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What You See Is What You Expect

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We "get" what we're told, shown, and subjected to over our lives, but in the best of times, changes come along that make us think. Thinking is good. When I was a kid in the '50s, it was perfectly okay for my school to put on a Minstrel Show, where kids in blackface acted (usually overacted) their perceptions of black people. Few in our rural area had met anyone unlike ourselves, and I recall watching as older kids had a great time shucking, jiving, and acting stupid--the way they perceived black folks. My mom was once given a box of books, and being an inveterate reader, I worked my way through them. One was a joke book, and I enjoyed the anecdotes about Goldfarb, Wisenstein, and other city dwellers with odd names. They were all self-absorbed, bossy, and overly concerned with money. It wasn't until years later I realized the characters in those "jokes" were all Jews, and the laughs were meant to come from the assumption that all Jews were conniving c

Wanna-be Writers: Here's the Scoop

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Oooooh, So Serious! The right way to get published? There isn't one! That's really all you need to know, but of course I'm not done. There are wrong ways , which include being in too much of a hurry and believing that your book is somehow different from the 3500 other books released each day. (Yup, I just read that figure, and while I didn't check it on Snopes, I'd say it's close with the current ease of publishing.) Still, a lot of what's out there as advice for writers is just silly . Statistics about how many words you write per day don't mean diddly. We're all different, so we work differently. Articles that insist you must maintain a blog or dun your friends and acquaintances with emails each and every month are dumb. Ask yourself who's giving the advice: a company that wants to be your email provider? An author who thinks she's the only person who ever wrote a book? A company that wants to make money from your hopes and dream

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

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So here's the new cover: better, I say! A few months ago my newest book, KIDNAP.org , was released. I had worked with the cover artist, who was very good about doing what I thought I wanted. I wish she'd been a little bossier. The author is usually asked what she pictures, and I had a vision. The only problem was, I'm not very good at vision. No artist's eye. No ability to see what the prospective reader will see--and deduce about the book. I imagined how cool it would be to have all the main characters pictured in front of the house they end up living in. I included the van they use for kidnapping bad guys. I thought it gave a good sense of the story. What I got was more Scooby Doo than kidnap capers. Yeah, it's cute, but the spookiness of the house and the cartoonish characters say the wrong thing to readers. When I ask audiences for an impression of the book I get, "Young adult, right?" Um, no. It's a caper novel, meaning the characte

On Being Everyone's Teacher

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Starting in 1978 (I think) and ending in 2002, I was one of two, sometimes three, English teachers at our high school. That meant every student capable of sitting in a desk for fifty minutes had at least one class from me. For most it was sophomore English and speech. Years later, the results of my work are on display on Facebook, Twitter, etc., and it's pretty interesting. I get to keep track of where everyone lives, whom they marry (or don't), how their kids are growing, and how they feel about life in general. Mostly, I love it. I get comments sometimes from those who aren't sure of their English skills and worry that I will correct their posts. (Not a chance, unless you ask me to.) I get memories of the "good old days," often funny incidents but sometimes messages of thanks for what I hope was respect for all my students. I get a few political arguments, though I try to keep out of the worst of that quagmire. (The funniest/saddest was from a student who was

The Skinny on Author Appearances

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Muskegon Book Festival 7/17 Some might have a mistaken idea of how author appearances go. I know I did way back when. I thought I'd sit at a table at the front of the bookstore and people would come in, see me, and say, "Oh, my, what have you written?" I'd tell them a little about it (it's called a pitch, and you practice it) and they'd say, "Sounds lovely. I'll take one--no, make that two. My sister likes mysteries too." As the girl says in A Chorus Line , "That ain't it, kid." Some ask you where the bathroom is. Some ask if you can recommend a good children's book for their granddaughter. Some ask if you carry the Wall Street Journal. Some walk in a half-mile circle to avoid passing close enough for you to speak to them. Some tell you about the book they're going to write when they get time. Some tell you about their second cousin, who wrote a book about her near-death experience and her talk with Jesus, wh

Here's What I Don't Get

I've been seeing ads on my Facebook feed lately that claim to help you generate plots for your novels. I guess my question would be "If you haven't got a plot, why do you want to write a novel?" A novel needs a plot, a reason to exist. As a reader I get tired of  some "literary" novels that tell a lot about how a person feels and how he got that way without the person ever doing anything interesting. Many books that are hailed by critics as "stunning" and "evocative" fail to hold my attention because nothing happens. Even a plot where things happen will disappoint me if those things are unbelievable or disappointing. A main character who kills had better have a reaaaaaalllly good reason for it. And both the murder and the resulting events must be logical. Here are some examples that disappointed me, despite the author's skill with words. I fully admit I'm in the minority here, because all of these were successful books; some

The Strategies of Authoring

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I've been at this for a while now, and I've seen the publishing world undergo drastic changes . When I got my first contract with a traditional publisher, that was the way to go, because books published by an author in what was then called "vanity publishing," were expensive to produce and almost certain to fail. That changed when two things happened: a few brave authors (e.g. Hugh Howey) began working to understand and use the system to their benefit and Amazon made it (fairly) easy and definitely cheap to publish books. My time with traditional publishers was extremely valuable. I learned about the need for good editing, good cover art, and good resources for promotion. On the downside, I learned I had few options once I signed a contract, and the financial reward for my work was a long time coming and not nearly as much as people imagine when they plop down $26.00 for a hard cover book. Now that I'm sort of independent (I've stuck with one of my pu