Like life, book sales are unpredictable

Patty here…

I was a featured author this past weekend at the Literary Guild of Orange County’s 15th Annual Festival of Women Authors, founded by Mystery Writers of America Raven Award winner, the indefatigable Joan Hansen. Each year, a panel of judges reads books, books, and more books and then taps eight diverse women writers to appear at the event. The 2008 authors were:

Maria Amparo Escandon’s novel, Esperanza’s Box of Saints, was translated into 21 languages and is available in 89 countries. She also wrote the screenplay for the film, which John Sayles produced.

Debby Applegate has a Ph.D. from Yale. In 2006, The Most Famous Man in America, her biography of preacher Henry Beecher Stowe (Harriet’s brother) was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 2007, the Pulitzer committee awarded the book a Pulitzer Prize for biography.

Not only was Christine Conrad an editor for Bantam and Warner Books, she also writes non fiction books as well as screenplays, including Junior, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Di Vito. She recently released her debut novel called Mademoiselle Benoir.

Nicole Mones was an entrepreneur in 1970’s China before young American women were allowed to do such things. She speaks fluent Chinese and has written three acclaimed novels based on her experiences: Lost in Translation (not the movie), A Cup of Light, and The Last Chinese Chef.

Mim Eichler Rivas is a biographer, ghostwriter, and spokesperson for animal welfare, non-violence, civil rights, and literacy. She co-wrote the film The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith and the bestselling book Finding Fish, the story of screenwriter Antwone Fisher.

Ann Stalcup is the author of ten children’s books. She has also published numerous other books and articles about her travels around the world.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has a Ph.D. from Berkeley and writes novels about the clash between Indian and American values. She is a winner of the Allen Ginsburg Poetry Prize and many other awards. Her novels include Sister of My Heart, The Mistress of Spices, and The Vine of Desire.

All are smart, talented, and amusing women.

And then there was me.

Sheesh!

At the author dinner, we each had to give a 5-minute talk about our accomplishments. I listened to my fellow writers, and when it was my turn, I cleared my throat.

“It’s such an honor to be here but something has been bothering me all evening and I just have to clear the air…Um, you know I’m not Jane Smiley. Right?



That got a big laugh, but I was only half joking. There is only one mystery writer selected each year and many of the previous authors have gone on to become the crème de la crème of crime fiction, including our very own Jacqueline Winspear, who was a featured author in 2005.

My fourth book is due out June 3, but because 600 readers, educators, and librarians were coming together to honor women writers and raise money for literary scholarships, my publisher allowed the Guild to sell COOL CACHE before the official release date.



On Saturday, I walked into the book room and saw towering stacks of each of my four books, casting long shadows on the carpet. Having just driven 250 miles the previous weekend to sell only one book, my heart sank as I imagined all of those novels flying back to New York unwanted and unsold.




It was my first look at COOL, so I bought one copy for my mother for Mother’s Day. I dedicated the book to her and to my dad who died before he saw any of novels in print. The cover is beautiful. My name is in LARGE print. He would have been so proud. I held the tome in my arms like a new baby, loving it more than I imagined I would.

“I’ll buy any books that are left over,” I said to the bookseller, apologetically, hoping my charge card wouldn’t explode when the register uttered its final ka-chink.

At ten o’clock, the bookseller found me in the ballroom and whispered in my ear. “Your books are selling like hotcakes. Do you have any more in the trunk of your car?”

I’m a writer. Of course, I have books in the trunk of my car. Do I ever have occasion to loan them to a bookseller? Rarely. But I didn't have any copies of COOL CACHE except the one I bought for my mother. I dashed out to the parking lot and lugged my box into the bookstore. By 10:30, readers were telling me my books were sold out. Did I have any more?

"I'm sure there's some mistake," I replied. "Check again."

By the time my breakout session began at 11:00 a.m., I was told that every single book was gone. Sold.

I was stunned. It’s not that my books haven’t sold out at previous signings, but not in such large quantities and not in such a short amount of time. It’s not even that my books haven’t sold in triple digits at a single event, but truthfully, that happens mostly when my mother goes through the line forty times in forty different disguises. So what happened? Was it something I said? Or was it just a group of superwomen supporting a good cause? Regardless, it was just about the most fun I've ever had at a book event.

Have you ever been happily or unhappily blindsided by expectatations? Dish, babies.

Happy Monday!

And How Do You Noodle?

from Jacqueline

With a deadline fast approaching, it’s a wonder I can do anything but use my writing time to add to my manuscript, racing forth towards the magic 100,000 words from which – with a bit of luck, my sixth novel will be hewn. But here I am, at Naked Authors, grateful for the interruption in my train of thought.



Aw, heck, why don’t I just admit it – at this stage in the game, my so-called creative mind seeks out distractions like a forest seeks out fire after forty years of drought. And it’s amazing what I can come up with.



Cleaning the keyboard is a favorite distraction. Ever since I took a painting class a few years ago and discovered that one of those flat brushes was just the right size to skim between the keys to collect fluff, breadcrumbs, chocolate fragments and even splinters of walnut, I have had that brush close to hand so that I can get down to some serious computerwork at a second’s notice.



Walking the dog doubles as “thinking time” and ever since I read in The Tao of Equus, that time spent with horses jump-starts creativity, I have justified every moment spent in the saddle, no matter how close that deadline.



Washing the dog is a good one. There I am, working away, crafting my sentences, bringing the movie in my head to the blank page, when ... what was that whiff that just caught the end of my nose? Sally, the senior citizen of the house has just walked into my office and is clearly in need of a bath. Never mind that no one else can smell “dog” and she’s never been one of those whiffy dogs anyway, it’s as good a time as any to get out the bucket, hose, shampoo and towels and lather the old girl into submission – oh, what deadline?



On Tuesday my folks arrived from England to stay, and decided to stay at my brother’s house because they knew I had a deadline looming. Nice of them. I should add that my brother lives around the corner, so it’s important, because they’ve come all this way, for me to drop in on them, just to check, after all, you never know, do you?

I have used excuse after excuse not to write when I know I should be writing, when it’s the thing I most want to do but for some reason noodling around in the depths of prevarication seems to be the only thing I can accomplish with any level of expertise.
Now, why is that? Why do we fart around when we should be working?

And here’s the interesting thing: When I had a full-time job and only dreamed of what it must be like to be a full-time writer, I never wasted one second. There was no setting aside that moment before I hit the page running, there was no excuse for not settling at my desk – I had so little precious writing time, that I wasted not one second.



My saving grace is that, ages ago I read the best book on writing on the market – in my humble opinion: On Writing by Stephen King. It’s the only book I have ever read by Mr. King, because I can’t read horror – it scares me too much – but to my mind, it is the best. You’ve probably heard me quote this before, but Mr. King maintains that a writer can complete the first draft of a novel in twelve weeks, based on a minimum daily output of 1200 words. Right there and then, my output goal became 1200 words, and seeing as I wrote my last novel in two months, sometimes I write a bit more. So, I noodle and I brush the keyboard, and I ride a horse and I wash/walk the dog – but I always feel as if I have to answer to Mr. King if I write less than my daily due.



And right now, because I clocked up the magic number today, I’m off for a cup of tea. Oh, that’s another one – stopping for yet another cup of tea ....



What’s your favorite writerly method of prevarication? (And Paul, that shoulder is way too painful to count – hope it heals soon.)

Happy Mother's Day. Ooops, better stop writing and nip out for a card ....

A Good Book and Bad Reviews --- Take the Challenge

James O. Born

I’ve been on a good fiction reading binge lately. When I say “good”, I mean a wide range of different genres and authors. I don’t mean it was all good fiction. In fact, some of it was difficult to slog through so I chucked the books and moved on through by TBR pile with an occasional manuscript or ARC someone sent me thrown in. I covered a lot o ground. It’s like when I skim through shows I’ve recorded on my DVR and erase many without watching them. It’s a feeling of satisfaction to have cleared up something you intended to do. In my case, read one of the many books I have on a bookcase now dedicated to only to books I want to read.

One book in this recent orgy of reading (I have to make it sound at least a little interesting) really stuck out in my mind and came to my attention in the most important and common way: a friend’s recommendation. Jay Lake, noted fantasy writer whom I’ve mentioned on this blog in the past told me about a science fiction writer named John Scalzi who’s books he thought I’d like. My love of science fiction is no secret and an easy enough habit to feed.

I picked up Ghost Brigades, Scalzi’s second novel and the second in a trilogy that starts with Old Man’s War. The first thing that stood out for me is that the novel, despite being the second in a series, really stands on its own well. The next thing I realized was that the novel sucked me in completely from setting to characters.

A true science fiction, set far in the future, Ghost Brigades is at once a story of man’s adaptation of technology that straddles the line of God’s and man’s domain and the story of the conflict between humans and other aliens interested in the inhabitable planets of the universe. The intrigue and military operations could be enough to make this book fun and riveting but it is the relationships and fates of the many alien and human characters that make it stand out in the crowded world of novels.

I know some crime fiction fans look down on science fiction fans the way literary writers look with distaste at crime writers. Ghost Brigades is another example of that flawed thinking. I wish I read more crime fiction written as well as this novel. Just as I advocate punching snooty literary writers I now proclaim that snooty crime writers should be beaten as well.

Scalzi has an interesting blog . A week or so back he posted some of his negative Amazon reviews and challenged other authors to follow suit. He believes we should show we can get past bad reviews. He offered a great graphic:

I will take him up and offer this:

From Amazon for Field of Fire :
This book had a good set of blurbs, from Michael Connelly and John Camp, so I bought it. The premise had some promise, but it doesn't pan out at all, and frankly as I got further into the book, I was waiting for it to end. When it did finish, the ending was pretty much what you would expect, improbable and not very satisfying.

Ouch. Gotta move on.

I extend Mr. Scalzi’s offer as well. If you’re an author, let’s see some bad reviews. C'mon, it'll feel good.

The Naked Quiz

By Cornelia Read

Still deadlining like crazy. So I've been thinking of some questions to throw at you guys.

1. You have been assigned to buy a baseball cap for the Dalai Lama. Which team's hat do you feel would be most appropriate, and why?



2. If mechanical dependency were no object, would you rather own this VW:


Or this woodie?:


(Is dependency even a word, outside the drug world? I'm so confused.)


3. If you could find out what really happened in the case of one single true crime, which crime would it be?




4. A tiny genie shows up on the beach while you're napping. She pokes you in the shoulder and wakes you up. You are offered a million dollars, but you must give it to a single charity (magically, every dollar will actually go toward helping those whom the charity was founded to help). Which cause do you support?


5. Tiny Genie is pleased with your choice. She allows you to pick one of the following, which will run perfectly and never need any expensive mechanical support.

Do you want the Porsche 356A:


Or the Jaguar XK 150?



6. You can banish one song from all radio stations forever. Which song is it?



7. Which do you generally find the most annoying:

Poets


Or clowns?


8. If you could choose one book to read all over again, for the very first time, which book would it be?



9. Two men want to date your teenage daughter:



Keith Richards




and Dick Cheney.



Which one do you shoot first?

Naked Scribbler Benched

Paul here, sort of...

Maybe it was throwing all those sliders. (No, Jim Born, not the little burgers you ate at White Castle).

Maybe it was swimming, by conservative count, 900,000 strokes since college.

Maybe it was just my aging tendons and muscles saying, ala Roberto Duran, "No, mas."

Anyway, I tore the rotator cuff in my right shoulder, the body part I use to pitch, bowl, type the word "poop," shoot the bird, and rattle a cocktail shaker full of Pisco sours.

Hurts to type.

Hurts to mouse.

Going on hiatus.

Paul