Guest Posts: Redux

When I last asked for guest posts back in May, I received so many quality submissions that I couldn't take just five. So! I accepted an additional five guest posts for next week, as I shall be out of town on Ye Olde Holidaye Times.

Where will I be? Well, somewhere significantly less stressful (and smelly) than New York City. I suppose that's not much of a hint, though, since that's pretty much everywhere else on the planet. At least you know I won't be in Beijing or L.A.

Without futher ado!

Monday, July 11th: "To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish? That is a Darn Good Question!" by Chevonese Fender

Tuesday, July 12th: "Four Elements of a Great Book Signing" by Corrie Garrett

Wednesday, July 13th: "The Glamour Life on a Book Tour" by Wayne Arthurson

Thursday, July 14th: "Writing Without a Net(Work)" by Lorna Graham

Friday, July 15th: "Rotten Rejections" by D.L. Orton

I'll return on Monday, July 18th with more gems, pearls of wisdom, and other assorted literary treasures for you. Until then, enjoy Friday's round-up and next week's guest posts!

Prithee, Inform Me: Summer Releases

'Tis the season for new releases, mes auteurs, and I was curious as to which you're most excited about!

While there are a number of books I'm dying to read, I'm most looking forward to A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin (July 12th, fiction), Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems by Marvin Bell (July 1st, poetry), and In My Time by Dick Cheney (August 30th, memoir). That last one should be pretty interesting.

In music (in which I have really eclectic taste), I'm pretty excited for Alpocalypse by "Weird Al" Yankovic (June 21st). Why? Because it's his first studio release in five years and the album contains a track called "Polka Face." Done and done.

Finally, in movies, I am super amped for the Green Lantern film this week (June 17th)! I've been waiting for this movie since I was about six, folks. If it disappoints me, I may never recover.

What about you, cats & kittens? What are you looking forward to in books, music, movies, and more over the next three months?

Guest Post: Eating the Elephant

by Lexi George

As a mom with a full-time job, I’ve always had to squeeze time out of my busy schedule for writing. I’ve been writing steadily for more than fifteen years, but for the first few years it was hit and miss, a little writing here, a little writing there. No pressure or time constraints and no real goals, other than to finish the manuscript I was working on... at some point.

In my forties, with the ugly Five-O looming on the horizon like Godzilla with a bad case of hammer toe, I got serious about writing. If I was going to do this, I’d better get cracking, I told myself. I was going to finish the darn book and get published before my fiftieth birthday.

Good grief, fifty! Where did all the time go? If I didn’t do this thing by then, it was all over but the crying. Of course, I knew my odds of getting published were slim—my husband is a numbers guy—but I didn’t dwell on them. I had a goal.

With Doomsday looming ahead, most days I managed to carve out some writing time. I had a self-imposed deadline to meet, with dead being the operative word. Fifty, sheesh. D-Day crept closer and closer, and Godzilla eschewed orthotics.

As writing became a more regular habit, I began to get anxious if I didn’t get my daily dose of prose. There were still plenty of times when life intruded upon my creative efforts, so I cut myself a little slack. I set a goal of writing a chapter a week, which for me averages anywhere from 2500 to 3700 words. That way, if I missed a day because of work or the kids, I could make it up the next day without feeling guilty or anxious.

Did I mention that guilt is a motivating factor for me? Guilt is my friend and my enemy. It keeps me on the straight and narrow, but it also makes me crazy as a June bug.

I finished the manuscript I was working on before Doomsday, but I didn’t get published. I have the pile of rejection letters to prove it. A quite impressive pile of rejection letters, I must say. Enough to wallpaper several bathrooms.

Fifty came and went and I kept writing. I decided to try my hand at something else, a romance about Addy, a small town Southern florist and a hunky immortal demon slayer named Brand. Lo and behold, thanks to luck, prayer and a lot of help from friends, Demon Hunting in Dixie sold to Kensington in a three-book deal! Holy smokes! Great jumping Jehoshaphat, I’m a published writer. Whoo hoo!

Then I got a reality check. I was given my first deadline, a deadline set by the publisher and not my inner nag. I had to complete a 30,000 word novella in three months. Having learned a little about time management and goal setting over the years, I gave myself a goal of 10,000 words a month, highly doable, given the fact I haven’t quit my day job or turned in my mom card. I am happy to say I met my first deadline. The novella, The Bride Wore Demon Dust, comes out this August as part of a Halloween anthology from Kensington entitled So I Married A Demon Slayer. The icing on my cake of happiness is the fact that I’m in the anthology with paranormal romance writers extraordinaire Angie Fox and Kathy Love. Somebody pinch me!

Then my second reality check came: the deadline for book two of the demon hunter series. I’m hard at work on it, but I will admit it has been challenging. I am a slow writer (I revise as I go) and I haven’t given up my day job or put up my teenager for adoption. But I will get there!

So, my advice is to set goals, whether they be daily, weekly, or month. Whatever it takes to get your butt in the chair.

When you set out to eat an elephant, take small bites. That’s my philosophy and it works for me.

Oh, and by the way, I’m fifty-four. Life didn’t end at fifty and neither did my passion for writing.

Or my ability to dream and reach for that big, brass ring.

Hmm, wonder what I should shoot for next?


Lexi George is an appellate lawyer by day and a romance writer by night. She started her writing career in the third grade penning bad poetry about hydrangea bushes and Erik the Red. Ironically, she ended up marrying a Viking, a Northern boy who came to Alabama with the Air Force and stayed. She wrote poetry all through high school and college. And then she decided to go to law school and the muse left in a huff. The muse hated law school.

The muse returned when Lexi’s oldest child was a toddler and Lexi has been writing ever since. After piling up an impressive number of rejections on her first book, a fantasy romance that she worked on for more than ten years, Lexi decided to try her hand at something else. The result was Demon Hunting in Dixie, a paranormal romance about demon hunters in the Deep South. The muse is very happy, and so is Lexi.

Visit Lexi on Facebook and Twitter (lexigeorge12) and check out her website at www.lexigeorge.com.

Demon Hunting in Dixie is available from: Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, BooksaMillion.com, indieBound.org, Borders.com, or your favorite retailer.

Guest Post: Making A Commercial Novel More Upmarket Using Setting

by Stella Notecor

Upmarketing Your Novel!

Have you ever heard of an upmarket novel? Many commercial books with literary elements are now being called "upmarket novels." Nowadays, commercial fiction tends to be a bit... commercialized. Adding touches of literary elements to your novel can help your fiction transcend genre, resonate with readers, and become timeless. (All of which translates to bigger sales and more money in your pocket!) That doesn't mean your fiction needs to be that dry and boring stuff your high school teachers made you read. Upmarket fiction can be as entertaining as commercial fiction!

Often the literary elements that suffer the most in a commercial novel are the setting details. We don't want to bog down our readers by providing too many setting details that pull them away from the plot. The following three tips will help you give your commercial fiction more oomph without detracting from the plot.

Tip #1 - Make the description relate to the character.

Descriptions should come from your character's point-of-view. Consider an old woman observing the house her granddaughter is begging her to sell so she can move into a retirement home.

"I stared up at the house that had been my life. The porch swing swayed in the breeze coming off the lake, much more gently than it ever had when my two sons were the ones swinging it. Wildflowers filled the window boxes. I always picked a plant or two when we went away on family vacations, bringing them back much as we brought back memories. The steps sagged a little, testament to the many little feet that ran up and down them over the years, but all in all, the house looked just as it had when Henry and I bought it fifty-five years ago."

Now, consider her granddaughter's point of view.

"This house would be the death of Gram. The old porch swing shuddered at the slightest breeze, threatening to fall from its rusty chain the next time Gram took a seat. Wildflowers in window boxes required Gram to water them every day. Elise had watched her totter around the house once, carrying a heavy watering can, as she attempted to water all the flowers. She'd nearly tripped coming down those old, rickety steps and the uneven walk had practically begged her to fall and break a bone or two. She had no idea why Gram wanted to stay in this death-trap."

Descriptions become more powerful when we see them through our characters' eyes.

Tip #2 - Use bits of culture to give your story realism.

Using small cultural references can help your readers identify a character's age, race, personality, and socioeconomic background while adding only a few words to your word count. Consider the following descriptions.

"Jane grabbed a soda from the fridge, then headed out the front door. Sliding into the car, she turned on the ignition and grinned as her favorite song came blasting out of the radio."

"Madison grabbed a strawberry Fanta from the fridge, then headed out the front door. Sliding into her Scion, she turned on the ignition and grinned as her favorite Katy Perry song came blasting out of the radio."

"Stacy grabbed a Pepsi from the fridge, then headed out the front door. Sliding into her Cadillac, she turned on the ignition and grinned as her favorite song by The Monkees came blasting out of the radio."

Which descriptions were more engaging? Madison and Stacy's, right? And I'm sure you can guess which girl was born in the fifties and which girl was born in the nineties!

(A caution... pop culture snippets can also date your story. If used in a modern book, editors may ask you to remove or limit them so that you don't render the book unsellable after a certain length of time. A teenager who mentions "Bennifer" isn't going work as well now as it did when Ben and Jennifer were still dating!)

Tip #3 - Make your setting a character.

By this, I mean that your setting should influence the story as much as a character does. Reading about the barren desert is all well and good, but the desert can become truly interesting if you make it out to be a savage beast, tearing your character's life away from them.

"The sand crept into everything. It got into our shoes and wore away at our socks, filling them with holes. Then it attacked our feet, wearing away the skin and leaving behind raw wounds that ached with every step we took.

The sun beat down on us, burning our skin and evaporating what little water we collected. If it weren't for the sun's heat, we could have walked twenty miles a day. Instead, we barely managed five."

Now, isn't that description a lot more interesting than "The hot and sandy desert made traveling difficult"?

Obviously, making your setting more interesting can make your novel a lot more interesting too. And there are ways to do it without adding to your word count. So, I have a question for you. Do you think you will use literary elements in your stories now? Which ones? Why? Why not?

Stella Notecor believes that love knows no boundaries. She writes erotic fiction that reflects that, choosing to focus on her characters' stories, not their genders. Her first self-pubbed novella, The Broken, was released May 29th in formats for all major e-readers. Visit her website at http://tiny.cc/stellanotecor for more information and to read an excerpt.

Guest Post: 5 Tools to Carry in a Conspiring Universe

by Sarah Allen

Is it just me, or do you feel like every time you start a new project, the universe conspires against you to take away all the time you thought you had to work on it? You finally get started, and then you look at your calendar and realize that the next several days are a string of doctors' appointments, meetings, helping your friend move, the Hare Krishna Festival of Colors, and you wonder where your time went.

So what do you do? Being busy doesn't just happen at the beginning of projects, it happens all the time. Many of us are balancing jobs, parenting, school, and all the other things going on in our lives with our writing and writing careers. How do we balance it all?

1) Carry a notebook. That way, when you're sitting at your kid's kindergarten waiting for school to get out, you can pull out the notebook and jot down a few sentences. You can outline the next chapter of your novel while sitting in the lobby of the doctor's office.

2) Carry a book. You could fit in a good page or so while filling up the car at the gas station. To be a good writer you must be a good reader, and I imagine that sneaking bits of writing time helps your brain keep at high functionality throughout the day, just like sneaking crackers or apple slices helps move things efficiently through your digestive system. Poetry and short story collections as well as literary magazines are particularly suited for this.

3) Carry business cards. Take the time for some guerilla marketing. Sneak a card into one of the magazines on the coffee table at the doctors office. Give your card or even a copy of your book to your kid's teacher or school librarian. Whatever you think might work.

4) Carry a planner. With writing time tightly squeezed, its useful to plan ahead and know exactly when you will be able to actually sit down and write, even if it's just in ten minute chunks. And then, once you know when you'll be at your computer, while you are out and about, plan ahead and know where and how you're going to start up again when you get back. That way you will minimize the unproductive staring-at-the-screen time.

5) Carry an iPhone. Or something like it, if possible. That way you can update your blog or Facebook fan page while sitting at the lecture you didn't want to go to in the first place. Get your e-mailing and social networking done while you're on lunch break, and then when you get home and finally have your own time, you can use it for the actual writing instead of having to catch up on all the businessy-type things.

Life will still be crazy and busy, no doubt, but carrying and efficiently using these tools can help maximize your writing productivity. Are there any other tools you think might be useful?

Sarah is a 22-year-old aspiring writer working on her first novel who recently graduated as an English major from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. She has been published in a handful of lit magazines and blogs about her adventures and misadventures on the road to future publication. She loves Cavalier King Charles spaniels, jazz, white chocolate, and owns all 11 seasons of Frasier.

In Blackest Night

It's raining in New York City, mes auteurs, which (to me) means: movie day!

Now, I know not everyone is as big a nerd as I am, so I understand if you only have a vague familiarity with (or have never even heard of) the Green Lantern. But he's been my favorite superhero since I was a kid (occasionally taking second place to Batman), and I am really, really excited that this movie is coming out.



June 17th!

Schedule, Schedule, Schedule

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, mes auteurs, then you're familiar with my opinion that, even beyond talent and luck, a writer needs discipline in order to succeed. John Gardner once wrote: "Most of the people I've known who wanted to become writers, knowing what it meant, did become writers" (bold emphasis mine). So: what does it mean to be a writer?

· You need to create and keep a schedule. If you can only write from 6:00 am to 6:45 am on Tuesdays, guess when you're writing? Bingo: 6:00 am to 6:45 am, every Tuesday.

It can be difficult to dedicate time to writing when you feel you have very little of it, since the payoff takes so long to realize. Even writing forty-five minutes a day, however, will get you a first draft of a short novel in about a year (assuming a modest 250 words in 45 minutes x five days per week x 52 weeks per year = 65,000 words).

· You need to be disciplined. Not only do you have to carve out the time to put your butt in the chair, you have to use that time wisely. No checking e-mail, no reading webcomics, no on-line shopping. Write longhand, go somewhere without wi-fi, turn off your router if you have to. When you're writing, you're writing. Period.

This can be difficult if you work long hours or have kids to take care of, but remember: there must be some time in the day, if even only a few minutes, during which you can write. Find it, set it aside, and use it regularly.

· You need to be willing to revise. Virtually nothing comes out perfectly the first time. While it can be frustrating to write that final sentence of a first draft and realize you're not even remotely done, you can't quit and decide your first effort will have to be good enough. Find some trusted readers and get busy cutting, recasting, and expanding.

· You can't give up easily. Every writer's life is full of rejection; I don't need to bust out the tired clichés and examples for you. Your short stories will get rejected, your novels will get rejected, you may have to try a dozen times to find an agent. If you're self-publishing, you may find your first half-dozen attempts sell as many copies before settling to the bottom of Amazon's title list. If you're thin-skinned, build some calluses. If you're prone to giving up easily, this isn't the business for you.

· Maintain your relationships with other writers. If people you know are writing, submitting, and publishing, it'll keep the pressure on you to stay on top of your game. Ultimately, your own expectations and motivations will determine your success, but it helps to have other people pushing you forward, intentionally or not. Plus, as I've said, it never hurts to network. Recommendations and referrals jump-start literary careers all the time.

But! You tell me, folks: what do you do to keep yourselves motivated?

Getting Your Name Out There

As I've mentioned a few times, gentle readers, an author's name is a brand, a social currency, a form of capital: it can signal cultural awareness ("Have you read the new book by so-and-so?"), serves as synecdoche for a book's actual content ("Have you read the new Suzanne Collins? Well, she wrote it, it must be good,"), and even acts as a seal of approval (e.g. reviews and blurbs).

So how do you get yours out there?

Well, the most obvious answer is to write a fantastic book that people love. Until then, however, there are a few things you can do to get your name and your writing on readers' radars.

Attend events. There's no substitute for face time, mes auteurs. Attending readings, book signings, panel discussions, conferences, conventions, and other literary events in your genre of interest will not only help you fill out your mental Who's Who, but will help raise your profile among other readers and writers interested in the sorts of books you are.

Write reviews. Just behind talking about themselves, people love reading about themselves. Write reviews of books you love by authors you admire, link to them, and spread a little good karma. The worst that'll happen is your name will be in print or on-line in one more place than it was previously; the best that'll happen is that the author will repost, retweet, link to, or otherwise call out your stellar review, and that can help raise awareness of your name significantly.

Participate in social media. You won't have the time or money to attend every in-person event you'd like, but that doesn't mean you're in any way cut off from the writing community of your choice. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter allow you to communicate with people you might never otherwise meet, and maintaining a web presence (website and/or blog) provides you a sort of digital storefront for you and your work. Networking has never been easier than with the biggest network (of networks) on the planet: the Internet.

Publish your short fiction. If you write short stories, submit 'em for publication. A nice array of publication credits in print and/or on-line will not only help build awareness of your brand, but may attract attention from agents and editors. Should you decide to go it alone and self-publish your work electronically, you can sell your short stories on the cheap to attract consumers for your novel. Again: worst case scenario, your name comes up more often in print, in conversation, and/or on-line.

Ideas? Theories? Tried-and-true methods? To the comments with you!

Prithee, Inform Me: The Rules of Writing

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Kurt Vonnegut, and today I'd like to share with you, gentle readers/writers, his eight rules for writing fiction.

They are:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading charcters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

(These are from the above link, which in turn borrows them from Vonnegut's Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction.)

Now, many successful writers have broken some (or nearly all) of these rules on several occasions, and I don't completely agree with all of them (my biggest quarrel is with #8). I do, however, think they comprise one of the better succinct "how-to" (or "how-not-to") guides to writing fiction, and I think they go a long way toward explaining why even fiction that isn't written that well can sell like hotcakes.

Yes: hotcakes.

Now, it should also come as no surprise to you that I am decidedly not a fan of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books (to use a somewhat dated example). However! I think they sell for many reasons apart from this country's recent obsession with vampires and the perpetual attraction of teenage girls to mysterious, well-coiffed boys. Some of those reasons include: Meyer gives the reader someone to root for; every characer in her books wants something; terrible things happen to her protagonists; &c, &c.

Some of Vonnegut's rules are a bit vague (see #1), but I think they nonetheless provide good benchmarks for whether or not one's fiction is, at the very least, functional. What I like best about them is that they're reader-oriented, not craft-oriented, so the question "What does the reader want? What will engage him/her?" is always paramount.

So I ask you, mes auteurs: what are your favorite writing quote/unquote rules? Which do you follow and which do you break? Which authors/books have proved themselves most useful to you when writing your own fiction?

To the comments!

Tip o' the Week

I've been re-reading Emerson, cats & kittens, and this quote of his caught my attention over the weekend: "The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent."

Writing is work, folks. More than that, writing is hard work, it's getting up early and staying up late, it's sacrificing doing other fun things to put another few hundred or thousand words to paper, it's spending money on printer ink and postage and conference fees when you'd rather spend it on mega sweet vacations, it's applying for fellowships and retreats when you'd rather be watching reality TV, it's spending time on your on-line platform or reviewing proofs or perfecting your backlist of e-titles on Amazon instead of hanging out with friends.

Writing requires commitment and discipline even more than it requires talent. The hungrier writer will outperform the more talented writer nine times out of ten. If you don't want to be a writer more than you want any other professional goal, odds are you aren't going to make it very far.

This isn't to say that writers don't have families or personal lives or other hobbies and interests; they have all these things. They simply want to be professional writers badly enough to put in the requisite time and effort to improve their craft and make the necessary connections. If you want to be a writer, you'd better be willing to put in all the work and jump through all the crazy hoops. If you want to be a writer, you have to be good enough and smart enough and dedicated enough. And you've got to be lucky as hell.

Nothing worth doing or learning comes easily, dear readers, but if that were the case, you wouldn't get any satisfaction from doing or learning those things. Keep working, keep reading, and keep writing, and your efforts are bound to pay off in some respect sooner or later.

Tomorrow: a lesson on special markets!

An Incomplete Education

I love web comics, mes auteurs, more than I love most people and some varieties of whisk(e)y. It should come as no surprise, then, that the intersection of books/grammar and web comics in the Venn diagram of my life is a most wond'rous and magical place.

I therefore present to you my top ten grammar pet peeves—in web comic form!

1. "Alot." "Alot" is not a word. Or, if it is, it refers to an animal that's better than you at everything.

2. Semicolons. I'm not a big fan of them; Kurt Vonnegut once labeled the semicolon a "transvestite hermaphrodite representing absolutely nothing," insisting that "all they do is show you've been to college." If you insist on using them, however, here's how to do it.

3. Mondegreens. Here's a definition; here's a visual guide to some common ones pertaining to English idiom.

4. Misuse of the word "literally." If you're guilty of this, I'll literally send you a strongly worded e-mail/figuratively explode.

5. Confusion of its/it's. Especially on the Internet.

6. Misuse of apostrophes in general. Thankfully, there is a cure: flowcharts.

7. Misspellings. Here are ten you should avoid.

8. Internet comments. This is more of a video than a comic, but it gets the point across: 99.9% of the people on the Internet are functionally illiterate, some of them hilariously so. (I've spent countless hours laughing at seething, near-incomprehensible rants on YouTube.)

9. People who think they can out-grammar me. Sometimes I lay traps for them just for fun.

10. People who smugly correct other people's grammar. It's just kind of a jerk thing to do. Me? I'd do it subtly via blog post.

Also, in case you were curious:

Created by Oatmeal

Many thanks to Hyperbole and a Half, Dinosaur Comics, and The Oatmeal for their fantastic comics.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We'll return to our regularly scheduled programming on Monday, November 29th. Until then, have a happy and safe holiday!

World of Tomorrow Week, Part 4 of 4: The Independent Renaissance

Part four of four, meine Autoren! Without further ado—

A Little History

For those who don't remember (though I suspect many of you do), before the late 1970s, independent stores were the primary retailers of books. Where chains (such as Walden Books or B. Dalton) existed, they were mall operations that generally didn't stock a large number of titles; for used, rare, or non-commercial books, independent stores were the way to go.

The '70s saw the purchase of Barnes & Noble by Len Riggio, however, and within a decade he had converted the company into a retail chain. Barnes & Noble bought B. Dalton in 1987, and by the 1990s, Barnes & Noble was the largest book retailer in the United States. Borders Books (which now, more often than not, is accompanied in print mentions by the adjective "beleaguered") evolved more or less contemporaneously, acquiring Walden after itself being acquired by K-Mart.

All this to say: by the 1990s, independent stores had lost their dominance in the market and were being replaced left and right by outlets of the rapidly expanding book store chains. The chains could offer title selections and deep discounts that the indies couldn't, and as a result, the number of independent booksellers has decreased by over 60% over the past twenty years.

On average, that's an independent book store closing every two days.

The Rise of On-Line Retailing

Granted, on-line retailers like Amazon didn't exactly help the situation. Although Amazon didn't become the monolithic book retailer it is today until the early 2000s, the convenience of on-line shopping and deep discounts similar to those offered by the brick-and-mortar chains (not to mention great deals on shipping and, later, aggressive bestseller and e-book pricing) set the stage for phenomenal growth. They are now the largest book retailer in the world and the largest on-line retailer in the United States.

Needless to say, the combination of lower prices, greater selection, and increased convenience offered by chain book stores and on-line retailers took a significant bite out of independent booksellers' bottom lines. Many closed; others contracted. Several that had planned to invest in their businesses by opening additional locations were unable to do so.

The Fall of the Chains

As I mentioned yesterday, right now I'm predicting that the major brick-and-mortar chains will, without significant reallocation of their business to the Internet, be all but gone within a decade. The decrease in physical print runs coupled with the increasing cost of warehousing, shipping, and rent for physical storefronts has already caused store closures for both Borders and Barnes & Noble. As e-books replace physical copies as the go-to format for mass production and consumption, the sprawling physical presence of brick-and-mortar chain retailers will become unnecessary and unsustainable. That is to say: easy come, easy go.

While some think that this will lead to the complete domination of the market by electronic retailers like Amazon or Barnes & Noble's .com operation, I think that consumer demand for physical books (albeit reduced) will remain strong, and physical store locations offering in-person browsing, readings, community events, book signings, and immediate access to used/rare books will ensure the survival of independent book stores. Moreover—if they play their cards right and participate as much as possible in the new media and formats—they could see something of a renaissance.

The Independent Renaissance

Again, as mentioned yesterday (and above), I think independent book stores offer experiences and benefits that are simply unavailable from e-retailers like Amazon. Amazon cannot host authors for readings or signings; it cannot function as a community center; it cannot grant you a quiet space to read or meet friends for coffee.

As the economy begins to recover and the e-revolution continues, I think it's pretty unavoidable that 1.) the chains will continue to close underperforming stores, 2.) existing indepedent book stores will begin to see their sales recover, and 3.) more money will be available for the creation of new small businesses (indie booksellers included).

Beyond this, however, independent stores can take advantage of social networking sites (like Twitter), electronic ordering systems for quick acquisition of new titles from publishers (instead of relying on paper catalogs), and potentially even in-house distribution of POD titles and e-books. This goes back to my theory that, over the next ten years, the industry will see a lot of consolidation; I see no reason why indies can't offer e-books as well as the age-old experience of browsing physical shelves.

The independent book store of tomorrow will be able to cheaply print copies of books that it doesn't have in stock, will be able to offer access to e-books, will promote local authors and host events, and will actively participate in on-line discussions about literature via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. They will adapt to changes in culture and technology, and they will continue to be relevant so long as reading remains relevant.

And despite all the doom and gloom surrounding this industry, remember: reading has been relevant for thousands of years, mes auteurs. That's not about to change anytime soon.

Singles: Not Just for Kraft or eHarmony

In case you haven't heard, mes auteurs, Amazon is introducing Amazon Singles, a new variety of content aimed at providing Ye (We?) Unwashed Masses with 30- to 90-page chapbooks, novellas, pamphlets, and so on. From the article:

Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format.

— Russ Grandinetti, Vice President for Kindle Content, Amazon

First of all, bravo, Amazon. Second of all, IT'S ABOUT TIME, I TOTALLY HAD THIS IDEA ALREADY. Like, over a year ago. It's a good thing we have the Internet these days for keeping track of things like this.

I believe the sale of e-chapbooks, e-novellas, and even (gasp!) e-short stories via Amazon will help revitalize two flagging genres of American writing: poetry and literary fiction. Don't want to take a chance on a début poetry collection? Try the shorter, cheaper chapbook. Not sure you want to buy that up-and-coming author's novel? Buy a short story or two. Only have a two-hour train ride and don't want to start a whole new book? Try an essay or a novella! Don't even get me started on the potential literary magazine renaissance.

The literary world is changing, bros and she-bros, and it's doing so very quickly. Smaller publishers have more opportunities now than ever before to showcase their (read: your) work electronically, so if you're not signed with one of the Big Six, don't despair—your publisher may be much nimbler and more savvy than a larger, more traditional house, and though you might not become the next J.K. Rowling, you certainly stand to gain a lot by having your work available to an ever-growing and (omni)voracious audience.

Again, however, I feel I should caution you: this does not mean an Internet free-for-all, and this does not mean that self-publishing is the way to go. I'm not saying you're stupid or impulsive, mes auteurs (far from it!), but simply because one can flood the Internet with work that hasn't been edited, marketed, or even reviewed by professionals—who, let's face it, sort of know what they're doing—doesn't mean one should.

On A Lighter Note

Yesterday's post generated a lot of reactions and opinions (which I appreciate!), but I feel that one comment above all others requires a post-length response: Dan Krokos' question, "Who do you guys think will be the villain in the new Batman?" (As you might have read, the Batman is my very favorite hero.)

As much as I enjoyed the Michael Keaton Batman films and the mid-90s' super campy Batman Forever and Batman & Robin (1995 and 1997, respectively), I think the new dark, (more) realistic, gritty Batman reboot would benefit from revisiting some of the over-the-top villains from these films. So, mes auteurs, I offer you the following: my choices for the next set of Batman (wo)mantagonists, along with the actors I'd love to see play them.

· Mister Freeze. He's frosty, he's tortured, he's got a mega sweet freeze ray. I think he's got a ton of backstory/developmental potential that weren't fully explored via Arnold Schwarzenegger's relentless ice/snow puns, so I hope they bring him back and give him a fair shake. My pick for the actor: Adrien Brody.

· Poison Ivy. I don't think Uma Thurman did a bad job at all in Batman & Robin, but I'd like to see a new actress take on the role. I'd have to go with Gwyneth Paltrow, whom I loved in Iron Man. Who else could pull off a supervillainess who's also a scientist?

· The Riddler. Jim Carrey played the enigmatic Edward Nigma a little (read: very much) on the crazy/wacky side. I'd like to see a cooler, more controlled Riddler, one more interested in panache and execution than in simply driving Batman up the wall (sort of how Heath played The Joker). My pick is Neil Patrick Harris, hands down.

· Catwoman. I liked Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in Batman Returns; the movie Catwoman (starring Halle Berry, whom I otherwise really like) was so dreadful that it ruined me on the character for years. Who can fix that? Another Aussie, Emilie de Ravin (Claire from lost).

· Two-Face. I'm not going to beat around the bush: Aaron Eckhart did a phenomenal job in the last movie, and yeah, while they sort of closed off Two-Face's potential role in any direct sequels, they didn't make it impossible for him to return. And I really hope he does.

· Clayface. This character hasn't seen a lot of action outside the comic books and animated TV shows, so I'd love to witness his silver screen début. It could just be an extension of my post-lost heartache, but I'd be beyond amped if they could get Terry O'Quinn (a.k.a. John Locke).

And those are my picks! Feel free to post yours in the comments.

Prithee, Inform Me: Where Are You in Your Career?

Every once in awhile, meine Autoren, I grow weary of hearing the sound of my own melodious voice (astonishing, but true), so I'd like to take a moment to ask you: where are you in your literary career?

Whether you're a fresh-faced college freshman writing your first novel or a seasoned author with a dozen novels under your belt, you know one thing: writing is hard work. Tell us what you're working on, whether you've got representation, how many years you've been writing, what genre you prefer, how and why you became a writer, &c, &c. No, really, let's talk about you.

Go nuts!

101 Form Rejection Projects for a Rainy Day

I hope you enjoyed last week's guest posts, readeurs and readeuses, and that a little more of the publishing world (particularly the non-sales aspects) has/have been illuminated for you as a result.

It's Monday, which means I'm going to ease into the blogging week with a frabjous discussion of the myriad uses for form rejections.

I like to pin up my tiered or personalized rejections above my desk, but the form ones, being both a) more copious and b) neither near or dear to my coal-black heart, require something more involved/vindictive. Therefore—in patented (call the U.S. Patent Office if you don't believe me) Bullet-o-Vision™—the first 10 of my 101 Form Rejection Projects for a Rainy Day:

· Cathartic papier-mâché. Make a tiny replica of you sitting on a stack of your bestsellers! Make a tiny replica of you winning the Pulitzer! Do not make a tiny replica of you strangling all the agents who rejected you. Bad karma.

· A crackly quilt for super hot nights. Staple (or sew, if you're sufficiently crafty) your form rejections together to make a blanket. Note: crying yourself to sleep on said blanket may cause the ink to run and is not recommended. Additional note: crying over form rejections in general is not recommended.

· Fancy coasters. Glue your rejections to pieces of cork and drink (something alcoholic) off your rejecters! (Rejectors?) If you're fancy: Laphroaig. If not: Jack Daniels.

· Origami. Try and make a thousand paper agents! (See #1, above, regarding treatment of said paper agents.)

· Use the backs to write The Great American Novel. Be green and emulate Thomas Wolfe at the same time!

· Agency trading cards. Collect them all! Trade them with your friends!

· A flipbook. Remember: no violence! Images of you winning multiple Nobel Prizes for Literature or receiving a $1,000,000.00 advance are permissible (and, in fact, encouraged).

· Make a fire. Preferably in your fireplace. Not as imaginative, but definitely cathartic.

· Pretend traffic tickets. Put them under the windshield wipers of cars parked on your block. Hide in the bushes and observe people's reactions.

· Confetti. Throw yourself a party! You're one rejection closer to representation.

Add yours in the comments!

Prithee, Inform Me: Your WIP

It recently occurred to me, mes auteurs, that you are amazingly patient people. You work on your novels for months or years, then query agents for months or years, and then wait months after that for a deal with a publishing house, only to wait a year (or more!) for your book to be released to the hungry hungry public. And, of course, you read this blog day in and day out, which means you have a strong stomach (the publishing industry is a scary place) and a high tolerance for cheerful nonsense. So: thanks!

But I digress. Today, bros and she-bros, I invite you to tell me and other loyal readers like yourselves about your current work(s)-in-progress. What genre do you write? How long have you been writing? What's your protagonist (dare I say... brotagonist) like? How far along are you in your manuscript? The questions, like your patience, is endless.

Without any further ado: to the comments!

Guest Post: The Training-Wheels Novel

I was mid-way through reading an interview with Amy Bloom in The Guardian when I ran into a line that stopped me short. I had to read it twice.

She was in her mid-30s when she started to write, her 20s having been spent raising three children and working fulltime. She would write late at night and first produced a mystery novel, which, after it was accepted for publication, she bought back because she didn't think it was good enough.

Let me repeat that in case you didn't catch it the first time, either. She bought it back. From the publisher. Because she didn't think it was good enough.

I dug a little deeper into this anecdote, and might have even tried to interview Amy Bloom myself if I were not raising children and writing and, let's be honest, if this were a paying gig that justified the further reporting time.

Instead, I googled for an earlier interview that might mention this bought-back book. I found one in 2000, in the literary magazine identitytheory.com. The book she'd yanked back had been a mystery novel, titled Them There Eyes.

She had this to say about it: "It was my warm-up... It wasn't anything of which I had to be deeply ashamed. But it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. Once I saw that, then I wanted it not in print."

This fascinates me.

So many writers talk about the proverbial novel in the drawer, but like many clichés, it's there for a reason. It seems everyone has a novel in the drawer.

When I first started writing fiction and heard writers talk about the one that got (put) away, I couldn't imagine it: all that creative energy, the characters trained to say just the right thing, the heartache and carpal tunnel syndrome, moldering somewhere in a computer file and chalked up to experience. Those years of late nights and middle of the nights and early mornings, all just training wheels for the big ride to come some other day.

Those are the phrases I hear to describe these first novels: Warm-up exercises. Limbering stretches. Training wheels.

Just the other day, I was talking to my husband about this from the slough of revisions of my own first novel, which my agent plans to sell soon. I was comparing it to the bike my daughter rides, pink and white with Dora the Explorer on the side. In a prolonged metaphor that amused only me, I told him I'd tinkered with this manuscript for so long that I'd pushed it to the starting line through the sheer force of my stubbornness. Whether or not it was the soundest vehicle, my Dora bike was now lining up for the Tour de France, its tall plastic flag flapping in the wind and little metal bell going brring-brring-brring all the way.

Is there something wrong with publishing your first novel? Should I have stood up after finishing it, cracked my knuckles a few times, then sat back down to a new blank document? All writers want to come out of the gate with their strongest work. So I suppose the real question is, how do you know when you're doing your best work, and since that's an ever-changing benchmark, can you embrace yourself as a work in progress? I once read about a well-known author, someone quite old and established, who said he never went back and read his old work because the desire to change it was too strong.

We are all so critical of ourselves, we writers. Though it seems to me the greater danger would be to keep pulling back, always measuring your work against some elusive voice you dream someday to express, which may not in fact be your own.

At times when I'm spinning my wheels, I wonder to what extent it's possible ever to be completely satisfied with your work. To hand it over with a confident Fini!, and maintain that certainty all the way to publication and beyond.

And I wonder too if Amy Bloom ever reads her old work and hears a little brring-brring-brring herself, and can love it anyway.


Nichole Bernier is a Contributing Editor (and former staffer) at Conde Nast Traveler magazine, and a member of the literary blog, Beyond the Margins (beyondthemargins.com). Her first novel is soon to be submitted to editors by her agent, and according to her kids, a bajillion people will buy it.

More Notes on Rejection

My apologies, meine Autoren, but the quantity and the quality of your guest post submissions have made it impossible for me to narrow them down to five finalists by this morning. I'm truly sorry to delay the results, but they'll be ready (for real this time!) on Friday morning. Scout's honor.

Unrelated news: rejection is hard. It's hard when you get a form rejection, it's hard when you don't get a rejection and have to follow up to get an answer, it's even hard when you get a nice, personalized "almost, but not quite." My record is four rejections in one day; I'm sure some of you have had even more discouraging high scores. All told, I've probably received hundreds of rejections in the short time I've been submitting work for publication, and again, I'm sure that those of you who have been looking for represenation for years (whether or not you've since found an agent) have had more than your share of the same.

Keep at it.

Because here's the thing: if you're truly horrible, agents will auto-reject you faster than you can say "form letter." If after thirty years and a million rejections you still haven't gotten beyond the query stage, it may be time to consider a new direction (hint: you're either a terrible writer or simply unsalable). If you're pretty good, you'll start getting personalized rejections and requests for partials, and so long as you keep reading and writing and learning, you're going to get better. And if you're good and you know it, keep on keepin' on: all it takes is time.

Sometimes more time and sometimes less, but if you're getting personalized rejections from literary magazines for your short stories, or three or four agents have told you they loved the writing but the project wasn't for them, or you've been a finalist in a couple of contests, you're at least on the right track. Do your research, keep submitting, and don't get bogged down by rejection. Everyone who has succeeded has been rejected at some point, and even the best and most successful authors probably, all told, have far more rejections to their names than acceptances.

You need a thick skin to work in this industry. If you want to be a writer, you'd better get working on it now.