Publishing and pain

A very good article in the Village Voice looks at the state of publishing from the perspective of a successful mid-list author. The hook for the story is how the guy, exhausted and disillusioned on a book tour from hell, managed to piss off some anonymous bloggers who proceeded to french-fry him online until he backed down. But the larger, more interesting issues addressed by the piece have to do with the desperate, almost flailing actions of book publicists, who don't understand the general uselessness of book tours for novelists, and the sad delusions of the novelists themselves, who think their book tour will be like a victory lap in front of informed crowds of fans and then find it amounts to appearing to empty rows of chairs in small towns where... but read for yourself:

Then comes the Friday night in Winnetka, Illinois, when you pull up to a street where the only light is coming from the bookstore, and you realize this won't be good. There's one customer inside, and the reading is canceled, but you talk him into buying a book anyway... There's the afternoon in a small, depressed Arkansas town when... the promised crowd and the television film crew have all been canceled, preempted by a big football game. Three middle-aged women walk in, escorting their senile grandmother, who they've brought back to town after an absence of 70 years to see what she remembers, which is nothing. The bookstore owner flips a thumb at you: "Why don't you do your little show for them?" And you do, dear reader, you do.

The piece captures the reality of what being a "successful" author -- one with good reviews and middling best-sellers to their name -- must really be like. For all those (like me) with unpublished novels who imagine (as I used to) that their lives will change when they're published, it's a good reality check.

Still, I know getting published means something. I have books on the shelves with my name on the spine. That doesn't mean I never have to work again, but it's something.

technorati: publishing

Things I had to look up: feuilleton

In a piece on Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, Paul Berman makes a comparison to:

A few years ago, Mario Vargas Llosa published an op-ed newspaper column about how he had given up smoking thanks to some useful tips from Gabriel García Márquez, and I came away thinking that I and 1 million other newspaper readers might very well have gone on following Vargas Llosa's nicotine narrative through another 300 feuilleton installments, if only he had chosen to natter on. It was because of that same confident mix of self-assured relaxation and electric high alert.

WTF? Some sort of 19th century... what? Turns out that it is:

1. The part of a European newspaper devoted to light literature, criticism, and the like; also something printed in this section.
2. A novel published in installments.
3. A short literary piece.

Here's part of the example they give: "Finally, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung offers tongue-in-cheek reading of the situation on the front page of its feuilleton section..."

I see. So the NYT Book Review, or the Insight section of the Chronicle's Sunday paper, are feuilletons (pronounced (FOI-i-ton).

Berman goes on:

In other parts of the world, in regions distant from Latin America—or so my wanton theorizing leads me to suppose—the pitiable champions of literature dwell under oppressive clouds of relentless doubt and irony, and are nervously stimulated by a bleak suspicion that anything they write must surely be a lie, and their own work is merely a game, and their avid readers don't really give a damn, and literature's last remaining purpose is to arch an eyebrow. But not in Latin America. The Latin Americans compose their narratives with a cheerful élan akin to that of the Victorian novelists. They do not think that literature is a lie. They are madly in love with their own inexhaustibly lush and wealthy literary tradition, and they feel a duty to push their tradition forward into the experimental future in the name of every decent hope of mankind and of Latin America; and their piety toward the past and zeal for the future fill their voices with the lovely and seductive vibrato of supreme self-confidence. I don't vouch for the universal explanatory power of my own theory, and yet something like this does seem to account for The Savage Detectives.

What a depressing paragraph that is -- self-hating and hopeless, it embodies the "oppressive clouds of relentless self-doubt" that the writer speaks of. So then I had to look up the writer, Berman. His Wikipedia article makes him sound sort of like Joan Didion, only he seems never to have published any novels.

Xmas is hard on farmilies

This ad from the Craigslist rants and raves section is too extreme even for me to reprint, but if the last sentence is any indication, somebody's family Xmas was a hard one.

Friends' sites, links and projects

San Francisco author Michelle Richmond had a reader so entranced with her novel The Year of Fog that he took a Flickr photo set of the places and things mentioned in the book. The novel is being developed for the screen by Newmarket Films.

Stephen Elliott and some other folks have a new online magazine, The Rumpus, and they're having a benefit reading on Jan. 14.

Xmas forecast

It's cold and rainy and intermittently sunny and blustery here at the House of Cats and Rhinos. We're gettin' up slow, having crossed the Bay Bridge after midnight on our way back from Xmas in Walnut Creek. Fortunately there was no backup at the toll plaza, since only about 4 lanes were open and most of the drivers took about a minute and a half each to grok the concepts of "toll" and "four dollars."

For Xmas, I think I'm going to give myself the present of self-publishing my Rat Pack novel. Why not let people read the damn thing. It'll take a while to get that into the pipeline, though, since the formatting has to be right or the resulting book will look like crap.

Looking forward to a week off, too. That's the scene here. Back to regularly scheduled programming soon.

Immature content only

On Friday I mentioned the CNet editor who self-published his novel and then wrote a long column about doing so. Now it seems (courtesy Galleycat) Apple won't allow his book to be sold as an e-book for the iPhone because of a single line in which "a teenage girl telling a detective that she overheard her friend asking a gentleman caller to '(love) me like you mean it,' just with a slightly more emphatic verb." The story goes on to speculate just how this phrase came to the attention of Apple, quoting a developer: "What would happen if I (a Romanian) would publish an e-book filled with Romanian obscenities? -- would Apple's staff need to learn Romanian... and read the entire ebook ... to make sure this doesn't happen?"

But the part of the story that caught my attention was lower down, in a section recounting Apple's struggle to keep iPhone apps SFW:

Apple's definition of "objectionable" has been questioned before. After initially balking, Apple finally relented to the extremely influential fart joke lobby last week and permitted applications such as Pull My Finger and iFart Mobile (ranked 3rd and 10th, respectively, among paid App Store applications at the moment) under what was described as a "Mature" section.

Really? Sounds like apps with names like that should be in an "Immature" section.

technorati: books, Apple, censorship

It's Bad Behavior Tuesday™! -- holiday feeling edition

A guy who was on the plane that crashed in Denver on Saturday sent Twitter messages about the experience, beginning with "Holy fucking shit I wasbjust in a plane crash!" (sic) After being taken back to the airport terminal, he wrote that passengers were being held in the airline's lounge but weren't given drinks. "You have your wits scared out of you, drag your butt out of a flaming ball of wreckage and you can't even get a vodka-tonic," he complained: "boo." His username? 2drinksbehind.

The CEO of Fry's, a West Coast electronics retailer, is being accused of scamming $65 million from the company in kickbacks from suppliers.

Today's fake: The New York Times apologized yesterday after publishing a fake letter to the editor purporting to be from the mayor of Paris.

Today's hoax: Publisher Jane Daniel is now speaking openly about having published a years-long hoax in which author Mischa Defonseca claimed to have survived the Holocaust as a child by living with wolves in a forest. Daniel is speaking openly, that is, because she has just published her own book about her role in the hoax. See my previous entry on the hoax.

In Colorado Springs, this headline says it all: Man Found Outside With Pants Down May Lose Legs.

'Sopranos' actor acquitted in cop shooting

In what must be a happy holiday story for, well, his family, former actor Lillo Brancato Jr. has been acquitted on felony murder charges in the 2005 shooting death of an off-duty cop.

Brancato, who will be remembered for shooting the Christopher character in the series' second season (the episode entitled "Full Leather Jacket"), also appeared with Sopranos co-star Drea DiMatteo in the 2001 Abel Ferrera film 'R Xmas.

Focus on the Fundies: Haggard says 'I never said I was heterosexual'

The Colorado Springs paper has seen the documentary "The Rise and Fall of Ted Haggard," which will be shown on HBO next month, and has these tidbits:

• Haggard, pronounced "one hundred percent heterosexual" after his three-week rehabilitation experience following his 2006 implosion, says "he never claimed to be heterosexual, as was once reported, and he continues to struggle with same-sex attraction. But he's committed to living a heterosexual life because he believes it's better for children to be raised by a mother and a father."
• Haggard's wife says she stayed with him to restore honor to the family, in some mixed-up way.
• Haggard now works selling insurance -- not so far from being a salvation-selling preacher -- but has not yet been successful at it and says, "Right now, I am a loser."

He sure comes off that way. Welcome to the real world, Ted! Maybe that other foamer will have to get a job, too.

Update: On Open.Salon.com, a former member of Haggard's church and babysitter for Haggard's children comments on his attempts to parlay the documentary into more fame.

technorati: Ted Haggard, New Life Church, Colorado Springs

Two articles about the state of publishing

Two articles/blog postings caught my eye today.

Courtesy Galleycat, a long, almost obsessively comprehensive article by a CNet editor about self-publishing his novel. He compares services, makes strategy suggestions, and comes to the conclusion that you have to spend the money a real publisher would have spent on your book if you want it to be good at all. But at least it's published then.

Then in Huffington Post, someone writes about the publishing industry's seeming disinterest in publishing books male readers would want to read.

Since the novel I wrote for a local small press was designed specifically for the male market, but turned down by the publisher and dumped back in my lap for a small kill fee with the restriction that I can only self-publish it, these two articles coincide with my own writing career, such as it is at the moment.

That's right -- the novel I signed a contract for in 2007 and wrote in six months, more or less to order, was rejected, and I'll wind up self-publishing it. I'll be sure to publicize it here, once I go through many of the steps outlined by that self-publishing article (but without spending all that money on the book).

technorati: books, publishing, self-publishing, reading

Focus on the Fundies: Give money so he can 'minister without hindrance'

For a few months I've been monitoring the ravings of a Pentacostal preacher who is madly trying to establish a nationwide "ministry" dedicated to ridding American cities of Satanic influence. I first noticed him when he made some passing comment about how the Colorado mountain tourist town of Manitou Springs is well-known as a Satanic base camp.* Since then, I've seen him move spastically around the country, from Kansas City to Detroit, attempting to gather followers.

Recently he's been begging openly for money, and a blog posting yesterday really takes the cake for shameless solicitation. Emphasis mine.

Biblically it's clear that believers live in a different economic system, and I'm convinced that the church is called to be financial forerunners -- we are called to lead the way by giving our way out of this recession.

We pray you would consider this to be fertile and good soil for your seed in 2009. In fact, we have many challenges right this very moment, and we'd like to invite you to give before the end of 2008. Your gifts are tax-deductible... Would you invest in this ministry of teaching, planting and revival? Your donation will help us as we... (m)inister in the cities of the earth without any financial hindrance. God has moved powerfully in Detroit and other places through the ministry in 2008. Due to a timely rumbling in this city, we will be ministering in Detroit 6 times (at least) in the first half of 2009 alone.

So he goes to economically devastated Detroit and invites followers to "Give our way out of this recession." And how will he use that money? To help the poor of Detroit? To retrain auto workers being thrown out of their jobs?

Your donation will help us as we... (d)evote ourselves to the time consuming yet deeply important ministries of prayer and study. It's common for full-time prayer missionaries to devote 6 hours or more to prayer each day. (And to)
Focus on our call to author prophetic materials. I've had a book burning in my spirit for over two years, yet have not had the time to start it.

Nice! He wants to spend hours of day in prayer, and the rest of the time writing a book. Me too, dude!

To top it all off, he illustrates his plea with a picture of his family. Is it a nice soft-toned picture of them wearing sweaters around a Christmas tree? No, they're all looking glumly into the camera with tape over their mouths with the word "LIFE" written on the tape. (A one-year-old baby is spared this discomfort; they stuck the LIFE label on its chest.) I guess the point is, If you don't send him money, it's the same thing as gagging him and his whole family.

If only it were so.

* cached web page

technorati: fundamentalists, Christianists, far-right, evangelicals, bipolar

Another ray of sunlight: arch-conservative Paul Weyrich dies

Far-right foamer Paul Weyrich, a conservative activist who founded the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation, has died at age 66.

Weyrich was one of the main people behind anti-gay measures, using them to motivate hysterical Christianists and hateful conservatives to the polls where they would elect more neocon Republicans -- a scam that continues to work to this day. In this sample of his work, from the Media Matters website, Weyrich comments in 2006 on the Mark Foley scandal:

WEYRICH: Here is the real problem. It has been known for many years that Congressman Foley was a homosexual. Homosexuals tend to be preoccupied with sex. The idea that he should be continued -- or should have been continued as chairman of the Committee on Missing and Exploited Children is, you know, given their knowledge of that, is just outrageous.

NPR host Nichelle NORRIS: Now before we go on, I think I can say, Mr. Weyrich, that there are quite a few people who would take exception to the statement that homosexuals are preoccupied with sex.

WEYRICH: Well, I don't care whether they take exception to it. It happens to be true. I mean --

NORRIS: That is your opinion.

WEYRICH: Well, it's not my opinion. It's the opinion of many psychologists and psychiatrists who have to deal with them.

technorati: right-wing, conservatives, Weyrich

Focus on the Fundies: Haggard pushes himself back in the spotlight

Ted Haggard, the disgraced megachurch leader whose outing as a meth-snorting Big Gay embarrassed the Christian Right just prior to the 2006 midterm elections, has agreed to promote an HBO documentary about his rise and fall.

The documentary, "The Trials of Ted Haggard," was shot by Alexandra Pelosi, who earlier made an HBO documentary "Friends of God," which also featured Haggard. The film is scheduled to air on HBO next month.

Haggard startled observers earlier this fall by appearing in the pulpit of a rural Illinois megachurch as a "Christian businessman" talking of his rise an fall as a star of the conservative Christian Evangelical movement, and now he's pushing himself into the spotlight on television. It's not enough for him to appear in a documentary; he's so starved for attention that he also signs on to promote the film, which I suspect will show him as a complete lying douchebag. What a media whore!

technorati: Ted Haggard, fundamentalists, Alexandra Pelosi

Things I had to look up: Boethius

After I sent this article on Buddhist-Christian contacts during the 8th century to a friend, she replied, "like boethius, they were busy and a' thinkin' during them there dark ages!!"

Due to my lack of a comprehensive liberal arts education, however, I had no idea who Boethius was. In this case the Wikipedia article was helpful enough for the likes of me. Known to the Roman Catholic Church as St. Severinus Boethius, the 6th century scholar and administrator was dedicated to preserving concepts of classical philosophy; he is credited with developing a three-layered classification of music as well as the Wheel of Fortune. (Cue music from Carmina Burana.)

On Open Salon: The 'spiritual, not religious' cliché

The vision of an infinitude of solitaries all practicing their own tiny, self-wrought "spirituality" is really a vision of spiritual death. Instead, I believe spiritual health depends on a recognition of interdependence, service to and with others, and participation in a cultural tradition that has the potential to beautify and conserve society.

More at my Open.Salon.com page.

Because, in Iraq, there are no cream pies

During a press conference in Iraq, as President Push was speaking alongside the Iraqi prime minister, a man hurled two shoes at Bush, one after the other. In this screen capture, Bush ducks the first shoe:

Click the picture to go to BBC tape of the event. Extra points to the man for getting off both throws before he was jumped upon and beaten to a pulp.

Meanwhile, someone burned down Sarah Palin's Wasilla, AK church. Sheesh!

Bettie Page, 1924-2009

Bettie Page, inspiration for young women across America and an icon of the 20th century as surely as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, died today at age 85. A selection of her classic pinup photographs, as well as drawings of her classic image, appear with an obituary on her website.

technorati: Bettie Page

Et tu, Blago?

I would mercilessly go after this story if the accused were a Republican, so in the interest of balance and fairness, let me rip Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich a new one for exhibiting new lows in cynicism and corruption. The two-term governor, formerly a three-term congressman, was arrested today under an indictment courtesy well-known U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, previously famous for prosecuting Scooter Libby.

Among Blagojevich's alleged crimes, one stands out: he intended to offer an appointment to Barack Obama's seat in the Senate to the highest bidder. Fitzgerald said today he purposely arrested Blago to prevent this, among other things, from happening. Disgusting.

Details of the indictment include Blagojevich saying "I'm going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain. You hear what I'm saying? And if I don't get what I want and I'm not satisfied with it, then I'll just take the Senate seat myself... (A Senate seat) is a f---ing valuable thing; you just don't give it away for nothing."

technorati: Blagojevich

Nine-year-old gets a book deal

A nine-year-old boy who wrote a book titled "How to Talk to Girls" is the toast of the internet this week, and on top of it all, he now has a movie deal. 20th Century Fox will adapt the how-to advice into a charming comedic vehicle for its next doomed child star.

Perhaps the young man can follow up his success with "How to Talk to Publicists," "How to Survive the Onset of Puberty While in Rehab," and "How to Sue Your Parents For All That Money They Said You Were Getting."

technorati: books, publishing, book deals

Hitler might not have survived internet mockery, Nobel prize winner says

In his speech Sunday accepting the Nobel Prize in literature, French writer Jean Marie Gustav Le Clezio suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler might not have been able to survive for long if the internet had existed in his day, saying "Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded - ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day."

The story is illustrated with an example of what that mockery might have looked like: an lol-hitler, if you will, with the caption "I Can Has Sudentenland?" (A reference, of course, to the classic lolcat site ICanHasCheezburger.)

technorati: Le Clezio

Karaoke crowd freaks when actual rock singer shows up

Mickey Dolenz, who sang many of the Monkees' hits, was having dinner at Elaine's in New York when someone realized that people in a karaoke club a few doors away were all singing along to one of his hits, "I'm a Believer." Dolenz was summoned, entered the karaoke bar, and the result was pandemonium.

The best part of the story was that it was a coincidence that Dolenz was nearby when the song -- which was repopularized in the 2001 film Shrek (YouTube clip here) -- was chosen by the under-20s at the karaoke club; they didn't know he was near.

Satire is dead, no 892134892: Praying with SUVs

A black church in Detroit blessed members who work in the nearly kaput auto industry as "three gleaming sport utility vehicles" shared the stage. In a nod to ecumenism, each car was from one of the Big 3 automakers.

Reinforcing the impression that these people are really stupid was a quotation from a church leader that "We have never seen as midnight an hour as we face this coming week," a sentence I had to read five times before I understood it. (In fairness, it was intended to be heard, not read. But I'm not sure the speaker knows, or cares, that "midnight" is not an adjective.)

technorati: bailout, auto industry, churchesa>, Pentacostals

Today in politics: fearing hoax, Florida congresswoman twice hangs up on Obama

The hoaxing of Sarah Palin no doubt still fresh in her mind, a Florida congresswoman twice hung up on President-Elect Barack Obama when he called to ask her help on coming legislation.

technorati: hoaxes, fakes

You say you want a revolution?

May 1968 -- revolution is in the air around the world, but Paul McCartney and Andy Williams are having a nice lunch. From the book "The Beatles: a Diary" by Barry Miles and Chris Charlesworth:

May 21, 1968: Paul and Jane [Asher] had lunch with Andy Williams and his French wife [the singer and actress] Claudine Colbert. That evening they attended his final Royal Albert Hall show and the end-of-the-show party afterward.

It must have been very relaxing.

technorati: Beatles, Andy Williams, Sixties

Another sign God doesn't approve of heterosexual marriage

Woman swept out to sea during marriage proposal

NESKOWIN, Ore. — A romantic marriage proposal on the Oregon coast turned deadly for the bride-to-be when a wave swept her out to sea.

Scott Napper planned to pop the question to Leafil Alforque, 22, at a spot near Neskowin Beach that got its name from couples ready to marry.

Napper said the tide had receded around Proposal Rock on Saturday when the couple began to walk to it. He planned to propose and give her the ring he carried in his pocket.

About 10 feet from the rock, a wave around 3 feet high suddenly came toward them. "I turned into it to keep from getting pulled under it," Napper said.

By the time he turned to find Alforque, only 4-foot-11 and 93 pounds, she had been caught by the receding waters. "She was about 30 feet away, getting swept away," Napper said.

The 45-year-old Silverton man tore off his jacket to get rid of any extra weight, and when he looked up again she was gone. "That's the last I saw of her," he said Wednesday, breaking into tears.

Did you catch the name of the place? "Proposal Rock." I'll bet the Native Americans called it something else, like "Virgin Sacrifice Rock."

Career Day: Technical writer

Courtesy a post on the blog of the fabulous and attractive Janice Erlbaum, I came across these five generic questions. You can see for yourself how she answers them from her perspective as a full-time nonfiction writer; I thought I'd give them a try from my perspective.

0) What's your job?

Technical writer at a big software company. I write manuals that tell customers how to install, configure and use our products.

1) When you were in high school, was this the career that you were most interested in? If yes, how did you accomplish your goals? If no, how did you choose this career?

When I was in high school, I had never heard of the job "technical writer," nor was I interested in computers (very few people in the early to mid 70s were exposed to computers, as Malcolm Gladwell points out in his recent book "Outliers," in which he says that the fact that Bill Gates was lucky enough to have a computer at his high school contributed to Gates' destiny), but I was definitely interested in being a writer, already working on short stories and plays. I was in the Creative Writing class in my senior year, and I had been keeping a diary since the beginning of my time in high school.

2) What is the education and training for this career?

Most technical writers I've met are like me: we have had little or no technical training. One of the maxims in the tech writing field is that you can train a writer about software, but it's very hard to train an engineer to write.

The training I had that contributed to my ability to do this job was, mainly, learning to write film criticism, and also training later in life as a high school teacher. From the first, I learned many good writing skills; from the second, I learned good ways to present information.

If you're a young person and think the job sounds good, I'd say the best thing you can do is work on your written communication -- clear, concise, unambiguous writing.

3) Can you please take me through a typical day that you might have?

I get to work around 9:00, screw around for a while reading email, then start tackling something that has to do with my job. There are several ways to start. I could:

• Look at a bug report that points out something incorrect or lacking about one of the manuals I'm responsible for.
• Look at a specification for one of the new features the engineers are working on.
• Work on one of the lists I keep just to keep track of all the different things I have to remember, do, and plan for.

I'll work a few hours, and I usually have lunch around 1:00 or 1:30. There's often a meeting in the morning or afternoon that lasts from 30 to 60 minutes, in which I meet with other employees and share information about current projects, because it helps to have others' insights on how something works (or is broken, which is often the case). I'll work some more until 4:30 or 5:30.

The actual work consists of writing new material, or editing old material, in these software manuals -- which are between 40 and 400 pages of instructions on how to install and use our software. We write the manuals in FrameMaker, and I use a utility called SnagIt to take screenshots of the software as illustrations. We publish the manuals using Adobe Acrobat, creating PDF files, and that's the only way we distribute them -- we don't have paper manuals printed.

In order to write about the software, I have to install, configure and use it myself. I have to talk to software coders, testers and managers to understand why a feature exists and how it works. I have to read specifications -- documents written by engineers and managers that explain how the software should function, and what under-the-covers work they have to do to make it work right. Since those documents are written only for other engineers who are working on the guts of our software, I have to selectively take only the parts of them that the customer -- the "end user" -- will care about.

4) What do you like the most about your job? What do you like the least?

The best thing about this job is the high pay. Starting salary for a junior tech writer is in the 50-60K range. With over 10 years experience, I make over $100K.

The worst thing about the job is working for a huge company with bureaucratic systems that get in the way more than they help.

5) What is the employment outlook for jobs in this career over the next 3-5 years?

Not bad. I thought that after the software industry bubble popped in 2000-2002, I might never work in high tech again. But the industry recovered and I was hired again in 2004 and have been exmployed ever since. The current economic climate is plenty scary, and a lot of people in high tech are losing their jobs -- not me yet, fortunately. But the industry will come back when the economy does.

Other posts in which I write about technical writing:
* Other posts about technical writing

technorati: technical writing, working, jobs