Past Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Continuing on a sporadically unintentional King-centric itinerary started last year, I arrived last Monday in Savannah, Georgia, hot on the heels of Stephen King's appearance the day before wrapping up the fifth annual Savannah Book Festival. Last April I spent some time in Estes Park, Colorado, at The Stanley Hotel, the place that inspired King to write The Shining. Last September in Fairfax, Virginia, I exchanged a few comments with King about The Stanley and The Shining. Just a few days ago our travels intersected again in Savannah, a stunningly beautiful town. It's often called "A City Built On Its Dead," and is allegedly so thoroughly haunted that King joked he should move there.

Of course, it's not any of King's books that revived Savannah's well-deserved touristic allure in the 1990's. That honor belongs to John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the "non-fiction novel" (known to locals simply as "The Book") that lived in The New York Times bestseller list for 216 consecutive weeks following its publication in 1994. Three years later Clint Eastwood produced and directed a movie bearing the same title, starring Kevin Spacey and John Cusack. Between them, the book and movie electrified Savannah's tourism coffers with a jolt that continues to this day.

As an author, it's astounding to wander through Savannah and see that there's virtually nowhere to go without directly or indirectly encountering Berendt's book. I've been fortunate enough to have seen a lot of the world, but excepting Vatican City I can't think of any place where a single book's presence is so abundantly pervasive as Berendt's is in Savannah. There's even a store on Calhoun Square called "The Book" Gift Shop, owned and operated by a lovely dark-haired belle named Deborah, that sells nothing but Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and wares connected to or derived from it. The shop has thrived ever since it opened in 1996, and unsurprisingly, is reputed to share its quarters with a ghost.

Berendt says he happened upon Savannah one day in 1982 when he took a spontaneous road trip south from Charleston, South Carolina. Enchanted by the city's Southern Gothic charms, nefarious history, and quirky personalities, he returned three years later to research and write his book. Initially, he planned to spend only a few weeks at a time in Savannah while working on the book, but after a short while he found the city such a great place to write that he moved there in earnest in 1985 and remained for years until the book was done.

Having just spent the best part of a week in Savannah, I have to agree with Berendt -- Savannah struck me hard as a fantastic place to write. In addition to the qualities that drew Berendt there, since his book's release enrollment at the Savannah College of Art and Design has skyrocketed from 500 to well over 10,000 students, reflecting the city's deep appreciation and unwavering support for all of the creative arts. One of the very few things I noticed in Savannah that were nearly as ubiquitous as Berendt's book, were the omnipresent influences on daily life throughout the city of SCAD and its students and graduates.

(And the chandeliers. I've never seen so many chandeliers. Antique or modern. In public buildings and private homes and businesses. In foyers and living rooms and dining rooms and bedrooms and bathrooms. On verandas and porches. In real estate offices and galleries and classrooms and restaurants. Lit by electricity or gas or candle. Indoors and out. Everywhere. It seems there's something about a chandelier nearly irresistible to Savannahians.)

So take a writer's walk with me through Savannah's historic district. Let's see what you might encounter.

Deciding a little reluctantly to forgo the Psychotronic Film Society's Don Knotts revival at the Sentient Bean after watching an angry hippie slap an unyielding car with a plastic "Stop for Pedestrians" sign, I ventured between the monuments and fountains and SCAD girls playing rugby in Forsyth Park, past the dreadlocked man in the wheelchair wearing a cartoon Batman mask and weaving cool rhythms on a set of African bongos, to stand in the room where Jim Williams shot and killed Danny Hansford with a German Luger at the Mercer House, thus triggering Berendt to write The Book. After wandering further south and grabbing a bite at the Moon River Brewing Company, a bar so infested with spirits that it drew the rapt attention of the Ghost Adventures Crew, I climbed into a hearse for a drive-by tour of some of Savannah's most haunted places. Along the way I traded greetings with a very large man reading tarot cards outside a Starbucks on the corner of Bull and Broughton Streets. I discovered he's the cousin of the notorious Dr. Buzzard, the dead shaman whose magic Jim Williams desperately called upon to secure an acquittal in each of the last two of his four murder trials; it wasn't till the fourth trial that the magic seemingly worked. While on the tour, my guide "Lunatic Laura" taught me how the phrases "dead ringer," "saved by the bell," and "graveyard shift" originated. After disembarking the hearse, I strolled beside the Savannah River on River Street, serenaded by live blues played by a man on his battered acoustic guitar to the accompaniment of his buddy working some steel drums, before visiting the rooftop bar of the Grand Bohemian Hotel to watch immense freighters lumber up and down the river with their lights and marine horns blaring. Meandering north on cobblestone streets and brick walkways under gaslit arches of huge, ancient live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, I found myself beckoned to explore the Sorrel-Weed House, from whose roof the opening scene of Tom Hanks' movie Forrest Gump was filmed. The current owner of this grand old house is too scared of it to live in it. He tried paying various people to live in and care for the house, but in each case only a few nights passed before they fled, too afraid to return to pick up their belongings. While I was there, I heard something utterly eerie, a sound I couldn't identify as coming from this mortal realm. I have it recorded, and a hundred listenings later I still can't make other than "paranormal" sense of it. The sound made me recall immediately the advice a sweet African-American woman named Angel had given me hours earlier when I told her I was going to take Laura's tour -- "You don't want to be doing that. You want to be like me. I'm only riding in a hearse once." Exhausted, I climbed into a taxi driven by a woman named Big Mike, who told me as we drove past dozens of gently lit antique stores and art galleries that the key to understanding her city is to know that Savannahians consider the curtains between past and present extremely thin and rarely closed, especially every night between three and four a.m. "Between those times, that's when it's really midnight here," she said. "That's the real witching hour in Savannah."

All of that's only an hors d'oeuvre. I was there less than a week, and I'd have had to try very hard not to find fascinating people, places and things in Savannah that my muse wouldn't adore. I ambled through that town with plots, characters and dialogues ceaselessly spinning in my head all the time.

Maybe I'll room with King.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

~~William Faulkner~~

Spotting Fake Online Book Reviews

There's a whole lot of e-books out there. And more get released every day, in every genre, in almost every language, all over the world. Just last summer, the World eBook Fair made available more than 6,500,000 e-books during its annual fair. To put that number in some perspective, in 2008 the fair touted about 650,000 e-books, and the 2009 fair included about twice 2008's offering.

I'm not complaining. I think it's great that the "traditional" publishing model's stranglehold on what books folks can choose to read is loosening. The issue becomes, how to select which books to read. If you live to be 80 years old, and from your 20th birthday to your last you read two books weekly, you'll only have time to read 6,240 books in your lifetime. That's .00096 percent of the e-books featured at last summer's fair, and certainly a lesser percentage of the e-books out now, and a virtually infinitesimal fraction of the ones that will be published before your 80th birthday. No avid reader wants to waste her precious time reading bad books.

On the flip side, how do authors attract attention to their books in an environment of geometrically, if not exponentially, growing competition for readers' time and money? Thanks to the on-going revolutionary democratization in book publishing, this is a matter of concern for all but the tiny sliver of very famous authors whose names have risen to the level of a brand.

I posted a few weeks ago (Tear Down the Walls) that the only "superpower" traditional publishers have left any longer over independently published books is the traditionals' preferential access to esteemed literary critics at premium book review sources like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and the like. As matters of practice and/or policy, those sources rarely dedicate review space to independently published books.

Shut out from the premium review sources as vehicles to promote their work widely, independently published authors must rely heavily on word-of-mouth, and ever more importantly, on customer reviews at online retail destinations like Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, Smashwords.com, and dozens of similar sites. Legitimate customer reviews are invaluable aids in helping a book's potential reader decide whether to take a leap with a new book by a new author.

But it's not the legitimate online customer reviews that this post is about. With all those e-books out there multiplying daily like super-rabbits crazed on genetically enhanced Spanish fly, the simple act of drawing enough attention to get potential readers to notice, buy, read and review a new book by a new author can be a daunting task.

Now, not every unknown author longing for reader attention is unscrupulous, and not every unscrupulous author is desperate. That said, from time to time temptations to pad the online customer review roster might be difficult to tame. For example, I remember reading what I know is the worst book I've ever read in my life a few years ago. It was an absolutely putrid independently published excuse for a thriller, typed by a doctor from somewhere around Los Angeles. To make sure I wasn't mistaken in the book's loathsome foulness, I read long portions of it aloud to unfortunate friends and strangers. Consensus came quickly -- the book was truly terrible.

You'd not know that if you went to Amazon and read the book's purported customer reviews, though. I checked. There were more than forty of them. None of them were less than four-star, and the vast majority were screaming five-star raves. If you had relied on this book's posted "customer reviews," you'd have bought the novel with the smug confidence of knowing you were about to indulge yourself in the work of a writer whose immeasurable authorial talent could result from nothing less than his being the gifted offspring of a union between Nobel and Pulitzer, with Shakespeare as his Godfather.

Relying on those seemingly forthright reviews, you might eagerly buy the book and delve into it. If you did, your disappointment would be boundless, not only in the book itself, but also in the "reviewers" who duped you.

So as a valuable public service, this post is a primer on spotting fake online book reviews. Hopefully, it will help you steer clear of rank books whose glowing "customer reviews" are nothing but scams orchestrated by alleged authors who are in truth nothing more than inept self-published typists with profoundly unfounded delusions of literary prowess and way too much idle time on their hands.

After a lifetime dedicated to becoming the finest marsupial whisperer in all of Gulpin Gulch, Arkansas, Cletus Skweezweezle capped this laudable achievement by partially overcoming functional illiteracy to self-publish his magnum opus, Sh*t My 'Possum Says. While surfing Amazon looking for something new to read, you stumble upon Skweezweezle's masterpiece, attractively priced at $7.99. Perhaps the cover caught your eye, or there's a soft spot in your heart for 'possums. Still, justifiably cautious before adding the work to your electric shopping cart, you wisely choose to consider the 417 customer reviews unanimously praising the book since its release 20 minutes ago.

Does it strike you as odd that the vast majority of Skweezweezle's reviewers don't post their critiques under names one might find in a telephone directory on earth? What level of trust is due a review consisting entirely of the word "awsome" posted by someone named CaptainJanewayRules@youknowyouwantme.com? Is it comforting that 356 of the book's reviews are five misspelled words or less long, and shockingly enough also come from uncommonly monikered posters at youknowyouwantme.com? What can you determine upon discovering 409 of Skweezweezle's reviewers have posted only about Sh*t My 'Possum Says, and no other thing in all of Amazon's vast array of saleable goods and services? Do your eyebrows raise when it appears, to the extent you can tell, that more reviews are posted by people from Gulpin Gulch than recent U.S. Census data indicate live in the greater Gulpin Gulch metropolitan statistical area? Against this backdrop, what can you make of that one pseudonymous review over 900 words long that begins, "In all my years as a tenured professor holding the Charles John Huffam Dickens Chair in the English department at Harvard University, never have I dared allow myself to dream for even the fleetest of nanoseconds that one day before death gently lifts my soul from this mortal coil would I be blessed with the inexpressible bliss of encountering a work of such monumentally towering yet utterly sublime merit as the relentlessly dazzling tour de force that is Cletus Skweezweezle's Sh*t My 'Possum Says"?

Are we learning yet?

In bookstores and all over the Internet, terrific books by very talented independently published authors are eager to entertain, educate, amaze and enthrall you. They deserve your attention. Diverging from the well-trodden path of reading only books written by famous authors is a good adventure. Now that you've reached the end of this post, you're better positioned to distinguish thoughtful and reliable online book reviews from drivel cloaking itself behind a cluster of self-serving rubbish that's sole goal is to hoodwink you into wasting your valuable resources. Happy reading.

"Half the work that is done in this world is to make things appear what they are not."

~~E.R. Beadle~~

Author Spotlight: J. Gregory Smith

J. Gregory Smith has made a leap lots of self-published authors would love to emulate. His first novel, a mystery titled Final Price, won the 2010 first prize for fiction in the Delaware Press Association's Communication Contest. Under the limelight of that achievement, and based on positive customer feedback and sales information from Amazon's sites, Greg's book came to Amazon.com's attention. Amazon picked up the book and released it under the flagship AmazonEncore imprint, which was created to "unearth exceptional books and emerging authors for more readers to enjoy." Greg's second book, a thriller called A Noble Cause, continued to impress Amazon enough so that it was published three weeks ago under Amazon's mystery and thriller genre imprint, Thomas & Mercer. Thanks to his quality writing and adept marketing, Greg has made the transition from a self-published author to one with the support of a surging book publishing powerhouse behind him.

For those of you who've not yet read A Noble Cause, here's my brief plot synopsis: In the aftermath of his girlfriend's Antiguan disappearance and the murders of his parents in Pennsylvania, Mark Noble battles to uncover the reasons and people behind the mysterious kidnapping and deaths. The plot rushes along a track centered around clandestine mind control experiments conducted on unwitting subjects via pharmaceutically-enhanced hypnosis. Now go out and read it.

Well, not right now. First, read the latest installment in the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight, featuring none other than Mr. J. Gregory Smith himself. Kudos to Greg for agreeing without even the slightest flinch or hesitation to make this appearance for us under the searing blaze that is the Author Spotlight. Without further ado, let's get the Klieg light fired up and see if Smith breaks a sweat.

Gazala:   In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Smith:   For fiction I’d pick the first edition copy of The Hobbit that my dad read to me as a child.  He received it as a boy when it first came out.  Interesting side note, the original version of the Riddles in the Dark chapter where Bilbo first finds the great ring differs slightly than in later versions after the Lord of the Rings trilogy was written.  In the original, Gollum accepts the loss of the ring and even leads Bilbo back to the passage through the mountain.  Later versions have Gollum crazier and trying to kill Bilbo. For Nonfiction, The U.S. Army Survival Manual.  Robinson Crusoe I ain’t!

Gazala:   Your latest novel is an excellent and gripping thriller titled A Noble Cause. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about A Noble Cause, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.

Smith:   Hypnosis has always fascinated me, though I've never tried it myself.  I've always heard the subjects really can't be made to do anything they really wouldn't do normally--but I couldn't let it go at that, so I came up with a sort of superhypnosis combined with a mysterious concoction that allows access to the deepest reaches of a subject's subconscious. Now we're talking power. Our hero, Mark, is caught in the middle of a struggle for what such power could offer.

Gazala:   What are books for?

Smith:   Done right, I see books as a partnership between reader and writer where the writer sets the scene and story and readers step up with their own imaginations to complete the picture and make it perfect. It is hard to do but when it works, magic happens. There’s a reason so many people will prefer a book to the movie version. They had a hand in making the story just right for them, and it can be jarring when a director substitutes his interpretation.

Gazala:   W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?

Smith:   I would tend to agree but even when I think I know what they are it doesn’t seem to make it any easier.  For me I’d say they were 1) come up with a great idea, 2) write it down, 3) make it better (and repeat #3 as needed.)

Gazala:   My car alarm is going off again. Ask yourself a question, and answer it. 

Smith:   Question -- Since you are a writer and not a “wrote”, what is next for you? Answer --  The sequel to my first novel Final Price, is coming out in March and is called Legacy of the Dragon. Right now I’m nearly finished with the draft of the third Detective Chang thriller tentatively titled Send in the Clowns.  (After it rests a bit I'll get to work on step #3.)

Now that you've indulged in Smith's Author Spotlight, you can go get your copy of A Noble Cause. A quick and easy way to order your copy is by clicking here.

How (Il)literate Is Your City?

How literate is your city?

Just like a ball team, every author has a home-field advantage. After all, where an author lives is likely where most of his family, friends, and colleagues live, and theirs in turn. I live just outside of Washington, D.C., and I'm fortunate to have a network of very supportive people in my area who enthusiastically buy, read, and help me promote my books and stories, locally and everywhere else. These gracious, book-loving people invite me to speak about my writing at their homes, businesses, clubs and libraries, giving my work a huge boost in visibility. It's kind of like getting an invaluable head start in a literary marathon where the finish line's always over the next hill, never quite in sight.

In that sense, the more "literate" an author's home town, the bigger a head start she can get when she's looking for traction for her work. So Central Connecticut State University president Jack Miller's annual survey of "America's Most Literate Cities" is something every author (and publisher, for that matter) should take a look at, both as an exercise in assessing her home town's enthusiasm for books and reading, and to help her design a promotional plan in cities other than her own where people devour books.

Before you rush to the survey and get disgruntled because your burg didn't place anywhere on the list, a caveat's in order. The study is limited to cities with populations of at least 250,000 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. While that might seem arbitrary, it's reasonable when you consider that according to the last Census there were 275 American cities with over 100,000 residents, and the National League of Cities counts more than 19,000 distinct U.S. cities, towns and villages in its membership. With the 250,000 resident cut-off, Miller's literacy survey ranks only the country's 75 largest cities.

In determining a city's passion for the lettered arts, the study looks at six criteria: daily and Sunday newspaper circulation; "Internet data" (which includes visits to newspaper/TV websites, Internet book purchases, and e-reader ownership); magazine and journal purchases/subscriptions; the number of retail, rare and used book stores a city supports; educational attainment data per city; and libraries, librarians, volumes, and circulation rates each city has per capita. Again, this is arguably an imperfect set of measures by which to rank one city more "literate" than another. Still, as with the population metric, you've got to start and end somewhere, and whatever flaws the study may have doesn't strip all meaning from its results.

So what does the survey say? For those of you who bash New Jersey as a Snooki-centric bastion of goonish illiteracy (be fair -- Snooki did write a book, kind of), Newark has the most book stores per capita. Folks who poke fun at the Lone Star state's education system may be surprised to learn Plano, Texas, has the country's highest per capita educational attainment levels. Cleveland, Ohio trumps all the other municipal contestants in library supremacy. And my town, Washington, D.C., defeats all comers in newspaper and periodical consumption, and using the Internet for buying and reading books.

Who knew?

Well, now, you do.

Let's put aside the granularity and look at the bigger picture. Sure to stir the delicious discord and choice controversy we love so much here at Gazalapalooza, here's the list of the Top 20 most literate cities in America in 2011:

1.     Washington, D.C.

2.     Seattle, WA

3.     Minneapolis, MN

4.     Atlanta, GA

5.     Boston, MA

6.     Pittsburgh, PA

7.     Cincinnati, OH

8.     St. Louis, MO

9.     San Francisco, CA

10.   Denver, CO

11.   Portland, OR

12.   St. Paul, MN

13.   Cleveland, OH

14.   Kansas City, MO

15.   Oakland, CA

16.   Raleigh, NC

17.   New Orleans, LA

18.   Baltimore, MD

19.   Honolulu, HI

20.   Virginia Beach, VA

What about those self-proclaimed major metropolitan cultural centers you'd expect to finish at least in the hallowed Top 20? At least higher than Virginia Beach? Where are Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Houston, for example? Respectively, they're at 29, 31, 59, and 60. And perhaps most interestingly, what of New York, the gatekeeper and shining citadel of American commercial literary publishing?  The Big Apple tied with Austin, Texas, at 22.5; both were edged out by Tulsa, Oklahoma, and they barely eclipsed Lexington, Kentucky. New York's love for literature outflanked by Virginia Beach's and Tulsa's? I, for one, didn't see that coming.

It's all well and good to applaud America's Top 20 most bookish cities. But it's also fun to see which of our nation's biggest towns dwell on the list's bottom, too, right? It's a guilty pleasure, like rubbernecking at literary train wrecks.

71.   Fresno, CA

72.   Stockton, CA

73.   El Paso, TX

74.   Corpus Christi, TX

75.   Bakersfield, CA

Hey, Bakersfield -- buy a book, why don't you?

Stereotypes are a bitch, aren't they?

"[Arthur Miller] wouldn't have married me if I had been nothing but a dumb blonde."

~~Marilyn Monroe~~

Author Spotlight: James Grippando

There's no one way to tell if you've "made it" as an author of captivating fiction. You can be prolific, yet never quite prolific enough to satiate your rabid fan base. You can create a series with a character (Miami criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck springs to mind at the moment) that critics have called, "John Grisham meets Robert Ludlum." Your work can climb international bestseller lists in multiple languages. Your novels could be lauded by reviewers worldwide. You might branch out from thrillers and suspense and try your hand, with success, at a novel for young adults. One of your short stories might be anthologized in a collection featuring the writing of some of the most eminent thriller writers on the planet.

All of those things, individually and collectively, are sure signs your decision to pursue writing popular fiction was a sound career move.

All of those things, individually and collectively, are true of James Grippando, today's guest under the intense hi-beam that is Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight.

But there's another indicator that's at least equally plain proof you've touched a nerve among countless readers. And that's when the correct answer to a New York Times Crossword Puzzle is the title of one of your novels. On June 14, 2005, Grippando's novel Under Cover of Darkness was the correct answer to 38 Across.

Now that's "making it" as a novelist.

Grippando's latest suspense novel just came out this month. Published by Harper, it's a stand-alone book titled, Need You Now. In his typically enthralling style, Grippando tells the story of Patrick Lloyd. Lloyd is a young financial advisor who, with his enigmatic girlfriend Lilly Scanlon, risk all to expose a deadly $60 billion ponzi conspiracy that oozes from Wall Street's gleaming skyscrapers far into the dark heart of Washington, D.C.

What better way for Gazalapalooza to commemorate Grippando's new release than with a cordial invitation to bask in the blinding gleam of the Author Spotlight? Fortunately for us all, the esteemed author graciously accepted the invitation. Without further ado, let's see how well Mr. Grippando fares under the spotlight's fiery glare.

Gazala:    In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Grippando:   For fiction, since  you’ve already spotted me the complete works of Shakespeare, I’ll take Goodnight Moon. It reminds me of everyone I would miss while stuck on that island—from my own kids to my grandparents. Plus, if you were to ask me if there is one book I wish I had written, it would be this one. 

For nonfiction, my high school English teacher gave me one of the most unforgettable books I've ever read, the Pulitzer Prize winning play, "A Man for All Seasons." It's the story of Sir Thomas Moore, who was tried for treason and beheaded after he refused on principle to sign an oath approving the marriage of King Henry VIII to Ann Boleyn. I still have that book. It became especially meaningful to me in the early years of my legal career, when I was young and naïve and appalled to discover how many witnesses lied under oath. People complain that lawyers are always trying to trip them up with their clever questions, but in my experience witnesses too often had to be tricked into telling the truth. In my most cynical moments as a trial lawyer, I'd go back to Sir Thomas Moore and the sanctity of an oath. It's just one of the many ways I'm so often reminded of my high school English teacher. That would be a comforting feeling on my desert island. 

Gazala:   Your latest novel in an excellent and gripping thriller titled, Need You Now. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about Need You Now, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader. 

Grippando:   My favorite thing about Need You Now is the sense of place. It's marketed as a "Wall Street thriller," but the feel of New York is what I'm most proud of. And I don't mean the typical hallmarks of Manhattan that find their way into every book set in the city. I just got an e-mail the other day from a "New-Yawker" who was convinced that I must have grown up in Queens near the Lemon Ice King of Corona and "spaghetti park." He was downright wistful about his old neighborhood, and he couldn't believe that some guy from Florida could capture the feeling of that place. Yes, Need You Now is a page turner...but slow down a little, and enjoy some of those moments.

Gazala:   What are books for?

Grippando:   Free, if we don't do something about Internet piracy.

Gazala:   W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no on knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?

Grippando:   I go with Upton Sinclair on this one. Legend has it that he was the keynote speaker at a Harvard University graduation ceremony. His topic was, "the key to writing a great novel." After being introduced by the university president, he walked to the lectern as the crowd gave him a warm reception. Finally the applause silenced. He looked out into the audience and said, "Why aren't you at home, writing?" Then he returned to his seat and sat down. In my view, that's the one and only rule for writing the novel. 

Gazala:   There are profoundly unsettling noises in my basement I have to go check out. Ask yourself a question, and answer it.

Grippando:   All right, here goes. Q: All the characters in Need You Now have something to hide. Do you think everybody has something to hide? A: Yup. In my second novel, The Informant, one of my characters says, "The only people who can be totally honest with each other are lovers or strangers. Everyone else is just negotiating." I believe it. Don't you?

Grippando's Need You Now is available everywhere. If you'd like to do yourself a big favor and order it from Amazon, all you have to do is click here.

Tear Down the Walls

For authors it's always intriguing to study the current throes of the "traditional" book-publishing business model. Rules and practices are fluctuating rapidly in almost every aspect of the business, from the ways books are published to the ways they're acquired and read. This places authors in a landscape as rosy as it is daunting to maneuver as they toil to capture the attention of potential readers.

In days gone by not so long ago, by the far the best path for an author to gain notice and a shot at fame and fortune was steadfastly treading the "traditional" route of book publishing. Many argue that the traditional route remains the best choice, and to some extent (at least right now), that might be true.

The question is, why was it ever true at all?

The answer is in those recently bygone days, and for many decades preceding them, the traditional publishing houses largely and most efficiently controlled the means of production, distribution, and marketing of books released for mass commercial consumption. Once an author contracted with a publisher for a book's publication, the publisher arranged for the book's editing and polish, its cover art, and its pre- and post-release reviews. The publisher arranged the book's physical production. The publisher had the wherewithal to get the book stocked on national and international retail shelves. The publisher had the money and means to market the book domestically and abroad before, during and after its release.

In the Internet Age, the traditional publisher's control in those matters is no longer as weighty as it used to be.

Authors now have access to a robust and growing array of means to have their books professionally edited and produced. Many independent publishing houses can arrange for "fully-returnable" book distribution to retailers via the likes of Ingram, and Baker & Taylor. (And as Kindles, iPads and Nooks abound and gain popularity, the necessity of producing physical books at all dwindles proportionately.) Any author reasonably familiar with social media, and possessing sufficient time and resources, can devise and implement a marketing campaign to support her work as vigorous as just about any rolled out by a traditional publisher.

So barring for the limited purposes of this post the undeniable benefits that accompany economies of scale, the traditional publishers don't enjoy any particular advantages in physical book publication and distribution, and only one (as we'll see below) in marketing. Yet at the moment, for sure, most independently published authors would be elated to move their books into the hands of traditional publishers.

Why?

Because not even the Internet Age has stripped from traditional publishers their one clearly invaluable power -- they have been for many years, and remain today, the arbiters of popular reading taste in the mass commercial markets. Whether rightly or wrongly so isn't relevant. It simply is so.

The popular music business is the traditional publishing model's first cousin, so a brief stroll into the music arena is illustrative. When I was a teenager, my family moved between two continents in the mid-1970s. Whether I was in Massachusetts or England in 1976 and 1977, just about every kid I knew had a copy of Peter Frampton's live double album, "Frampton Comes Alive." Record stores on both sides of the Atlantic displayed reams of promotional collateral devoted to the record. American and western European radio stations kept cuts from the album in heavy rotation for nearly two years without interruption. The album became a phenomenon that fed on itself, until for my generation owning the record was a commonplace rite of teen passage.

Alternatively, had the record label not so aggressively stamped the record with its seal of approval, the odds were only a small fraction of us would have ever heard of it, much less bought it.

A&M/Polygram was the record label that made "Frampton Comes Alive" successful. The label, which operated much the same way a traditional book publisher does to this day, excelled at convincing record-buyers that Frampton's album was good, and worth purchasing.

Frampton wasn't unheard of before "Frampton Comes Alive" was released. He had previously been a member of  the well-received band Humble Pie, and released four solo albums between departing the band and "Frampton Comes Alive." Neither individually or collectively did those four solo records remotely approach "Frampton Comes Alive" in sales. Was "Frampton Comes Alive" a great record, or one of the "best" ones released in the mid-1970s? Was it truly superior to hundreds of other contemporaneously-released albums in its and other genres, including Frampton's own previously released material?

Well, that's a matter of taste, isn't it?

Exactly.

In 1976 and 1977, A&M/Polygram was a formidable tastemaker in popular music. The average radio station, music store and record buyer had neither the time nor inclination to scour through hundreds upon hundreds of albums released around the time of "Frampton Comes Alive" to seek out lesser-publicized gems. The record label did this for them.

The major record labels were gatekeepers. Their imprimatur was perceived, to a significant extent and whether justifiably or not, as a pledge of product quality on which stations, stores and buyers were willing to rely. And this is only one example of labels' highly effective gatekeeping and tastemaking efforts before and since "Frampton Comes Alive." (I selected this specific example because it rekindles such fond memories of my youthful miscreancy in the 70s. You'll just have to indulge me.)

The only superpower that traditional book publishers still have today is that power of tastemaking.

Online retailers like the behemoth Amazon.com have millions of traditionally and independently published books for sale. As of this writing, independent e-book publisher/distributor Smashwords.com has "3,764,692,764 words published." Yet even a cursory glance at the current major bestseller lists will return almost exclusively the names of authors who are very well-known and widely read, and have been for years. The premier book review outlets (i.e., The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, major television programs and magazines, etc.), as well as book stores and book buyers, have neither the time nor inclination to scour through hundreds upon hundreds of books released every month to seek out lesser-publicized gems by lesser-known authors. As they have for decades, they rely on traditional publishers do the sifting for them.

Hence, at least originally and in considerable part, the remarkable success of Meyer's Twilight, or Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or scads of other "phenomenon" books. The underlying business model that made worldbeaters of Twilight and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the same one that propelled "Frampton Comes Alive" to such lofty heights.

I know many authors, both traditionally and independently published. I don't know one who wouldn't crave his or her book to be reviewed by The New York Times. And The New York Times, like The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and other major newspapers, magazines, television stations and radio programs, very rarely shine any light on independently published books. The Washington Post, for one, declines to review independently published books as a matter of stated policy, and it's far from alone in this regard.

My friend Marvin McIntyre recently released his debut novel, a great thriller titled Insiders. His book is professionally edited and produced, and it's distributed "fully returnable" via Ingram, and Baker & Taylor. It has earned great feedback from Internet review sites and online reader reviews. But his sales didn't take off until he was able, through his own professional connections, to get Insiders reviewed by Barron's.

I know it's the Internet Age. There are tens of thousands of web-based book review sites. Some are very good, some not so much. Some have lots of readers, but most have few. There are so many online book reviewer sites splintering readers' limited time and attention that none of those sites have aggregated sufficient gravitas to be a national tastemaker. None of them alone (and even some thousands of them put together) yet have the reach and prestige to launch a book's sales the way a single, brief mention in  The New York Times can.

The way to The New York Times' book review pages and their precious ilk is still, and for all meaningful intents and purposes is exclusively, via the traditional publishers. Relations between traditional publishers and the front-line prestigious book review outlets remain tight and cozy. The publishers will battle to the end to keep it that way, as it's the last vestige of their old-world value proposition that continues to matter. For the near future it seems in the reviewers' interests to perpetuate this status quo too, since it obviates the need for them to invest limited resources in seeking and evaluating independently published books that are as good as, if not far better than, the ones shilled by the traditional publishers.

These are the last walls between very talented but independently published authors and the widespread attention they justifiably deserve. Those walls won't stand forever. The sooner they crumble, the better it will be for everyone who loves to read books.

  "Something there is that doesn't love a wall..."

~~ Robert Frost ~~

Author Spotlight: Alan Orloff

The area where I live and write is a roiling cauldron of dazzling literary talent. As you might expect given the plethora of politicians, staffers, judges, lawyers, bureaucrats, spies, lobbyists, judges and military folk who comprise the epicenter of this place, the vast majority of tomes produced around here are very, very serious. For example, try losing yourself in a few scintillating pages of An Annotated list of Literature References on Carpets and Rugs 1940 to 1963 (Dept. of Agriculture). Or perhaps you'd prefer curling up with a dog-eared copy of Distinguishing Bolts from Screws (U.S. Customs and Border Protection). True, every so often the ceaseless political and personal scandals abounding in our nation's capital produce some delightfully bawdy material for the bestseller lists. Be that as it may, "funny" isn't the first thing that springs to mind when "Washington, D.C." comes up in a game of word association. At least, not funny as in ha-ha.

Against such a somber backdrop, native Washingtonian author Alan Orloff's "Last Laff" series is a refreshing departure. His just-released book, Deadly Campaign, is the second entry in Orloff's series (coming hot on the heels of the series' debut, Killer Routine). The novels feature the amateur sleuthing of troubled stand-up comedian and comedy club-owner Channing Hayes, and are set in and around Washington. Orloff will be the first to concede he doesn't write the series to punch his ticket to the Comedy Hall of Fame. Still, his books are sprinkled liberally with sly humor and good jokes, in addition to being engaging thrillers.

To celebrate Orloff's new release, I invited him to visit Gazalapalooza for a fresh installment of Author Spotlight. Rather than pretending he doesn't know me, or faking his own death, we're fortunate he graciously accepted my invitation. Without further ado, let’s get this blazing spotlight fired up and test Mr. Orloff's antiperspirant.

Gazala:   In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Orloff:   Thanks for not mentioning my transgressions (embarrassing!). Would I be allowed to trade the works of Shakespeare for the works of Stephen King? If not, then I’ll take The Stand as my fiction choice. It’s a great book, and it’s long enough that I’ll forget most of it by the time I reach the end (making it ideal for re-reads). For nonfiction, I’ll take the Guinness Book of World Records. That should keep me entertained, and who knows, it may inspire me to try to break a record or two.

 

Gazala:   Your latest novel is an excellent and gripping thriller titled Deadly Campaign. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about Deadly Campaign, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.

Orloff:   First off, let me say that your recommendation should sway readers. I mean, from where I sit, you have excellent taste and judgment! My main goal with Deadly Campaign was to write an entertaining story with fun, three-dimensional characters. At the same time, if I could provide readers with a glimpse into the world of stand-up comedy, as well as skewer a few make-believe politicians, then so much the better. I’ve lived in the D.C. area most of my life, so I know something about the sordid stories associated with those walking the corridors of power.

Gazala:   What are books for?

Orloff:   Oh, where to start? Books are for entertaining, enlightening, enchanting. Liking, loving, lusting. Transporting, teaching, training. Enough alliteration? How about, “Books are for everyone to cherish in their own special way"? (Or is that too Mr. Rogers?)

Gazala:   W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?

Orloff:   Actually, there are at least a dozen rules, but no one knows what the additional nine are either. Ba da bing. I believe there’s too much subjectivity/individuality involved in the writing/reading process to sum up the process with a tidy set of rules. If something works for a writer, then it works. Period. Ask ten writers how they write a novel and you’ll get eleven answers (at least). And that’s a good thing. Otherwise, one novel might read too much like the next (and the next and the next…).

Gazala:   There's someone at my door. Ask yourself a question, and answer it.

Orloff:   (If it’s a Girl Scout, could you please order me a box of Samoas?) My question to myself: What’s the best part about being a writer? Aside from the lax dress code and flexible working hours, I’d have to say the best part about being a writer is the opportunity to share your work—your ideas, your visions, your stories—with readers. Of course, working in sweats is pretty sweet!

You don't have to look too hard to find Deadly Campaign. If you want a quick and easy way to get your copy, clicking on this link will make you happy.