John Blumenthal's Blog

Here’s a template that should make it less tiresome for readers to write Amazon customer book reviews:

I found this (novel) (story) (insufferable twaddle) to be (engrossing) (charming) (moronic).The plot was (engaging) (fast-paced) (like watching paint dry) and the characters were (lovable) (lifelike) (mostly shallow simpletons). The prose style employed by this (writer) (literary genius) (total illiterate) was simply (marvelous) (delightful) (incomprehensible). I read this book (in one sitting) (with great enjoyment) (in awe of the author’s total lack of talent), and I will (recommend it) (gift it to everyone I know) (see how well it works as kindling).

PS: If you review THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAIL BIRD please be kind.

Below is a blessedly short synopsis of "THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAL BIRD" which has been described by some as an even greater page-turner than"The 2019 Miami Florida Residential Business Codes as Applied to External Sewer Plumbing Fixtures and Modular Electrical Safety Measures."

Our hero, Ishmael Archer, is a young man beset by a profound lack of social skills, an obsession with classic literature and the peculiar speaking style of a Dickens character, He seems destined for the lonely life of a literature professor at the academic backwater of Longfellow College. While he yearns for female companionship, a recent acrimonious divorce followed by a series of romantic disasters have left him in a state of emotional fragility.

Struggling to pay his rent, he is obliged to undertake the dreaded task of teaching a summer creative writing class. Convinced that he will be saddled with a group of student malcontents who care not a whit for Tolstoy or Dickens, Ishmael is delighted to encounter the luminescent Abigail Bird, whose passion for literature equals his own. Unfortunately, her past failures at love also equal his own so their romance proceeds undeclared as they both shyly dance around the subject.

This undefined relationship is cut abruptly short when Abigail suffers an accident that causes fiction to become fact and vice versa. Although Abigail is inexplicably changed, Ishmael decides to resume his courtship but must find a way to connect with the Abigail Bird with whom he had originally fallen in love. Will Ishmael’s strange new courtship of Abigail succeed? Will she change back to her original state? Will he find the nerve to risk rejection and declare his love? Did she love him prior to her accident?

The novel is peppered with a cast of eccentric characters—a college dean obsessed with orchids, a Greek landlord with a deep affinity for the works of Ernest Hemingway, and a self-important writer who vies with Ishmael for Abigail’s affections.

Winner, 2019 Next Generation Book Award for Fiction.

https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Courts...

The following is the Acknowledgments Page for my sixth novel, "The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird," to be published by Regal House in October 2019. (Available for pre-order on Amazon.)

Whom, I wonder, shall I acknowledge this time around? My old college English professor who encouraged me to become a writer without mentioning the possibility of starvation? My agent, who encouraged me to make the book more marketable without telling me how? My editor, who pointed out that it might have been wise for me to have paid more attention when my teachers were explaining grammar? Or to the cumbersome Dewey Decimal System, now, sadly, no more than a vague memory among those of a certain age?

Nah. 

Since “The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird” is the story of two people whose lives are utterly consumed by classic literature, I think it appropriate to pay homage to those who love to read, that noble minority of souls who still look to books for engaging stories and endearing characters, for clever turns of phrase, for the joys of well-wrought interior monologue. 

They say that we book lovers are an endangered species. I think not. My meanderings throughout the maze of social media have led me to believe that reading is indeed quite alive and prospering. One can easily find a plethora of those dedicated to reading on Instagram and Tumblr; Goodreads reaches twenty-five million people, twice as many as the previous year; book bloggers abound; Facebook offers hundreds of groups dedicated to a variety of books, not to mention countless author fan pages, many with thousands of followers. 

Amazon’s cyber shelves contain the largest collection of books in the history of the written word and the retail giant has given birth to the most innovative approach to reading since the invention of typesetting. Thus, thanks to Amazon, I may now travel with hundreds of books without increasing the weight of my suitcase by more than a few ounces, giving new dimension to Stephen King’s famous observation that “Books are uniquely portable magic.”

#thestrangecourtshipofAbigailBird #johnblumenthalbooks #romcom

"Author, Author!"" is a Facebook Group I started several years ago and it has grown to more than 2000 members with new people---writers. readers and literary junkies---joining and posting every day. Posts have included everything from photos of the fiirst edition of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" to quotes and articles about writing by famous authors to articles about Mark Twain's favorite pen to literary cartoons and so forth.

Best of all, there exists a pleasant camaraderie among group members, and it's a great way to meet other writers and avid readers.

New members are always welcome. The link is as follows:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/autho...

Thanks nd hope to see you on Author, Author!"
John Blumenthal

First off blokes, what exactly is the name of your country? Is it England, Great Britain or the United Kingdom? 

Why can’t you make up your bloody minds? England is okay, but Great Britain? Do you really need the pompous adjective? Other countries think they’re great too, but they don’t all advertise it in the title name.
We don’t call ourselves “The Really Terrific United States of America.”

The same goes for United Kingdom. I mean, seriously? Kingdom? Newsflash: You don’t actually have a kingdom anymore, chaps. It’s gone. You’ve been kicked out of everywhere.

Why is everything “brilliant”? Sure, we Americans overuse the word “awesome” but you’re supposed to be smarter than we are (do you ever call an actual smart person “brilliant”?) Find another adjective.

Why was it necessary for your upper class twits to change into monkey suits for dinner every single night? And why did you need six guys to take away the soup plates?

Fox hunting. Why is that fun? I don’t get it. The hounds do all the work. Why do they need you? 

What is this fixation with tea? You show up at somebody’s house and right away your host asks, “cuppa tea?” Nobody ever declines or says, “Do you have any tomato juice?” We Yanks just say, “May I get you something to drink?” This opens up a wide variety of possibilities, many of them toxic.

And what’s with the word “bloody”? Why is everything bloody good or bloody awful? If you cut your hand and it bleeds, are you “bloody bloody”?

Why do some of you still have titles? If you’re a Duke, what exactly are you Duke of? Nothing. You used to have lavish estates and too many servants (please tell me why you couldn’t even figure out how to dress yourselves? It’s not rocket science) but now you can’t afford to maintain them so you’re selling your titles. Now some random guy from Hoboken can spend a few hundred grand and be Joe Schmo, Duke of Whatever, but nobody will call him “Duke” unless that’s his first name.

I wrote a book last week. I’ve never written a book before but so what? They’re just words on a computer screen right? I’ve written stuff before –- emails and lists of things to get at the hardware store so I have experience. Anybody can do it.

It all started when my friend Bert said, “You know Bud, you should write a book about your crazy family. ” I thought about it a minute. It was a totally unique idea. So I wrote it. The words just flowed out of me like diarrhea.

It took me a pretty long time –- three hours -- to think up a catchy title. I finally came up with, "My Crazy Family," How could you not sell a million books with a grabber like that?

I slapped together a cover –- my niece Sarah Jane (she’s so cute) helped with the finger-painting –- and uploaded it on Amazon as a Kindle and a paperback. Heck, the uploading was harder than writing the book!

The next thing I did was change my Facebook profile. It used to say, “Works at Plumber.” Now it says, “Works at Author.”

Then I had to do some marketing. My first idea was total genius -- I got all the members of my crazy family and a bunch of my friends to write customer reviews on Amazon. In a few hours, I had twenty reviews and a 5-star rating!

Next, I pasted the Amazon link on Facebook, which is also a really clever idea that ‘s probably never been done.

I heard that Amazon has a freebie program where you give the book away for free to create what they call “buzz.” I knew this would work. How often have I stood in line outside of Walmart to get a free set of beer coasters or an umbrella hat?

I ended up selling 8000 books for free. Now I had a following!

I thought about trying to get reviews from hoity-toity places like the "New York Times" – (it’s pretty simple – you just send them a copy of your book with a nice letter) -- but the Post Office was going to charge me $9.95 for Priority Mail so I didn’t bother.

The book sold pretty well (getting my friends and relatives to buy it was another brilliant marketing scheme –- has anybody tried that before?)

About a week after publishing the book, my son caught our dog Bowzer tearing out the pages and eating them (everybody’s a critic, right?) . It was the cutest thing! My son got the whole thing on videotape and made a YouTube out of it and pasted it on Facebook. The damn thing went –- what do you call it? -- virile in two days.

The next day, I sold 150,000 copies but poor old Bowzer was constipated for a week.

A few days later, I got a call from a guy named Marty from Hollywood. Said he loved my book and wanted to make a TV sitcom out of it. He asked me if I have an agent and I told him I did. (Mickey Bergan has been my insurance agent for twenty years.)

But I told Marty I didn’t want to sell. I figured I could shoot a TV series myself. How hard could it be? Most TV sucks. All I have to do is shoot an episode and send it to a TV network and they’ll pay me tons of money. My family is pretty excited about starring in a TV series.

I plan to use the video on my son’s Smartphone. We start shooting next week.

John Blumemthal's next novel THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAIL BIRD will be published by Regal House in October 2019.

The consensus among the literary establishment is that author Thomas Pynchon is one of the foremost novelists of our time. His books –- Gravity’s Rainbow, V, The Crying of Lot 49 -- are considered by many to be modern classics.

He is also a recluse. Nobody -- with the possible exception of his agent and his editor-- knows where he is at any given time. He never goes on book tours and never signs autographs. He makes J.D. Salinger look like a party animal.

So it is particularly odd that I am in possession of his medical records.

In 1973, while employed by Esquire Magazine, I was also working on the Great American Novel which never saw the light of day, because it was -- to put it as delicately as possible -- a stinking, noxious pile of steaming horse shit. In other words, it was not dissimilar to the oeuvre of Dan Brown.

That same year, Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow was published and featured on the cover of The New York Times Sunday Literary Section. Later, it received the National Book Award.

At the time, my father was an internist with an unthriving practice in my hometown, Middletown, New York, a small town which was well-known for nothing. One day, a new patient came to my father’s office complaining of a cough. My father ordered a chest X-ray.

Before the examination, the patient was required to fill out the usual form, which asked for his name, address, profession and previous illnesses. When he was finished, my father sat him down in his office and went over the form.

“So you’re a writer?” my father asked. The patient nodded. My father snickered. He was well aware that many people called themselves writers, but had never had anything published. He had developed that opinion from observing me and my numerous feeble attempts at writing fiction. “Never heard of you,” my father said. His new patient merely shrugged.

When the tests came back, my father informed him that he had a bad cold, but asked him to return in a week to see if his condition had improved.

A few days later, my father called me. After the usual litany of advice –- wash your hands, never eat undercooked shrimp --- he asked me if I had ever heard of a writer named Thomas Pynchon. I said yes, informed him of Pynchon’s fame and asked him why he wanted to know. “He’s one of my patients,” my father said blandly. “He has a cold.”

I was thunderstruck. “Is he coming back to your office?” I asked enthusiastically. “Yes,” my father said. “For follow-up.” I gave it a moment’s thought. If I could get an interview with Thomas Pynchon, my publishing career would actually become a publishing career.

“Can you hide a tape recorder in your office when he comes back and ask him some questions about his writing?” I inquired. My father paused. “Absolutely not,” he said. “What goes on in a doctor’s office is confidential. “

I felt deflated. “Can you at least get him to autograph a copy of his book?” I asked. My father said he could do that.

After my father’s last meeting with Thomas Pynchon, I came to town to visit. My father handed me the autographed copy of Gravity’s Rainbow. On the title page, Pynchon had written “Dr. Blumenthal: 10 Pages q-i-d for Mesopolitosis.” Signed, “Thomas Pynchon”. I have no idea what Mesopolitosis is. I assume he made it up.

As I was putting this rare autographed novel in my suitcase, a piece of paper fell out. At the top, it said, “X-Ray Consultation. Patient: Thomas Pynchon. Address: Middletown. NY, Chest X-ray. Findings: Free of disease. Impression: Normal chest.” It is signed by the radiologist.

Having a book signed by Thomas Pynchon was rare enough. But to have his medical records! Utterly priceless.

But my father still wasn’t that impressed. “He was an excellent patient,” he said. “I’m just glad he didn’t have bronchitis.”

John Blumenthal’s next novel, THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAIL BIRD, will be published in October, 2019 by Regal House.

“Moby Dick”
Herman Melville

“Call me the whale guy a hansom cab Steve Ishmael.”


“The Old Man and the Sea”
Ernest Hemingway

“He was an old man who smelled like garlic played the harmonica fished alone in a bathtub dinner jacket skiff in the Gulfstream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a nap bath dump fish.” (Note to self: My agent will hate this. The hell with him. He’s a wimp)

John Blumemthal's next novel THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAIL BIRD will be published by Regal House in October 2019.


“Trees”
Joyce Kilmer

“I think that I shall never see/ A sandwich rhyming bunch of words poem as big lovely as a woman’s breasts bush ficus pea flea tree.” (Note to self: Do I really want to write about a tree? Why not a duck? What rhymes with duck?)



“The Trial”
Franz Kafka

“Someone must have slandered Joey Jay Josef K. for one morning, without having done anything truly embarrassing wrong, he was handcuffed to a radiator arrested for mooning a fishmonger.” (Note: This will never sell.)


“Mrs. Dalloway”
Virginia Woolf

“Mrs. Dalloway said she would swipe strip for buy the chafing dish sled cookies flowers herself.”



“The Bell Jar”
Sylvia Plath

“It was a clear, sultry summer, the summer they plugged in fried electrocuted the toaster oven washer dryer Rosenbergs and I didn’t know what I was doing in my kitchen my tutu Cleveland New York.”



“The Great Gatsby”
F. Scott Fitzgerald

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my dry cleaner father gave me some crackers oatmeal dumb platitudes advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since Zelda stopped drinking my hamster died.”

John Blumemthal's next novel THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAIL BIRD will be published by Regal House in October 2019.

(Reposted from Huffington Post)

Many people write novels to express their most profound emotions, to tell a captivating story that has some deep meaning, to create characters that come alive, to enrich the lives of their readers.

Unfortunately, these are the worst reasons to write a novel, unless you're only interested in selling your book to immediate family members, your closest friends and six random people who bought it by mistake and lost the receipt.

But if you want to make real money writing novels, you'll have to appeal to the broadest possible base of readers. Your best bet is to go scattershot and attempt to attract every demographic by combining all the elements that appeal to most readers.

This is not rocket science.

Young adult fiction sells well, although I rarely see young adults reading and I suspect the teenagers I pass on the street wearing cell phone ear plugs are not listening to audio books of "Dead Souls", a novel by an unsuccessful writer who simply lacked the talent to create nonsensical plots, one-dimensional characters, gratuitous sex and likable vampires. As a result, the book is not a best-seller.

In addition to young adult fiction, romance novels, mysteries, thrillers, sci-fi and erotic literature also sell briskly, so if you can combine all those genres, you'll make a bundle.

First off, keep in mind that women buy more books than men, so if you're a male writer, you might want to use a pseudonym. Female readers are attracted to books written by women with first names like Delilah or Mona or Constance. Your fake last name should imply sexiness. But be subtle. Two alluring last names might be Delight or Pleasure.

Who wouldn't buy a book by someone named Constance Delight or Mona Pleasure?

Plotting is the most important element in writing best-selling fiction. Keep it moving at a frenetic pace and don't worry if it makes any sense. If it appears to be exciting and there's lots of lurid sex, grotesque murders and glaringly obvious red herrings.

Believability is the last of your worries. Don't concern yourself about loose ends. Nobody will notice.

Don't write descriptive passages that are more than 50 words long. Readers don't care what a house looks like, and long blocks of typeface scare them. Endless narrative passages are only good if they involve passionate sex. When writing hot sex scenes, always make sure the reader will immediately know it's a sex scene by italicizing certain words such as "moan," "groan," "hard," "thrust," "tongue," and "thighs."

Otherwise, stick to dialogue. Readers like dialogue because they can zip down the page faster. Writers like dialogue because it doesn't involve as much typing, although indenting can become tiresome.

Very important -- make sure the book is thick. Get your publisher to use a reasonably large typeface; end chapters at the top of the page; and include lots of unnecessary punctuation, like ellipses and five or six exclamation points at the end of every other sentence. You might even want to consider adding 15 or 20 blank pages at the end. Nobody will notice until they get there. People are not going to spend $27.95 on a thin book.

To minimize the amount of work you need to do, keep chapters short. Those blank pages between the text of the old chapter and the start of a new one can add up. If you have 90 chapters, that's 90 pages you don't have to write anything on. Besides, most readers feel a sense of accomplishment when they can say they're up to Chapter 37, even though they've only read 5,000 words to get there.

If you've gotten bad reviews, edit them to your advantage before putting them on your cover. For example, if a reviewer says, "This book is ridiculous, a jumble of total nonsense, bursting with pathetic, dimwitted attempts at badly written sex scenes that are the author's inane idea of passion," you quote it as, "Bursting with passion."

One final word: Needless to say, in today's book market, vampires are an absolute necessity, though hideous post-apocalyptic creatures, zombies and deeply troubled werewolves can work, as long as they look like the guy in the Calvin Klein jockey shorts ads. This might require some thought, which is a drawback, because thought only gets in the way of writing bestsellers. For most best-selling writers, thinking just slows them down.

Typing fast is much more important.

John Blumemthal's next novel THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAIL BIRD will be published by Regal House in October 2019.

To all you book lovers out there: Today, my first book just went up on Amazon Kindle! It's a word-for-word copy of an actual fifteen-item grocery list I recently penned (cleverly titled "My Grocery List," not to be confused with "Schindler's List"). I'm so excited! Now I'm a real, bonafide AUTHOR and my name is up there on Amazon along with the great ones -- Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Dan Brown and my neighbor Sheldon Klein who just published a three-page Kindle eBook anthology of poems about tree bark.

Writing a book has been my dream ever since I was six and spent eight minutes writing a list of supplies I would need for school on a pea green Post-It note.
It's such an amazing thrill! The moment "My Grocery List" appeared on Amazon, I changed my Facebook job description from "Bolt Inspector" to "Published Author."

Thank you Amazon for making it so easy for ordinary people like me to become real, professional writers in less than an hour!

So far, the pre-publication reviews have been outstanding! Albertsons called it, "one of the best written grocery lists we've ever seen. The printing is excellent and, unlike most grocery lists, impressively legible. A must read!"

A bagger at Vons named Leticia opined, "I've found a lot of grocery lists that people leave in their shopping carts after they're done shopping, but Mr. Blumenthal's vivid combination of produce, canned goods and household products stands out as one of the most poignant and heartfelt lists I've ever read. I couldn't put it down."

Butch Milner, a checker at my local AM-PM store gushed about the book. "I loved the chapter called 'Bacon.' This book is destined to become a classic in the shopping list genre."

Just to give you a little background, I originally wrote the whole book with a Ticonderoga #2 pencil on the back of an envelope that once contained my gas bill. Like Hemingway, I wrote it standing up (in my case, in the kitchen.) And it only took me about two minutes!
The inspiration for the book was my wife Janet who had asked me to pick up a few things at Vons -- fifteen items in all -- because her sciatica was acting up. Once I got started writing, the words just flowed as if God Himself were guiding my hand. I didn't need to rewrite a single word, although I did cross out "2 Cans of StarKist Tuna" when Janet informed me that we already had a bunch left from our last trip to Costco.

Truth be told, I had kind of a hard time writing a plot synopsis for my Amazon page mainly because the book doesn't actually have a plot. Also, the actual writing is limited to just a few words (brevity is the soul of wit, right?) and a lot of blank space. But I had to write something so I came up with this description: "'My Grocery List' is the heartbreaking story of a diverse family of grocery store items tragically separated by long, brightly-lit store aisles. They lead lonely, barren lives, shivering in the store's arctic air, knowing that soon they will all be swept up in the crazy adventure of the conveyor belt and the soulless scanner. Eventually, their lives will intertwine climactically when they're confronted by the poignancy and eroticism of commingling in my cloth bags."

(Of course, none of that stuff is actually in there -- you have to imagine it all. I like to leave interpretation to the reader.)

In the rest of my synopsis, I described the tempestuous love affair between my two protagonists, "Seedless Grapes" and "Yoplait Low-Fat Yogurt." Then there's a nonexistent subplot about my jaunty, lovable character, "Windex Extra-Strength" who sits on a rack all day staring longingly across the aisle at the beautiful, soft and sexy "Downy Fabric Softener," who only has eyes for the powerful but villainous cad, "Dulcolax Laxative Tablets."
But I really shouldn't tell you any more. I wouldn't want to spoil it! You'll just have to find out for yourself by reading the book. I've priced it at $2.99. Those with short attention spans will be glad to know it's a quick read.
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In the meantime, stay tuned for my next book, "A Few Things I Need at the Hardware Store."

John Blumemthal's next novel THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAIL BIRD will be published by Regal House in October 2019.