Last Thanksgiving, Magazine History: A Collector’s Blog posted an amazingly comprehensive list of links to 22 of JD Salinger’s uncollected stories, courtesy of the excellent site Dead Caulfields:

Spanning his literary career between the years 1940-1965, these stories display changes in both the author’s style and message. While some are plainly of commercial quality, most are serious works containing an expansive gift of enlightenment and self-examination: that very-satisfying “Salinger moment”.

Each link is accompanied by a brief description of the story and bibliographic information. A taste:

“The Young Folks”
Story March/April 1940. “The Young Folks”, was Salinger’s first published story. It was published in Whit Burnett’s Story magazine. Burnett was the teacher of short story writing at Columbia where Salinger took his course. Salinger himself was twenty one at the time of its publication. The story satirizes the selfish concerns of a pair of young adults at a party and the festering shallowness of their lives.

Happy reading.

Author, Melanie Benjamin, hits the scene with her historical novel and debut, ALICE I HAVE BEEN, to much buzz.  The story is an inspired what-if speculation on the life of Alice Liddell, muse to Lewis Carroll and template for one of the most recognizable characters in all of literature - the very Alice who tumbles down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.  The book is climbing lists and gathering speed, so it’s quite nice to catch Ms. Benjamin before she’s too busy for us.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Melanie: Many years ago, I had an idea for a parenting essay; I tossed it off, sent it to a local parenting publication, and was offered my own column.  I thought publishing was so simple - little did I know how hard it would be in the ensuing years!  The ease of that first publication credit did not prepare me for the inevitable rejection that’s part of every author’s life.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Melanie: ALICE I HAVE BEEN is a book of historical fiction, about the life of Alice Liddell, the little girl who inspired Lewis Carroll’s ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND.  It’s also about their friendship; how it gave the world Wonderland, but also changed their lives forever in ways that were both beautiful and tragic.  It haunted Alice through her long, eventful life - which included a rumored romance with a prince of England, and sending all three of her sons off to fight in World War I - until, near the age of 80, she finally seemed able to embrace her literary legacy.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Melanie: Two things - reading is the primary one.  I really do believe the best education a writer can get is a lifelong love of reading, particularly in the genre they wish to write.  Second is my ability to look forward, not back; I don’t get too attached to my words and if something doesn’t work out, I toss it - even whole manuscripts! - if I think it’s not working out.  Then I begin something new.  This ability has really saved my career.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Melanie: Afternoon and after dinner.  I’m not a morning person!

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Melanie: Read, read, read!  Read everything you can, read what’s being published today.  And also - respect.  Work hard at the craft of writing, give it years of study and practice as you would any other artform.  The Internet has made it all too easy to think we’re all writers; the ease of seeing your words instantly on a screen or a blog can lull a person into thinking she doesn’t have to work that hard.  We all do.

ALICE I HAVE BEEN is in bookstores now and available at online retailers, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com for both delivery and Kindle or Nook download.

Paige Crutcher, the Nashville Authors Examiner, took the time (and a page) to profile me and AuthorScoop in an feature this past week.

Ms. Crutcher is to be applauded for corralling my ramble.  It’s harder than it sounds.  She’s an utter delight to chat with, so I offer up a link and a recommendation to her other articles, as well.

Thanks, Paige!

Scowling dark clouds seem to amass when the the subject of Twitter bumps up against the glowering storm front that is the modern publishing industry.  Articles abound, and not without stout reasons, on the fear of Twitter ultimately trivializing literary efforts, bastardizing language, and further shortening our attention spans.

But there’s room for Twitter to advance the cause of literature and books and writers.  William Haskins runs a Twitter feed for this very news blog and then today, I find this little nugget, tailor made for a Friday afternoon smile.

Aspiring novelist, Corrine Jackson, chronicles the tweet by tweet adventure that led to…

Well, let her tell you herself.

(reprinted from her blog, www.CorrineJackson.wordpress.com, with permission)

How I Got My Agent

January 14, 2010 by Corrine Jackson

Full confession. I am a Twitter addict. Since I succumbed to my obsession in November, I have surreptitiously been following AKA stalking fellow writers, editors, and agents. One particular name would set my heart beating a little faster when her address would pop up – @bradfordlit. Last year, she requested my full manuscript with the kindest handwritten note that has since owned serious real estate on my fridge between the Paris magnet and the New Orleans magnet.

Then, one evening last week, Laura Bradford of Bradford Literary Agency tweeted this:

I had a vague thought that maybe she meant my full before dropping off to sleep. The next morning, while riding the bus to work, I read these:

Knowing my manuscript might be considered too long, I experienced a higher pitched twinge of maybe-it’s-me. As you can imagine, I was constantly refreshing Twitter as the day went on. These tweets came next:

I watched as Laura’s followers began to get in the game. At this point, I was madly DMing my pal, Kate, asking her if I was crazy to think I could be the subject of those tweets. Then, Laura realized the author of the manuscript was following her on Twitter. She really began to tease.

Okay, at this point, I am FREAKING out. I’m talking shaky hands and an inability to string two words together. Not an easy feat for a person who deals in words. After all, I did print on heavier paper, and I am a “she.” I am obviously cool under pressure, so I dare to ask:

Her answer?

Kate’s response?

I’m texting my sister with eight thumbs. Kate and I are jumping up and down, sure that smiley face screams my name. My coworker, who has noticed my inattention, is grinning. We’re all excited. And then I remember with abject horror: I never sent Laura my new San Francisco phone number. I dash off a very sheepish email to her because, hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I ask her to please disregard the puddle of humiliation at her feet if she is, in fact, discussing a complete stranger.

Two minutes later, my phone rings. It’s Laura, and she’s offering me representation. And she’s even more phenomenal than I thought she would be. I can’t think of a better, more heart-palpitating way to have received an offer. The months of sending queries. The eight agents who requested my manuscript. The agonizing wait. Highs. Lows. A rollercoaster to hell and back. And then, ONE PERFECT DAY. Totally worth it.

As for Laura… She’s my agent. Happy sigh. : – )

Cross-Writing, or How a Nonfiction Writer Came To Dabble in Fiction

Dr. Christopher Johnson guest blogs at ‘Because I Love To Hear Myself Type’ (hey! that’s me!) in a clever and insightful piece on treading the ether between fiction and non.

Check it out.

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… oh wait.  I didn’t fly.  I drove.  But as my insufficiently padded little car has about a four hour butt-limit, there’s a pair of tired spots (could actually be closer to pulverized) right in the vicinity of where I’ve been attacked by the driver’s seat.

I attended the Killer Nashville Literary Conference this past weekend and, as usual, it ended too soon.  Wonderful production, Killer Nashville.  Geared towards writers of mystery, crime, and thriller fiction, this annual event features scores of lectures and panel discussions on writing craft, the publishing business, and a string of presentations for source material presented by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and other experts.  This year there were classes on the art and science of surveillance, reconstructing shootings, poisons, real case studies, and an excellent primer on psychopathy, just to name a few.

The TBI also stages a crime scene contest each year, in a light version of the course they use to quiz professional law enforcement.  Yours truly got to help set up this time and it’s probably not hard to imagine how much fun it is playing go-fer for two career sleuths oooh-ing and ahhh-ing over the realistic consistency of their secret-recipe fake blood.  See for yourself the fruits of our labor -

(photos courtesy of C.H. Valentino, because I’m simply too dumb to remember my camera)

I can’t decide if I should say what they used for brains.  You’ll never look at a child’s kitchen playset the same way if I do.

I gained new appreciation for my friend, Butch Wilson, over at www.tech4writers.com.  He’s an angel anyway, but his knowledge of how to get the best freeware/shareware/open source tools for writers easily filled the two presentations he gave during the weekend.  Need nifty technology?  Click above and you will not be sorry.

And finally there was me.  On Sunday morning, I gave a talk, Write What You Know - Learn What You Don’t, and if I was a little long-winded on the philosophical side of telling the truth in fiction, I did at least leave the attendees with a list of internet resources that is by no means complete.  It’s reprinted here, at Tech4Writers, and I hope more than anything, it sparks a notion of all the things we could get right, if only we’d ask.  My little group of Sunday morning diehards battled their (and my) party fatigue and made something quite fine of the whole affair.

Special thanks to a few people, out of a terrific group as a whole, who made the bruising to my tailbone more than worth it:  Beth Terrell; Clay Stafford; Philip Lacy; Butch Wilson; Special Agent Mike Breedlove, TBI; Special Agent Dan Royse, TBI; Addie King; C.H. Valentino; and Dr. Stephen Benning, Vanderbilt University.

Only three hundred and fifty-some days until next year’s Killer Nashville.  See you there!

William T. Vollman—the gun-toting, globetrotting, eyebrowless writing machine whose new book, Imperial (released tomorrow), weighs in at 1,300 pages—gets a thoroughly fascinating profile in the New York Times, courtesy of Charles McGrath.

McGrath describes him as “a loner, a bit of a recluse, despite being married and the father of a daughter, and a throwback: a wandering, try-anything writer-journalist in the tradition of Steinbeck or Jack London. Some people think he’s a little nuts.” Gawker, who rarely compliments anyone without using the back of their hand, says he’s “probably the last of a dying breed: The badass literary figure.”

The figure struck by the profile is at once reckless and calculating, intimidating and generously polite.

The most interesting comment, for me at least, is his acknowledgement that the length of his new book might cost him some readers: “The world doesn’t owe me a living, and if the world doesn’t want to buy my books, that’s my problem.”

Check out the entire piece here.

Simon Winchester in The Atlantic editorializes on the history, usefulness, and accuracy of Peter Mark Roget’s lexicography.  He vilifies the crossword puzzle and the the sad span of the net of linguistic mediocrity, and generally makes us all think twice about the whole business, as the contributors over there at The Atlantic like to do.

What has what-we’ve-come-to-call the thesaurus done to our minds?

Roget never imagined, for instance, that an Ohio sophomore majoring in political science might one day use his book to find a word with which to pad out a paragraph in a midterm paper. Roget never envisioned that paperback editions of his work would be stuffed into millions of school backpacks and satchels from Huddersfield to Hobart, or that a barely literate board chairman bound for Liverpool would have his secretary’s volume by his side as he was writing his report to shareholders on the morning express from Euston.

Roget assumed, as he organized his work, that anyone who might chance upon it would be just as clever as he, just as accustomed to precise syntax, to scrupulous grammar, and to confident and impeccable word selection. Armed with this naive set of assumptions, he produced a book that was predicated on the misguided belief that, as he wrote in his introduction, users would guide themselves through the thicket of words by relying on what he grandly termed their “instinctive tact.” Thus there was no need to explain what any word meant—because his users, with all their “tact,” would know that full well already.

…The way the book is arranged makes it all appear easy, a quick solution in an efficient microsecond. And yet, precisely because the users are ill-versed, and because the book makes utterly invalid assumptions about their knowledge, and offers no help at all in discovering what anything means, the word chosen with each presto! is often wrong. Sometimes very wrong. Often slightly wrong. And at the very least, frequently, curiously, and discordantly off. For example, a freshman student of mine, who admitted to using Roget, attempted to improve the phrase “his earthly fingers” by changing it to “his chthonic digits.”

Each time such a wrong is perpetrated by way of Peter Mark Roget, the language, as spoken, written, or read, becomes a little worse, a little more mediocre, and a measure more decayed, disarranged, and unlovely. And that, I suggest, is why all Rogets should be shunned.

Read the full article here.

Personally, I thought I loved my thesaurus.  I didn’t use it to pluck out the brainiest synonym for self-aggrandizement.  I loved it for the bit of free-association it provokes, the diversion of contemplating the fantastic array of nuance in the English language.

But, just as in romance and dinner, I like to know what I’m loving.  Now, thanks to Simon Winchester in The Atlantic, I do.  Be careful out there.

Christina Meldrum’s debut novel, MADAPPLE, was acclaimed all over the place, as you’ll see below.  It also happened to be one of my favorite reads of the last several years.  Ms. Meldrum and I spoke about it in a podcast interview this past summer and she’s returned to round out what we know of her here on AuthorScoop.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Christina: My first publication was during law school when I wrote a few legal articles.  But MADAPPLE was my first piece of published fiction.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Christina: My novel MADAPPLE was released in May 2008.  A “crossover” book intended for older teens and adults, it is part literary mystery, part psychological thriller.  The story takes place in rural Maine and tells the story of Aslaug, a sixteen year old girl who knows far more about botany and mythology than she does about the modern world.  When Aslaug’s mother dies a mysterious death, Aslaug finds family she never knew she had and becomes embroiled in a web of family secrets.  When Aslaug’s aunt and cousin also die mysterious deaths, the reader is forced to ask whether Aslaug is the innocent she would have the reader believe or a calculated killer.

MADAPPLE was well-received critically.  It received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly.  It also was a finalist for the inaugural William C. Morris Award and was a Booklist Editors’ Choice pick for 2008.  The American Library Association named MADAPPLE as a “Best Book for Young Readers for 2009,” and both Booklist and Kirkus Reviews included MADAPPLE on their 2008 “best” lists.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Christina: There have been so many people.  My family has been instrumental.  My husband supported my writing for years, long before there was any indication I ever would be published.  My children love that I am a writer and have always been supportive and encouraging.  I have a sister, Amy Laughlin, who also is a writer, and she is a never-ending source of wisdom and support.  My mother and other siblings have been readers for me as well as fantastic sources of information and encouragement.  I have many talented close friends, some who are writers, some who are fantastic readers and editors, and some who have great insight into human psychology.  I have relied on all of them at times.  In addition, Michelle Frey, my editor at Knopf, is a wonderful editor.  I have learned a lot from her, and she made MADAPPLE into a far better book.  Also, my literary agent Laura Rennert has been a huge support for years.  I am leaving out many people, including former teachers and colleagues.  This list goes on!

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Christina: Because I have children, I work mainly when they are at school.  By necessity, that is when I do my best writing!  It is not necessarily when I do my best thinking, however.  I actually seem to do some of my best thinking while I am asleep.  (I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing!)  Often I wake in the morning and find my brain has solved some issue related to my writing while I slept.  Because I am not able to write at that time, I usually scribble notes to myself and then return to those notes later, when my children are at school.

When I am in the editing stage, my writing schedule changes somewhat.  I tend to work throughout the day, making notes to myself when my children are home and sometimes working late into the night.  It seems I am using a different part of my brain then, and the inspiration comes in spurts.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Christina: I think the best advice I ever received as a writer was:  write what you love.  So often writers are told to write what they know, but I think this can be very limiting, depending on one’s life experience.  When you write what you love, the world is open to you.  In writing MADAPPLE, I wrote about subjects that fascinate me.  I didn’t know all I needed to know about these subjects when I began the book, but I learned through research—research I found interesting.  I think a writer is better able to make material fascinating for readers if she herself finds the material fascinating.

Christopher Johnson, MD is a leading pediatric intensivist, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but practicing in pediatric intensive care units all across America.  So far, he’s put out two excellent guides for parents, simplifying the critical knowledge they need to get the best care for their children, in both routine care and in life or death situations.  I’ve done podcast interviews with Dr. Johnson about both his books, YOUR CRITICALLY ILL CHILD: LIFE AND DEATH CHOICES PARENTS MUST FACE and HOW TO TALK TO YOUR CHILD’S DOCTOR and found that the information therein is fascinating to anyone with an interest in why and how doctors do what they do.

We’d like to thank him for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Chris: Before I started writing for general readers I was a medical researcher and professor at Mayo Medical School. Over a couple of decades I wrote sixty or so scientific papers and textbook chapters, mostly about an infection of the heart called infective endocarditis. My first one of those came out in 1980, and I still remember how excited I was to see my name in print. Now I suppose that paper is gathering dust on medical library shelves along with all the other ones I wrote. In spite of that, though, I enjoyed writing them and I think I did advance our understanding of that disorder just a smidge.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Chris: My latest book, my second (the third is in preparation), is called How To Talk To Your Child’s Doctor. My reason for writing it was my observation, after thirty years of practicing pediatrics, that most parents have no idea how doctors think, how we conceptualize problems and then go about solving them. Because parents don’t know how we do that, they can easily get frustrated and confused. The fact is, we physicians live in our own mental universe when it comes to framing and answering questions. As I point out in the book, this has good aspects and bad aspects, but generally there are good reasons for proceeding the way that we do.

One particular thing I stress is that most parents don’t know that about ninety percent of all diagnoses are made through what we call the history: what the symptoms are, when they started, what you did for them and if that helped. Medical diagnosis is largely a matter of good detective work, and all good detectives, before they do anything else, try to get the sequence of events straight. Of course we use lots of fancy tests, scans, and whatnot, but the history is the most important thing. A wrong history sends us down all sorts of useless and potentially dangerous pathways. More than a few parents become annoyed at what can seem to them to be a string of pesky questions, but I wanted to show them why we ask them in the precise form that we do.

I also have a couple of chapters that are sort of anthropological in nature, like a field guide to doctors observed in their native habitat. I explain how we got to be this way and how some of the common annoying traits most physicians have to one degree or another (even me!) came to be. These are things like arrogance, a controlling nature, defensiveness, and a feeling of entitlement. I have a chapter with my own taxonomy cataloging about ten varieties of difficult doctors (e.g. poor listeners, judgmental, poor examiners, a bunch of others) with suggestions about how to handle these folks to get the best care for your child.

The book’s guiding notion is that the encounter between parents and their child’s physician ought to be a conversation between equals, with both sides contributing useful and important parts. What I wanted to give parents was a sort of users’ guide to physicians by explaining how we think. No conversation goes very far if the two participants speak (and think) using different languages.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Chris: I had some excellent teachers early in my career who taught me how to write grant proposals. That was great training because, when you’re writing grants, you’re explaining things to people who don’t know the ins and outs of what you’re doing. One of these teachers was a Nobel Prize winner and in fifteen minutes he could explain what he did to anybody in very understandable terms. The other thing that has helped me a great deal is that little of my premedical training was in the sciences. This was not uncommon thirty-five years ago when I went off to medical school. Of course I took some chemistry, biology and the like, but mainly I studied religion, history, and philosophy, with a strong dose of literature. I also went to graduate school in history for a time. These days medical school admissions committees don’t like that sort of background very much, although they deny this — I know because I spent four years on the Mayo Medical School admissions committee and I was always arguing the point. I’d have serious difficulties getting into medical school if I applied today. I think my own particular background conditioned me to regard medicine as at least as much an art as a science. That has had a huge impact on my career, and on my life generally.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Chris: I practice pediatric intensive care, which means I spend my days (and nights) in a pediatric intensive care unit. There is an ebb and flow to the work there, and I mostly write when I’m there and waiting for something to happen, not happen, or whatever. My job is much like that of a fireman, waiting around the firehouse for the bell to ring. I mostly write between the fire calls. Often I have no time to do that, but over the course of the year or so it takes me to write a book I find the time, especially during the nights.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Chris: I write nonfiction, although my agent just sent out to publishers a novel I wrote (a paranormal medical mystery) and we’ll see how that goes. A nonfiction writer these days does need some kind of a platform of expertise in their subject. It’s not entirely fair, but there it is. So if you want to write nonfiction you need to acquire some expertise or team up with somebody who has it. As far as the actual writing goes, my other bit of advice is to read closely the work of accomplished essay writers. The essay form forces you to make your argument quickly and cogently and not ramble. I learned some of my best tricks, however, from humor writers. Study how they get punch to their sentences with unexpected turns of phrase and surprising and apt word usage.

Terri Cheney is a writer and memoirist best known, at the moment, for her tremendous book, MANIC: A MEMOIR.  I spoke with her last year in a podcast for PsychJourney and a Harper Collins interview with Terri was featured on our Afternoon Viewing segment recently.  She’s graciously agreed to expand what we know of her in this AuthorScoop exclusive.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Terri: I had a poem published in the local newspaper, The Daily Report, when I was about 10 years old.  It was a very bad poem, I think, but my father was over the moon about it.  Thirty-seven years lapsed before my next credit.  In 2007, I submitted an essay about bipolar dating to the New York Times “Modern Love” column.  I was astonished when it was accepted for publication, and especially pleased that it ran the week before my first book, Manic: A Memoir, was released in 2008.  I’d made sure to mention my book in the essay, of course, so the publicity was terrific.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Terri: Manic is about the disintegration of the careful facade I lived behind for most of my adult life.  On the outside, I looked very successful — I was an entertainment litigator, representing the likes of Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, and motion picture studios.  In truth, however, I struggled with a raging case of bipolar disorder.  When I was manic, I was extremely productive, creative and energetic.  But when depression inevitably hit, I fell apart.  I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think.  If I absolutely had to go into the office, I hid out under my desk.  I told no one about my illness — not my friends, my family, my coworkers, no one.

Then in 1999, I was hospitalized after several suicide attempts.  After a few weeks went by, I realized that none of the patients (including me) were getting better, because we simply couldn’t express what was going on inside us.  There were clinical words, but they weren’t enough.  So I decided to write my own story, from the inside out:  to tell what bipolar disorder truly felt like, from the little hairs on my arms that quiver in mania, to the crushing weight of my body in depression.  I wrote disjointed pieces in my writing groups for the next 7 years.  By 2007, they finally coalesced into Manic.

After Manic’s surprising success, I received many emails, the most compelling of which were from parents of bipolar children, desperately seeking more info, answers, advice.  They moved me so deeply that I decided my next book, which I am hard at work on now, will be a childhood memoir about growing up bipolar.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Terri: My father was instrumental in instilling the love of words in me.  When I was a little girl, he would read to me every morning (at ungodly early hours!).  He always loved to hear what I had written, and having a captive, spellbound audience is a surefire way to keep writing.  Also, I had a sixth grade teacher (thank you, Mrs. Martin, wherever you are) who set me free from classes to simply read and write whatever I liked.  Her faith in my talent stayed with me the rest of my life.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Terri: If possible, I like to go out of the house to write, in the morning or early afternoon.  I have a few favorite cafes around town, where I order a latte and a bite to eat, and they let me scribble away for hours.  I write on an old-fashioned legal pad, then later transcribe what I’ve written into the computer.  I feel this gives me two bites at the apple for editing.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Terri: First, get in a writing group or class.  My two weekly groups have been essential to me.  They give me the discipline which I’m sure I would otherwise lack, to keep churning out pages week after week.  Also, it’s invaluable for me to get feedback, to realize that what I’m writing is not so far from the universal human experience — that other people can relate to it. Second, don’t let the daunting prospects of publication get in the way of your writing.  If you’re a true writer, you must write and you will write.  Worry about agents and publishers and polished manuscripts later, after you’ve written the very best book that you can.

John Levitt is an author and musician who splits his time between Alta, Utah and San Francisco. His latest Urban Fantasy, New Tricks, was released in late 2008. You can check out an excerpt of it here.

We’d like to thank him for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

John: My very first?  I wrote a chapter on local bird identification for a small pamphlet about the  history and natural fauna of Little Cottonwood Canyon in Alta, Utah back in  the 1970s.  All proceeds went to the Alta Historical Society, and it was still selling twenty years later.  My first “real” publication was in 1989, a mystery/thriller novel titled Carnivores, published by St. Martin’s Press.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

John: My latest is New Tricks, an urban fantasy set in San Francisco.  It’s the second in a series about Mason, a jazz musician and reluctant magical practitioner who runs into all kinds of trouble while he’s trying to live a quiet life.  His friends and acquaintances keep dying, and he has to figure out what’s going on, and why, and who’s responsible.  Lots of magic, a few supernatural creatures, but no werewolves, vampires, fey, or traditional fantasy tropes in this book.

Mason is  aided by his magical companion, Lou, who is a small dog like a mini pinscher.  Only, he’s not really a dog.  Just sort of.   He can’t talk, or do magic, but he’s a great help and everyone’s favorite character, hands down.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who else do you feel has contributed to your success?

John: I always thought I didn’t need any help – I use no crit groups or beta readers, and no one sees any of the ms until it’s done.  But it turns out I do occasionally need help, and I was lucky enough to find an agent, Caitlin Blasdell, who is also a very fine editor, which she used to be.  Her editorial advice has been invaluable in pinpointing problems and steering me back on course when I start flailing and don’t know how to fix the book.  Not to mention that she managed to sell the series to Ace.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

John: That’s totally dependent on the rest of my life.  I used to be a night person, and worked swing shift and nights for years.  I wrote my first novel between midnight and two every night after getting off work.  These days, I futz around in the morning, and finally get to work around noon, so afternoons are now my writing time.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

John: Honestly, there’s nothing I can say about writing that hasn’t been said a hundred times before, and by better writers than I.  But as far as getting published goes, I do think that luck, or timing if you don’t believe in luck, has a lot more to do with it than we like to admit.  And the longer you persist, the better chance you have of getting that break.  So don’t give up, don’t let rejection get you down, and grow a thick skin – you’re going to need it.

Guest columnist, Graeme Cameron, is welcomed back to AuthorScoop.  So is his opinion and take on what to take away from praise and scalds.

You’re Only As Good As Your Last Prolonged Period Of Self-Loathing

Legend has it that wisdom and humility go hand in hand. One cannot learn, they say, but by one’s own mistakes - and one cannot learn by one’s mistakes if one isn’t willing to listen when one’s mistakes are pointed out to one.

Of course, this is music to the ears of those who never make mistakes, but to the mere mortals among us - particularly those who believe we’re only as good as our last review - it presents quite the most daunting challenge. You might have thought the worst was over when you bled your final full stop. You might even have come to terms with the fact that, the moment they slipped from your fingers and into the hands of your beta readers, the innermost workings of your mind, guarded so jealously through all those years of artistic frustration, were suddenly and irreversibly exposed to ridicule. But ironically, the one thing you haven’t quite counted on, no matter how many times you’ve dreamed that thrilling little rags-to-riches daydream, is the most inevitable part of the whole damn drama: sooner or later, a professional is going to read your book. And he’s going to tell you it’s shit.

Now, if you thrashed out your novel during NANO month and hammered it clumsily into shape over breakfast, in your heart of hearts you probably don’t feel too down about this. But if it’s the culmination of two years of backbreaking, hair-pulling, sweat-dripping labour, played out to the tune of “we love you, you’re awesome, you’re gonna be a superstar,” it can feel so crushing a defeat that you might very well throw down your quill and vow never to utter another word.

Sadly, though, it should come as no surprise. You chose your beta readers for their disinclination to blow smoke up your ass - something of which you’re confident because, well, they’ve never been afraid to disagree with you on every subject you’ve ever discussed, have they? Throughout this laborious exercise, as you nurtured your fledgling manuscript to cater to the whims of your audience, you repeatedly paused to question whether you really were as unstoppable as they said you were. But despite the problems you knew ran rampant throughout the pages of your masterpiece, the compliments just kept on coming, right up until that glorious sunny day when you could finally scribble ‘The End’ across your magnificent weapon of mass entertainment and unleash it about your plan for world domination. And yet suddenly here’s your none-too-prospective agent, telling you everything that, deep down, you already knew was so badly wrong with your novel.

‘It doesn’t work as a comedy,’ he says, ‘because it’s funnier than the subject matter dictates it should be. And it doesn’t work as a thriller because the structure doesn’t allow you to properly document the events. And it doesn’t work as a crime novel because the antagonists are so stupid. And it doesn’t work as lit fic because it’s not existential enough. And all these other bits I’ve highlighted make no damn sense whatsoever. Go away, and call me when you’ve written the book you’re capable of writing, or when Hell freezes over, whichever comes second.’

Not so invincible now, are you?

And therein lies the fatal flaw in the shimmering facade of critiquing. Throughout the writing process, mindful of the importance of constructive criticism, you’ve pandered to the voices murmuring adulation and auctions and six-figure advances, and carefully steered your story around any obstacle of doubt. Taking your carefully-selected circle of confidants as representative of the readership at large, you’ve cunningly engineered a product that’s guaranteed to charm the pants off every agent, editor, buyer and bookstore browser in the civilised world. You’ve even half-convinced yourself that you believe your own hype. And now, six-to-eight weeks later, someone you don’t know from Adam has just pointed out the inconvenient truth: that instead of telling the story you had in your head, you’ve written the book that a gaggle of acquaintances wanted to read - and they’ve already read it.

When this finally happened to me, after a handful of those unfathomable ‘I want to have your babies, but a novel this powerful could literally bring about the end of all life on Earth’-type rejections, it burned with the fire of a thousand torpedoed careers. I knew the man was right - he’d only confirmed my darkest suspicions, after all - and that could only mean one thing: his kids were now scribbling on the back of my life’s work because I was a washed-up, talentless hack.

And what a blessing that turned out to be.

It would have been easy to dismiss the agent’s assessment based on that age-old adage about opinions: everybody’s got one, and most of them are assholes, I think it goes. After all, those other lovely people said the book was great, didn’t they? Ultimately, though, while we’re taught to view everyone’s opinion as equally valid, there’s a strong argument against favouring the person who’s willing to spend $20 on your book over the one you’re asking to stake a career on it. The latter, in case we’re unclear, being the one who wrote it.

No, instead I did what any straight-thinking hack-elect should do: I threw myself into rewriting the novel, quickly discovered that I hated everything about it, myself and all of you, and then quietly wept for six months. And then, when I’d toyed just long enough with the idea of binning the whole thing and starting anew, I picked it up and I read it.

Now, it’s impossible to judge your own work while it’s still in progress because, quite simply, regardless of what’s actually written on the page or how nonsensical it might be to another reader, you’ll still remember exactly what you meant when you wrote it. You’ll read every word in the context of your own intentions, and unless you pick up a couple of spelling mistakes in the process, that’s an unspeakable waste of time.

Give it six months, however, and you’ll find that you’ve gained the amazing ability to look at your own work through the eyes of a real-life reader. And for me at least, this proved a revelation. Suddenly, I was able to acknowledge with some degree of certainty that, yes, actually I can write pretty well, thank you very much. And while those problems that were so brutally highlighted by Agent X were still very much in residence, given this renewed clarity of vision it turned out that they were all eminently fixable. And most importantly of all, I fell in love with it all over again.

What, then, would I have you take away from all this? Well, at the risk of placing it in some infamously ill-advised company, my plan of attack is three-pronged…

Listen to your readers, but don’t let them put you off your aim. Seek acceptance, but embrace your most ferocious rejections. And above all, if you’re only as good as your last review, make sure you set aside some time to write yourself a good one.

“But forget plotting. It’s all about the sentences. Though it might be best not to tell your publisher that.”

Ms. Francine Prose had me at ‘Hello.’  And I’m pretty sure I’ll have to read her new novel, GOLDENGROVE, based on this article/interview in The Washington Post.  The book is about a family dealing with grief and that’s not really any sort of special.  In fact, it’s done constantly - not that there’s anything wrong with that.

What sets it apart this time is what she had to say about how she wrote the book, bravely undressing a concept that is a hallmark of good writing:

“I would really like, before this whole thing is over, for at least one review to talk about the sentences in my novel,” Prose says. Usually what you get is plot summary, but in a way, the plot of “Goldengrove” was “a vehicle for me to hang those sentences on.”

The interview tackles the nature vs. nurture argument (as it pertains to writing) in a way that could result in Ms. Prose being pegged for an elitest and a poacher of hope.  She says writing can’t be taught, although she’s led many a creative writing class in her years at The University of Arizona, The University of Utah, and Sarah Lawrence College.  But even in contradiction, there’s sense to be had here.  And inspiration.

The balance scale dangling story from one arm and storytelling from the other has never been diagramed better.  Enjoy.

(in which I reveal my dirtiest little secret)

AuthorScoop is pleased to feature this guest column from novelist, essayist, and occasional poet, Graeme Cameron (Graeme.N.Cameron@gmail.com).

It’s not considered good form to hear voices in one’s head. Since the blossoming of popular culture’s morbid infatuation with mass murder, those of us so afflicted have carried a burden of homicidal expectation; an unspoken certainty that we have, at the very least, a screw loose – and more likely, a strangled hooker in the freezer.

At his trial in 1935, geriatric paedovore Albert Fish - today fêted as America’s first serial killer – blamed the very voice of God for his hefty catalogue of perversions. It didn’t work and, in a defining moment of poetic justice, they fried him shortly thereafter, but his psychobabble nonetheless quickly established itself as the ruse of choice for anyone seeking to dodge the ‘chair. We may have considered such behaviour unseemly since the day we hoisted our knuckles up out of the dirt, but it was Albert who made it the stuff of legend.

Now, given modern folklore’s take on the matter of intercranial instruction, you might be wondering why I’d so readily and publically admit to entertaining such Fishy folly. Well, there are two reasons for that. Firstly, I haven’t got much of an appetite for monkeys and pee wees. And secondly, I’m doing it so the rest of us don’t have to.

The difference between Albert and me, you see, is that my voices know who’s boss. They never presume to tell me how to do my job, and they only offer advice when I ask them for it. I don’t work for the voices; they work for me. And like any other employee, they’re out the door if they misbehave.

In fact, they’re not like those other voices at all. Mine all come with names and faces, addresses and birthdays; school reports, shoe sizes, hopes and regrets; haircuts, shopping lists and bobbly suit jackets that they just throw in the washing machine because there’s never a parking space outside the dry cleaners. They’ve got places to be and people to see, and rarely does any of that involve me. They always know when I need them to drop everything and come running, but they only do so if they’ve got nothing else on. It’s trying sometimes, but then none of them ever claimed to be omnipotent. Which, I think you’ll agree, is a good sign.

In fact, you could argue that I don’t actually hear voices at all – but rather that I’m surrounded by a very fickle bunch of imaginary friends. And yes, I know that serves only to offer a low mental age as an alternative to my being the Zodiac, but it’ll do, because I can justify it in just three short words:

I’m a writer.

You see, without wishing to overstate the obvious, writing fiction is all about making shit up. And therein lies the problem. Anyone who’s ever entertained an enthralling daydream knows that the line between fantasy and reality is very distinct. In one’s head, the facts never stand in the way. You can gloss over all the tedious little details that don’t add up; the practicality and the geography and the glaring errors in continuity. But when the cold light of day meets ink and paper, your torrid affair with Brangelina goes down like the Titanic.

That’s when the old cliché comes out – the one about ignoring your overactive and uninformed imagination and writing what you know. And in principle it makes sense, until it occurs to you that what you know is swiping groceries through a scanner for eight hours a day before coming home to bang a Rustlers rib into the microwave and fall asleep in front of the tv. There might be a book in that somewhere, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to read it.

So if you can’t just make up random rubbish, and no one wants to hear about your gas bill, how are you supposed to write anything at all? Well, you can get off your arse and do some research, obviously, but more importantly this is where your imaginary friends come in.

To be successful, your made-up story needs to have a solid foundation in reality, regardless of whether it’s about shopping for shoes or slaying dragons - and it’s down to the people doing the shopping and chopping to build it. A reader will take as read the most ludicrous set of circumstances you could possibly cook up, provided your characters react to it like real people. Even the most pedestrian of tales is doomed to the bargain bin if “People just don’t talk like that.”

Put simply, the key to a good story is the people who are in it. Like the actors in a film, they need to be told where to stand and who to talk to, but they also need the freedom to improvise a little; to tailor their performance according to their own unique personality. Unlike an actor, though, a character can’t be relied upon to just turn up on the day and rattle off his lines. He is, after all, not the one hunched over the keyboard. He has no earthly body and can therefore neither act out a scene nor scribble down his thoughts. He relies solely on you, the writer, to express his feelings for him; to portray his reactions, his opinions and his method of getting the lid off a jar of pickles. And the only way you can hope to do that is by knowing him inside out.

Now I don’t know about you, but the way I like to get to know someone is by spending a little time with them, and when they only exist in my mind, that process is a whole lot easier. I don’t have to worry about missing appointments or emailing maps. I give them a shout and, if they feel like it, they just turn up – simple as that. And when they do, I can reach as far into their psyche as I want or need. I can pull up a chair and make idle smalltalk, or I can leap right in like Sam Beckett and spend an hour or two in their skin. And yes, I know this sounds like something I should seek professional help for, but I wouldn’t want to do it any other way. I may not be able to remember where I left my bloody sunglasses, but I know exactly what A***** is going to do when she finds out about T**, C***** and the f******, and that’s by far the more important issue.

So please, if you want to be a writer, forget about drawing tedious beardy character charts and just let out your inner child. Invite all your imaginary friends round for a tea party and find out what they’ve been up to. Slip inside their heads and see what the world looks like through their eyes. Your imagination is a wonderful thing, but with a little bit of theirs you’ll go a long way.

(or Why I’d Hate People Less if They Read More)

I have a low personal-turbulence tolerance. Or at least I did. I very accidentally on purpose engineered my life to buffer me from the world with an impenetrable wall of placid people. I hand-picked them for their blood-pressure. Then I filled the moat with their cheerfulness and serenity. Not that they’re boring mind you, they’re brilliant and essential, but my long-time chosen companions are polite, or at least willing to simmer down when it’s required. They are self-possessed and disinclined to get all lathered up unless a 911 call is imminent. They aren’t petty or caustic or prone to capering. My old friends do not get arrested.

A sense of humor was always a must, but they had to have all their dials and buttons firmly in hand. None of my friends was ever likely to go to eleven. I was content to be the eccentric in the bunch, my brand of rebellion being all talk and no warning labels. I am as safe as toast.

Then I got this crazy idea that I wanted to be a writer. It felt almost inevitable. I had lived in books and stories. I had narrated in my head nearly constantly since I was seven years old, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized not everyone did this.

So I sought them out, the writer people. They are magnetic, imaginative, and a good few of them have unpredictable fuses so microscopic they might as well be stored in lead-lined boxes and labeled ‘Explodes on Impact’. They’re argumentative and dramatic and sad and wildly happy and, well, exhausting. I’ve learned much about myself. I’ve fiddled with my own settings and expanded my capacity for feeling things. But I’m no match for them – all those writers I’ve come to cyberknow. They’re mostly all crazy and I’m still just slightly burned bread.

So why do I stay? Why do I suffer fits of outrage and boil in arguments and pine for acceptance and thrill to their encouragement? It’s certainly not what I thought I’d do.

My recent vacation sorted all this out for me. I also learned what my pre-writing friends have in common with the writers I’ve latched onto: they don’t take things for granted.

Large anonymous crowds do not bring out the best in me. If I’m honest, I don’t like people much. Civility, appreciation, and common courtesy have, as a result of Global Warming I’m sure, melted into the highways and sidewalks. They have taken a terrible trampling. As much fun as I had on the trip (think bushels and barge-loads) I’ve never been so disgusted by people in all my life.

My limits were tested in minutes, not hours or days, by rude, sulking, intolerant people paying good money to shuffle past me with grumpy, hang-dog expressions on their furloughing faces. They barked orders at their fellow human beings, who were obviously working diligently in the service of their holiday. No ‘please’. No ‘thank you’. They talked over presentations they’d stood in line to see, and didn’t turn off their cell phones – even when asked to. They didn’t clap for the performers efforts (which were excellent) and they didn’t smack the snot out of their surly children who sighed “I’m glad that’s over” within earshot of those who would be wounded by such comments.

I think, although I could be wrong, that the writers I’ve forged bonds with wouldn’t do this. They notice things. They appreciate things. And they love to tag experiences with superlatives, from both ends of the scale.

I’d suggest that a decline in recreational reading in our culture is contributory to what upset me so on this trip. When you open the cover of a book, you agree to swim the minutia therein. Appreciation for what happens or how it’s told is all there is in a book. There’s no laugh track to goose you into a response, no eerie music to herald the suspense. You have to do it yourself. A book is a transaction with the devil – the one in charge of all the details. And he’s a good tutor. Readers are better students of life.

Writers collect details, because they have to – it’s the raw materials they work with. They’re less bored, and subsequently less boring, than a great wedge of society pie. I think I love them. I can’t think of anyone I enjoy who isn’t appreciative.

All of a sudden, the polarity of my friends seems maybe a little less so.

Years ago, when I lived in Boston, I twice bought my father old books as gifts. I’m sure I paid at least market price for them, but I was astounded to be able to get them at all. They were magnificent: beyond their beauty, beyond the marvel of the words printed in them - beyond the depth and dignity of their very age - they were Significant, and they deserved to be hallowed. Each purchase was around one or two days’ pay; my days were a poor standard by which to judge these marvelous works.

One purchase was a five-volume set of the complete works of Byron - published in 1817, bound in leather. They were - are - magnificent, and they are Byron. God, Byron was alive when they were published, so they weren’t even complete yet.

The other purchase was a two-volume set of the poetical works of Longfellow - signed by the poet himself. The ink, once black, had started to turn sepia, as it does.

(The autographed biography of George Washington was beyond my means.)

I was amazed not just that I was able to afford these works, but that they were for sale. For sale, among the leaning, overladen shelves of a small bookshop, in among mere mortal texts. Who, I wondered, if they had these books, would part with them?

I never knew, but it’s this awe for the old and original, the pages touched by the creator, that came to mind this evening.

I read, you see, that Charles Dickens’ writing desk was recently sold at auction, for £433,250, to an Irish entrepreneur. According to the article, the winning bid was several times the estimated selling price. The buyer, on the other hand, thought it was a great bargain at that price; after all, Great Expectations was brought into the world upon this noble furniture.

The order of magnitude is quite different, but I understood immediately how this man felt. I’m at a loss as to how one could part with such a piece, but it sounds to me as though it’s fallen into very good hands.

Lovejoy, the antiques dealer and general low-rent rogue of Jonathan Gash’s splendid series of crime novels, is a divvy. He can feel a bonging in the chest when in the presence of true antiques: they are, he says, imbued with a near life-force of their own, one that cannot be faked (Lovejoy sometimes produces fake reproductions, but much to his personal anguish, and only, er, in emergencies). Lovejoy would’ve understood too.

Oh, yes, at the end of the article on the Dickens sale, we learn of two other sales: the typescript of Churchill’s 1940 speech to Parliament on the Battle of Britain, and (ho hum) a first folio of Shakespeare’s plays.

It’s dumbfounding to realise that everything - regardless of stature or provenance - really does have its price. But it’s also heartening to know that these things exist.

“Excuse me, sir. Grab that big heavy bar, will ya?”

“Okay. Got it. What do you want me to do with it?”

“Lift it up over your head. A little further… a little further. That’s it, push it. Great. You can put it down now.”

“Phew.”

“Would you mind doing that again, nine more times?”

“What for?”

“It’s good for you. And you, ma’am, grab your ears and try to touch your knees to your chin. Excellent. Do it a hundred times. Over there, you! Yeah you. Run around in a circle until you want to die.”

***

There was a time when filling our bellies and keeping the rain out of our slack, sleeping mouths was a full time job. Life was exercise. There were no flabby hunter-gatherers and pioneers didn’t need Pilates. But as our conveniences got cleverer, we went soft and weak. It’s not an indictment, it’s only the truth. And who would go back to the days of crossing the room to turn up your stereo?

Everyone knows there’s value in power-walking over a wide rubberband that’s looping on rollers, and we don’t question the ridiculous practice of grunting under disks of metal lifted to nowhere in three sets of ten reps each. In our modern lives, there just isn’t demand enough on the muscles and tendons to keep them strong and healthy. Survival, for the most part, doesn’t test our capabilities anymore. So we invented Jack Lalanne.

Life also isn’t big enough, or long enough, for most of us to ever know how we’d react to an alien invasion, or what we’d want if we grew up as best friend to someone socially off-limits. The range of our experience, even among the most traveled and tormented, can’t cover all we could do, given the time. Our personal dose of drama often isn’t sufficient for the vast capacity of the human mind for empathy, outrage, heroism, and debauchery. So we invented fiction.

Just think about that the next time you feel guilty for wasting time between the covers of a novel. The benefits of mental and emotional calisthenics play out every day. Pure fantasy can lay the paving stones for journeys we have yet to take. And if it’s well-written, forewarned is most reliably forearmed.

But if you’ve been sitting there too long, just raise the book over your head. And one and two and - don’t lock those elbows - three and four…