Collected Miscellany

The NYTimes has an interesting article on authors who also blog, but before I get into it, let me point you to Julana’s good quote and recommendation on writing. Many of us lead “humble and uneventful” lives, and we need communities in whatever way they can be formed to share them with each other.

NYTimes reporter Tania Ralli quotes the same reason I’ve heard from other writers on the joys of blogging. “It is very satisfying to write something and get an immediate response to it,” said John Battelle, who calculated that last year he wrote 74,000 words for his book, and 125,000 words on his blog. “It is less satisfying to write a chapter and let it sit on the shelf for six months.”

Too much feedback can overwhelm some authors, but if blogging builds trust in readers, I think it’s worth the trouble. Still, there’s more to blogging for published authors:

Authors who have experimented with blogging in this way – and there are still only a handful – say they hope to create a sense of community around their work and to keep fans informed when a new book is percolating. The novelist Aaron Hamburger used his blog to write about research techniques he employed to set his coming book in Berlin. Poppy Z. Brite, another novelist, has written about her characters on her blog as though they have a life of their own, not just the one springing from her imagination.

Blogging on the characters in a book? That’s cool. It’s back-story and instant sequel combined. Boundless opportunities for historic fiction, in which a writer may not believe he can include several great points of research in the story but can blog them.

Do blogs sell books? The article says it’s too early to say, but columnist James Watkins believes blogs are meant to sell books, in part. Number 4 on his “Top Ten Column-writing Secrets Revealed,” is shameless self-promotion. “I’m not above using excerpts from my 14 books for columns, and then shamelessly mentioning that they are available at www.amazon.com. And if you have a Web site with your best (?) columns archived, you can make references to it through out the entire column.”

Close Case is Alafair Burke’s third Samantha Kincaid mystery (see here for #1 and here for #2) and if you liked the first two, the third won’t disappoint. Those coming to Burke, and Kincaid, for the first time will find a interesting legal mystery with a feisty female lead character trying, often unsuccessfully, to balance her work and her personal life.

The plot is kicked off with the apparent murder of Percy Crenshaw, a popular investigative report, on the same night protests turned into riots. Samantha Kincaid, a 32-year old deputy District Attorney in Portland, is called in when suspects are found. It appears that two young thugs got high on meth and beat Crenshaw to death in a car-jacking gone bad. Tension builds when the partner of her newly moved-in boyfriend, police detective Chuck Forbes, pushes the interrogation to the limit and perhaps beyond in order to get a confession. Kincaid knows that her case hangs on the confession and that the police tactics could lead to it being thrown out as inadmissible. Once again she finds herself trying to balance her relationships with the police detectives (especially her boyfriend) with the responsibilities of her job in the D.A. office. And as in the first two books in this series, the original case unravels and Kincaid is forced to find out the truth the hard way.

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I hope everyone is enjoying their Fourth of July weekend. I have had a great time with family and friends.

I wanted to send out this last minute reminder about our short story contest. The deadline is midnight tonight. There is still time to win fame and fortune (or at least a free book). So send in your entries to contest[at]collectedmiscellany.com. Details on the contest here.

Happy Fourth of July!

Some literary types (see here for example) are upset about movie marketing invading the book world. Well, let me admit something: the marketing must have worked on some level because I purchased the book (of course the 30% off helped).

I guess I don’t understand the problem. Do marketing gimmicks ruin a good book? Are they somehow illegitimate? It seems to me if the book is good, how it is marketed is beside the point. Of course, if the marketing works and more people read a good book, then great. If the book is bad and people are suckered into reading a bad book, well such is the price of having choices.

I for one found the “The Matrix meets Alias” tag intriguing, but it reminded me more of The Highlander. I have no illusions that this is some grand work of literature for the ages, but can’t one enjoy a little fun? If The Traveler becomes the next Da Vinci Code or Harry Potter I don’t see the harm.

The New York Times ran a front page story today on the acquittal of Richard Scrushy, former CEO of Health South. Despite the testimony of numerous former lieutenants, Scrushy walked. It broke the government’s winning streak against malfeasant executives. The trial was set in Birmingham, Alabama, Mr. Scrushy’s hometown. During his days running Health South, Scrushy was a cornerstone of Birmingham society, throwing lavish parties, giving big gobs of cash to charities. I think we can anticipate a book deal and possible movie of the week tie-in. Judith Regan comes to mind as the ideal publisher for Scrushy. Fortunately for all concerned, ReganBooks is still in New York. Birmingham is just a few hours by air from the throbbing heart of Bookdom. This won’t be easy to pull off from Los Angeles for several reasons: all flights originating in the South begin and end in Atlanta. If your travel plans don’t include Atlanta, you’d better drive. (2) Sarbanes-Oxley forbids loans to corporate officers. Travel advances may or may not be construed as loans. Ask your financial advisor; they’re in Atlanta. (3) Congress is considering legislation limiting the number of exploitative books each publisher may produce in a given year ( fiscal year). Special allowances are made for members of Congress, their memoirs, works of scholarship, and the quarterly Beige Book issued by the Fed. If you’re looking for a copy of the Beige Book, there’s one in the Atlanta Public Library.

Let’s hope there are plenty of marketing toys to go with the Scrushy book. One idea is to have Pamela Anderson on the cover. There are no other ideas. All I can say is, make mine a Scrushy.

A couple of weeks ago I discussed Paul Johnson’s very brief volume on George Washington. In that review I noted:

Johnson’s take on Washington is popular history (see here for more). If one is looking for tightly argued scholarship and debates about the latest paper this is not the place.

This is apparently more true than I had thought. In the current issue of the Weekly Standard Gordon S. Wood reviews both the Johnson and the Christopher Hitchens bio of Thomas Jefferson. Wood, who is a brilliant historian and fully capable of writing engaging popular history himself, takes Johnson to task for repetition and historical inaccuracies:

With only 30,000 words or so to work with, the authors of these little biographies should not want to waste any. But unfortunately Johnson does. He repeats himself several times, telling us more than once that George III never left Britain and never saw the sea until he was 34, and doing the same with the story of Washington addressing his officers at Newburgh in 1783, fumbling with his glasses and telling them that he had grown nearly blind in service to his country. Such repetitions are nothing, however, compared with Johnson’s many mistakes and unreliable statements, which suggest that the book was hastily written and poorly edited and vetted . . . One or two serious errors might be forgivable, but with so many mistakes and exaggerated statements the reader’s confidence in the reliability of the biography is undermined.

Not being an expert on George Washington I obviously didn’t notice the errors, but I admit I am disappointed in Johnson for his sloppiness.

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