The first e-book offering from little old me.

Yep. I did it. It wasn’t traditional. It wasn’t even my favorite book. I know, you shouldn’t say that. But I have become filterless in the last short while… beware the “f” bomb, people.

I blame it on the world. I am, like most writers filled with doubt about the publishing world- the book as we once knew it is probably changing forever. And along with that, is the way we acquire, market and buy both the author and the book.

So what’s a girl to do? Give up her dream? Stand there and just take it? Nope. Not my style. I have been patient. I have been understanding, forgiving and kind. Ask my agent.*

I believe there is “the right time” for everything, but seriously… does it take 4 months for an editor to reply? I know I always think I can do something better than the guy in charge, but imagine this… an email comes in. You read the query.  You say, nope. not for me. you reply. You delete, and repeat. A pitch comes from an agent, you like it, you request manu.  She sends it, you skim, trust your gut. Offer or decline. Done. Next?

Don’t even get me started on the army of marketers and accountants it takes to push a manuscript into book form. Or the way most people only read what they find listed on a BOGUS best-seller list. ANd please, we do not want to talk about the way some writers are more magic web masters and salespeople than wordsmiths.

ARGH.

Let’s just say, I want to keep writing novels, even if no one ever reads them. Even if I have to buy the whole stock myself and fly around the world reading chapters to blind people . I want to believe in the power of words, be sucked into the imagery of a place I will never go nor have never been. I want to be responsible for taking one person out of their reality and dropping them smack into a place from my dream. I want to mess with your head and I want you to love me for it.

Well, there. that’s why we write. For love. Or… to annoy the shit out of you.

I do both.

*note to agent   forgive my candor…now go pitch We’re Not Waving, We’re Drowning, and 3 Women Walk into a Bar

But instead. I am here. In a chair, In front of a laptop. At a desk with a mug of coffee, a bottle of water and a ream of paper waiting to be filled.

Everyone has opinions. See this article to get the analysis from Roger Ebert, Margaret Atwood and more.

My take?

When posting these paragraphs from my current novel in progress: 3 women walk into a bar, a scene told from the protagonists POV, I was told by the analysts at I WRITE LIKE, that  I write like David Foster Wallace. What do you think? Here are the paragraphs I submitted:

The cozy bar on the corner. There’s one in every city, a hole in the wall that does more business than the big hotel bars. It will have more character, hide more stories, and even though most nights the biggest tip will only be a crumpled ten spot tucked into the waitress’s cleavage, the place will cash out stronger than the big guys, and with an honest owner, it could be around for years— like Cheers, minus the high paid actors and a cheesy laugh track.

I felt it as soon as I walked in. That I-wish-it-was raining-so-I-could-have-an-excuse-to-hunker-down-in-the-corner- booth-with-a-smoky-scotch-and-a-beer-chaser feeling. The idea hit me that some people would do exactly that even if the sun was shining and the boss was waiting and then another feeling began to sink in¾ kind of sick and wormy¾ that some people, even if they couldn’t afford the scotch part of the fantasy, would spend their days in that corner booth drinking away their future, trading their life for temporary liquid happiness.

It was this feeling that kept me away from drinking booze in quantity. I have been known to drink the occasional cold one at the ballpark, but I didn’t drink and drive, I never drank alone, and no, bartenders don’t count. I’d learned over the years that me plus alcohol add up to asshole. Anytime I thought I wanted to imbibe all I had to do was come to a place like this and take note of the loner at the bar, the one trying to look like he had it under control, though you could smell the loser on him, or the guys slamming shots at a back booth, killing brain cells, getting louder and more idiotic by the minute. I’d be reminded of the jackass nature of the drunken male and could order my soda, then leave.

Then, I submitted another  section from the same novel, one told from a main character’s POV, her backstory. It looked like this:

She went into work the first day, wearing kabuki makeup with her hair knotted over her head and a light-up Star Wars saber tucked in her sparkly belt.

She pulled over a chair, hopped up on it and addressed her first table, “I’m the Queen of Siam, Motherfuckers, who are you?” The bartender applauded and the table ended up tipping thirty-five percent.

One day she wound battery-operated Christmas lights around her waist and had them trail behind her like a tail. She recited dirty limericks in foreign accents, took every guy’s phone number that was slipped to her in the check folder and pasted them to the ladies room wall, next to an arrow and the words: Rich and Hung like a horse.

Roxie sat around the bar with the other servers after work.

“What did you clear?”

“Ah, the usual bullshit, you know,” she said, shrugging.

But they didn’t. The other girls on the floor were pulling a buck fifty maybe two hundred on a Saturday, and that was if they hustled. The quicker you turned a table, the better chance you had to clear a nice bit of coin. But you still had to tip the kitchen and the bar, and sure as shit those bartenders knew what your tickets were. Most of the time the waitress could blame it on the customer, calling them cheap, or saying somebody walked, but if you said that too often it came out of your pocket. Like Janice. She fucked up more than once.

“You aren’t pulling a Janice, are you?” The girls asked Roxie.

“Who me? Shit, I sold a thousand bucks and turned in two hundred in tips, okay?” Roxie was getting pissed. She climbed onto the bar.

“Look, fuckers!” she yelled, waving a twenty. “This is for you Rusty.” Roxie crumbled the bill and threw it at the bartender. “And you, and you and you,” she said as she went down the line, liking how they looked scrambling on their hands and knees for the money. She didn’t care. She had really cleared over four hundred and stashed most of it her bra. “All right then? Are we okay? Now, can I have a fucking beer? Please.”

I WRITE LIKE said that paragraph was similar to the writing of Cory Doctorow

Hmm.

I tried a flash fiction piece that had recently appeared in DOGPLOTZ.

She wants to keep him around longer than a night. She wants to be more than his fuck buddy, the one he calls when he wants a piece of ass without buying it dinner. She knows she’s not pretty enough for him, not skinny enough or nice enough and her crooked teeth, she figures they might have something to do with it, although he never minds feeling them skim across his cock.

She wants him to shut off his phone when he walks in her door because the chime and ding of all those pretty girls calling him gets annoying after a while and she has to try even harder to please him, even harder to get him to understand she is so much more than this naked girl standing in front of him willing to do anything he asks any time he asks.

Again, I got Cory Doctorow.

Now, for the piece de resistance.

I inserted a few paragraphs from the novel my agent is shopping in NY, We’re Not Waving, We’re Drowning. Hello HOTSHOT MARKET SAVVY EDITORS????

I went for the opening:

A phone that rings after midnight never brings good news. Maggie Morris rolled over and reached for the receiver, glad they hadn’t yet cancelled the house landline. She never would have heard the polite chirp of her cell phone or even found the tiny thing she’d tossed in her bag the night before.

She put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Morris? Mrs. David Morris?

It never was a good sign when they called you Missus.

By the time Maggie hung up the phone, two local Philly cops were on her porch, as if she needed further confirmation that her husband was dead.

That wasn’t what they said, of course. No one was allowed to draw conclusions. After all, mistakes had been made before, wrong doors had been knocked on, boats had returned, people had swum to shore, but Maggie felt the void of David, a fissure in her wall.

They said missing. They said there were some indications. They said she would need to go to Savannah. They pushed papers at her and phone numbers and offered assurances they didn’t have, while Maggie nodded then closed the door behind them. She wiped her eyes and began collecting the things she’d need, until she found herself standing in her office sobbing and she realized she had no idea what she needed.

She stuffed the papers in her bag then pawed through the junk drawer in the kitchen for a working pen while she called a cab. When the drawer stuck halfway, Maggie reached in and pushed stuff around until she found the culprit, a ratty old book. She tossed that in her travel bag too, rolled her suitcase to the door and stepped outside, closing the door to her predictable life.

In the back of the cab, Maggie repeated her mantra. Rely on yourself. Rely on yourself. It was her mother’s voice in her ear, a voice that whispered to her on the first day of kindergarten, on the day of the fifth grade spelling bee, each time the love of young Maggie’s life dumped her. Rely. On. Yourself.

It was from a poem her mother used to recite. The next line came to Maggie.

Oh, but I find this pill so bitter said the poor man. As he took it from the shelf.

Something about the phrase fortified her.

I WRITE LIKE came back with David Foster Wallace. Odd, yes? Appears DFW is the default writer. Sorry, dude.

And from another section of the novel:

A story like that didn’t go away. It was a tragedy, a retold lesson of the boy from Tarrabelle who drowned, about his missing sister and their dead parents, the couple who had clung to each other until the bitter end, jumping from the branch of the oak in the meadow, the noose on her neck doubled around the branch, ending in a loop of rope around his neck. The mother who had needed sixteen stones in her pocket, a counter weight to her husband’s limp body.

Someone had taken a photograph and sold it to the city papers, a distant image of two darkly clothed bodies hanging beneath a tall tree. People supposed they had jumped at the same time, stepping off into the air together holding hands.

If you squinted hard enough at the blurry photograph you could see them walking down a foggy path and imagine the distant clouds under their feet were a soft road that led somewhere wonderful.

I’m almost embarrassed that that section pegged me as Dan Brown.

Holy crap.

Third try with same novel: ( benefit of having 3 povs??)

I am an old woman, given to rants and daydreams. I earned the right in my troubled youth to act this way. People give me leave, allowing me space to act out my foolishness. In all truth, they encourage me, thinking I should be a foolish old woman, a demented old bitty, a sad, lonely and deplorable creature, so sometimes to assuage them, I am. And it disappoints me when I take joy in their discomfort.

What would George think of me today, in this funeral home, crying over his dead body? What would he tell me to do? I’d spent weeks hovering over him, asking how I could help. He’d been the one to send me out with the dogs, told me to take them down to the water and watch the sunset, take my time coming back. I suppose I knew what he’d planned. Maybe that made me feel guilty, feel like I needed his forgiveness.

Why can’t someone say those words for him now and fill up my emptiness, unclutter my heart?

“Miss Martus?”

A young girl—but they are all young now—touches my arm. She hands me a tissue.

“Is there anything I can get for you?”

I want to say, Yes, I’d like another forty years with that man. You can turn back the clock and make me a young girl running barefoot on the beach. You can give me back my life.

And wow. That submission earned me: Neil Gaiman. I think I should stop while I am ahead. WAY WAY ahead. I idolize Gaiman.

So, here the thing. Have you noticed, they are all male authors? What am I supposed to think of that? I know I have cajones, but still?

Ok. Here’s a challenge for the analysts. Let’s throw that algorithm a loop.

I will submit a sentimental passage, from a female POV. Let’s see what they think.

The door opens. She turns and watches him walk into the room. He takes off his sunglasses and as his eyes adjust to the darkness he sees her in her yellow dress sitting in the same place where they sat almost a year ago. She stands, wiping her palms on her dress, raising her brow, inviting him to come to her.

He crosses the room in three long strides, reaching for her, pulling her into his arms, pressing her against his chest. He’s sweaty from the ride over, hot and thumping with the blood and the adrenaline and she is sure that he can feel her heart through his shirt, that he reads her Morse code message sent out in beating dots and dashes. It’s. You. Finally.

He smells too good, and fits against her perfectly, as she remembered. She feels his muscular back, his broad shoulders and feels the strength in his hands as he runs them down her back to her ass. The silky fabric of her dress rides up when she raises her arms to encircle his neck. She thinks for a minute it will be like a sappy commercial, that he will spin her around in the center of this bar, that she will pull the clip from her hair and let it free, while kicking up her heels. But the second has passed and they are still standing there in front of the other customers—she hears them now, scraping back their chairs, resuming their conversations as if to say, show’s over—but still Jimbo holds Angel.

He presses his cheek against hers then tucks his head into her neck. His breath is warm and cool at the same time, as if he has just brushed her teeth, as if he ate a mint in hopes of kissing her. He reaches for her chin and tips it up toward his. They are almost the same height, she in her high heels, he in his cowboy boots. She opens her eyes and slowly blinks. A tear runs from the corner of each eye. She doesn’t try to wipe them away.

He smiles then, as if that was what he’d been waiting for, as if that tear told him everything. He looks at her so intensely, his gaze moving from eye to eye. It’s a test, a confirmation, the solution to the puzzle. She rolls her chin in his hand and when he meets her eyes again, his lips part and the angle is perfect. When his lips touch hers there is nothing else in the world, but them.

She doesn’t want to break the kiss first, end the embrace, pull away, but also what she wants to do she can’t. She wants to climb up his body and wrap herself around him like a python, she wants to slither down the front of him then lay at his feet sucking on his toes. She wants to stick her tongue in his ear and reach her hand down his pants and ride him barebacked through town with hair as her only clothing. She thinks all these things in one foolish moment and then, allows herself a small giggle, and that is how they part.

AND boom. I’m back to David Foster Wallace.

How bizarre.

In further testing, various Blog posts came back as Cory Doctorow, ( three times)  Chuck Palahniuk, ( thanks! I think) William Gibson, ( who?)  Raymond Chandler ( I wish!!) and the most funny to me?  I got “you write like Charles Dickens,” with my Neil Diamond concert blog post from 12/08. HAHAHA.

So, the answer to all this…. is that I am now ordering some books by Doctorow, Gibson,  and Wallace. And yep, totally rewriting my Dan Brown-esque paragraph.

Most of it I did privately, sharing only with my writing group and agent. Proud to say, finally figured out some nagging issue, and now at almost 81000 words, can see the end of on the new novel, 3Women Walk Into A Bar.

I have been distracted, with life and people and plans.. and with other writing. Yep. Strange. It’s feast or famine for me. My muse is a taskmaster.. which sounds kinda like Beastmaster… which might be more fitting.

But that’s the thing with words. When they come, they need to be dealt with immediately.  or they will disappear.

Sit in the chair and forget about paying bills, buying groceries and  working out or closet sorting. Their day will come. Those little gifts? They never seem to disappear.

I did make time to go the the Margaret Mitchell House for an evening with writers. Congratulations to Kathryn Stockett for winning The Townsend Prize for her novel, The Help.

A book I not only read, but had Kathryn sign earlier this year when she spoke at The Atlanta Writers Club. Kinda bummed my favorite book in the running, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming didn’t win though. I love, love, love that book – and the author, Joshilyn Jackson.

But, there was jazz music and literary talk- albeit a really boring keynote speaker… but there was WINE and afterward, fun girl stuff at an Irish pub….

From The New York Times

What to Write Next

I recently published a novel, and now it’s time to get back to work. If you’re anything like me, figuring out what to write next can be a real hassle. A flashy and experimental brain-bender, or a pointillist examination of the dissolution of a typical American family? ­Generation-spanning door-stopper or claustrophobic psychological sketch? Buncha novellas with a minor character in common? To make things easier, I modified my dartboard a few years ago. Now, when I’m overwhelmed by the untold stories out there, I head down to the basement, throw a dart and see where it lands. Try it for yourself!

Encyclopedic Have you ever thought, There is a system that rules our culture, and this system also determines interaction on the individual level, and I have come up with a metaphor that describes both manifestations, and can provide many examples? If so, you may be postmodern, or postmodern-curious. E. M. Foster said, “Only connect,” and Lauryn Hill seconded him, maintaining that “everything is everything.” They aren’t postmodernists, but that’s the beauty of the postmodern — it’s not what it is, it’s what you say it is.

Realism Take this test. When you read “These dishes have been sitting in the sink for days,” do you think (a) This is an indicator of my inner weather, or (b) Why don’t they do the dishes? Does the phrase “I’m going as far away from here as my broken transmission will get me, and then I’ll take it from there” make you think (a) Somebody understands me, or (b) Why don’t they stay and talk it out? What is more visually appealing, (a) a Pall Mall butt floating in a coffee mug, or (b) those new Pop Art place mats in the Crate & Barrel catalog? If you answered (a), do we have a genre for you.

Recommended for: The rumpled, drinky.

Ist Simply add -ist to any oddball or unlikely root word, and run with it. You’d be surprised.

Ethnic Bildungsroman Your parents packed their bags and took a chance on a dream called America. From Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, Bangladesh and Beijing. Then you came along, with all your surly second-­generation-ness, and you wondered, Why do they eat that food, their accent is so heavy, why can’t they leave me alone and let me play baseball? For you are not like them, you Old World-eschewing, Otherness-contemplating, bubble-gum-popping, shiksa-smooching, WASP bastion-­charging, bootstrapping young thing. You got moxie, kid, and just like Mary Tyler Moore, you’re gonna make it after all.

Sample titles: “From Here, but Also Not”; “Annette Lipshitz for President.”

About A Little Known Historical Fact Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Find a little-known atrocity and claim squatter’s rights. Get in there so no one can take your lynching, massacre or overlooked genocide away from you. People like to be educated about tragedies that they’ve never shaken their heads sadly over before. Getting them to say “I didn’t know about that” is a surprisingly effective marketing tool. Practice speaking mellifluously — you’re going to be doing a lot of NPR.

Sample titles: “The Gridleysville Account”; “Shout! The Forgotten People.”

Fabulism Ladies with wings and men without mouths. Dancing trees and talkative cows. If it’s for kids, it’s a fairy tale. If it’s for grown-ups, it’s magic realism! Whether you’re 8 or 80, everybody loves magic. This is the perfect genre for writers who may be tempted to throw out manuscript pages when they get stuck — with magic realism, you can just conjure up a flaming tornado and whisk troublesome characters away. “Where’s Jasper?” “Remember that legend I mentioned 25 pages ago, about the Flaming Tornado of Red Creek?”

Historical Novel Sweeping. . . . Meticulously researched. . . . Something about verandas. Welcome to the world of the historical novel. This is different from a book About a Little Known Historical Fact in that you’re taking a recognizable event or milieu, familiar from PBS documentaries and Oscar-winning movies, and putting your own spin on it. If you get sick of those tedious period details (gas-lamp, chamber-pot, chandler — oy!), consider cutting between the past and the present, where the narrator discovers information about some ancestor’s role in things. Throw in a real-life famous person — Jimmy Hoffa, Emma Goldman, the Lindbergh baby — and watch the sparks fly.

Allegory This book is about the Black Death . . . or is it?

Sample titles: “The Forest”; “The Mound”; “The Illness”; “The Cubby”; “The Lump.”

Domestic Why is Timmy spending so much time with his door closed? Did I hear Janet sneaking out last night? Bert’s always working late these days, it’s like I hardly see him. Jamie has started another affair — she’s one of my best friends but I don’t know what she’s thinking sometimes. I guess it all began that fateful night when my car broke down.

Recommended for: People who stumble upon their muse in Aisle 8 of Whole Foods.

Thriller Nothing wrong with putting a little food on the table, especially in these times of economic uncertainty.

Recommended for: Those who know only five adjectives, but know them really well.

Southern Novel of Black Misery Africans in America, cut your teeth on this literary staple. Slip on your sepia-tinted goggles and investigate the legacy of slavery that still reverberates to this day, the legacy of Reconstruction that still reverberates to this day, and crackers. Invent nutty transliterations of what you think slaves talked like. But hurry up — the hounds are a-­gittin’ closer!

Sample titles: “I’ll Love You Till the Gravy Runs Out and Then I’m Gonna Lick Out the Skillet”; “Sore Bunions on a Dusty Road.”

Southern Novel of White Misery, OR Southern Novel What race problem?

Sample titles: “The Birthing Stone”; “The Gettin’ Place.”

Social Realism You: A canny observer in a white suit and a fine cravat. The Culture: Just waiting for someone to explain it to itself. When these two krazy kidz get together, it’s zeitgeist! Dig in and tell people how they really live today. Convince the reader that your ear is attuned to the modern vernacular, that your nose sniffs the tang of changing mores, and that your fingers are on the pulse of our time, somewhere around the neck, to better choke the life out of it. Hold up a mirror to our society, or at least to the lives of book critics who will write that your book “holds up a mirror to our society.” You’re not done until you come up with at least one spot-on description that enters the national vocabulary. Here are some freebies to start you off: “cyber galoots,” “walking kabobs,” “electric ninnies.” But please, please, please — know when you’re too old to pull it off.

Sample titles: “Yonder Lies the Glittery City”; “Sotto Voce.”

Remember, this is only a partial list — there are literally dozens of kinds of books out there waiting for the right writer to come along. Step right up, and see what happens. It works for me.

I found and joined the Facebook group, Naked Girls Reading, without really knowing what it was, only that I was one of them. I admit. I read in bed. I’ll also admit, I don’t always wear pajamas.

But wait, read on.

This is a live reading series, where totally buck naked- not even a pasty- they claim. beautiful Burlesque dancing women read from banned books.

“Pinchbottom Burlesque debuted Naked Girls Reading Banned Books at Madame X on Friday, October 16. It was hosted by Nasty Canasta, with Gal Friday, GiGi La Femme, Jo Boobs, Legs Malone, Sapphire Jones and Naked Girls Reading creator, Michelle L’Amour. ”

I know. Great, isn’t it?

Now, I’d love to see some audience reaction photos.

Here, “Nasty Canasta reads And Tango Makes Three, the true story of Silo and Roy, a male penguin couple in the Central Park Zoo. The American Library Association deemed it the most banned book of 2009 and most challenged book of 2006 – 2008.”

Burlesque gets smart-assed.

God, I love New York.

Have you seen this story? Got to agree with the author on that one.
And then there’s this one: Yikes.

There is even a contest for the worst covers. Here’s the 2005 finalists.

Some bad book covers I found are funny because they’re out dated: like these
and some I have to say I like, you know, for the art.