Month: March 2014

Classic or Commercial?

really old book pixabayLet’s do a little thought experiment. Pick your favorite classic of literature. One of those books you were forced to read years ago in school. Make it something old enough to be in the public domain. I’m partial to A Tale of Two Cities myself. Your choice is probably different. Maybe Pride and Prejudice, Tom Sawyer, or even (God forbid) Moby Dick (just call me bored stiff). Now pick something more modern, but still a classic you might have read in school from fifty or a hundred years ago. My choice is The Old Man and the Sea. Maybe you prefer Catch-22, something by Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury or As I Lay Dying are a couple possibilities). Or if you prefer a book with a little more heat and your school district was much more enlightened than mine you might choose Lady Chatterly’s Lover.

What are your picks?

All of the books I’ve listed, and I assume those you picked if you didn’t like my suggestions, have stood the test of time. Presumably they were commercially successful. If nothing else, each has sold well over the years with sales to schools and libraries. Now imagine the books you picked hadn’t been published for whatever reason, but the final fully-edited manuscript was discovered and published by the author’s heirs today. We’ll also imagine they published it using a pen name so there isn’t a ton of hype about author X’s undiscovered book. What do you think the odds are that the book would sell? How would the critics react? What do you think the reader reviews on Amazon would look like? Continue reading “Classic or Commercial?”

Yet Another Reason to Be an Indie

Who me? I would *never* do anything like that!
Who me? I would *never* do anything like that!

Do you secretly dream of being traditionally published?

When someone you know is offered a contract, do you experience a moment of intense envy? Do you smile, and say ‘congratulations’ while silently screaming ‘why not me’?

Don’t worry, your dirty little secret is safe because….yes, hand-on-heart, I too share your shame. Despite everything I have learned about the traditional publishing world in the last two years, I still haven’t completely quashed the romantic notions I used to hold about the Big Six. I guess it’s like the dream of finding Mr Right and living happily ever after, it never completely dies.

But to quote the Bard, “All that glitters is not gold…”

Every contract we sign, whether it be with Amazon, or one of the New York set, will contain a warranties and indemnities clause, and the language is remarkably similar. In effect, this clause absolves the ‘publisher’ from any blame or financial responsibility if the book breaks any laws. That is, if the poop hits the fan, the author is responsible for the clean-up. Continue reading “Yet Another Reason to Be an Indie”

Featured Book: Life First

Life FirstLife First
by RJ Crayton
Genres: dystopia, thriller, romance
Available from Amazon.

Strong-willed Kelsey Reed must escape tonight or tomorrow her government will take her kidney and give it to someone else. Kelsey enlists the help of her boyfriend Luke and a dodgy doctor to escape. If they fail, Kelsey will be stripped of everything.

Excerpt:

“Maybe, if I go willingly, there might be an opportunity for me to escape.”

“No one’s ever escaped from a holding facility,” Luke spits. Then he pauses, reconsiders. “At least, not the way you mean.”

I close my eyes. Suicides. Those have been the only escapees. And that was only in the beginning. Most inmates in long-term holding facilities go insane and are kept heavily sedated or straight jacketed. They can’t stand the waiting, the knowing that at any moment, without notice, they’ll be told they’re dying today. That their heart is needed for a transplant to someone who puts life first. That their time here is done. That Life First, the mantra drummed into their heads since childhood, means nothing. The hypocrisy alone would drive one mad, let alone the prospect of being the human parts drawer society reaches into to cure its neediest patients.

What others are saying:
“It gripped you like King Kong and would not let go until you had finished the book.” – BestChicklit.com

 

Are you a writer, or just insane?

the scream by edvard munchA couple of my Facebook friends have linked to this blog post that more or less equates the writing life with mental illness. The author of the post starts out by mentioning the notoriously troubled relationship between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda (who probably had some type of mood disorder), and goes on to name a number of other writers who have battled depression, among them Sylvia Plath. He then suggests that writers tend to be unhappy people because they “think a lot,” and also because of their “long periods of isolation and…high levels of narcissism.”

It was the comment about narcissism that got me. I’m a writer, after all, and I know a lot of writers, and I don’t know that I’ve met all that many narcissists. Just as a quick reference, here are the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder (as listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, according to Wikipedia): Continue reading “Are you a writer, or just insane?”