Posts
Elizabeth Zelvin
I spent last Sunday at the Brooklyn Book Festival, an ambitious annual event that describes itself as follows:
The Brooklyn Book Festival is the largest free literary event in New York City presenting an array of literary stars and emerging authors who represent the exciting world of literature today. One of America’s premier book festivals, this hip, smart, diverse gathering attracts thousands of book lovers of all ages.
This year’s luminaries included Larry McMurtry, Terry McMillan, Jennifer Egan, John Sayles, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter Mosley, Jean Valentine, Jules Feiffer, and Pete Hamill. But I didn’t hear any of them speak. The New York chapters of both Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime had tables. Between the two, I was on my feet for several hours, schmoozing with both the passing book lovers and my fellow writers. I handed out at least a hundred bookmarks for Death Will Extend Your Vacation, my new book, which won’t be out till next spring. I even sold a decent number of my already published books.
Typically, given New York’s increasingly fickle weather (global warming doesn’t mean it’s always hot—it increases extremes), the day started out gray and blustery and gradually became one of those clear, sparkling fall afternoons for which New York is famous.
At the Sisters in Crime booth, the hot ticket item was Murder New York Style: Fresh Slices, an anthology of crime stories by chapter members, each set in a part of New York City (within the five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island) that probably doesn’t appear in any tourist guide. My story’s setting, the church basements of AA throughout the city, certainly doesn’t. Though a lifelong New Yorker, I had never heard of the Morbid Anatomy Library. One formerly well-kept secret, the High Line, is rapidly becoming a tourist attraction. Since its stunning renovation as a block-wide “mile-and-a-half-long elevated park, running through the West Side neighborhoods of the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea and Clinton/Hell's Kitchen,” it’s rapidly becoming a favorite of both locals and visitors. Every guest I’ve had from out of town or another country in the past year has been eager to see it. Anyhow, the settings have quite a range, and the anthology, which actually debuted at the Festival, sold briskly at a special event price.
Rock bottom bargains were the order of the day at the MWA table too, where my fellow authors included Rosemary Harris, Charles Salzberg, and Sheila York. There’s no doubt in my mind that thanks to Amazon, the amount people will pay for a book, especially a hardcover, has been permanently lowered. But as veteran self-promoting authors (and that means all of us) know, selling books is not necessarily the most important item on the agenda at a book event. We’re building readership every time we hand out a bookmark or encourage someone who says, “I’ll get it at the library” or “I’ll get it for my Kindle.” I had a chance to catch up with author Grace F. Edwards, who I wish still came regularly to MWA and SinC meetings. Rosemary had a productive chat on behalf of MWA with the author of the book publishing guide on About.com. Sheila got to meet a fan who squealed with delight to find that she could finally read the sequel to the first book in Sheila’s series, which she adored. That’s a peak experience for any author, on top of the pleasure of an afternoon in the sun, schmoozing with fellow writers and people who love books.
Larry McMurtry, Susan Isaacs, and me
I just learned this morning that my picture appears in illustrious company in an article about the Festival on About.com.
Showing posts with label Rosemary Harris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rosemary Harris. Show all posts
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Naming "Baby Book Harris"
by Rosemary Harris, guest blogger
When Pushing Up Daisies was released last year I found myself fielding lots of questions and comments about a certain television show with a similarly catchy title. Frighteningly enough, an early version of my book cover even looked a bit like the show’s ads which haunted me at every bus stop in New York City.
I think I was gracious about it. My favorite “no, that’s not me” experience was with a gentleman at a library talk in Connecticut who refused to believe I was not connected with the program. After five full minutes of denying that I had a Hollywood deal, I simply thanked him and agreed that, yes, my mother was very proud of me.
There’s also a story behind the title of my second book, The Big Dirt Nap, which hits stores this week. (I love saying and writing that – hits stores – as if they’re being flung out of moving vehicles and miraculously land on bookshelves in stores.) There was some drama concerning the title. The working title was Corpse Flower, which everyone agreed didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. I hadn’t said it out loud much (just typed it) and when I did, for some reason, I was reminded of Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond saying “Ethel Thayer” over and over again. It had to go.
Much to the dismay of my editor, I rejected most other botanical titles as either too cutesy, too obvious or too excruciatingly nonsensical, e.g. Stalking the Corpse Flower – but it was getting late in the day. I remembered working with a man who told me that the name on his birth certificate was Baby Boy Johnson, because his mother couldn’t decide what to name him. (It’s still his nickname and far more colorful than the name she eventually gave him.) I started to think of my book as Baby Book Harris.
Weeks passed. The natives were getting restless. I finally came up with Dirt Nap. Some people loved it; others went “hunh?” Some thought it was too angry, too edgy, too obscure. (I’m eternally grateful to Julia Spencer-Fleming for being one of those who got the joke.) Still, people in-house were not 100% convinced.
Enter Hector DeJean, publicist extraordinaire, film buff, and quite coincidentally having the same name as the ambitious hotel bouncer/security guard in my book, who saved the day by saying five words. (Hector’s a man of few words.) “How about adding The Big?”
Eureka! The Big Dirt Nap. It knocked off some of the hard edges without making it totally wussy, and quietly paid homage to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep -- always nice to acknowledge the masters. I liked it. Sales and marketing liked it. For all I know, people in the mailroom were polled too. And on February 17, I hope that you like it.
Rosemary Harris is the author of the Dirty Business Mystery series. The first title, Pushing Up Daisies, was a Mystery Guild Selection and was named to Library Journal's Best First Fiction List for 2008. Please visit www.rosemaryharris.com for more information.
When Pushing Up Daisies was released last year I found myself fielding lots of questions and comments about a certain television show with a similarly catchy title. Frighteningly enough, an early version of my book cover even looked a bit like the show’s ads which haunted me at every bus stop in New York City.I think I was gracious about it. My favorite “no, that’s not me” experience was with a gentleman at a library talk in Connecticut who refused to believe I was not connected with the program. After five full minutes of denying that I had a Hollywood deal, I simply thanked him and agreed that, yes, my mother was very proud of me.
There’s also a story behind the title of my second book, The Big Dirt Nap, which hits stores this week. (I love saying and writing that – hits stores – as if they’re being flung out of moving vehicles and miraculously land on bookshelves in stores.) There was some drama concerning the title. The working title was Corpse Flower, which everyone agreed didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. I hadn’t said it out loud much (just typed it) and when I did, for some reason, I was reminded of Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond saying “Ethel Thayer” over and over again. It had to go.
Much to the dismay of my editor, I rejected most other botanical titles as either too cutesy, too obvious or too excruciatingly nonsensical, e.g. Stalking the Corpse Flower – but it was getting late in the day. I remembered working with a man who told me that the name on his birth certificate was Baby Boy Johnson, because his mother couldn’t decide what to name him. (It’s still his nickname and far more colorful than the name she eventually gave him.) I started to think of my book as Baby Book Harris.
Weeks passed. The natives were getting restless. I finally came up with Dirt Nap. Some people loved it; others went “hunh?” Some thought it was too angry, too edgy, too obscure. (I’m eternally grateful to Julia Spencer-Fleming for being one of those who got the joke.) Still, people in-house were not 100% convinced.Enter Hector DeJean, publicist extraordinaire, film buff, and quite coincidentally having the same name as the ambitious hotel bouncer/security guard in my book, who saved the day by saying five words. (Hector’s a man of few words.) “How about adding The Big?”
Eureka! The Big Dirt Nap. It knocked off some of the hard edges without making it totally wussy, and quietly paid homage to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep -- always nice to acknowledge the masters. I liked it. Sales and marketing liked it. For all I know, people in the mailroom were polled too. And on February 17, I hope that you like it.
Rosemary Harris is the author of the Dirty Business Mystery series. The first title, Pushing Up Daisies, was a Mystery Guild Selection and was named to Library Journal's Best First Fiction List for 2008. Please visit www.rosemaryharris.com for more information.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Using Our Words
Elizabeth Zelvin
A feature of contemporary parenting as practiced by generations younger than mine that always tickles me is the way parents deal with temper tantrums by telling a screaming toddler, “Use your words.” It’s a pithy definition of what writers do.
This piece occurred to me as I sat around the breakfast table at a country inn in Oakmont, PA with two writer friends, Rosemary Harris and Barbara D’Amato,
with whom I appeared at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop Festival of Mystery. It’s always great fun to schmooze with other writers, and we got to talking about what different kinds of writers do and how it’s not as easy as it looks to the people who perennially tell writers, “I’ve got a great idea, why don’t you write it and we’ll split the profits.”
I’ve done a significant amount of writing in four distinct genres, or five if you count short stories separately for novels: fiction, poetry, songwriting, and academic or professional writing—six if you count blogging, which I consider a form of journalism, though for some bloggers it’s rather a form of journaling, not at all the same thing.
As someone said at breakfast, it’s marvelous that there are so many words in the English language that each writer comes up with something unique on any given theme. Aspiring fiction writers don’t always realize this. Newcomers sometimes worry that if they send their manuscripts out to agents and editors, these professionals may steal their uncopyrighted material. I’m told this sometimes happens with movie pitches in Hollywood, but it makes veteran novelists laugh.
One, there are proverbially only seven original plots.
Two, the ideas are the easy part: imagination, craft, organization, and perseverance in putting the words on paper (or on screen) are what distinguishes the writer from the wannabe. (Note that this pejorative term becomes less ugly when defined by the writer’s ability to follow through and complete a work, not by publication status.)
Three, I've met at least one writer who expressed concern that his manuscript, also about a recovering substance abuser in lower Manhattan, might coincidentally be too similar to Death Will Get You Sober. I assured him it didn't worry me. I believe someone else has about the same chance of coming up with my characters, my dialogue, and my voice as those monkeys who are supposed to type Shakespeare’s plays if they keyboard long enough.
Poetry, a craft I’ve been practicing for more than thirty years, allows the individual writer to create a unique work by using fewer rather than more words. The challenge is to tell a story (or paint a word picture, depending on what kind of poem one writes) in 100 to 200 words if it’s a typical free verse one-page lyric poem, in seventeen syllables (three lines divided five-seven-five) if it’s a haiku.
Song lyrics are often equated with poems, but in my experience, the crafts of songwriting and writing poetry are distinct. Without demonstrating it here, I can assert with confidence that I can pair songs and poems I’ve written on a single theme—alcoholism, love lost or found, and death, for example—in which I address the theme in two entirely different voices and ways of using words. The power of good songwriting is not only that, like poetry, it’s condensed, but that it expresses what the writer wants to say not in the most original words but in the simplest and most basic words of one and two syllables, while managing to give this simplicity a fresh twist and depth of emotion that can move listeners in much the same way as a poem moves hearers or readers.
In contrast to all of these storytelling genres, professional writing requires the writer to use specialized language—a jargon or, more kindly, idiom—with a precision that will make it perfectly comprehensible to any colleague in the same profession—and do so without telling any stories at all that aren’t true.
A feature of contemporary parenting as practiced by generations younger than mine that always tickles me is the way parents deal with temper tantrums by telling a screaming toddler, “Use your words.” It’s a pithy definition of what writers do.
This piece occurred to me as I sat around the breakfast table at a country inn in Oakmont, PA with two writer friends, Rosemary Harris and Barbara D’Amato,
with whom I appeared at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop Festival of Mystery. It’s always great fun to schmooze with other writers, and we got to talking about what different kinds of writers do and how it’s not as easy as it looks to the people who perennially tell writers, “I’ve got a great idea, why don’t you write it and we’ll split the profits.”I’ve done a significant amount of writing in four distinct genres, or five if you count short stories separately for novels: fiction, poetry, songwriting, and academic or professional writing—six if you count blogging, which I consider a form of journalism, though for some bloggers it’s rather a form of journaling, not at all the same thing.
As someone said at breakfast, it’s marvelous that there are so many words in the English language that each writer comes up with something unique on any given theme. Aspiring fiction writers don’t always realize this. Newcomers sometimes worry that if they send their manuscripts out to agents and editors, these professionals may steal their uncopyrighted material. I’m told this sometimes happens with movie pitches in Hollywood, but it makes veteran novelists laugh.
One, there are proverbially only seven original plots.
Two, the ideas are the easy part: imagination, craft, organization, and perseverance in putting the words on paper (or on screen) are what distinguishes the writer from the wannabe. (Note that this pejorative term becomes less ugly when defined by the writer’s ability to follow through and complete a work, not by publication status.)
Three, I've met at least one writer who expressed concern that his manuscript, also about a recovering substance abuser in lower Manhattan, might coincidentally be too similar to Death Will Get You Sober. I assured him it didn't worry me. I believe someone else has about the same chance of coming up with my characters, my dialogue, and my voice as those monkeys who are supposed to type Shakespeare’s plays if they keyboard long enough.
Poetry, a craft I’ve been practicing for more than thirty years, allows the individual writer to create a unique work by using fewer rather than more words. The challenge is to tell a story (or paint a word picture, depending on what kind of poem one writes) in 100 to 200 words if it’s a typical free verse one-page lyric poem, in seventeen syllables (three lines divided five-seven-five) if it’s a haiku.
Song lyrics are often equated with poems, but in my experience, the crafts of songwriting and writing poetry are distinct. Without demonstrating it here, I can assert with confidence that I can pair songs and poems I’ve written on a single theme—alcoholism, love lost or found, and death, for example—in which I address the theme in two entirely different voices and ways of using words. The power of good songwriting is not only that, like poetry, it’s condensed, but that it expresses what the writer wants to say not in the most original words but in the simplest and most basic words of one and two syllables, while managing to give this simplicity a fresh twist and depth of emotion that can move listeners in much the same way as a poem moves hearers or readers.
In contrast to all of these storytelling genres, professional writing requires the writer to use specialized language—a jargon or, more kindly, idiom—with a precision that will make it perfectly comprehensible to any colleague in the same profession—and do so without telling any stories at all that aren’t true.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Soon-To-Be-Published
Rosemary Harris (Guest Blogger)
The gestation period for an African elephant (loxodonta Africana) is 22 months. I can top that. Even if I only go back as far as the date I got my agent, (as opposed to when I finished my book) I've been expecting for 27 months - with another 5 months to go.
I don't know this information first-hand, but I understand nausea, cravings, crying jags, moodswings, and insomnia all feature prominently in the expectant mother's life. What a minute! I DO know that stuff first-hand, I’m soon-to-be-published.
My story goes back even further. I never dreamed I’d write a book, but once I did, my husband encouraged me to find an agent. That in itself took about a year. I sent the manuscript to the first agent I’d heard of (insert eyeroll) and then waited six months for her to get back to me. Unsurprisingly, it was a rejection. Foolishly, I let that scenario repeat itself two more times before I did the math and calculated that at that rate I could be ninety before I connected with someone who recognized my book for what it was – a good, publishable mystery.
I rewrote the first chapter on a fourteen hour flight from Hong Kong to New York, with one leg suspended in the air due to an accident in Beijing the day before. I don’t know if writing in that position caused more blood to flow to my brain, but by the time we landed, I knew I’d made it better.
Instead of waiting around like I’d done in the past, I sent the new first chapter and a letter to ten agents I’d identified as being cozy-friendly. Within two weeks, three of them had gotten back to me. I chose the one who seemed like the best fit for me, and I was right.
So, the bubbly flowed in the Harris household and I engaged in what my husband affectionately refers to as the “Rosemary dance,” probably because he’s too kind to use the word goofy. In my naiveté, I thought the book would be sold in sixty days and likely be released the following year. (Insert second eyeroll.)
Between “it’s summer and everyone’s away,” “it’s Frankfurt and no one’s here,” “it’s the holidays, sales conference, fill in the blank..” I began to cobble together quite an image of the average book editor – tanned, athletic, a cross between Anna Wintour and Joan Crawford, constantly jetting off to one glamorous location or another, only stopping to check her mail periodically and break the hearts of little people like me.
By the time I got my book deal, another nine months had passed. I was beginning to sense a pattern of hurry up and wait, but I was still ecstatic. More champagne! More goofy gyrations! After two agonizing months, the long-awaited meeting with my editor took place. I was instructed to meet Anna/Joan at a cool restaurant in Manhattan. Since I was early (overeager?) I was ushered to her preferred table in the back to wait.
I’ve grown to love MM dearly, and I don’t think she’ll mind if I say she is not especially athletic and definitely not tanned. We had a wonderful lunch – she loved my character, my book, and me. She thought it needed very little editing – “yes,” she said, poking at her grilled watermelon, “we’ll release it Winter 2008.” What?? It was summer ’06, what was she talking about? “Well, these things take time.” Apparently. The only good news was that Winter 2008, didn’t mean December 2008.
For the first six months I gnashed my teeth. Friends were starting to lose interest, or worse, thought I was delusional, like that writer who lied and told his friends he was going to be on Oprah. Then a veteran publishing person said to me “Enjoy it. You’re soon-to-be-published. Anything can happen.” He was right. Hell, maybe I could get on Oprah. Or Victoria Beckham could be spotted in an airport with my book. The possibilities were limitless.
Since then, I have embraced my STBP status, going to shows, joining groups, and more importantly learning from the generous writers who’ve been down this road before and have been kind enough to share information with a newcomer. When you’re STBP the world is your oyster.
When Rosemary Harris finally does deliver, happily it won’t be a 260 lb calf, it will be a 290 page book, Pushing Up Daisies, her debut novel and the first in the Dirty Business Mystery series. St Martin's Minotaur, February 2008. (She does not really think she’s going to be on Oprah.)
The gestation period for an African elephant (loxodonta Africana) is 22 months. I can top that. Even if I only go back as far as the date I got my agent, (as opposed to when I finished my book) I've been expecting for 27 months - with another 5 months to go.
I don't know this information first-hand, but I understand nausea, cravings, crying jags, moodswings, and insomnia all feature prominently in the expectant mother's life. What a minute! I DO know that stuff first-hand, I’m soon-to-be-published.
My story goes back even further. I never dreamed I’d write a book, but once I did, my husband encouraged me to find an agent. That in itself took about a year. I sent the manuscript to the first agent I’d heard of (insert eyeroll) and then waited six months for her to get back to me. Unsurprisingly, it was a rejection. Foolishly, I let that scenario repeat itself two more times before I did the math and calculated that at that rate I could be ninety before I connected with someone who recognized my book for what it was – a good, publishable mystery.
I rewrote the first chapter on a fourteen hour flight from Hong Kong to New York, with one leg suspended in the air due to an accident in Beijing the day before. I don’t know if writing in that position caused more blood to flow to my brain, but by the time we landed, I knew I’d made it better.
Instead of waiting around like I’d done in the past, I sent the new first chapter and a letter to ten agents I’d identified as being cozy-friendly. Within two weeks, three of them had gotten back to me. I chose the one who seemed like the best fit for me, and I was right.
So, the bubbly flowed in the Harris household and I engaged in what my husband affectionately refers to as the “Rosemary dance,” probably because he’s too kind to use the word goofy. In my naiveté, I thought the book would be sold in sixty days and likely be released the following year. (Insert second eyeroll.)
Between “it’s summer and everyone’s away,” “it’s Frankfurt and no one’s here,” “it’s the holidays, sales conference, fill in the blank..” I began to cobble together quite an image of the average book editor – tanned, athletic, a cross between Anna Wintour and Joan Crawford, constantly jetting off to one glamorous location or another, only stopping to check her mail periodically and break the hearts of little people like me.
By the time I got my book deal, another nine months had passed. I was beginning to sense a pattern of hurry up and wait, but I was still ecstatic. More champagne! More goofy gyrations! After two agonizing months, the long-awaited meeting with my editor took place. I was instructed to meet Anna/Joan at a cool restaurant in Manhattan. Since I was early (overeager?) I was ushered to her preferred table in the back to wait.
I’ve grown to love MM dearly, and I don’t think she’ll mind if I say she is not especially athletic and definitely not tanned. We had a wonderful lunch – she loved my character, my book, and me. She thought it needed very little editing – “yes,” she said, poking at her grilled watermelon, “we’ll release it Winter 2008.” What?? It was summer ’06, what was she talking about? “Well, these things take time.” Apparently. The only good news was that Winter 2008, didn’t mean December 2008.
For the first six months I gnashed my teeth. Friends were starting to lose interest, or worse, thought I was delusional, like that writer who lied and told his friends he was going to be on Oprah. Then a veteran publishing person said to me “Enjoy it. You’re soon-to-be-published. Anything can happen.” He was right. Hell, maybe I could get on Oprah. Or Victoria Beckham could be spotted in an airport with my book. The possibilities were limitless.
Since then, I have embraced my STBP status, going to shows, joining groups, and more importantly learning from the generous writers who’ve been down this road before and have been kind enough to share information with a newcomer. When you’re STBP the world is your oyster.
When Rosemary Harris finally does deliver, happily it won’t be a 260 lb calf, it will be a 290 page book, Pushing Up Daisies, her debut novel and the first in the Dirty Business Mystery series. St Martin's Minotaur, February 2008. (She does not really think she’s going to be on Oprah.)
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