Gary Paul Corcoran's Blog
November 22, 2013
When History Careened Down Its Alternative Path
November 22nd, 1963
The call came in over the intercom at some point shortly after 11:00 AM, on a Friday. The exact minute, I am no longer certain, only that it was not quite 11:30. We had been out to morning recess. Lunch was just ahead. I was a freshman in 7th grade at the time, and, ironically enough, in my history class as history was being made.
I remember our teacher being called out into the hallway briefly and coming back in with an anguished look on her face. She said the principal would be making an announcement over the intercom in a couple of minutes. When I saw her fighting back tears, I knew something was terribly wrong. Exactly what, I could not have imagined.
Picture someone announcing the death of your parents over a loudspeaker. Today, they would have brought in grief counselors. The entire thing was so unreal, from the message itself to the way it had been delivered. If you were not alive and there that day, you must realize how my generation had spent our early school years practicing what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. The Soviet Union was evil and omnipresent and once a week we pretended to hide from their bombs under our maple desks. At hearing that our President had been assassinated, the Russians inevitably came to mind. They had to be behind this despicable deed. It was all part of a grand conspiracy. A nuclear attack and invasion was imminent. I do not say this facetiously. That was a very real fear of ours at the time.
More than anything, the message over the intercom that day was for each student to hurry home to safety. Who knew what would happen next? I cannot recall exactly what I did over the next few hours, only that it was not until sometime later in the afternoon when I finally arrived home. My father, an Irishman named John Francis was seated at the kitchen table with a bottle of Irish whiskey, weeping over a fellow Irishman. I had never seen my father weep before, and, other than for bouts of maudlin drunkenness over the ensuing years, never saw him weep again. It seems to capture the essence of our nation's journey that this man of the trades and labor unions, a staunch Democrat, would hole himself up in his bunker in later years, listening to Rush Limbaugh. From inspiration to cynicism, that was our journey.
You cannot speak of that moment without mentioning how much more surreal things became that following Sunday as we watched both Lee Harvey Oswald being shot in a Dallas police station and President Kennedy being carried to his final resting place through the streets of Washington DC. Shock was added to grief. Then soon it was Thanksgiving Day.
The debate goes on about President Kennedy's place in history, and a case can be made that he accomplished little and was deeply flawed as a man. To those who weren't there to experience the moment, perhaps it would be a bit like showing you an image of the Beatles without allowing you to hear their music. Calling the Kennedy presidency Camelot almost seems trite, but it was magic of some sort, to those of us who were willing to believe in it. You knew that the king was truly a king, not some interloper. A man said, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade..." and we did that. He said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" and young people signed up in droves to serve in the Peace Corp and participate in the noble cause of public service. As much as anything, he made us laugh. Just hours before his death, President Kennedy, in commenting to a gathering of businessmen in Ft. Worth about all the attention paid to Mrs. Kennedy, joked that "Nobody wonders what Lyndon and I are wearing."
His mark of inspiration was so powerful, it somehow carried my generation forward through our disbelief, grief and growing disillusionment, until they shot his brother dead too, some five years later. By the time they had beat our heads in on the streets of Chicago that same year, outside of the Democratic Convention, the severing of a generation from its own dreams was mostly complete.
I am heartened to see my generation returning to its dreams in later years. I am heartened to see a younger generation being called to the hopes and dreams of their own halcyon days. I am not here to prove this or that about President Kennedy's place in history. But I can tell you that he inspired me and millions more like me, and what more can a leader possibly be asked to do. I still look back with utter disbelief at what happened that day. I suppose the only true way to honor the man's legacy is to allow my heart to dream great dreams again...
The call came in over the intercom at some point shortly after 11:00 AM, on a Friday. The exact minute, I am no longer certain, only that it was not quite 11:30. We had been out to morning recess. Lunch was just ahead. I was a freshman in 7th grade at the time, and, ironically enough, in my history class as history was being made.
I remember our teacher being called out into the hallway briefly and coming back in with an anguished look on her face. She said the principal would be making an announcement over the intercom in a couple of minutes. When I saw her fighting back tears, I knew something was terribly wrong. Exactly what, I could not have imagined.
Picture someone announcing the death of your parents over a loudspeaker. Today, they would have brought in grief counselors. The entire thing was so unreal, from the message itself to the way it had been delivered. If you were not alive and there that day, you must realize how my generation had spent our early school years practicing what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. The Soviet Union was evil and omnipresent and once a week we pretended to hide from their bombs under our maple desks. At hearing that our President had been assassinated, the Russians inevitably came to mind. They had to be behind this despicable deed. It was all part of a grand conspiracy. A nuclear attack and invasion was imminent. I do not say this facetiously. That was a very real fear of ours at the time.
More than anything, the message over the intercom that day was for each student to hurry home to safety. Who knew what would happen next? I cannot recall exactly what I did over the next few hours, only that it was not until sometime later in the afternoon when I finally arrived home. My father, an Irishman named John Francis was seated at the kitchen table with a bottle of Irish whiskey, weeping over a fellow Irishman. I had never seen my father weep before, and, other than for bouts of maudlin drunkenness over the ensuing years, never saw him weep again. It seems to capture the essence of our nation's journey that this man of the trades and labor unions, a staunch Democrat, would hole himself up in his bunker in later years, listening to Rush Limbaugh. From inspiration to cynicism, that was our journey.
You cannot speak of that moment without mentioning how much more surreal things became that following Sunday as we watched both Lee Harvey Oswald being shot in a Dallas police station and President Kennedy being carried to his final resting place through the streets of Washington DC. Shock was added to grief. Then soon it was Thanksgiving Day.
The debate goes on about President Kennedy's place in history, and a case can be made that he accomplished little and was deeply flawed as a man. To those who weren't there to experience the moment, perhaps it would be a bit like showing you an image of the Beatles without allowing you to hear their music. Calling the Kennedy presidency Camelot almost seems trite, but it was magic of some sort, to those of us who were willing to believe in it. You knew that the king was truly a king, not some interloper. A man said, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade..." and we did that. He said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" and young people signed up in droves to serve in the Peace Corp and participate in the noble cause of public service. As much as anything, he made us laugh. Just hours before his death, President Kennedy, in commenting to a gathering of businessmen in Ft. Worth about all the attention paid to Mrs. Kennedy, joked that "Nobody wonders what Lyndon and I are wearing."
His mark of inspiration was so powerful, it somehow carried my generation forward through our disbelief, grief and growing disillusionment, until they shot his brother dead too, some five years later. By the time they had beat our heads in on the streets of Chicago that same year, outside of the Democratic Convention, the severing of a generation from its own dreams was mostly complete.
I am heartened to see my generation returning to its dreams in later years. I am heartened to see a younger generation being called to the hopes and dreams of their own halcyon days. I am not here to prove this or that about President Kennedy's place in history. But I can tell you that he inspired me and millions more like me, and what more can a leader possibly be asked to do. I still look back with utter disbelief at what happened that day. I suppose the only true way to honor the man's legacy is to allow my heart to dream great dreams again...
November 20, 2013
Free at Last, Free at Last...
So, I finally completed a thorough edit of my previously published novel, South on Pacific Coast Highway and re-released it directly through Amazon myself. Again, how embarrassing to have found my own work out there in the marketplace in such a terrible state of editing. What a relief that we live in a digital world where one can so easily remedy their own boneheaded mistakes. How satisfying to see the fruit of my efforts. With the appropriate search terms and categories applied to my novel, sales of said novel skyrocketed within two days of the re-release. Simply put, when the millions of book buyers on Amazon search in the category of murder, mystery, crime, detective novels, et al., my offering now comes up, allowing me an opportunity to become acquainted with this potential buyer. Previously, Bookbaby had me in the "Literary" category, and, hey, fougetaboutit. I'd love to think I'm a literary kind of guy here, if you know what I mean, but 'dis is your basic crime novel, so let's get real already.
In any case, time to move on. As one of my dearest friends here on Goodreads so aptly stated, writers should be writing, not trying to sell themselves, and that so aptly expresses my attitude today. I write with a sincere belief that it is now worth doing so lest what I write is still worth reading in a thousand years. Let me die a pauper, if need be, but one about whom it can be said, he was a merchant in truth...
In any case, time to move on. As one of my dearest friends here on Goodreads so aptly stated, writers should be writing, not trying to sell themselves, and that so aptly expresses my attitude today. I write with a sincere belief that it is now worth doing so lest what I write is still worth reading in a thousand years. Let me die a pauper, if need be, but one about whom it can be said, he was a merchant in truth...
October 30, 2013
Search Terms & Sub Categories on Amazon, The Conclusion
Or, I Wish I Had Known Then What I Know Now...
So, to correct one error from my previous post, one of Amazon's reps from Author Central had told me, yes, you can make whatever changes you want to your book listing on Amazon, even though it was "published" through Bookbaby and that turned out to be incorrect. The matter was sent over to Kindle Publishing Direct, the final arbiter of such things and they said, no, since Bookbaby posted the novel for you, they must be the ones to request any changes.
Okay. Back to the drawing board...
I will not bore you with all the pesky little details. Suffice it to say, I knocked heads with Bookbaby again on the phone, going round and round about everything I alluded to in my previous post and finally arrived to this moment of reckoning. I offered to send over the e-mail I wanted Bookbaby to send to Kindle Direct, requesting KDP to change the search terms for my book listing, and as well as to add a new subcategory, which KDP had assured me I was allowed. And Bookbaby's response? That's not within the scope of our template.
Wow.
As noted at the start of my previous post, there is much be desired about Bookbaby's services, but that response was so not techy, Silicon Valley start up thinking. That is the kind of response I expect to hear when dealing with AT&T. All they had to do was patch and paste my note into their own e-mail, so KDP saw it was coming from Bookbaby and they refused. And, mind you, the amount of time we spent arguing about it over the phone, they could have gone through the exercise of forwarding the e-mail a hundred times and come out way ahead.
Okay, adios Bookbaby. For now, I am leaving them in charge of my accounts with Nook and I-book, and the eight other obscure e-book retailers, but once I have South on Pacific Coast Highway back up and running on Amazon via my own account, you can bet I'll look into taking the reins with all the e-book outlets. Bookbaby basically works as a formatting service, and now that I understand the formatting requirements, who needs them? Had they cooperated with my most reasonable request, we would never have come to this. For $199.00, the service they provide is certainly worth it, but to act like some bloated corporate leviathan, unable to step outside their own "template" ???? Jesus, what a pathetic situation. I should add this one word of caution. Bookbaby has only one method of contact, so any complaint you have with their reps? It goes straight to the people who are giving you headaches. Hard to get some satisfaction under those circumstances.
So, there is always a silver lining, and in this case, brother, am I so thankful for this uninvited headache. To whit, having completed my final edits of South on Pacific Coast Highway back in July, and having turned over the manuscript to Bookbaby to be formatted, I had one of those middle of the night revelations, realizing I had forgotten to resolve one of the major plot elements in the novel, and when you're talking a crime novel, this is a really, really big deal. Mind you, I was caught between Bookbaby's pipeline time frames and my own preset deadlines. Bookbaby had quoted me ten days to complete their end of the bargain. I had a press release and interviews with the local press scheduled on a particular date. If I pulled the manuscript back out of Bookbaby's pipeline, I risked missing my deadlines. However, as noted, not resolving this plot element was a really, really big deal and would have haunted me, so I bit the bullet and went to work. Pursuant to a discussion with the folks at Bookbaby, I was told that if I delivered the manuscript back to them the following day, we could still meet our agreed upon deadline.
Thus began a 24 hour marathon editing job, by which time, I had started to see little green men out of the corners of my eyes. Again, had I known then what I know now, I would have been in full control of the process and not up against Bookbaby's artificial time frame. Instead, with my back to the wall, I delivered the manuscript back to them, not having thoroughly checked my own work, which I did two days ago, once I had made the decision to retake control of the project. And, oh, the horror. And gratitude. And embarrassment. And gratitude. Had I not been placed in the aforementioned head butting contest with Bookbaby, I might never have looked at this manuscript again, or realized, in the course of my hasty editing job, I had left behind innumerable typos. My god, and to think of the thousands of people who have purchased this book and what they must think of my sloppy professionalism...
Apologies to all, whether they can hear me or not.
So, I am now nearly finished with a thorough review of the manuscript and the updated version should be live on Amazon within the week. All's well that ends well. I could have done without these headaches but here's hoping that those who come after me will benefit from the error of my ways...
So, to correct one error from my previous post, one of Amazon's reps from Author Central had told me, yes, you can make whatever changes you want to your book listing on Amazon, even though it was "published" through Bookbaby and that turned out to be incorrect. The matter was sent over to Kindle Publishing Direct, the final arbiter of such things and they said, no, since Bookbaby posted the novel for you, they must be the ones to request any changes.
Okay. Back to the drawing board...
I will not bore you with all the pesky little details. Suffice it to say, I knocked heads with Bookbaby again on the phone, going round and round about everything I alluded to in my previous post and finally arrived to this moment of reckoning. I offered to send over the e-mail I wanted Bookbaby to send to Kindle Direct, requesting KDP to change the search terms for my book listing, and as well as to add a new subcategory, which KDP had assured me I was allowed. And Bookbaby's response? That's not within the scope of our template.
Wow.
As noted at the start of my previous post, there is much be desired about Bookbaby's services, but that response was so not techy, Silicon Valley start up thinking. That is the kind of response I expect to hear when dealing with AT&T. All they had to do was patch and paste my note into their own e-mail, so KDP saw it was coming from Bookbaby and they refused. And, mind you, the amount of time we spent arguing about it over the phone, they could have gone through the exercise of forwarding the e-mail a hundred times and come out way ahead.
Okay, adios Bookbaby. For now, I am leaving them in charge of my accounts with Nook and I-book, and the eight other obscure e-book retailers, but once I have South on Pacific Coast Highway back up and running on Amazon via my own account, you can bet I'll look into taking the reins with all the e-book outlets. Bookbaby basically works as a formatting service, and now that I understand the formatting requirements, who needs them? Had they cooperated with my most reasonable request, we would never have come to this. For $199.00, the service they provide is certainly worth it, but to act like some bloated corporate leviathan, unable to step outside their own "template" ???? Jesus, what a pathetic situation. I should add this one word of caution. Bookbaby has only one method of contact, so any complaint you have with their reps? It goes straight to the people who are giving you headaches. Hard to get some satisfaction under those circumstances.
So, there is always a silver lining, and in this case, brother, am I so thankful for this uninvited headache. To whit, having completed my final edits of South on Pacific Coast Highway back in July, and having turned over the manuscript to Bookbaby to be formatted, I had one of those middle of the night revelations, realizing I had forgotten to resolve one of the major plot elements in the novel, and when you're talking a crime novel, this is a really, really big deal. Mind you, I was caught between Bookbaby's pipeline time frames and my own preset deadlines. Bookbaby had quoted me ten days to complete their end of the bargain. I had a press release and interviews with the local press scheduled on a particular date. If I pulled the manuscript back out of Bookbaby's pipeline, I risked missing my deadlines. However, as noted, not resolving this plot element was a really, really big deal and would have haunted me, so I bit the bullet and went to work. Pursuant to a discussion with the folks at Bookbaby, I was told that if I delivered the manuscript back to them the following day, we could still meet our agreed upon deadline.
Thus began a 24 hour marathon editing job, by which time, I had started to see little green men out of the corners of my eyes. Again, had I known then what I know now, I would have been in full control of the process and not up against Bookbaby's artificial time frame. Instead, with my back to the wall, I delivered the manuscript back to them, not having thoroughly checked my own work, which I did two days ago, once I had made the decision to retake control of the project. And, oh, the horror. And gratitude. And embarrassment. And gratitude. Had I not been placed in the aforementioned head butting contest with Bookbaby, I might never have looked at this manuscript again, or realized, in the course of my hasty editing job, I had left behind innumerable typos. My god, and to think of the thousands of people who have purchased this book and what they must think of my sloppy professionalism...
Apologies to all, whether they can hear me or not.
So, I am now nearly finished with a thorough review of the manuscript and the updated version should be live on Amazon within the week. All's well that ends well. I could have done without these headaches but here's hoping that those who come after me will benefit from the error of my ways...
October 22, 2013
Search Terms & Sub Categories on Amazon
Or, Does Anyone Know What the H#%!*ll They're Doing Around Here???
Let me start with saying, in e-publishing my crime novel, South on Pacific Coast Highway, I went with Bookbaby and there are many upsides to employing their services. They're cheap. They're competent. They have readily available phone support and they don't take any of your royalties. A lot to be recommended there.
However, two months into the publication and I was becoming steadily more aware that something was dreadfully wrong with my listing on Amazon. Where other crime novels showed subcategories, like Mysteries, Thrillers, Suspense, Crime, Hard-Boiled, Sultry Dames etc., etc., (all right, I made up that last one) my listing showed none of these. Now, speaking of dread, we come to that moment where you pause in your work (mine being that of a ghostwriter, novels and memoirs) and anticipate the half day on the phone with Amazon that you will never get back. And, oh, had it only been that simple...
In fact, I initially called Bookbaby to see what they knew and watched as the ball was punted summarily over into Amazon's direction. Okay. I'm nothing if not determined so I give them a call. Round and round we go. The day is rapidly disappearing, and no one at Amazon seems to have a clue. "You'll need to talk with Seller Support," I was told. Okay. We're rapidly approaching dinner by now. The memoir du jour is calling me. I try to make a quota each day. If not, I will rapidly go broke. I try to write without distraction for at least eight hours each day, or I will rapidly go insane, and I am rapidly becoming both famished and bug house loco at this point.
So, unable to take another minute of misery for now, I put everything off and try to crank out some work the next day, with the dreaded phone call looming over me the entire time. Spoiler alert. I'm actually condensing the story a bit here. Finding no ready answers, I kept putting things off for another day, and another one, until several weeks had gone by without a damned bit of progress or insight on how you come to have these subcategories on your book listing. Mind you, if you are the proud owner of a mainstream novel, perhaps none of this matters, but for me, with a crime novel, this lack of subcategories meant my work would never ever appear in applicable searches. You're looking for a good mystery? I'm not even in the same galaxy as far as Amazon is concerned.
Well, miracle of miracles, I'm chatting with the fifth or sixth Amazon rep and get the word. Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhh, you want to be talking with somebody in Author Central support. Picture me hanging my head, and even further when I'm told that I cannot call them. I must instead fill out a form, requesting a call back. So, how long is the life of the universe? And do I have the patience to wait that long?
All right. I'm nothing if not determined so I go to fill out the form and guess what? The options are, a call back "Now" or in "Five Minutes." You're kidding me, right? I am so used to being on hold to the Philippines for fifteen minutes. Well, I roll the dice and go for the "Now" button and guess what? The phone rings instantly. I answer. An automated voice tells me to wait and a real, live gringo (or in this case, gringa) appears on the phone within seconds. Halleluiah!
Now we're getting to the nitty gritty, methinks, but no, don't get yourself going too fast there, partner. This gringa immediately tells me a falsehood. Because Bookbaby is effectively my "publisher" they must be the ones to request the change in search tags. Okay, so I'm back on the phone with Bookbaby, and here's where I learn, on this issue, they don't know their you know what's from hot rocks. I was given a list of "available" search terms that only vaguely related to my crime novel. Let me put it to you this way. The words "crime" and "mystery" and "thriller" were not even in there. Bookbaby additionally steered me onto this site called BISG, or Book Industry Study Group as if they were the Bible when it came to these issues. You know them, right? Well, if so, you're hitting for a far better average than me.
Mind you, we have shot way past one day of my life wasted on the phone at this point, and I feel the madness coming on. The list of search terms Bookbaby says are available to me have nothing in common with the search terms specified on BISG, and neither of them related in the least bit with the terms I had been told were relevant to my crime novel by the Amazon people. And you wonder why people lose it in this world??
That was last week, and frankly I had to take a break and regain what was left of my sanity. And having done that and feeling reasonably refreshed this afternoon, I filled out the call request form at Author Central, prepared for another pummeling. Actually, this has become my one moment of glee in the entire saga. You click "now" and the phone rings. Now that really spins my prop.
So, to make a long story short, and if you have to say that, the story is already too long, I get the guru of all search term gurus on the phone today and guess what I learned. There is absolutely no need to get Bookbaby in the middle of this. The search terms available to me are whatever the hell I want and there is no direct correlation between "search terms" and subcategories." You get five search terms. You pick the ones that best describe your book, which I decided were private investigator, mystery, thriller, crime fiction and suspense. Then, as a subcategory, I chose private investigator. The search terms are obviously keyed to my category and subcategory, but I could have chosen, Venusian Vixen Private Investigators, had I so desired. I probably wouldn't have gotten many hits, but the search terms can be anything you want. The categories have to be taken from the ones on Amazon. In my case, you go to Kindle books, then choose Mystery, Thrillers & Suspense from among the categories in the left hand column. Once you click on that tab, you can meander around among crime, PI's, hard-boiled, etc., etc. I chose private investigator because it's true about my novel and it's a new category, so the competition wasn't so stiff. I should add that there are two ways to search on Amazon. In the search bar up top or from the category listings in the left hand column, but either way, once you start looking for a mystery or crime book, you'll end up within the general crime/mystery genre.
Okay, was that too much information for you? Well, let me put it to you this way. If any of this relates to your own experiences and it took you five minutes to read my post, I just saved you a few lost days of your life, so be grateful. As with all things, in e-publishing one of my several novels, it just doesn't seem to matter how many blogs I read or how much research I do, I end up at some point knocking around in a dark room until I stumble upon the light switch.
Sure hope this helps those who come along after me...
Let me start with saying, in e-publishing my crime novel, South on Pacific Coast Highway, I went with Bookbaby and there are many upsides to employing their services. They're cheap. They're competent. They have readily available phone support and they don't take any of your royalties. A lot to be recommended there.
However, two months into the publication and I was becoming steadily more aware that something was dreadfully wrong with my listing on Amazon. Where other crime novels showed subcategories, like Mysteries, Thrillers, Suspense, Crime, Hard-Boiled, Sultry Dames etc., etc., (all right, I made up that last one) my listing showed none of these. Now, speaking of dread, we come to that moment where you pause in your work (mine being that of a ghostwriter, novels and memoirs) and anticipate the half day on the phone with Amazon that you will never get back. And, oh, had it only been that simple...
In fact, I initially called Bookbaby to see what they knew and watched as the ball was punted summarily over into Amazon's direction. Okay. I'm nothing if not determined so I give them a call. Round and round we go. The day is rapidly disappearing, and no one at Amazon seems to have a clue. "You'll need to talk with Seller Support," I was told. Okay. We're rapidly approaching dinner by now. The memoir du jour is calling me. I try to make a quota each day. If not, I will rapidly go broke. I try to write without distraction for at least eight hours each day, or I will rapidly go insane, and I am rapidly becoming both famished and bug house loco at this point.
So, unable to take another minute of misery for now, I put everything off and try to crank out some work the next day, with the dreaded phone call looming over me the entire time. Spoiler alert. I'm actually condensing the story a bit here. Finding no ready answers, I kept putting things off for another day, and another one, until several weeks had gone by without a damned bit of progress or insight on how you come to have these subcategories on your book listing. Mind you, if you are the proud owner of a mainstream novel, perhaps none of this matters, but for me, with a crime novel, this lack of subcategories meant my work would never ever appear in applicable searches. You're looking for a good mystery? I'm not even in the same galaxy as far as Amazon is concerned.
Well, miracle of miracles, I'm chatting with the fifth or sixth Amazon rep and get the word. Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhh, you want to be talking with somebody in Author Central support. Picture me hanging my head, and even further when I'm told that I cannot call them. I must instead fill out a form, requesting a call back. So, how long is the life of the universe? And do I have the patience to wait that long?
All right. I'm nothing if not determined so I go to fill out the form and guess what? The options are, a call back "Now" or in "Five Minutes." You're kidding me, right? I am so used to being on hold to the Philippines for fifteen minutes. Well, I roll the dice and go for the "Now" button and guess what? The phone rings instantly. I answer. An automated voice tells me to wait and a real, live gringo (or in this case, gringa) appears on the phone within seconds. Halleluiah!
Now we're getting to the nitty gritty, methinks, but no, don't get yourself going too fast there, partner. This gringa immediately tells me a falsehood. Because Bookbaby is effectively my "publisher" they must be the ones to request the change in search tags. Okay, so I'm back on the phone with Bookbaby, and here's where I learn, on this issue, they don't know their you know what's from hot rocks. I was given a list of "available" search terms that only vaguely related to my crime novel. Let me put it to you this way. The words "crime" and "mystery" and "thriller" were not even in there. Bookbaby additionally steered me onto this site called BISG, or Book Industry Study Group as if they were the Bible when it came to these issues. You know them, right? Well, if so, you're hitting for a far better average than me.
Mind you, we have shot way past one day of my life wasted on the phone at this point, and I feel the madness coming on. The list of search terms Bookbaby says are available to me have nothing in common with the search terms specified on BISG, and neither of them related in the least bit with the terms I had been told were relevant to my crime novel by the Amazon people. And you wonder why people lose it in this world??
That was last week, and frankly I had to take a break and regain what was left of my sanity. And having done that and feeling reasonably refreshed this afternoon, I filled out the call request form at Author Central, prepared for another pummeling. Actually, this has become my one moment of glee in the entire saga. You click "now" and the phone rings. Now that really spins my prop.
So, to make a long story short, and if you have to say that, the story is already too long, I get the guru of all search term gurus on the phone today and guess what I learned. There is absolutely no need to get Bookbaby in the middle of this. The search terms available to me are whatever the hell I want and there is no direct correlation between "search terms" and subcategories." You get five search terms. You pick the ones that best describe your book, which I decided were private investigator, mystery, thriller, crime fiction and suspense. Then, as a subcategory, I chose private investigator. The search terms are obviously keyed to my category and subcategory, but I could have chosen, Venusian Vixen Private Investigators, had I so desired. I probably wouldn't have gotten many hits, but the search terms can be anything you want. The categories have to be taken from the ones on Amazon. In my case, you go to Kindle books, then choose Mystery, Thrillers & Suspense from among the categories in the left hand column. Once you click on that tab, you can meander around among crime, PI's, hard-boiled, etc., etc. I chose private investigator because it's true about my novel and it's a new category, so the competition wasn't so stiff. I should add that there are two ways to search on Amazon. In the search bar up top or from the category listings in the left hand column, but either way, once you start looking for a mystery or crime book, you'll end up within the general crime/mystery genre.
Okay, was that too much information for you? Well, let me put it to you this way. If any of this relates to your own experiences and it took you five minutes to read my post, I just saved you a few lost days of your life, so be grateful. As with all things, in e-publishing one of my several novels, it just doesn't seem to matter how many blogs I read or how much research I do, I end up at some point knocking around in a dark room until I stumble upon the light switch.
Sure hope this helps those who come along after me...
October 9, 2013
A Hero of Our Time
For those unfamiliar with Mihail Lermontov’s brief, 19th century novel titled the same, the narrator and protagonist, Pechorin, while dashing about the wild and rugged Caucasus Mountains, quelling native uprisings on behalf of the tsar, woos the heart of a certain Princess Mary, Pechorin’s conquest of this young noble lady seemingly motivated by one thing and one thing only. He thought her foolish and took delight in breaking her heart.
The dirty, rotten scoundrel…
Ironically, or not so ironically, Lermontov died in a gun duel not long after writing the novel, at the age of 27, his death prophesied by a haunting poem he had written barely a month before his demise.
In noon’s heat, in a dale in Dagestan, With lead inside my breast, stirless I lay;
Lermontov’s novel came to mind the other day while discussing the nature of my hero, Michael Devlin, with an old friend. Given the title, A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov’s novel, naturally came to mind in the discussion. Indeed, what the hell was I intending with my hero, Michael Devlin?
Digressing for a moment, I would like to note that the discovery of Lermontov’s stark, spare prose was nothing less than stunning to me as a fledgling writer. I have no recollection of how I stumbled across this now crumbling paperback but I do remember reading the first page and thinking, wow, isn’t this different. I could easily picture Hemingway having stumbled across Lermontov too, though to my knowledge he never mentioned it.
Be that as it may, Pechorin certainly represented a seismic shift in the heroic model in Western literature. As Northrop Frye pointed out in his Anatomy of Criticism, European fiction had steadily descended down the heroic ladder over the course of fifteen centuries, from gods to godlike heroes and finally to men, like Pechorin, who were little different from you and me. From the mythic to the high mimetic to the low mimetic, we had arrived at last to a bald state of irony. Pechorin did not believe in anything. He did not stand for anything and clearly did not care what anyone thought of that fact. I mean, a guy could really feel ripped off here for having his ideals.
There is abundant evidence to suggest that we, as Americans, have a serious internal conflict when it comes to the nature of our heroes. Using Star Wars as an example, we readily cheered on the rebels as they battled the Empire, when in fact our real life heroes are more akin to Imperial Storm Troopers. Think Seal Team-6, James Bond and Tom Clancy tomes. On the other hand, we find ourselves increasingly uneasy with a monolithic government prying into our personal lives, never mind corporations, so when someone like Jason Bourne comes along, giving voice to those discomforts, we have no problem with cheering on these anti-heroes too. We like our neo-corporate heroes, like Ironman. We like our scraggly Hans Solos too. We love guys who save the girl. We love guys who save the world. I suspect we’ll side with anyone who wins.
In sitting down to write South on Pacific Coast Highway, I had started out with a modest premise, that of writing the first book in a series of good mystery novels. Good crime books? Good murder mystery books? Whatever. The hardboiled crime of Raymond Chandler was my point of departure, but for atmosphere only. Phillip Marlowe was never a hero of mine. I enjoyed his wry nature, certainly, but I always thought Chandler had cheated a bit there. We know Marlowe is wounded, but what are wounds if we never learn how they came into being? Perhaps Chandler let on with a vague reference now and again. I knew a woman once. That sort of thing. It was Pechorin with a fedora, a chessboard and a Packard coupe in place of a steed.
At least Lermontov was being honest. As a young man, he did seem to be something of a misogynist. Chandler was entirely dependent on the kindliness of women in his life. We could have expected him to say something honest to that effect.
In recently reading Guy Davenport’s essay, The Symbol of the Archaic, I was reminded how mankind is always looking backward for its inspiration. The Renaissance looked back to Greece and Rome. The Enlightenment, with the advent of archeological discovery, looked back even further to ancient ruins and 20,000-year-old cave paintings. As Davenport notes in the essay, while Breuil copied bulls painted onto the ceilings at Altamira, Picasso crawled in beside him and found the seeds of a transformative artistic career.
South on Pacific Coast Highway was originally envisioned as a love story, with a few dead bodies here and there, and in creating Michael Devlin, I was actually looking back to the Troubadours. The “rescuing a friend” angle came later on.
Everyone knows of the Troubadours. Few properly understand the historical context in which they existed. In Robert Briffault’s seminal tome on the subject, The Troubadours, he makes a case that the blossoming of 12th century Provençal culture was the true Renaissance, or at least the original one. Certainly, if not for the Albigenses Crusade (and boy, do you ever not want to run into an Albigenses Crusade) history might well have come to consider that 16th century explosion of art and culture along the Italian peninsula as a footnote.
In what I believe to be the proper sense of the word, I would argue that the blossoming of 12th century Provençal culture was not in fact a Renaissance at all. Those lyrical poets were not looking backwards with longing eyes to another era for inspiration. They borrowed a poetic template used by the Moors, applied it to an existing form of music but sang the songs of a new romantic idealism. Somewhat misguided, in my humble estimation, all this willing suffering at the feet of a lady, but the point is, love in that moment had been transformed from something generic to the individual. You no longer accepted your family and church giving your hand away in marriage. And if that did come to pass, and you found yourself chained to a loveless relationship, you had no qualms about keeping a lover. In short, a kindred spirit and soul mate, who gave voice to your most tender and inspired emotions.
So to my point, and I am getting to one here, in the same sense that the Troubadours had borrowed from Moorish poetry, I was borrowing from the Troubadours in creating Michael Devlin, yet without kowtowing to their one thousand year old formalized template, no more than I would kowtow to buckled shoes and powdered wigs. And here too I separate myself from the incomparable Joseph Campbell. He seemed to worship this suffering over love as the true romantic template, when for me it was simply one halting step along the road of our evolutionary destiny. My thinking is, once folks have been freed from the daily struggle to survive, they play at l’amour. The Troubadours did, and this has never been more true than it is today. Check the personal ads on the Internet. L’amour is our age’s Omaha Beach. The sand may be littered with our corpses, but we’re always preparing for another assault.
The irony for Michael Devlin in South on Pacific Coast Highway is that he has found spiritual bliss in the arms of a woman, yet comes up hard against the vagaries of our ephemeral and unpredictable existence. The woman he loves is caught in a web of insanity, i.e. clinical depression, leaving Michael to his unwitting fate—that of the long suffering troubadour, singing songs of purity and devotion, at the feet of the woman who can no longer hear him.
Heroic? Who can say? In South on Pacific Coast Highway, Michael forges on relentlessly, all his energy focused on freeing a wrongly accused friend. Per the words of St. Paul, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” Michael’s form of heroism is to remain valiant in the face of all odds, i.e., an increasingly screwed up world. Love whispers like the desert winds in the background, forever reminding Michael of what was lost, but also reminding him of what might yet come to be. He knew devotion once. He longs to feel it again. Amidst the many heartless distractions of modern existence, there are certainly far less heroic things that could happen to a human being.
The dirty, rotten scoundrel…
Ironically, or not so ironically, Lermontov died in a gun duel not long after writing the novel, at the age of 27, his death prophesied by a haunting poem he had written barely a month before his demise.
In noon’s heat, in a dale in Dagestan, With lead inside my breast, stirless I lay;
Lermontov’s novel came to mind the other day while discussing the nature of my hero, Michael Devlin, with an old friend. Given the title, A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov’s novel, naturally came to mind in the discussion. Indeed, what the hell was I intending with my hero, Michael Devlin?
Digressing for a moment, I would like to note that the discovery of Lermontov’s stark, spare prose was nothing less than stunning to me as a fledgling writer. I have no recollection of how I stumbled across this now crumbling paperback but I do remember reading the first page and thinking, wow, isn’t this different. I could easily picture Hemingway having stumbled across Lermontov too, though to my knowledge he never mentioned it.
Be that as it may, Pechorin certainly represented a seismic shift in the heroic model in Western literature. As Northrop Frye pointed out in his Anatomy of Criticism, European fiction had steadily descended down the heroic ladder over the course of fifteen centuries, from gods to godlike heroes and finally to men, like Pechorin, who were little different from you and me. From the mythic to the high mimetic to the low mimetic, we had arrived at last to a bald state of irony. Pechorin did not believe in anything. He did not stand for anything and clearly did not care what anyone thought of that fact. I mean, a guy could really feel ripped off here for having his ideals.
There is abundant evidence to suggest that we, as Americans, have a serious internal conflict when it comes to the nature of our heroes. Using Star Wars as an example, we readily cheered on the rebels as they battled the Empire, when in fact our real life heroes are more akin to Imperial Storm Troopers. Think Seal Team-6, James Bond and Tom Clancy tomes. On the other hand, we find ourselves increasingly uneasy with a monolithic government prying into our personal lives, never mind corporations, so when someone like Jason Bourne comes along, giving voice to those discomforts, we have no problem with cheering on these anti-heroes too. We like our neo-corporate heroes, like Ironman. We like our scraggly Hans Solos too. We love guys who save the girl. We love guys who save the world. I suspect we’ll side with anyone who wins.
In sitting down to write South on Pacific Coast Highway, I had started out with a modest premise, that of writing the first book in a series of good mystery novels. Good crime books? Good murder mystery books? Whatever. The hardboiled crime of Raymond Chandler was my point of departure, but for atmosphere only. Phillip Marlowe was never a hero of mine. I enjoyed his wry nature, certainly, but I always thought Chandler had cheated a bit there. We know Marlowe is wounded, but what are wounds if we never learn how they came into being? Perhaps Chandler let on with a vague reference now and again. I knew a woman once. That sort of thing. It was Pechorin with a fedora, a chessboard and a Packard coupe in place of a steed.
At least Lermontov was being honest. As a young man, he did seem to be something of a misogynist. Chandler was entirely dependent on the kindliness of women in his life. We could have expected him to say something honest to that effect.
In recently reading Guy Davenport’s essay, The Symbol of the Archaic, I was reminded how mankind is always looking backward for its inspiration. The Renaissance looked back to Greece and Rome. The Enlightenment, with the advent of archeological discovery, looked back even further to ancient ruins and 20,000-year-old cave paintings. As Davenport notes in the essay, while Breuil copied bulls painted onto the ceilings at Altamira, Picasso crawled in beside him and found the seeds of a transformative artistic career.
South on Pacific Coast Highway was originally envisioned as a love story, with a few dead bodies here and there, and in creating Michael Devlin, I was actually looking back to the Troubadours. The “rescuing a friend” angle came later on.
Everyone knows of the Troubadours. Few properly understand the historical context in which they existed. In Robert Briffault’s seminal tome on the subject, The Troubadours, he makes a case that the blossoming of 12th century Provençal culture was the true Renaissance, or at least the original one. Certainly, if not for the Albigenses Crusade (and boy, do you ever not want to run into an Albigenses Crusade) history might well have come to consider that 16th century explosion of art and culture along the Italian peninsula as a footnote.
In what I believe to be the proper sense of the word, I would argue that the blossoming of 12th century Provençal culture was not in fact a Renaissance at all. Those lyrical poets were not looking backwards with longing eyes to another era for inspiration. They borrowed a poetic template used by the Moors, applied it to an existing form of music but sang the songs of a new romantic idealism. Somewhat misguided, in my humble estimation, all this willing suffering at the feet of a lady, but the point is, love in that moment had been transformed from something generic to the individual. You no longer accepted your family and church giving your hand away in marriage. And if that did come to pass, and you found yourself chained to a loveless relationship, you had no qualms about keeping a lover. In short, a kindred spirit and soul mate, who gave voice to your most tender and inspired emotions.
So to my point, and I am getting to one here, in the same sense that the Troubadours had borrowed from Moorish poetry, I was borrowing from the Troubadours in creating Michael Devlin, yet without kowtowing to their one thousand year old formalized template, no more than I would kowtow to buckled shoes and powdered wigs. And here too I separate myself from the incomparable Joseph Campbell. He seemed to worship this suffering over love as the true romantic template, when for me it was simply one halting step along the road of our evolutionary destiny. My thinking is, once folks have been freed from the daily struggle to survive, they play at l’amour. The Troubadours did, and this has never been more true than it is today. Check the personal ads on the Internet. L’amour is our age’s Omaha Beach. The sand may be littered with our corpses, but we’re always preparing for another assault.
The irony for Michael Devlin in South on Pacific Coast Highway is that he has found spiritual bliss in the arms of a woman, yet comes up hard against the vagaries of our ephemeral and unpredictable existence. The woman he loves is caught in a web of insanity, i.e. clinical depression, leaving Michael to his unwitting fate—that of the long suffering troubadour, singing songs of purity and devotion, at the feet of the woman who can no longer hear him.
Heroic? Who can say? In South on Pacific Coast Highway, Michael forges on relentlessly, all his energy focused on freeing a wrongly accused friend. Per the words of St. Paul, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” Michael’s form of heroism is to remain valiant in the face of all odds, i.e., an increasingly screwed up world. Love whispers like the desert winds in the background, forever reminding Michael of what was lost, but also reminding him of what might yet come to be. He knew devotion once. He longs to feel it again. Amidst the many heartless distractions of modern existence, there are certainly far less heroic things that could happen to a human being.
September 5, 2013
Mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore...
You know, having engaged now in a month of self-promotion, I have come up hard against my own true nature. I am so not the guy bounding out of a Tony Robbins seminar. I'm far more like Ted Kaczynski in a remote cabin, without the bombs. Perhaps some lives are built around denying how truly screwed up this world is? Was? Has become? But honest writing cannot be one of those lives. My point of pride, and I suppose sanity, is to wake up everyday and say, okay, it's a mess, but I'm going to face it and do everything that I can to make this a better world. I will plant my little patch of kindness and charity and hope that it grows around me.
The fact is, when I write, I feel clean inside. When I get caught up in all the marketing, I begin to loathe who I am. Is it too much to ask that someone will pick up what here represents four years of love and care on my part and enjoy it? I don't want to be rich or famous. Twenty grand a year and a trailer on the beach in Baja and I'd be a happy guy. As long as I can write and put to good use the greatest gift that god gave me. My thought in publishing one of my novels was to free myself from what is presently a respectable career as a ghostwriter. World's Greatest Ghostwriter wasn't exactly what I wanted chiseled on my headstone, but at times these days it begins to sound rather attractive to me. At least my life is pure again. I get up to write each day and somebody else has to sell it.
I am left finally with this simple concept. Community. Tribe. If I ask what I can do each day to help those in my tribe, things begin to make some sort of spiritual sense. I mean, so many people are struggling, whether emotionally, financially or whatever. And I'm worried about selling my books? So those are my thoughts here at four in the morning. The wee small hours of the morning, as Frankie used to sing. Really, all I want is a magic wand to wave and make this world all right, and writing is the closest thing I have to a magic wand.
Laguna Beach
In the year of our lord, 2013
The fact is, when I write, I feel clean inside. When I get caught up in all the marketing, I begin to loathe who I am. Is it too much to ask that someone will pick up what here represents four years of love and care on my part and enjoy it? I don't want to be rich or famous. Twenty grand a year and a trailer on the beach in Baja and I'd be a happy guy. As long as I can write and put to good use the greatest gift that god gave me. My thought in publishing one of my novels was to free myself from what is presently a respectable career as a ghostwriter. World's Greatest Ghostwriter wasn't exactly what I wanted chiseled on my headstone, but at times these days it begins to sound rather attractive to me. At least my life is pure again. I get up to write each day and somebody else has to sell it.
I am left finally with this simple concept. Community. Tribe. If I ask what I can do each day to help those in my tribe, things begin to make some sort of spiritual sense. I mean, so many people are struggling, whether emotionally, financially or whatever. And I'm worried about selling my books? So those are my thoughts here at four in the morning. The wee small hours of the morning, as Frankie used to sing. Really, all I want is a magic wand to wave and make this world all right, and writing is the closest thing I have to a magic wand.
Laguna Beach
In the year of our lord, 2013
August 12, 2013
If I Had a Nickel for Every Time...
I sit here thinking, and I have miles and miles to go before I sleep. Oh god, another yawn. Forgive me.
There was a time, not long ago, when I still wore two hats, and how I long for those days again. Well, not really, but I was able to carve out huge blocks of time, weeks and months where I had nothing to do but write without pressure. Now I ghostwrite by day and schmooze by night. And come to it kicking and screaming. The schmoozing part, I mean. I would much rather tell another story. There are so many waiting here to be told.
For now, I come begging for an audience. I spend years creating one work of fiction. I want so much for a few souls to find themselves transported, even for a few days or a week, their Buddha brains opened, their imagination stirred, the child in them reawakened, their hearts carried over the Himalayas somewhere, their return coming with a sense of catharsis, in some small way, seeing their journey among the stars in a brand new way.
So, if you are reading this, please stop by my website. You can read the first chapter of my recently released novel for free. There are also two stories to read. I will be adding more as time goes by, so please keep checking back. If you buy my novel and enjoy the read, please let me know. That means so much more to me than money...
There was a time, not long ago, when I still wore two hats, and how I long for those days again. Well, not really, but I was able to carve out huge blocks of time, weeks and months where I had nothing to do but write without pressure. Now I ghostwrite by day and schmooze by night. And come to it kicking and screaming. The schmoozing part, I mean. I would much rather tell another story. There are so many waiting here to be told.
For now, I come begging for an audience. I spend years creating one work of fiction. I want so much for a few souls to find themselves transported, even for a few days or a week, their Buddha brains opened, their imagination stirred, the child in them reawakened, their hearts carried over the Himalayas somewhere, their return coming with a sense of catharsis, in some small way, seeing their journey among the stars in a brand new way.
So, if you are reading this, please stop by my website. You can read the first chapter of my recently released novel for free. There are also two stories to read. I will be adding more as time goes by, so please keep checking back. If you buy my novel and enjoy the read, please let me know. That means so much more to me than money...
