FAQ - Odds and Ends

I did an interview yesterday and was reminded of lots more little Q I'm F A.  

Q: Why aren't your books in hardcover?

A: That was the publisher's decision, not mine. I suspect they felt that I'd have better luck building an audience with seven dollar paperbacks than with twenty-five dollar hardcovers. And let's face it, many folks see mysteries as quick, rather disposable reading -- not something they intend to read again and again.


Q: Are your books on Kindle and other Ebook formats? 


A: Yes, they are. Again, that's up to the publisher -- I have nothing to do with it.


Q: What about audio books? 

A:  Sorry, no.  I'd love it if they were -- especially if it was a good reader who did the dialect well.  Maybe someday . . . but again, this is in the hands of the publisher and, like everything to do with publishing, it's driven by the bottom line. 

Q: What advice would you give writers hoping to get a book contract with a traditional publisher?

A:  1. Don't quit your day job in hopes of selling a book and watching the money roll in. That happens in only a very, very, VERY few instances.

        2. Your first priority should be to finish writing your book --before you get your author's website (I said, website, not blog) and before you get that author's photo taken in the tweed jacket with suede elbow patches. Finish the book and start the next one. 

        3. There's an overwhelming amount of writing and publishing information out there. Don't try to read it all. Don't attend every conference and take every workshop. If you did, when would you have time to write your book?

 

The two photos were taken at sunset on Jupiter Road as I drove home from the interview.

Space Mystery Solved!

 Not that kind of space. (But a sensational title, right?)

No, I'm talking about the space after the period (or ? or !) at the end of a sentence-- one space or two? 

I typed my way through endless college papers, my own and my husband's, as well as my MA thesis and I always put two spaces after the period. Just like I learned at my mother's knee (actually, just like I learned in typing class -- back in the Fifties.

So, imagine my surprise when my first manuscript came back to me with enigmatic little red marks all over it, indicating that I was taking up too much space -- that one space after the . or ? or ! was all that I was allowed.

Well, okay, then. I shook my head and tried to unlearn the two space habit of a lifetime, muttering to myself about the inscrutable ways of publishers but never asking why? 

Now the mystery is solved! I stumbled upon this article in SLATE (which I visit everyday to read DOONESBURY) and learned that it all has to do with the difference between typewriters (remember them?) and computers.

The article says  that typographers have always agreed that one space between sentences is preferable for ease of reading. But (and I quote --) 

" The problem with typewriters was that they used monospaced type—that is, every character occupied an equal amount of horizontal space. This bucked a long tradition of proportional typesetting, in which skinny characters (like I or 1) were given less space than fat ones (like W or M). Monospaced type gives you text that looks "loose" and uneven; there's a lot of white space between characters and words, so it's more difficult to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule—on a typewriter, an extra space after a sentence makes text easier to read. 

Here's the thing, though: Monospaced fonts went out in the 1970s. First electric typewriters and then computers began to offer people ways to create text using proportional fonts. Today nearly every font on your PC is proportional. (Courier is the one major exception.) Because we've all switched to modern fonts, adding two spaces after a period no longer enhances readability, typographers say. It diminishes it."

I think maybe you have to be a typographer to get real worked up over this. But I really liked learning the reason for the new rule.  Plus it's a funny, funny article.

Hopeful Signs

In the morning sun.

A tongue of new green glowing,

Growing in the light.

Forsythia buds 

Swelling green in the window . . .

Clear blue sky outside.

I know, I know -- we've got lots of winter yet to go. But what a pleasure to see these early signs.   

And  in French from Miss Yves--

Bourgeons de forsythia
S'enflant, verts, à la fenêtre
Ciel bleu clair dehors.

The Amazing Coen Brothers

These guys are magic. Ethan and Joel Coen have made some of my favorite movies of all time. 

I first fell in love with the boys' over-the-top movie-making style when a friend told me about "Raising Arizona" -- a film I've seen now approximately twenty-five times.  The dialogue and the voice-over narration are so witty, so articulate that I'd be happy just to listen to this flick -- but then I'd  miss Nicholas's Cage's loose-limbed physical humor or the innumerable 'bits' that make me grin just thinking about them.

"Fargo," "Burn After Reading," "O Brother, Where Art Thou, "The Big Lebowski" -- these, too, are all part of my short list of films to rewatch yearly.  Or more. Sometimes I just need to see the Jesus section of "The Big Lebowski" one more time.  John Tuturro and his purple jumpsuit -- words fail me.

When the Coen brothers'  "A Serious Man"  came out, the reviews I read were lack lustre and  the entire premise just didn't entice me. A Jewish college teacher has a lot of bad things happen to him and he tries to make sense of his trials.

Meh. Didn't grab me.

Then I heard an interview with the Coens and they talked about "A Serious Man" and I realized I'd made a serious mistake.

We watched the movie and I adored it. And for those critics who didn't like the ending -- they should consider the Book of Job.

It really ties the whole thing together.

Looking forward to seeing what the boys have done with "True Grit."

Sunshine Came Softly . . .

What a pleasure to see shadows again!

And to hear the sweet dripping of icicles!

And to read that the temperature could reach the forties this weekend!

Oh joy!

Moonshine Revisited

A re-post from '08. It may be the continuing snow that has me thinking of strong drink...

I wouldn't know, myself, where to find moonshine for sale but thanks to the proverbial 'friend of a friend,' we were given a jar a few months ago. It came from Tennessee and, who knows, maybe even from Pop Corn (see Thursday's post) himself. Those are sliced peaches in the jar and I'm told this is a fairly common practice -- using fresh fruit of various kinds to flavor and color the white liquor.

We've been given jars of 'white' before this -- always from friends who swear they know the origin of the stuff and can vouch for its safety. We keep it around to offer a 'sup' to visiting flatlanders who are curious about this infamous local product. (It tastes a lot like tequila to me -- not bad but not something I'm crazy about.)

In the old days, the local folks didn't go to making whiskey out of a desire to break the law or to get drunk. It was a simple matter of economics. If you live in a remote mountain cove and your main crop is field corn, how will you make more money -- hauling bushel after bushel of dried corn down the mountain and to market to sell for animal feed or cornmeal -- or do you turn that same corn into distilled whiskey, using the knowledge and skills your ancestors brought over from Scotland and Ireland?

Whiskey was easier to haul, more valuable, and it kept well. One of the earliest 'value added' products.

Of course, with taxation, Prohibition, and dry counties, things changed and moonshining turned dangerous. And then, as the bootleggers used fast cars to transport their illegal cargo over twisting mountain roads (see Thunder Road with Robert Mitchum), it all led to NASCAR.

Aye, law.

I have no idea what folks pay for white lightning but I suspect it's not cheap. I've heard tell of the tour buses of country music stars lined up at one particular bootlegger's home and and the quart jars being loaded on by the case.

It's a nostalgia thing, I suspect.

A Wilkes County copper moonshine still
Courtesy of Applachian Cultural Museum
Applachian State University
Boone, North Carolina

For more information on moonshine, go here

The Hare With Amber Eyes

I really enjoyed this memoir.  And found it making me think about the layers of history all around us . . . something I'm addressing in my current proposal (not quite ready for Herself but close.)


Anyway, here's an excellent review of the book for background and then I'll add my thoughts below... see you there.

Amazon Best of the Month, September 2010: At the heart of Edmund de Waal's strange and graceful family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, is a one-of-a-kind inherited collection of ornamental Japanese carvings known as netsuke. The netsuke are tiny and tactile--they sit in the palm of your hand--and de Waal is drawn to them as "small, tough explosions of exactitude." He's also drawn to the story behind them, and for years he put aside his own work as a world-renowned potter and curator to uncover the rich and tragic family history of which the carvings are one of the few concrete legacies.

De Waal's family was the Ephrussis, wealthy Jewish grain traders who branched out from Russia across the capitals of Europe before seeing their empire destroyed by the Nazis. Beginning with his art connoisseur ancestor Charles (a model for Proust's Swann), who acquired the netsuke during the European rage for Japonisme, de Waal traces the collection from Japan to Europe--where they were saved from the brutal bureaucracy of the Nazi Anschluss in the pockets of a family servant--and back to Japan and Europe again. Throughout, he writes with a tough, funny, and elegant attention to detail and personality that does full justice to the exactitude of the little carvings that first roused his curiosity. --Tom Nissley

Washington Post review

I love netsukes and posted about my very small collection here.  And the history of the Ephrussi's  collection provides the framework for this fascinating book. But the real story, as far as I was concerned, was what happened to this this wealthy, cultured family when the Nazis arrived and how quickly what had always been an undercurrent of ant-Semiticism became a tidal wave of terror.

I spend a little time in Vienna every day, thanks to Merisis's beautiful Vienna for Beginners 

I love Merisi's photos of Vienna's gorgeous buildings, pastel against the blue skies, and the many architectural statues and gilded ornaments. It may be the most beautiful city in the world.

But after this book, I'll always be reminded of a terrible period in Vienna's history. 

Almost every country has ugly things in their past -- the South's gracious antebellum plantations hide the brutal fact of slavery behind their romantic exteriors and the spear points I find in our fields remind me that this land belonged to the Cherokee before they were "removed."

The pink building pictured here is a casino in Vienna -- formerly the Palais Ephrussi -- the home of the netsuke collection and the Ephrussi family . . . before the Jews were removed.

(All of the pictures are from the internet -- mostly from Wikipedia.)

FAQ - Tips for Critique

Q: I hang my head because I tend to cheerlead too much, I think. . .  Do you suppose you could give us some things to start with if we are recovering cheerleaders and want to be better crit partners?

A: If you do cheerlead, at least be specific. 'I love the way you described the sound of his gargling'  or 'The way you show your ninja hero's weakness by having him insist on a night light makes him much more interesting to me' is a lot more useful than 'Oh, you're such a good writer.'

Here are a few place to start in critiquing a novel.

Setting: Is there a strong sense of place? Do we know when and where the action of each scene is taking place? Are most of the senses engaged -- do we know what this place smells, sounds, feels like? Is the woolen coat the girl wears rough under the hero's fingers? 

And, this is the big question, are the characters acting against the backdrop of setting? 'Harold always ate his dinner at the table in the center of the room. It was covered by a red tablecloth with a small burn spot.


Or are they interacting with the setting? (much better)  "Harold carried his microwaved TV dinner to the table in the center of the room. As always, he positioned the plastic dish to cover the burn Matilda's cigar had left in the red tablecloth."

Characters: Are the main characters real, fully developed people with a past? What do they want to achieve? What stands in their way? Are they likable or at least interesting so that readers will want to know what is going to happen to them?

Dialogue: Does the dialogue sound like real people talking? (Hint -- most folks in speaking use contractions - "I  (would not) wouldn't pick up that ferret if I were you, Cyril.") Do the main characters have distinctive voices? Can the reader keep track of who's speaking?

Show, Don't Tell: Is the author telling the reader things that the characters should be showing the reader?

'Horace was really angry.'  That's Tell and it's boring. 

'The knuckles on Horace's clenched fist were white but his face was a deep red. Without warning, he smashed his fist through the dry wall.' That's Show. See the difference?

Odds and Ends :In my classes, I generally suggest that we not focus on typos, misspellings, punctuation, or grammar. I make these corrections on the hard copy but don't take up time in class with the basics.

I do, however,  address the all too common misuse of its/it's and the difference between lie and lay. Just as I did in this post a few years ago.

And one last tip. I think it's a mistake to critique work on the basis of the author reading aloud. Unless, of course, you're critiquing performance. The thing is, a good reader can make mediocre writing sound better than it is and a bad reader can make great writing sound like . . . that stuff you step in.
.

No, THIS Story. . .

So, in as much as we're still snowed in, Brenda's going to make cocoa for everyone and I'm going to tell the story she really asked for. Maybe someone would make popcorn as well. Snow cream would be nice too.

This happened almost twenty five years ago. It was summer time and John was at work in Asheville (back then he owned a power equipment store.) The boys and I had gone shopping and I had gotten a fair amount of birdseed and dogfood and such that would have to be put in the basement. 

So I drove our jeep through the front yard and up the narrow grassy strip that led to the basement door -- a maneuver I'd performed without incident in the past. Only this time, trying to stay well away from the lower side of the road that dropped away rather sharply,  I managed to drive the jeep's two left tires up on the bank on the upper side of the road and the vehicle began  to tilt-- perilously, it seemed to me.

At that time, the roadway was a good bit narrower than it is in the picture below and I feared that the car was going to pitch over  and roll down the steep slope on the other side of the road.  Trying to sound calm, I told the boys to get out of the jeep -- on the upper side -- and go call their father and tell him what was happening. 

The thing is, I was totally convinced that it was only my weight, there on the upper side of the jeep, that was keeping it from rolling over -- and I was afraid to try to back the car off the bank. 

 

Soon the boys came out on the porch to say that Dad was on his way home and to ask if they could they make some popcorn.  Which they did.

They even brought me some -- handed it in through the car window and returned to the rocking chairs on the porch to wait and see what would happen next.

It was just over a half an hour later that I heard John's truck roaring up the road and coming up through the front yard.

"I broke all the speed limits getting home," he told me later.  "I wasn't quite clear on what the situation was. And when I was coming up the road, I saw the kids on the front porch and their hands kept going up to their faces. It looked like they were crying and I was sure something terrible had happened.

 "Then as I got closer, I saw that the car was still there and you were still there. . . and they were eating popcorn."
 

(And what about the teetering jeep? 

No tow trucks, tractors, chains, or come-alongs were needed  -- John took a look at the jeep, shook his head, and told me to get out. He climbed in, backed the jeep down off the bank, and very kindly didn't tell me I was an idiot.)

Stop Me If You've Heard This One. . .

Before I get to today's post, here's an addendum to the past two posts from Bo Parker of Cobbledstones.

"We're talking about one of the most flexible, expressive words in our language, depending on its pronunciation. There's the matter-of-fact one-syllable sound of the word in a simple declarative sentence explaining nothing more than what one just stepped in. Or with a bit more inflection, hard on the "it," the word can be an expression of utter disgust to something, like maybe a reaction to what one just stepped in.  And finally, pronounced with extended emphasis on the "e," often proceeded with "oh," it can be a statement that stresses the unpleasantness of a situation, like realizing one had forgotten to clean shoes and tracked it across the kitchen floor.
  
"As you said about poo. 

It may stick to the shoe.

But that's not as bad as a young boy's summer woes.

Chicken shit sticks between barefoot toes. "

Thanks, Bo!

  ******

Brenda asked for this story and I don't remember if I've posted it before . . . this is my 1,120th post and I may well have.

But I'm going to tell it again anyway. And I'm not going to post pictures of the blizzard that's going on as I write this on Saturday. We have over a foot of snow now and they say there's some serious weather coming. . .

So, here's the story Brenda wanted to hear.

Down the road from where we live is a little Free Will Baptist church. We aren't believers and at the time of this story -- maybe 25 years ago -- I'd never even been in this church. (Later, I went with a neighbor to a revival there but that's another story.)

Back then church met Wednesday night and Saturday night and it was one Saturday night around nine that John and  I were returning from having dinner in Asheville. As we neared the church, it was obvious that a big service was under way -- the church yard was full of cars and trucks and vehicles were parked all along one side of the narrow road.

Actually, they were parked in the road, taking up the other lane, and we slowed down. Through the church window we could see the preacher waving his arms wildly -- in fact, he seemed to be doing jumping jacks. 


John slowed the car to a crawl as we both watched in fascination. And then there was a jolt and a bump and our car was in the ditch. In the ditch and not moving. 


We had visions of church letting out and the congregation gathering round as the preacher pointed out what happened to sinners who spent their evenings carousing in the fleshpots. (What are flesh pots anyway? Sounds awful.)


So we very quietly got out of the car and, giggling like mad, hurried up the road toward our driveway about a half a mile off. 

Once were out of sight of the church, we slowed and took our time getting the farm truck and a chain to pull the car free.

When we returned to the scene of the mishap, the church was dark and all the vehicles gone. The saved had gone home to their righteous rest, leaving the sinners to deal with their folly unobserved. 


And we were very thankful.

A Story . . .

So, like yesterday my pictures have nothing to do with the subject matter.  It's been snowing all day long and, while it's absolutely gorgeous, my eyes are ready for some flowers.

And I'm not yet done with yesterday's topic.

This story took place about thirty years ago. I'd taken my boys to Tampa to visit their grandparents and great grandparents. As we drove the long weary miles through South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, I discussed with the boys  (ages 3 and 8, as I recall)  what kind of behavior would be expected of them in suburban Tampa -- no running around naked, no peeing outside, yes ma'am and yes sir to their elders and then there were certain words not to use. . .

Now this was foolish on my part. The boys didn't use 'bad' language at that tender age. But I knew they'd heard it so I just wanted to make sure they understood the rules.

And they did.

One morning as the boys and I were having breakfast with my grandparents, the three year old, angelic little Justin, his spoonful of cereal half-way to his mouth, fixed me with a solemn gaze and and said, quite clearly, "We don't say 'shit.'

Euphemistic Language

Reader Wil started it. Her comment yesterday about not saying 'shit' because it was vulgar has led me to this post. (For reasons that should be obvious, my photos have nothing to do with today's natterings. )

So anyway, I got to thinking about some  of the euphemisms that are employed rather than offend anyone's ears with the fine old Anglo-Saxon 'shit.'

There's crap and poop and poo poo,

 Doo dahs, squat, and shhiz,

Dookie and doodie and doo doo

And who doesn't know Number Two?

Whatever its name 

Call it crud, caca, or poo,

Vulgar or not, it's all still the same
When it sticks to the sole of your shoe.

Isn't language fun?