it used to be.

Two of my friends have sons who wish to be opera singers. Their stated intention is to work in casual jobs--waiting tables, bar tending--for the next few years. They know they won't even have a hope of getting into their chosen niche until they're in their forties and their voices have matured. Don't you just love that long-term view? Supposing we did that with writers? There'd be no Twilight for one thing...RESIST THE COMMENT JANE.

So I guess having a husband with Darth Vader tendencies can be seen as compensation for having attained the age of wisdom. And going to sleep last night without the familiar sound of sawing logs really was rather pleasant.

So...if you're young, what bothers you about aging? If you're not young, what do you think you've gained and/or lost?

Photo: Stock.xchng

A Historical Fiction Book Blogger Tells All

Well, not ALL. But I do love an eye-catching title.

I met book blogger Sarah Johnson on Twitter, and (as I do) immediately hopped over to her blog. And found a treasury of historical fiction info, which is hardly surprising as Sarah has been editing the Historical Novels Review since 2000 and has written two guides to historical fiction (more details here).

I've always enjoyed historical fiction, but my interest in it has really started to perk up since I discovered I liked writing it as well as reading it. So I was looking for knowledgeable friends to guide me into this reading and writing niche, and I certainly found one. Being nosy, I had a bunch of questions I wanted to ask Sarah, and I thought you'd enjoy her answers:

JS: Please say a little about yourself: who you are, how long you've been blogging, what kind of books you review.

SJ: I'm Sarah Johnson, and my blog Reading the Past has been online for nearly six years. I cover historical fiction exclusively.

JS: And why do you do it?

SJ: I started my blog as a way of sharing information about historical novels with other readers. There weren't many other historical fiction blogs around in 2006 - just a handful - and we formed a small community that discussed our favorite reads, random observations, pet peeves, and other interests. I talked about cover art a lot - the good, the bad, and the very tacky. Reading the Past didn't start out as a book review blog, but publishers found me and began offering me review copies, and I decided to accept some of them.

I enjoy the discussions that spring up in the comments, and each new book gives me the opportunity to stretch my reviewing or interviewing skills. One goal is to highlight each novel's unique features or strengths. I enjoy most of what I review, but the trick is to make the reviews fun to read even if the books weren't!

JS: How do you decide which books to review? Do you pass on many books, and why?

SJ: Some of what I review are books that publishers or authors offer me; others are my own copies. Historical fiction is a diverse genre, so I try to write about a wide selection of books - from cozy historical mysteries like Mignon Ballard's Miss Dimple Disappears, set in WWII-era Georgia, to Canadian literary fiction such as Joan Thomas's Curiosity, about 19th-century fossil-hunter Mary Anning.

I pass on books that fall outside my interests; I have a review policy that spells out what they are. I love sagas but am not so keen, personally, on alternate history or "big battle" fiction. There isn't enough time to read everything I'm offered, either, so I pick and choose. If I have more than a dozen books on the pile, I hold off accepting others until I'm more caught up.

JS: Where, in your opinion, is the most interesting historical fiction coming from? Who are the rising stars? Have you spotted some interesting trends?

SJ: I review books from mainstream publishers, small presses, and the occasional self-published novel, and can't point to any one venue or press as being a particular favorite. Collectively, they offer a huge variety that I think is wonderful. For me, the most interesting historical novels are those that put new spins on familiar events or focus on less common settings or historical characters.

Some historical novelists whose debut works I thought were especially strong, and whose subsequent books I look forward to reading, include: Elizabeth Loupas (The Second Duchess, a suspenseful and romantic mystery about the story behind Browning's poem My Last Duchess); Stephanie Dray (Lily of the Nile, fantasy-tinged fiction about Cleopatra's daughter Selene); Katherine Webb (The Legacy, a terrific Gothic saga); and Rebecca Lochlann (The Year-god's Daughter, an amazing debut that absorbs you in its world of ancient Crete; an impulse Kindle purchase). Also, these authors have been around for a while, but Kate Morton, Stephen Harrigan, Sally Gunning, and Susanna Kearsley have written some of my favorite books.

Within the genre, the "strong woman" trend has been around for a while, and it continues. World War II fiction has suddenly become very popular, and when I pointed this out on my blog, it received an impressive response from readers.

JS: People are saying online that book bloggers are becoming the new "gatekeepers" for promoting good books. Do you get contacted by many writers looking for a review? Can this be off-putting?

SJ: I'm contacted by a good number of writers about reviews, and I don't find it off-putting. With so many authors acting as their own publicists, it's getting to be the norm. Nearly all are professional and polite. The exceptions are those who haven't read my review policy and who argue with me when I turn down something outside of my stated interests.

JS: What's your advice to a new writer (traditionally or self-published) trying to get his/her historical fiction talked about? What should they NOT do?

SJ: Get started with marketing early on, well before the publication date. Not everyone blogs or tweets or Facebooks, but these platforms can help writers build a network so that by the time their book appears, they have a large audience already set to support them and provide advice. (I've seen this work for many writers, and historical novelists are generally a very supportive group.) It also lets readers follow them along their journey. Goodreads, LibraryThing, and Amazon offer opportunities that let publishers get their books into readers' hands early; these are all good venues to try. Self-published authors should ensure their book is the best it can be - with regard to the writing, editing, and production quality - before releasing it to the public. Word of mouth isn't something that can be controlled, but it can be powerful when it gets going - and writers can give it a good running start.

Not being a historical novelist myself, I may not be the best person to give advice on this, but some other suggestions: Adopt a professional attitude. Attend conferences and other events to connect with other writers and readers in person, if you can. Contribute to forums and discussion lists, but without being overly self-promotional. Avoid arguing with reviewers about their opinions, especially in reader forums; this can backfire quickly!

JS: Do you have any suggestions for writers who want to try their hand at book blogging?

Book blogs written by writers are often differently focused than those run by readers, so it depends on what they want to achieve: whether they want to discuss the writing process, expand upon their research techniques, point out books they've enjoyed themselves, etc. The key is to have an authentic voice and interesting content and be eager to interact with their audience. All of these are what blogs are all about.

###

Wow, thanks Sarah! If you're a reader or a writer, I strongly recommend finding some good book blogs. I have come across many excellent ones, but they often review/discuss genres I'm not crazy about. So finding a blog that matches my own tastes is a treat.

The other thing I love about Sarah's blog is the excellent community of knowledgeable and encouraging commenters, some of whom I'm starting to get to know online. I now need about five years' sabbatical in order to read enough history books and historical novels to get myself up to speed. Anyone care to make that possible?

Readers, do you read historical fiction? Who's your favorite author?

Take the Risk, Take the Money?

OK, I'll come clean. The money aspect of novel-writing matters to me. I'm of the opinion that it should be possible for a writer with some talent who's ready to put in the hard graft necessary to produce a decent novel should be able to aspire to making a modest living from writing.

When I started writing fiction back in the ancient days of 2009, novel writing seemed to be viewed as a Noble Pursuit that made money for very few people. New writers were (and still are) being warned to expect advances of around $5,000 if they were lucky enough to get any advance at all. And then about a buck a book on units sold, once you'd earned out your advance. And this tremendous fortune was the culmination of years of knocking on doors, honing your craft and spending $thousands on conferences and classes. We were conditioned to expect to start in negative numbers and then work for practically nothing for the sake of our Art.

Seasoned writers with several books could earn bigger advances, of course: this is a pretty interesting look at what you get when you make the New York Times bestseller list after a few years of hard work. And in the follow-up post later that year, the author reveals that in the year or so since her book launched, she had still not earned out her $50K advance (which is her gross figure, remember, because she still has to pay her agent, expenses and taxes) but her publisher had grossed over $450K on the book.

Author - $50,000
Publisher - $450,000. Nine times as much. Plus they get to own the book for a very long time.

Fair enough, right? The publisher puts up a large sum of money long before a cent has been made on a book. They pay editors, designers, publicists and others, thus contributing to employment in the book industry. They have overheads: they need office space, usually in one of the most expensive locations in the US.

And they take on 100% of the risk that the book fails. If the author gets a $50K advance and the novel's a complete flop and sells less than a thousand copies, the author keeps the $50K and the publisher swallows the loss. I'm not here to argue against Evil Publishers. It's a business, and business involves risks, and who takes the risk reaps the benefits if the risk pays off.

What's new in 2012 is that taking the risk yourself has become a respectable course for an author. It's called self-publishing. You've probably heard of Amanda Hocking or J A Konrath by now, right? Hocking is sitting on $millions, and Konrath is jumping for joy because he just made $100,000 in three weeks.

But if you drag your gaze away from these superstars, you'll also find self-publishers who report that they made $43.75. Or $130.10. In other words, almost certainly a loss. Even buying a single ISBN to identify your book costs $125.

I'm putting money into the two things everyone says you really need: a copyeditor to ensure that you don't shower the world with typos and bad grammar, and some good artwork because, although my graphic design skills are better than average, they still ain't great. So my loss is likely to be a whole lot more than that of the self-pubber who edited herself and designed her own cover, but that's my choice. I have Opinions on the way things ought to be, and I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

And like all small businesses, I accept that there's an elusive element to success. You can make a rockin' product in any field but just fail to connect with the right buyer. You can write a good book and see it sink without trace. Right now, my chances range from zero to infinity and everything in between.

I also realize that readers don't care how much a writer makes. So if you're not interested, apologies and thanks for reading thus far anyway. I'm not going to bang on about the biz ALL the time, but this blog reflects what's on my mind, and currently it's this.

Now You See Me, Now You Don't: The Politics of Online Friendships

Who are 'friends?' The people you send Christmas cards to? If you even send Christmas/holiday cards any more. I know quite a few people who've given up on the whole business, and I can't really imagine Wasabi's generation doing it. By the time they're proper adults (meaning with jobs and mortgages and silverware and stuff) I'm not sure there'll even be a postal service.

I'm like most people: in real life I have a few friends and lots of acquaintances. But online, it seems, we all have to be 'friends.' Twitter talks about 'followers,' but the Twitter community is more likely to refer to each other as Twitter friends or tweeps. Friendliness is the online version of courtesy--the polite nod, the door held open, the cautious smile at a stranger with whom you make eye contact.

Online, we learn pretty quickly to be nice. Rude, aggressive, petulant, sulky, vindictive or crass behavior on social networking sites hangs around, waiting for people--LOTS of people--to notice. I liked the old days when you could only vent your venom at the people standing around you. The thought of teenage me on Facebook is enough to turn my hair white.

Facebook and Twitter are now so universal that new forms of etiquette are springing up. Guides abound to bring the clueless up to speed on details like NOT USING CAPITAL LETTERS BECAUSE THAT'S SHOUTING and being very, very careful before you hit that "Reply All" button (been there, done that, still embarrassed about it).

So what happens when you want to end a relationship? On Twitter, you simply unfollow people. They can keep following you till Kingdom come, blissfully unaware of the unfollow because you wouldn't tell them you unfollowed them - that's bad Twitterquette.

Of course, some people take unfollows personally. I don't, and neither should you. a) both Twitter and Facebook sometimes decide to end a relationship for absolutely no good reason (gremlins?) and b) everybody has their own follow policy and could we get some perspective here? You won't even meet many of these people in person.

There are sites that'll tell you who unfollowed you on Twitter, but I don't use them. My own policy is to follow back nearly everybody who follows me, as long as they're 1) sane 2) not connected to the porn industry and 3) not just trying to sell me stuff. To keep my numbers balanced, every day I trim off 10 people who didn't follow me back in the month since I followed them, even if they're people I'm really interested in. I figure that if we're meant to connect, we will some other way, and the lack of a Twitter relationship is no big deal.

On Facebook, things are a bit more personal because I know about 95% of my Facebook friends in real life (occasionally I'll friend someone I know well from online interactions). So, what do you do when your Facebook friends are driving you crazy with their political rants or poetry?

You've got choices, that's what.

If it's not your friends but their interests that bug you, and you think you'll be heading for the loony bin if you see their games or the articles they're reading or the music they're listening to or their horoscope ONE MORE TIME, just block the apps themselves. I do that a lot.

If you don't want to hurt people's feelings by unfriending them, you can hide their updates. Useful if that nice woman you used to work with is in the middle of a bad breakup and is a bit out of control. You don't know her well enough to offer comfort or counsel, but you really can't take hearing about her ex's habits any more. Hiding stops you from getting annoyed at people, but as far as they know, you're still listening.

Unfriending is used a lot by the younger generation, and sometimes by adults who think it's an effective way of showing people what they think of them (it's not; it comes across as juvenile). When you unfriend someone you can still see their updates and comments, so it leaves a back door open to a renewal of friendship. I always think of unfriending as a statement, although I do know people who, without malice, cull their friend lists down to just the people who interest them. But one of the joys of Facebook is getting to know people better, so restricting yourself to a small circle is like hanging around exclusively with your clique at high school; you miss SO much.

Blocking is the our-paths-are-sundered-forever option, because it makes you invisible to each other. You can't see a trace of the other person on Facebook. Not even a comment. It's the option to use in cases of harassment or in other circumstances where you'd really like to keep your business away from certain eyes. So if Gossipy Glinda unfriends you but you're still mutual friends with Amiable Ann, you may have to block Glinda to keep your girls' night out photos--yeah, THOSE photos--away from Gossipy Glinda's gleeful gaze. (If Ann posts her photos of the party, you're toast. But seriously, there should be a special setting on cameras to prevent them taking shots of drunk people.)

You can also set options for individual friends or statuses, but that's way too complicated for me. If you're a friend, you're a friend and that's it. I protect myself by sticking to Jane's Golden Rule: never say anything online that you're not prepared to have quoted in the newspapers.

Because you never know.

Of course there are many other social networking sites, and best practices vary. What have YOU noticed about online social etiquette?

Is Writing an Art, a Craft, a Vocation or a Profession?

One of the books I'm currently reading is called Before Victoria: Extraordinary Women of the British Romantic Era. In it I find this remark: "Above all, Romantic artists see art as a vocation, where the eighteenth century often saw it as a profession or a craft."

Sensible eighteenth century, I thought to myself. And then I fell to musing (as I do, particularly when I'm procrastinating) about how the Romantic view of art still affects us today, particularly when it comes to writing.

I'm often struck by the amateurish side to publishing--and I'm not talking about the brave new world of e-publishing and POD, which has self-publishing 'experts' and social marketing 'gurus' popping up like mushrooms on a damp fall morning.

No, I'm talking about things as they were even before the Disruption. After all, you don't need any qualifications to be a writer. And you can set yourself up as an agent, editor, bookseller, publicist or  publisher without passing any exams as far as I know.

That's not a dig at such people, by the way, because I love them all (except the shady ones); it's just a fact. Compared to the rigors of law school or the medical profession, publishing is a cakewalk. To sell houses you have to be licensed. To be hired as an IT person you need to show experience and skill, and back that up with a degree or diploma (and then you're STILL underpaid). To be a lawyer or a doctor, woah baby--you need really good grades and financial support for YEARS. To be a politician...well, let's not go there. I live in Illinois. To make money in almost any aspect of the book trade, you just need your wits and a willingness to work hard.

So is writing an art, a craft, a vocation or a profession? My guess is that your answer will depend on what kind of writer you are, so here's my lighthearted look at who will answer what.

If you think writing is an art, 'being a writer' is probably very important to you. You like to buy writer stuff; you have one of those clocks, a mug that identifies you as a writer, and perhaps a very special chair. If you're a romance writer, all of those items are pink. ALL your acquaintances know you're a writer. You introduce yourself as "Hi, I'm Jane, I'm a writer" and mention your writing about once every five minutes, if not more frequently. You have routines for your writing, like starting each morning with exactly the same food and beverage or playing special music to summon your muse. Your life's goal is to be published by a publisher that everyone's heard of, and your head swivels round faster than that Exorcist chick's when anyone in the room says 'Random House."

If you think writing is a craft, you WORK at it. And boy, do you let everyone else know it. Your family are carefully trained to Respect Your Writing Time, and the entire vacation budget goes into writing-related trips. You probably wear a lot of loose, black clothing, and are to be found at every quality writing class for a hundred miles around. You probably seat yourself near the teacher and nod a lot. You sneer, ever so subtly, at the neophytes and people who think writing is easy. You may or may not have an MFA, but you aspire to one when you can afford it (i.e. when somebody finally recognizes your genius). You read Real Literature, or if you are a genre writer you personally know every author in your chosen genre and have read every single one of their books. Your goal is only to submit your very best work, which could take years, and no publisher that lets their books stray into Wal-Mart will ever receive a submission from you.

If you think writing is a vocation, your bio probably includes the words "Jane has been writing since she was an embryo" or "I was born with a pen in my hand..." You do not consider anybody to be a writer who has not had articles published in their high school magazine, or won a poetry prize as a child. You write ALL the time, and if you go a day without writing, you feel physically ill. You have nightmares about writer's block, and agonize over rejections. Your day job torments you. Your family and friends are MATERIAL and will find their way into your novels, thinly disguised. You write for half an hour in your journal every morning, without exception, and have a special shelf where you keep the 5,235 journals you have produced in your long, long writing life. No need to ask what kind of publisher you want; you have been published already, and are on your 20th book.

If you think writing is a profession, you cheerfully admit to wanting to earn money from your writing. In fact, you even own up to doing the occasional SEO gig when things are a bit slow on the fiction side. Rejection doesn't bother you much; there's always another opportunity. You've probably explored all sorts of writing, and fill in with side jobs such as editing, public speaking, writing textbooks or ghostwriting. If it fills the coffers, you'll do it. You don't have a day job because writing IS your day job in one form or another. You're self-employed and keep meticulous records of every penny you spend on books. You probably self-publish your novels AND have a well-known blog on how to self-publish your novels. AND are invited to conferences to tell other people how to self-publish their novels.

OK, in reality we probably all have traits from each of these descriptions. And whatever kind of writer we are, our business is to write as well as we can, to be as professional as we can, and to encourage those who are dipping their toes nervously into the water. I don't think there's ever going to be a perfect formula for writing, and perhaps that's why the industry will always be ever so slightly amateurish. God bless us, every one.

The Blog Evolves

If you're reading this in a blog reader, let me just show you my new look. D'ya like it? After three years, my blog is evolving.

Of course, this may cause you to step away, and that's OK. In fact I've recently eliminated some old friends from my blog reader: blogs I've been reading for years, in some cases.

Sometimes it's because the writer's started to repeat his/herself. Quite normal, when you consider that our thinking tends to run in tracks (well, mine certainly does). This is often true of writing advice blogs of all kinds; they are very useful for a while, at a certain stage in your career, and then after a bit you start to feel comfortable with what you know and just don't need the advice any more. Which is fine, because there are always new writers coming on the scene, and the writing blogs will be invaluable to them.

Sometimes it's because the blog has evolved in a direction that no longer interests me. And then, sometimes it's just because I can only keep up with a certain number of blogs and I have to cut back somewhere.

But I continue to follow a ridiculous number a sufficiency of information sources about the publishing industry (both the traditional and indie sides) and about the whole writing biz. I tweet the links to anything I find interesting, but lately I've also begun to collect good posts I come across into topics on Scoop.It!, an interesting curation site that seems to be quite useful. Take a look at the two topics I post on regularly, which are:

Can Writers Choose? where I collect articles on all sorts of publishing topics
The Big List of Book Lists because I'm always coming across good reading lists

The top right-hand corner of my blog page will usually feature one of my information offerings, and I hope to change it regularly to keep it fresh.

Lower down on the right-hand side of the page, you'll find my 20 latest book reviews on Goodreads; I don't put all of my reviews on this blog by any means. I have had to eliminate and simplify a bit to keep this list where I wanted it to be; if you desperately miss any particular gadget just tell me.

Does all this bookish stuff mean I'm becoming a book blogger? Not really. I still don't want to focus Keep Going You Fool! too narrowly but the book reviews are a) popular and b) a source of constant new material. I will continue to write nonsense whenever the silly side of life strikes me, and generally reserve the right to do whatever I darn well please.

I'm also hoping to get more interviews with all kinds of people in the publishing industry and beyond. I'm fascinated by all the options out there for anyone who loves books and fine writing, and I want to ask lots of nosy questions. So if you have a question you'd like to have asked, let me know! keepgoingyoufool(AT)gmail(DOT)com is the email address to use.

And I'll be adding some more pages over the next few weeks. Not quite sure how they'll turn out, but I have a few ideas.

Have you evolved recently? I'm a big believer in change (because, for one thing, I have a very low boredom threshold) but I feel like I'm an exception. Do you love to change, or do you prefer things to stay the same?

Book Review: The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno by Ellen Bryson

I have started a survey of historical literature about late (post-Civil War) 19th century America, based on this list to begin with but I may branch out a bit. I'm going to start a new page soon listing the books I read that fall into this category, and as always I'll review the ones I like best on this blog (the complete set of my reviews is available on Goodreads and LibraryThing). Here's my first Late 19th Century America review:

The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno by Ellen Bryson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Where I got the book: from my local library.

This is one of the most unusual and compelling historical novels I've read in a long time. I don't want to say much about the story, because this is definitely one of those novels where you want to start off knowing as little as possible, and then discover each little detail with a sense of delight.

The setting is P.T. Barnum's American Museum in New York, in the mid-1860s. The protagonist is Bartholomew Fortuno, billed as the World's Thinnest Man, and the action centers around the Museum with its cast of Fat Lady, Contortionist, Strong Man and Missing Link. Only these characters have names and personalities, and we are quickly pulled away from an external view of their differences into the feelings that lie behind the odd appearance.

Finding out how Barthy's life changes when a new act is introduced, and why he is as he is, was a fascinating experience. The pace of the writing was a little stately, and I wasn't entirely thrilled with the way Bryson handles the dénouement, but overall I just loved reading this novel.

Recommended for lovers of superior historical fiction.

View all my reviews

That Was the Month That Was: Links for December 2011

I'm introducing a new feature this week, and I would love to know if it resonates with you. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know I tweet a whole bunch of links, usually about writing or publishing but not always. This is because I'm online way too much I read many blogs and online articles, many of which are pretty darn interesting.

(How do I find time to do this? I don't watch TV very often. Especially not TV news, because, seriously. The only news worth watching is BBC World News, and I figure that if anything important happens, I'll hear about it anyway. So the blogs and stuff ARE my news.)

So...drumroll...New Feature! It! Is! Links!

Yes, other bloggers do this. Not exactly original. But I'm only going to do it once a month, and my choice of posts is determined by which links got the most clicks on Twitter. Yes, I analyze that stuff. I know.

But first, this. How a writing duo rose to the top of the UK charts while waiting for agents to respond to their submissions, and then had to send rejection letters to agents... That's not the title of the post, but sort of my summary. And there is SO much more to this story. It rewards very careful reading, especially if you're an aspiring author. I think it's a great illustration of how writers shouldn't just jump at the first offer they get, but weigh all proposals very carefully.

And now. The links, in order of how much they impressed my Twitter followers.

The one that made me go EEK! because it got 2,146 clicks: 10 Reasons Why You'll be Using Google+ in a Year. Needless to say, I'm now paying more attention to Google+.

With 116 clicks, Seth Godin on the trap of social media noise. This was the article that inspired this post.

With 67 clicks, Michael Hyatt on How a Shift in Your Vocabulary Can Instantly Change Your Attitude. I love glass-half-full people.

With 63 clicks, an article on six things Charles Dickens gave the modern world. Humungous apologies to the 63 people who clicked on the link I originally posted and found themselves back on Twitter; I must have done that one very early in the morning.

With 45 clicks, why you should date a girl who reads. We bookworms are quality. Just quality.

With 38 clicks: Why Your Novel is a Tall, 6-Pump Vanilla, Breve Latte Grande, Extra Hot, Heavy Whipping Cream, Extra Dry Cappuccino (Or It Should Be) - how the Starbucks concept of imputed value should be applied to e-book pricing.

So there you have it...and I'm only going to do this once a month. As I said above. I really want you to know this, obviously.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

It's New Year's Day. At the time of writing, that is. Of course by the time you read this, January 1 will be so one day ago. Or possibly ancient history if you're reading this in the year 3012, in which case, Greetings. Please use your personal time machine to pop back and say hi, unless the human race has mutated into something even worse, in which case, Go Away.

Anyway, on January 1, 2012, the house is blissfully quiet. Wasabi and Bobo, after the usual you're-my-best-friend-I-hate-you-I'm-sorry-you're-my-best-friend routine, have gone out. Orangina is also out, with her best friend whose code name will be Sparkle. I love Sparkle to pieces and she was the inspiration for one of the characters in The House of Closed Doors (which is getting published in 2012, watch this space!)

And this blog has now been in existence for three full years. Happy birthday, Keep Going You Fool blog!

Each year I have posted on and around January 1. In 2009, I was musing about good taste and cultural mores. In 2010, I made some resolutions at which I now laugh hollowly. At some point in the last couple of days we watched Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason in which Renee Zellweger delivers the line: "...and I will always be a little bit fat." Well, I think I have to resign myself to the reality that my office will always be a little bit of a pigsty. The rest of the house (apart from Wasabi's and Orangina's rooms--they DEFINITELY inherited an untidy gene) looks fairly good, but my poor office is like my brain. Stuff is everywhere.

And then in 2011, I talked about writing and editing, and it's not a bad post as posts go. Except that it contains a list of five classic novels I intended to read in 2011. I DID NOT READ THEM.

And the moral of the story is, I will not make any resolutions in this post. Except to tell you that I intend to change up this blog's appearance a bit. So if you go directly to the blog rather than reading it in your reader, you will soon no longer see the familiar green and gray. I'm not sure which design I'm going for, but it will be a fairly minimalist black and white - as simple as possible so that I don't have to put up with the formatting glitches that occur with this design.

Given my past experience with the way life derails my plans, I hesitate to say any more. But I do in fact have Goals written out in my journal, and intend to make a printed version for the noticeboard. They are exciting Goals. But I'll tell you about them IF I achieve them.

Of course, Wasabi regularly informs me that the world will end on December 21. (I particularly liked her reassurance that we would get to go see The Hobbit just in time, as it opens December 15.) So with that cheerful thought, I leave you with all best wishes for a blessed 2012 or the first 359 days of it, depending on your degree of pessimism. Thank you, thank you for reading my blog and sharing my obsessions.

Book Review: The Sleepwalkers by Paul Grossman

The Sleepwalkers by Paul Grossman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Where I got the book: LibraryThing Early Reviewers program

Inspektor-Detektiv Willi Kraus's new case involves a corpse whose leg bones are the wrong way round. And a sleepwalking princess. Stringing together the clues drags him into contact with history; in Berlin in 1933, Hitler's National Socialists are gaining more power, more rapidly than anyone could have imagined. And they seem to be implicated in the mysterious disappearances.

Kraus starts out thinking that he's looking for an ordinary serial killer, but soon realizes there's a lot more involved. His contacts within the traditional power structure, and his knowledge of the Berlin underground, are of great use to him; but he has one huge disadvantage. He's a Jew, and his friends and family are saying just one thing to him: get out of Berlin now.

It's such a pleasure to be able to give a five-star review to a debut author. I loved the way Grossman combines the elements of a murder mystery with the history of 1930s Berlin, blending fact and fiction together with great skill. His characters are well-drawn and memorable, and the novel is loaded with descriptive elements that pulled me right into its setting. The writing jarred at a few points, but these were minor quibbles compared to the novel's overall high quality.

Recommended for thriller fans who like their reading to have a certain literary quality and a fascinating setting.

View all my reviews

Indie and Trad CAN live together: interview with Samantha Hunter and GIVEAWAY!

You may have heard that I don't generally choose novels with a lot of sex in them. So what am I doing, I hear you asking, displaying a book cover with "Forbidden Fantasies" on it? Today, dear Reader, I'm interviewing Samantha Hunter, author of both steamy romance novels like Straight to the Heart over there (to be released in January 2012), and of cozy mysteries such as Once Burned (released this month).

Since 2004, Sam's been successfully published through Harlequin, igniting the, er, imaginations of readers all over America and beyond. And since 2010 she's been enjoying a burgeoning career as a self-published author of cozies. She uses the same name for both genres and lists all her books together, in chronological order, on her website as if it doesn't matter. Gasp!

It's my understanding that many traditionally published authors are starting to have Forbidden Fantasies about keeping the wolf from the door expanding their range by incorporating a little self-pub into their daily routine. So let's lift the curtain and take a peek into the mind of an author who's proved she can sizzle at whatever she puts her mind to. And at the end of the interview, you can win your choice of book in a GIVEAWAY!

JS: Sam, you've seen the pros and cons of both traditional/category publishing and indie publishing. What would your advice be to a new writer hesitating between the two options? 
SH: Yes, I do write for category, which is traditional publishing, and I would like to publish in trad single-title romance at some point. Personally, I am a huge fan of traditional publishing, and I know that's not something we're hearing much these days, but I have learned so much and gained so much from trad publishing that has helped support my indie writing. Working on hard deadlines with my editors, going through production processes, and many other things that I've experienced with trad publishing--including many, many rejections--all gave me hard-earned skills that have allowed me to write indie books more confidently. And even with Past Tense, my indie book that was rejected by trad pubs, I had good feedback from editors who liked it, but didn't buy, and from my agent, so I was able to indie pub it with some confidence that it was a good book. This all helps, as well as building name recognition--tens of thousands more readers read my romances through sheer distribution.

The cons for each: With trad publishing, obviously, you may be knocking at the door for a while, you may be rejected several times, you might have to do heavy revisions, and you may not earn a ton of money (depending. I sold my first book, and rejections came later). You could have editorial clashes (I am lucky enough never to have had this happen--I have wonderful editors at Harlequin), but you do have to get used to seeing your work as more "collaborative" in nature. This is not a bad thing. It can push you. But it can also present some tough challenges. You may have to learn to revise or sculpt your writing to suit more than your own liking--but you can also learn to be very creative within a given framework, and that's valuable.

For indie publishing the cons are, in my opinion, that especially if you are brand new, you don't get the benefit of learning about the industry and the production of a novel with experienced editors who can really help you learn to write well, know what's marketable, etc. Also, like I mentioned, name value--I have some benefit (like others who are publishing from a trad base) of having had my name out there and developed a pretty large readership over eight years before I put indie books out. Readers respect traditional publishing, and I think writers should, as well. There's a lot of history there. And if you are brand new, getting that name recognition from an indie base will be very, very hard. Not completely impossible--there are obviously some indie authors who have become huge, but they are really the minority. And let's put it this way: even with my established trad base, my indie sales are still a nth of my trad/print sales. This is something to think about.

JS: Your traditionally published books are steamy romances, but your indie books are cozy mysteries. What's it like writing two very different genres at the same time? 
SH: Technically, I don't write them at the same time, since I tend to work on one thing at a time--each book has my full attention until I move on to the next one (yes, that means to write 3-5 books a year, I am writing pretty quickly--another benefit of having good editors.). But for me, this gives me variety and stretch--writing the same thing over and over can deaden your creativity, so being able to try new things allows me to stretch as a writer. I'm always pushing myself, trying something new, the next hardest thing, because that's how we get better, go farther.

There is also overall benefit--writing mystery allows me to be a better plotter in my romances, and writing romance allows me to have more insight into characters and relationships in my mysteries. People have commented often about loving my main characters in my mysteries; they are invested in the relationships, and I think I can do that characterization and relationship work because I have refined it in writing romance. Likewise, reviewers often mention the plot points of my romances, which sometimes have suspense/mystery elements, because I work with those in my indies. It all comes together.

JS: Do any of your fans from the Blaze side tell you that they enjoy your cozies as well? Or do you have two separate readerships? 
SH: Both--I definitely have crossover readers who read both books, but I do think that crossover goes more from romance to mystery rather than from mystery to romance. I think my romance readers like my mysteries because at the end of the day, all of my books are about relationships--the sexiness, while fun, is not the focus--falling in love, negotiating family, friends, life, and various conflicts are the commonality on all of the books. However, for whatever reason, romance readers tend to be more willing to cross over. I guess we'd have to ask them why that is, LOL. But it's just an observation on my part.

JS: Why do you think the indie/traditional publishing debate is becoming so adversarial? Do you think the readers are missing out because of what's happening right now in the industry? 
SH: I do think readers of trad books are missing out to some extent because there are a lot of really cool and original ideas that readers would love to buy--and are buying--and trad pubs are not taking chances on them, whether it's due to the economy, marketing, or whatever. I hope that will change--it's clear from the success of a lot of indie work that there is a lot of good reading material there that trads have either passed on or never saw in the first place.

While there is a lot that could be in the scrap heap in indie as well, I love the "wild west" feeling of indie, I LOVE that people write because they LOVE to write, and polished or not, many good stories come from that enthusiasm and desire. Readers want good stories--that's the bottom line, and there are a lot of them out there in both markets, trad and indie. You have to trust the reader will find what they want--but it has to be out there for them to find.

I think readers are more open and smarter than trad publishers often give them credit for--for instance, I suspect trad pub would not have wanted me publishing mystery and romance under one name as they think readers get "confused"--no, readers do not get confused. They know what they want, and they know how to tell one kind of book from the other.

Why is it adversarial? Because people like to argue, and there's money, ego and power involved. Personally, I think, let the powerhouses and publishers, corporations, etc fight it out. I'm a writer. I write. My concern is readers and getting my stories out there to them--whether that's through trad, indie, or some other venue we haven't heard from yet. Whatever one of them can help me do that, that's who I'll work with, trad and indie. And I think the best route is doing both, because you learn things and gain from each things that you can't get just doing one (unless you are writing just because you love it, not to build a career in it--to build a writing career, I think you need to cast a broad net).

******

So what do you think, readers? Are you just looking for a good story, or are you picky about where your fiction comes from? I think Sam does a marvelous job at seeing the positives on both sides of the industry, but if you want to defend either side, GO FOR IT.

And don't forget to tell me in the comments which of Samantha's books you'd like to win. ("Either" is a valid response, and unless you specifically say you DON'T want to be entered for the giveaway and forget to declare a preference, you will be entered as an "either.") We've got 2 copies of each book to give away: Straight to the Heart in either paperback (US, UK and Canada addresses only) or Kindle/Nook, and Once Burned on Kindle/Smashwords.

Why I like Amazon

I'm an unashamed Amazon fan. A couple of minutes' research tells me that I made my first purchase in October of 2000 (did you know you can see every purchase you ever made? That's one of the things they do for you.)

I also love small, indie bookstores, like the wonderful Lake Forest Book Store which always seems to be full of people. I ADORE antique bookstores like Jarndyce's opposite the British Museum, where you have to ring a bell to get in but then they let you fondle the most marvelous books.

So I read Don't Support Your Local Bookseller with a slightly wry chuckle. I thought writer Farhad Manjoo made some pretty good arguments, but he hasn't convinced me to be anything other than what I am: a hybrid book consumer. I also acquire books from other online stores, through library sales, from the clearance cart at B&N, on my Kindle, and through the giveaways that abound in the publishing world. I am a Bookavore.

And that's why I like Amazon. I can get almost any book I want from its virtual shelves, including many that are out of print or otherwise impossible to find. Often the older books are discoveries I made at my local library; if I love it, I'll buy myself a copy.

Usually when I review a book, I'll say where I got it. That's for my benefit, so that I can keep track of my purchasing habits (I'm an analyzer) but I hope it's of interest to someone, somewhere. In fact, my new year's resolution is to enter the place of purchase in my LibraryThing reviews (Goodreads doesn't have that feature: this is why I store my reviews in two places!)

OK I'm going to do something really geeky now. (Is it possible for me to get through a post without a rabbit trail?) See these books? That's part of my physical TBR pile. 39 books. Out of which:

23% were giveaways
15% were purchased from Amazon
13% were purchased at indie stores
13% were purchased at library sales
10% were gifted to me
10% were bought at retail price at big box bookstores
8% were bought from the clearance rack at big box boostores
8% were sent to me for review

Of course having done this I now want to do a PROPER inventory but hey, let's get to the bottom of this post, right? Anyway, there you go: Amazon's at 15%. Not exactly dominating my life.

My point (here it is!): I don't see any reason to make Amazon the villain of the publishing world. As Manjoo points out, "Amazon doesn’t host readings and it doesn’t give you a poofy couch to sit on while you peruse the latest best-sellers. But what it does do—allow people to buy books anytime they want—is hardly killing literary culture. In fact, it’s probably the only thing saving it."

In the eleven years I've been purchasing from Amazon, the other thing I've noticed is that they tend to do things right. I have purchase HUNDREDS of items directly from their store or by the third-party sellers they support (has nobody else pointed out that they have fostered countless home-based businesses through their seller programs?) and never, NEVER have I had a problem. Items have arrived on time in pristine condition, returns are smoothly effected...when they lowered the price of the Kindle one month after I bought it, I sent them an email asking if it was possible to recoup the difference. The $70 was in my account the next morning, and I got a charming email to boot.

No, if there's a problem with main street book selling, the blame lies elsewhere. I'm old enough to remember just how unfriendly small bookstores used to be (especially if you were a kid). And then came the great big humungous stores with coffee shops and couches, and the small, unfriendly stores closed. And the big stores were OK except that they didn't just sell books but tempted you with assorted tat and food smells, and drew people away from the books toward videos and CDs. And you could never find the book you wanted anyway, if it wasn't a best-seller, and had to walk past shelves of huge shiny Danielle Steel hardbacks to get to the interesting stuff. And people took the books off the shelves and dog-eared them or spilt coffee on them before you got a chance to buy them. And then the big shiny books began turning up in WalMart and Target, because by now we had the idea that books were a cheap commodity like magazines.

If Amazon's destroying anything, it's that. If it can make us see beyond the shiny consortium-written bestsellers and go for what readers really enjoy, then more power to its algorithms. If it continues to allow just anyone to e-publish on really very fair terms, I say yippee! Who knows what great but quirky authors (for which read unpublishable in traditional terms) may emerge from its fold? There are quite a few things that remain to be worked out: how to stop publishers or individual authors from gaming the reviewing system is one. How to avoid stupidities like being seen as the enemy of main street stores is another.

But my guess is that in the end, the survivors will be Amazon and the really stellar indies.

What's your prediction?

UPDATE: Over the holiday week, we watched a lot of videos on the blu-ray player Felsted recently bought from Amazon. And came to the conclusion that it was defective. So at 6 pm on a holiday, he asked me to retrieve the order and ask Amazon if we could return it even though the 30-day period was over and we'd thrown away the box. At 7 pm we got an email which basically said "Sure! I'm sending you a new one. Here's the free shipping label to send yours back." THAT's what I'm talking about.

Twitter Strategy for Authors: Engagment or Enlargement?

This post was inspired by Seth Godin's post on social media 'noise.' It's worth your while reading the whole post at this point, but don't do what I do, which is get distracted and three hours later you're shopping on Amazon. I don't know how that works, but it does.

So Seth says it's wrong to do these things (on social media in general, but it's obvious Twitter is the main focus here):

• Follow a ton of people to get people to follow back
• Focus on the # of followers, not the interests of followers or your relationship with them.
• Pump links through the social platform (take your pick, or do them all!)
• Offer nothing of value, and no context. This is a megaphone, not a telephone.
• Think you're winning, because you're playing video games (highest follower count wins!)

OK, I thought, makes perfect sense. So the first thing I did was tweet the link (highly ironic in view of the third item) and then I hopped on Twitter to follow Seth. And discovered that his only 'official' account is followed by 132,192 people AND FOLLOWS 0 PEOPLE. AND ITS SOLE PURPOSE IS TO PUMP LINKS TO HIS BLOG.

THE IRONY.

And now, instead of getting on with stuff, I have to vent about something I come across all the time on Twitter. I am working very hard on increasing my Twitter numbers, and I'm proud that I've passed 2,000 followers (added 1K in 58 days! Yay! Can you tell I like stats?) But my aim isn't to sit back and brag about how many people follow me.

You see, I've discovered that for every hundred or so people I connect with on Twitter, about 10 will connect with me in some way, and one or two will become online friends and enrich my life. So, my thinking goes, if I connect up with lots of people on Twitter, I'll have lots of friends. And I'd really like one or two of them to be multi-published authors, because that would be a great way to network with the minds behind the books.

But.

Experience shows that the people least likely to follow me back on Twitter are the multi-published. They're followed by many but follow a few. WHY? The people following them are their readers. They are trying to connect. Following them back commits you to very little apart from the possibility of receiving weird private messages from them (at which point you just have to click the 'block' button).

Why in the name of Steve Jobs would an author NOT want to know who his/her readers are? Not want to see their daily lives? The readers are what matter in an author's life. Not the agent. Not the publisher.

A shining example of How To Do It is Laurie R. King, mystery writer and creator of the inimitable Mary Russell. She (or her assistant, because, y'know, sometimes she's writing books) proactively connect on Twitter with people who express an interest in her novels. One of my happiest days on Twitter was when 'Mary Russell' followed ME.

Another good example is Kate Kerrigan, an excellent Irish writer. I reviewed her novel Ellis Island favorably; she left a very nice comment, with a link to her Facebook fan page; I subscribed to the page; after some further interaction on Facebook, she also friended me personally. Will I buy her next book? That's 100% affirmatory.

Both of these authors have turned a casual reader (yours truly) into a fan by connecting. They are going out looking for their readers, and making an effort to shake hands digitally. They're not ignoring the people who buy their books.

So, Seth, you're absolutely right. It's not a numbers game. But you're not following your own advice, and you're wrong in one respect. Connecting with more and more readers/potential readers/potential allies in the struggle that is modern life is important, because you're allowing the power of the internet to bring new friendships to you.

Scared to write a novel? Here's why you shouldn't be

It never fails to amaze me that the most popular post I have written on this 'ere blog is the one about how I'm too lazy, scared and untalented to write a novel, and I did it anyway.

(As a complete aside, that particular novel is "on the shelf." Editing it threw me into a Spiral of Doubt, and by the time I'd recovered my faith in the novel (which happened about three months ago) a whole new set of interesting possibilities had suggested themselves. The novel, whose working title is now Deep Within, may take years to perfect, but that's OK. It's very dear to my heart.)

Anyhow, that post still gets an impressive number of page views, which leads me to conclude that there are a lot of wannabe novelists out there who are scared that they lack what it takes to be a writer. So, with Christmas approaching, I decided to offer the gift of Encouragement.

Here is my view on why you might be scared to write that novel, and why you shouldn't be.

You're afraid it'll be no good and nobody will ever want to read it. Yep, I'm going to tell you right now that there's a strong possibility your first novel won't be the greatest thing EVER. Especially if you've never written a whole lot. Dear Reader and future Writer, say this to yourself: This is my practice novel, and I'm doing it for fun. It can stink if it wants to, and I don't care. Remember, the Brontës wrote great steaming piles of doodoo before they got to the stage where they could write genius masterpieces and become famous. (That's one of my favorite posts, by the way, and shows me that occasionally I can write coherently.)

You're afraid that your family and friends will laugh at you. Again, yes, this might happen. It happened to me, big time. IT SHUT ME UP FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS, for crying out loud. I am nearly in tears with the intensity of trying to communicate to you that their laughter should never, ever stop you from pursuing your writing. They are jealous because you have aspirations and they don't. They are the fools, not you. Here is what you say to them: Jane says: 'Go boil your head.'

You're afraid that you'll start and not finish. This year's National Novel Writing Month had 256,618 participants, out of which 36,774 writers managed to hit the 50,000 word count that made them a 'winner.' (Caveat: 50,000 words is not a novel. You need to be thinking in terms of anything between 70,000 and 120,000 words, depending on your genre.) So that's only a 14% success rate, meaning that the other 86% ran out of time, energy or ideas. Depressing? Well, most novels aren't written in a month. Some take years. Look at it this way: if you write just 250 words a day, every day, in about 18 months you'll have a 120,000 word first draft. So your mindset should be that of the tortoise rather than the hare: say to yourself, I'll finish when I finish. It's not a race.

You're afraid that getting published is really, really hard. Well, yes and no. It's complicated, like most relationships, except that this relationship is between you and your readers, with the publishing industry as a sort of annoying little sister who won't leave the room when you want to smooch. And if you're still thinking about that novel rather than writing it, you're a good two years from even having to worry about getting published. And there are a bazillion resources out there in cyberspace to help you understand your options. But for now, say to yourself: Getting published isn't important. Getting my words on paper is what matters, and it's only a stinky practice novel anyway. By the time you've finished your first draft*, you'll have a much deeper understanding of what fiction writing is, and will probably have made friends with more experienced writers who'll help you get to grips with the mysterious world of publishing.

You're afraid that you'll waste hundreds of hours of your time on something that'll get you nowhere. First, let me ask you this question. How much time do you waste watching TV? Surfing for pix of Taylor Lautner? (No, you don't, do you? Seriously?) Playing Angry Birds? Lying on your bed staring at the ceiling and thinking about writing a novel? Say to yourself, reading and writing are never a waste of time. As Sir Francis Bacon so pithily said, "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man." (Or you can adopt the Jane Mantra, which goes thus: Reading makes you smarter; TV makes you dumber. Ask my kids how many times they've heard that one.) Writing really does do something for your inner self, something that's quite hard to describe but trust me, you'll love it.

And even if your very first novel stinks, just think: it will be there on paper to bear witness to the person you are now. One day you'll look back on it with great affection. But you never know...you may end up writing something good.

*When you've written your novel, it's a first draft. You must edit, get advice, edit, give it to readers, edit, proofread, polish, rinse and repeat before it's even close to ready for publication. DO NOT take my encouragement as license to upload your first draft onto Amazon and expect to hit it big. Unless you really are a bona fide genius, in which case WHY ARE YOU READING MY BLOG? Go write.

Book review: The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory

The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Where I got the book: review galley from NetGalley.

Philippa Gregory takes a step back farther in time with The Lady of the Rivers; after exploring the lives of the various Tudor women in a succession of novels, she now dives into the rich and complicated history of the Wars of the Roses. This was a period in the 1400s in which two branches of the Plantagenet royal family struggled for power over England (and various bits of France).

The protagonist in The Lady of the Rivers is Jacquetta of Luxembourg, who is not generally a well-known historical figure. The story covers Jacquetta's life from adolescence to middle age, and Gregory fans will realize that it ends with the beginning of Gregory's 2009 novel The White Queen.

I've been critical of Gregory's kings-and-queens novels in the past, mostly because I would like to see more pure fiction from her, but I enjoyed The Lady of the Rivers. As usual, though, I did not find the protagonist particularly interesting; I felt that she was an observer of history rather than being a participant in it. Of course, in those days a noblewoman's role was to run the house and lands while the men fought (Jacquetta does plenty of that) and produce children (Jacquetta had sixteen). So maybe the impression of passivity that I received was due to the necessity of sticking fairly close to historical fact. The bits of white magic that all of Gregory's heroines inevitably indulge in do not come across as exciting enough to compensate me for the lack of action.

And yet there were some definite improvements over recent novels in the series. For one thing, Jacquetta gets to travel around quite a bit, and even though she's not in the battles I did get a better sense of being near to the action than I usually do. And the supporting cast was good; I particularly liked Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI's queen, and I found the account of Henry VI's mental illness compelling. There were several other memorable characters; in fact, I now understand the Wars of the Roses a whole lot better. So if you read historical fiction for the history, you'll be satisfied.

I'm not going to say much about Gregory's writing idiosyncracies here, since what I was reading was a galley (which had not even been edited for capitalization and paragraph layout; that surprised me). I desperately want to send her the gift of a big bag of semicolons, though. Gregory is the undisputed queen of the comma splice.

One last comment; I have been reading Gregory for years, and am fascinated to note that the novels are getting less sensual as time goes on. This one was PG-rated.

Overall impression: a good Gregory, and recommended for lovers of English history.

View all my reviews

Hate to be a prophet of doom, but...

Yes, Blond Knitter, I also called you a Prophet of Doom (POD for short) when you were predicting snow in, what was it, October? Check out that 50 degree December weather.

But that's beside the point. I am not here to dispute the possibility of snow in Chicago, which last February was host to the weather event known as Snowtorious B.I.G. (two days off! Woot!) No. I am here to explain why I am inching daily closer to a decision to self-publish the House of Closed Doors series before I've even made an effort to break into the traditional publishing industry.

So I'm going to talk about the future of publishing. An industry in which I have never worked and about which I consequently have only the knowledge of an attentive observer. So please feel free to take my opinions with a grain of salt.

But first, a story. Back somewhere around 2007, I happened to be working for a large retail chain. I got recruited into this just after I finished my master's degree, back in those heady boom days when stores were hiring like crazy, and I enjoyed the job. I got to chat to a lot of people and sell them pretty stuff, and I could walk out of the door at the end of my shift without a responsibility in the world. My co-workers were some of the nicest people I've ever met.

The downside, of course, was Human Nature as displayed by (a minority of) the customers. Talk about material for a book. In the end I realized I wasn't really made for retail, and had another job offer on the table (oh, the good times!)

But in the months before I left, I listened often to the BBC World Service News in my car on the way to work. And they kept saying that the USA was heading for a recession, and it was going to be a doozy. I relayed this idea to my co-workers and friends, and the response was always, "No way! Things are going great! We'll just go on getting richer and richer! The BBC is being a Prophet of Doom!"

Well, you know what happened next. By the time I was ready to leave, a black cloud was hanging over the entire retail sector. And the moral of this story is, sometimes the prophets of doom have got it going on.

And there are lots of them circling around the publishing industry right now. Although I don't really believe in the imminent collapse of Publishing As We Know It. My guess is that one or two large companies may go the way of Borders, but the rest of them will find ways to adapt and survive. The many talented people who work in the book biz will forge their own paths through the Wild West of the e-book boom; they may have to draw on different skills than the ones they use now, but some of them may even find greater prosperity and happiness in the process.

What worries me is what's going to happen to the new and newer writers who are entering the market hoping to get published the traditional way. The business is going to change; change takes time; mid-list writers who enter into contracts in 2012 may conceivably find publication of their book suspended or even canceled as  people move around and companies change hands. You could sign with Company A in March and find that your words belong to Company F by December. Again, I point out that I'm no expert. But I've been around long enough to see boom and bust a couple of times, and I know how things work.

And self-publishing is no longer considered the sport of losers. Every day the internet brings evidence--with book sales and earnings figures attached--that self-published authors are making anything from a very modest income, but still an income, to quite a decent income from e-publishing their books. Authors are moving between self-publishing and traditional publishing in both directions, and sometimes doing both.

And all this comes with greater connection between the author and the reader. And in the end, that's what it's all about. Whether you make a little money or a lot is a bit of a crapshoot, but the real thrill for me is being read. That's why I blog. I'm afraid that if I try to go the traditional route in this time of upheaval, it might be years before anything happens with my fiction. It would happen, I'm sure of it, but look--I'm used to a pretty fast-moving business world, and it's hard to adapt to the slow pace of publishing.

And if, by the remotest chance, any publishing industry professionals read this, no offense meant. I think that agents, editors and publishers have an enormous amount of added value to offer to writers who decide to keep control of their own work. I would have no idea how to negotiate foreign rights, for example, or get my book on the shelves at Wal-Mart (alas, the bookstore of the future). And I predict that in five years' time (or maybe a lot less) there'll be a whole new set of relationships out there between new writers and the industry.

By which time, I hope I'll have a few readers for my novels.