Visiting a bookstore

Spent part of the last two days visiting bookstores, including a couple of independent stores. And I bought a couple of books.

Being at a bookstore is a great way to spend part of the day.

I highly recommend it.

Thanks for reading. Now head off to a bookstore.

Book clubs

My wife has been in a book club for several years. It meets once a month and has been around for 13 years. It's called the Saturday Ladies Book Club. Usually, although not always, the book is either by a black author or it is a book with a black theme. (They have read both The Help and 50 Shades of Grey. Go figure.)

It's a group of mostly highly educated, professional black women, most of whom are married and on their first husbands, and, says my wife, there's absolutely NO drama in the group. They all get along. It's nothing like "The Housewives of . . . "  Twice a year -- in the summer for a cookout and in December for a Christmas party -- they have an event and invite husbands. Both are wonderful events.

The way it works, a different woman hosts the club once a month, picking the book to read and picking up the tab for food and beverages, whether hosting at home or some place else. Although the entire contingent never comes, it can easily be 15 or more people, which is a nice group for picking up the check.

Back around Christmastime, my wife mentioned that she was scheduled to host the January meeting and hadn't picked a book yet. Jokingly, I suggested one of my manuscripts. When she agreed, I almost died from panic. But we picked which book it should be -- in this case, An Untidy Affair -- and I made a PDF copy and shipped it off.

I was nervous about what they'd think but when I went to the meeting to discuss it with them I got loads of praise. They loved it. They asked good questions about the story and the writing, and, with the exception of one woman, were surprised by the ending. They found it engaging and fun to read.

And I was on Cloud Nine. (Plus, since we were paying for it, I enjoyed some great food. It was in a black-owned New Orleans restaurant.)

I happened to see one of the ladies last night at a fundraising event and she loved my first novel so much she wanted to know when I would give them another one to read. Not ready for that yet, but we will see.

So, when I finally get a publisher, I am going to try hard to find all those ladies book clubs. Can't hurt.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

Record

Though only half way through the month, my pageviews have reached a new record. I was close last month, missing a new record by less than 1 percent. But I have just blasted through this month.

Thanks dear readers. I appreciate you, even if you are just re-reading old posts.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

Who's Looking, Part II

I don't think I have posted anything on this subject in 18 months but it's about time. Who's reading me?

I still don't have a good answer to that question but I do have numbers and this month has been a great month. Not half the month is over and yet I already have the fourth highest monthly totals since I started this blog more than four years ago. At the current rate, this could be my highest month after October 2009. And with a little luck, I could top even that month.

Posts from last month are very popular. Hits from February 2012 make up six of my Top 10 posts this month. But still, the three most read posts so far this momth are oldies but goodies. They are: Being a picker at Amazon, from Dec. 20, 2010; What's in a name?, a four-year-old post from Jan. 4, 2008; and Querying agents, from Jan. 8, also in 2008.

I am still trending heavily in the United States, which isn't surprising. I'm an American writer.

This month, 48 percent of my page views are from the U.S., with The Netherlands coming in second with 24 percent. That is trending well with my all-time hits, where U.S. views make up slightly more than 50 percent of total views, followed by Germany and France.

There is lots more information from the stats section on my blog and in the weeks ahead I am going to try to better understand what readers are looking from (other than posts from 2008 and 2009). And I will let you know what I find.

In the meantime, thanks for reading and keep writing.

Christmas reading

During the Holiday season, you hear and see much about Christmas television specials. (There's a new one this year -- I think on ABC Family -- about a dog who saves Christmas. That in itself is insipid enough but it also has the voices of Mario Lopez and -- gag me with a spoon -- Paris Hilton. UGH!!!!!)

Don't get me wrong. There are loads of great holiday movies and TV specials. Some of my favorites include: Holiday Inn (I watch this while wrapping gifts), It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, How the Grinch Stole Christmas {TV version}, A Charlie Brown Christmas, The Santa Clause, and The Holiday (I watched that last night) ... to name a few.

But there is also good reading. Though my children are older now, before we go to bed on Christmas Eve I always read them The Night Before Christmas.

Of all the holiday-themed books, there is one book I read every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is not a classic, if only because it's not that old -- less than a decade, actually. But for me, it is a very enjoyable read. And I looked forward to sitting down and opening it this afternoon.

It is Skipping Christmas by John Grisham.

It's not a legal thriller. It's not a thriller of any sort and there are no lawyers or judges in it.

It's about an accountant named Luther Krank and his wife Nora. The Krank's 20-something daughter is off to Peru for the Peace Crops, leaving them along for Christmas for the first time. And Luther comes up with the brilliant idea to TOTALLY skip the trappings of Christmas for one year, thus saving $6,000 on everything from stamps for Christmas cards to the electricity he won't use to light a large Frosty the Snowman on his roof. He's not really a Scrooge because he plans to spend $3,000 of the savings on a cruise with Nora starting on Christmas Day.

They barely weather an intense storm of anger and criticism from friends, colleagues and (in particular) neighbors when they receive a call on Dec. 24, from their daughter Blair who will be home in six hours and is looking forward to sharing a traditional Krank Family Christmas with her new fiance.

I love it. It's funny because it is written with a lot of wit. And the end is touching.

So, between all the turkey and stuffing, and the cookies, pies and cakes, and between watching football games and television specials, find a favorite book and enjoy it as if it's the first time you are reading it and not the Nth time. And if you can't think of one, pick up Skipping Christmas.

Have a good Holiday season and thanks for reading.

Write what you know.

The current issue of Writer's Digest is "The Big 10" issue in which the editors and writers share many of the 10 secrets of writing and success. They examine productivity, top books and markets, plot problems, and more. They have interviews with 10 best-selling authors, where I noted with amazement that not a single one of them was black. But that is a matter for another blog posting.

What immediately caught my attention, however, was the 10 Rules of Writing from writing experts. And most importantly, for each of the 10 rules, there was a reason one expert said you should follow it and another reason another expert said you should break it.

The whole exercise was exhilarating and confusing. What advice do I take?

Super agent Donald Maass, whom I unfortunately missed last October at Bouchercon, says write what you know. That means, he says, "write what you see differently, feel profoundly and know is important for the rest of us." But author Natalie Goldberg says the opposite. She says be curious, and look for "what lurks beyond the familiar, safe streets."

Good advice from both. But which do I choose? (As a writer for nearly all my professional life, I go with write what you know. But that's what research is for -- so there will be things you know.)

Write 'shitty first drafts.' John Smolens, an English professor and best-selling author of a number of books and short stories, says follow that rule. "Really, do you have a choice?" he asks. While columnist, teacher and author Nancy Kress says first drafts "can certainly be rough and sloppy," but that doesn't mean they have to be shitty. She says you can only write as well as you can write. A first draft can be messy but "a mess can be fixed. Shit is just a waste. And a first draft is never a waste."

More good advice from both sides of an issue.

And it goes on. Write every day, John Dufresne says, because you have to. Not so, says James Scott Bell. It's not possible to write everyday if only because life will sometimes intrude, he says, plus you regularly need the break to recharge your creative batteries.

Read what you like to write; silence your inner critic; if you want to get rich, do something else -- all great topics, and all with conflicting points of view.

But not necessarily. If you examine them closely, you can see similarities in the points of view. So what I took most from the article is that, as a writer and as a person, you have to be true to yourself. That is where the real truth is and it is from that place that you want to reach readers.

Do what feels best to you. That may not have been what the experts intended but it's what I got from them. Otherwise, all their advice is nothing more than background noise.

Thanks for reading. Search inside yourself and keep writing.

The last book I read

Reading is essential for a good writer. You can get into the book and escape into the story, which is what I love most, or you can study a book for its craft -- style, setting, pace, dialogue, you name it. While I do both, I prefer to get into a book and escape into reading it without much thought of anything else.

So, what was the last book I read? THE LOST SYMBOL by Dan Brown. I bought the book when it first came out but couldn't get into it. It didn't grab me at first. But I picked it up again a couple of weeks ago and charged through it. It's well-researched -- Brown is known for that -- and well-written. Oddly, the thing that struck me the most was the shortness of his chapters -- an average of about three or four pages. Some are as short as one page. That means his 500-page novel has about 130 chapters.

The next two books I plan to read are THE SWAN THIEVES by Elizabeth Kostova and THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson. This is Kostova's second novel and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. And I was suppose to read DRAGON TATTOO in a reading group earlier this year but never got to it.

The funniest book I have ever read was WITHOUT FEATHERS By Woody Allen. What can I say? It's classic Woody Allen. I read it decades ago and it still makes me laugh out loud.

My favorite series are the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich, and Harry Potter by, well, you already know that. Evanovich's writing inspired me to write my last novel, AN UNTIDY AFFAIR, in first-person. In fact, a lot of the style of the novel was inspired by Evanovich. I tried to keep it light and funny, but moving quickly and with escalating tension.

As for Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling created a wonderful world of magical creatures and with a escalating sense of danger with each new book. I do think the books tended to get bloated further along -- Books five and six, in particular -- but the continuing story of Potter and his friends is compelling.

(This spring I tried to read the Twilight series and just couldn't. I guess I will have to try the films.)

While I like to read merely for the escapist enjoyment, one of my favorite novels is THE TEARS OF AUTUUM by Charles McCarry. It is a book that got me thinking. It's about the assassination of President Kennedy and who was behind it. While I believe Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, if there was a conspiracy, our racial and ethnic prejudices would never allow us to seriously consider the villains in the book as the ones responsible for one of the worse crimes in American history. And because of that, if they did do it, they would get away with it.

It's a great theory.

So, there is some of what I have been reading or have read, and why. If you'd like, tell me what you think.

Thanks for reading and don't give up on writing.

Reading something into Obama's Book Bag

I just read an article online about what President Obama is reading while on his vacation in Massachusetts this week, and what can be learned about the man from his vacation reading. No much as far as I can tell.

There are five books, all by white men. But that is neither surprising nor alarming. (What is alarming is that he doesn't have one of my books. I'd send him the material to read. I have got to get him to read DEATH AT THE JUNGLE-BUNNY JOURNAL.) I can't discern anything about him from the list, which includes:

THE WAY HOME, a crime thriller set in Washington written by George Pelecanos.
LUSH LIFE by Richard Price. It is a story about race and class in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Environmental revolution is covered in HOT, FLAT AND CROWDED by Tom Friedman.
Kent Harut's PLAINSONG.
And my favorite is JOHN ADAMS by David McCullough.

McCullough's book is the only one I have read, and also enjoyed. It was years ago when I was still living in Philadelphia. It was long before the HBO film series by the same title, which I also enjoyed.

If I were president, which I wanted to be when I was 17, what would I take? Probably much of what I took on vacation two weeks ago (except a book on writing). There was a mystery, a general fiction, one history, one on baseball and a book on writing.

The only one I finished that week was the mystery. (It was the 14th book on Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. I need to get the 15th book.) The only one I didn't touch was on the one on history.

Reading is essential for a writer. What can be discerned by my vacation reading list? Probably no more than can be learned from the president's reading list.

Thanks for reading and don't give up on writing.

The love of books

I was in the mall yesterday and a local book collector was among a series of vendors set up in the common area outside of Macys. I was going to Macys -- I needed a new belt -- and I wandered through the bookseller's area for a few minutes that lasted far longer than I originally intended.

It was because I love books, and old books in particular. There is something about having a book in you hands that is comforting and relaxing. Although I do enjoy audio books -- a fact that I would have denied a decade ago -- there is nothing better than having it in your hands. Even with technology, having a virtual library in my hands, such as a Kindle, would not be the same as holding an actual book.

For $7, I bought an original copy of William L. Shirer's book, BERLIN DIARY: THE JOURNAL OF A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, 1934-1941. (The seven bucks was four dollars more than the original sale price of three dollars back in 1941 when it was published.) The book is wonderful, giving a day-by-day account of the changing events in Europe leading up to and just after the Second World War. Having majored in 20th Century European history in college, I love that stuff.

(And for those stupid enough to doubt the Nazis' systematic oppression, torture and murder of Jews, Shirer's third diary entry dated September 2, 1934, mentions someone showing him around Berlin and he writes, "Coming back, he pointed out a building where a year ago for days on end, he said, you could hear the yells of the Jews being tortured." That was only 18 months after Hitler took office and five years before the war. Even with poor intelligence, the Western powers had to have known about some of what the Nazis were doing to Jews, in particular, and other social, political and religious victims, in general.)

Though not on a par with sex, reading a good book can be as satisfying as getting a good night's sleep. But with the world changing so quickly because of the Internet, I wonder whether future generations will enjoy books in the same way I do. Yes, the information will still be there. But I fear what will be lost is the feel of it in the hand.

It makes me sad but I guess that's progress.

Thanks for reading me today. Go out and buy a good book. And don't give up on writing.

Skipping Christmas

As I have said before, reading is essential for good writing. Reading helps a writer develop their skills and helps in developing an individual style. Other writers can also inspire new ideas or approaches to old ideas.

It's a win-win situation. Plus, even if you are not a writer, reading is just fun and enjoyable.

There are a number of writers I particularly like. One I discovered just this year is Janet Evanovich. My daughters have been reading her Stephanie Plum series for years but I only discovered them this past spring when we listened to one of the audio tapes while in the car driving to Pennsylvania. Since then, I have read or listened to five or six of Evanovich's novels and also read a non-fiction book she wrote on writing.

But probably my favorite author is John Grisham. I generally listen to a book on tape and it I like it, I buy the hardback and read it. Two I really like -- and read often -- are "The Testament" and "The Broker." Both have good stories and are told well.

Yet there is another one I read once a year. It is "Skipping Christmas." The book is not a crime or legal thriller. It's about a man who plans to completely skip celebrating Christmas one year and take a cruise. Given how chaotic the season often is, who wouldn't want to do that.

Well, the book is delightful. I love reading it at Christmastime each year, not the least because I also remember the friend who gave me the book. But it is such a wonderful book to read, fun and easy. The descriptions are perfect. The setting and characters are perfect. The dialogue is perfect. Just about everything about the book is perfect.

I just read it this week and enjoyed it as much today as when I read it for the first time in 2001. And I suggest it to you at Christmastime.

Thanks for reading. Don't forget to keep reading and don't give up on writing.

Reading

When I was a child, I wasn't a good reader. And as I grew older and my reading ability and comprehension improved, I became very self-conscious about reading aloud. I always feared I would come across a word I didn't know and would be embarrassed. While I was in college, I refused to read aloud in English class.

Some time later I attended a church in which during Bible study we would take turns reading verses aloud. When I knew my turn was coming, I would silently read ahead and search for all the names I knew I'd have a hard time with. It is for that reason that I prefer the New Testament __ fewer difficult names.

I am still self-conscious about reading aloud, although I am willing to do it. When I read, it generally is with little infliction because mouth is several seconds behind my eyes and my mind, which are looking ahead for any difficult passages. With several seconds of lead time, I can work around some word with which I am unfamiliar.

I mention all this because I am self-conscious even if I am reading my own writing. If I ever get a book published, I can imagine having some reading and being so nervous about it ahead of time that I can barely go on. It would be better to just memorize vast portions of text and pretend to read them.

Reading your work aloud is good, however. I just spent the better part of an hour reading two chapters to my wife. Hearing your work read aloud helps you with pacing and in developing a true sense for how people will preceive it. There can be troublesome words or phases that you just don't pick up on without hearing your work aloud.

So find a good friend or loved one and read your work to them. Self-conscious or not, it will help.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

Reading Like a Writer

While I was on vacation last week, my wife and I were in a bookstore and she saw a book that she thought I should get. It's called, "Reading Like A Writer: A Guide For People Who Love Books And For Those Who Want To Write Them." It's by Francine Prose. (Good name, by the way.)

I purchased a copy, not the least of which because it was deeply discounted. And it is a fascinating book on reading books slower and more closely to learn how authors construct their writing. The book is better than a creative-writing workshop because it assumes the reader likes to read and that writers like to read.

There are chapters in words, and on sentences, and on paragraphs, and then some. I particularly like the chapter on dialogue, although it was a little too long after she made her point. One of the things I do when writing dialogue is I try to hear it in my head and then put it down. It then can sound like informal speech that is spoke, sometimes choppy and directionless, and with incomplete sentences.

But when writing a novel, she says dialogue should be like spoken speech only better. There should be an economy of words to express a thought. That makes sense, which means I will have to reexamine all of my dialogue moving forward and when I get around to later drafts.

It is should a wonderful book I have suggested it to another aspiring novelist, even going as far as buying her a copy that I am sending tomorrow.

But like in all things, one shouldn't let reading a book get in the way of writing a book. There are tons and tons and tons of useful book on bookshelves around the globe. And if you try to glean every bit of knowledge out of them before you write, you will never get any writing done. And I plan to continue getting writing done.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

A visit to a post office

I was talking over the weekend to a very good friend who lives in rural backwater Virginia, a half hour’s drive from Charlottesville. Rachel and her husband Colin (not their real names, of course) have one of the nicest homes of any of our friends. Their house sits on a plateau at the base of a mountain and looks out over a mountain range in the distance. It’s beautiful and serene and I love being there because I always feel at peace. We may take the children there for spring break this year.

I met Rachel (still not her real name) while I was in college, so we have known each other for years. For more than 20 years she worked as a reporter and then as an editor at one of the top newspapers in the country before she and hubby moved to Virginia. She is a wonderful writer and perhaps the most well-read person I know. But she does not read John Grisham. She thinks little of his writing.

So it was a bit ironic last Friday when she went to her post office in rural backwater Virginia to pick up her mail and bumped into Grisham who was there picking up his mail. (I wondered whether he was there to pick up royalty checks from his latest novel, “The Appeal,” which, as it turns out, isn’t destined to be one of my favorites.) Recognizing him, she said hello. Then she recognized that he wouldn’t recognize her because he is a celeb and she isn’t. But he was polite nonetheless.

What she did not do was go “hack, hack, hack” as she pretended to cough as Colin (still not his real name) suggested she should have done. She also didn’t wrestle him to the ground and badger him about her having a longtime friend (me) who had just finished his first novel called “Fighting Chaos” and needed an agent. That's what I wished she had done.

But since she didn’t, I guess when we next go visit Rachel and Colin, I will just have to hang out at the local post office all the time. Just my luck, I’d probably see Mary Chapin Carpenter instead. She also lives in the area.

Thanks for reading and don’t give up on writing.

A new book

I like to read, of course, although I am naturally selective about what I pick up. The first consideration is time, not interest. Will I have the time to devote to the material? Even if I am interested in it, it can get squeezed out by time restraint.

While I am busy at the moment, I picked up a new book today that I had been waiting for months to arrive. And I will devote the time to it.

It is the new John Grisham book, “The Appeal.” Until I ventured into the bookstore, I had no idea what it was about. I had purposely decided to remain ignorant.

I had been thinking about this new legal thriller since I started researching agents back in late September and happened to visit Grisham’s agent’s website. Though only a few months ago, the book at the time was still untitled, although it was slated for publication in February 2008. They must have gotten a lot done in a couple of months.

Unlike “The Broker,“ which was published two years ago and remains one of my favorites of Grisham, this book packs in a lot in the first couple of chapters. The Broker was slower in the beginning and I am wondering how Grisham is going to keep up the pace for more than 300 pages in this new offering.

It will be interesting to see.

While I was in the store, I saw a new murder mystery novel revolving around the Oscars. Good timing! And it looked good. That might be a good one to pick up next __ if I have the time.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

You are what you read

I am so thrilled I can hardly contain myself. No, I don’t have an agent yet. But what I do have is my February 2008 issue of Writer’s Digest. It came Saturday and I restrained myself from immediately going through it. I actually waited about an hour. (And I took it with me to the mall when Angela, the girls and I went shopping. I was just there as the eye candy and read while they tried on clothes.)

There are so many great articles in it, as usual, that I hardly know where to start. I know I will cover some of the issues mentioned in the magazine in the weeks to come.

But the lead series of articles is called, “Yes! You Can Write A Novel”. Just what I need to know. I haven’t really looked at the articles because I was busy working on Sunday after returning from church and then all day today. But I am going to read and concentrate on every word.

On Saturday I read a very amusing article in Inkwell on Page. 20. It was called “Stand Tall, Fellow Rejects!” Boy, I thought I had it bad when two e-mail query rejection letters came on the same day about a month ago. March 2007 was really a bummer for him. (I really liked the part where his rejection included being paid NOT to write. Now that’s rejection!)

On Page 35 there was a sidebar called “Blog Your Book”. Until then, I never thought one day I could turn these blog postings (or some of them, at least) into a book. How myopic I am.

There is so much in the magazine, such as the piece on metaphors, that it’s amazing. There is nothing else that I read on a regular basis that contains so much useful information. I haven’t finished this issue and I am already looking forward to the next one. It is a publication I recommend.

Anyway, thanks for reading and don’t give up on writing.