Jean Harkin's Blog - Posts Tagged "jean-harkin"
March--From Violence to Birdsong
In like a lion, out like a lamb, or vice versa, as they say about March. So my book discussion is full of contrasts too—from violence to birdsong.
There is nothing more horribly violent than genocide. I read the first volume of “Maus” by Art Spiegelman, a family’s personal account of the Holocaust. Written in comic book form for adults, the characters are imaged as cats and mice, plus a few pigs. This book was recently banned by a school board in Tennessee that picked up on “inappropriate words” and “nudity” (a tiny image of a bathtub suicide in human form.) But the censoring school board overlooked the vitally important lesson of a horror story that must be told so as to never be repeated.
See my full review of “Maus 1” on Goodreads.
Avoiding violence is the timely theme of a just-released anthology, “There I Was. . . When Nothing Happened.” Jason Brick, of Portland, has gathered stories from forty violence professionals and martial arts enthusiasts who detail a time they came close to, but avoided, violence through skills both physical and language-related.
Now for the birdsong: I enjoyed randomly skipping through the delightfully, artfully, and alphabetically informative pages of “Birdpedia: A Brief Compendium of Avian Lore” by Christopher W. Leahy. This little book nests at my bedside for nightly reading. See my Goodreads review.
And be sure to check out “Bed Stuy” by Portland author Jerry McGill. This novel was nominated for the 2022 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. See my Goodreads 5-star review.
I hope soon to be assigned an editor for my debut novel, “Promise Full of Thorns” under contract at Sunbury Press.
There is nothing more horribly violent than genocide. I read the first volume of “Maus” by Art Spiegelman, a family’s personal account of the Holocaust. Written in comic book form for adults, the characters are imaged as cats and mice, plus a few pigs. This book was recently banned by a school board in Tennessee that picked up on “inappropriate words” and “nudity” (a tiny image of a bathtub suicide in human form.) But the censoring school board overlooked the vitally important lesson of a horror story that must be told so as to never be repeated.
See my full review of “Maus 1” on Goodreads.
Avoiding violence is the timely theme of a just-released anthology, “There I Was. . . When Nothing Happened.” Jason Brick, of Portland, has gathered stories from forty violence professionals and martial arts enthusiasts who detail a time they came close to, but avoided, violence through skills both physical and language-related.
Now for the birdsong: I enjoyed randomly skipping through the delightfully, artfully, and alphabetically informative pages of “Birdpedia: A Brief Compendium of Avian Lore” by Christopher W. Leahy. This little book nests at my bedside for nightly reading. See my Goodreads review.
And be sure to check out “Bed Stuy” by Portland author Jerry McGill. This novel was nominated for the 2022 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. See my Goodreads 5-star review.
I hope soon to be assigned an editor for my debut novel, “Promise Full of Thorns” under contract at Sunbury Press.
Halloween Horrors of Publishing
I didn’t need to refer to Stephen King to recount these horror stories. Two fellow authors have furnished some frightful tales:
The author who I quoted last month as having suffered through his publishing ordeal, sustained new shocks following his novel’s release. He ordered two boxes of his books from the publisher to sell himself. In the first box he found two misprints. In the second box he found his novel printed with a page of blurbs from someone else’s book after the copyright page.
His marketing attempts ran into bookstore snafus that almost read like scams. In his first approach, he found that the store would land on the favorable side of a 60/40 split, and to make sure, the store would ring up the sales. For his $20 book, the store would earn $12 (for what?), and he would net $8. He had paid $9.25 to the publisher at author discount, thus actually losing $1.25 on each sale.
That bottom line has me spooked of scheduling a bookstore event!
Another author spent six years crafting her first novel. At a writing conference, she was thrilled to garner attention from an editor with a big-name publishing house. Following instructions, she submitted the first 25 pages of her novel for review in advance of meeting with the editor. The meeting turned out to be a terror: the editor lambasted her for not including a cover letter and had nothing good to say about the novel excerpt. Says the author, “I was so disheartened that I did not write a word for six months.” Bewitched!
She never finished that novel but went on to publish four successful ones, one with a major publisher and three with small presses.
Enchantments can happen! I have been assigned an editor, and my novel Promise Full of Thorns is scheduled for December release. We’ll see! “Many a slip”. . . stay tuned!
The author who I quoted last month as having suffered through his publishing ordeal, sustained new shocks following his novel’s release. He ordered two boxes of his books from the publisher to sell himself. In the first box he found two misprints. In the second box he found his novel printed with a page of blurbs from someone else’s book after the copyright page.
His marketing attempts ran into bookstore snafus that almost read like scams. In his first approach, he found that the store would land on the favorable side of a 60/40 split, and to make sure, the store would ring up the sales. For his $20 book, the store would earn $12 (for what?), and he would net $8. He had paid $9.25 to the publisher at author discount, thus actually losing $1.25 on each sale.
That bottom line has me spooked of scheduling a bookstore event!
Another author spent six years crafting her first novel. At a writing conference, she was thrilled to garner attention from an editor with a big-name publishing house. Following instructions, she submitted the first 25 pages of her novel for review in advance of meeting with the editor. The meeting turned out to be a terror: the editor lambasted her for not including a cover letter and had nothing good to say about the novel excerpt. Says the author, “I was so disheartened that I did not write a word for six months.” Bewitched!
She never finished that novel but went on to publish four successful ones, one with a major publisher and three with small presses.
Enchantments can happen! I have been assigned an editor, and my novel Promise Full of Thorns is scheduled for December release. We’ll see! “Many a slip”. . . stay tuned!
