Where Are We?

by Sheila Connolly

A recent post on the editorial page of the Boston Globe had me scratching my head.

What first caught my eye was a big image of the book cover of Jamaica Plain, a book by Colin Campbell, set in (you guessed it) Jamaica Plain.  To put this in perspective, if you wanted to put a paid ad with an image that size in the paper, it would cost you big, big bucks.  This was free advertising.

Jamaica Plain is a neighborhood of Boston, about four square miles, settled in sixteen-whatever. The opening line of the editorial reads "Colin Campbell has never set foot in Jamaica Plain, and it shows." The editor accuses Campbell of putting a raunchy nightclub in a sedate neighborhood, among other sins.  He's defending Jamaica Plain, and that's good.  He may also be a little miffed at Campbell for being an Englishman and writing about Boston.

I've met the author at a conference, and he's charming and funny and very clearly English—and I'm not talking snob English. He's writing fiction, about an English cop in Boston. Let me tell you:  I live a whole heck of a lot closer to Jamaica Plain than he does, and I couldn't find anything there if you paid me.  I think I've been there, but I'm not even sure.

Okay, I'm not the one writing about it. The real places I write about I usually (but not always) know pretty well.  I can tell you where the main streets and buildings are.  I can tell you how to take public transit, if there is any.  I can tell you what a blizzard or a drought looks like there, or what kinds of shops and homes line the streets.  I can usually tell you something about the history of the place and why it looks the way it does.

Why does it matter? 

I have heard it said that a writer has an unwritten contract with the reader, to be as accurate as possible about whatever he or she writes, be it geography or forensics or accents.  When you're writing about real places, how much do you owe the reader?  Can you insert a building where there is now an empty lot?  Can you rename major monuments?  Can you change the direction of the main streets? And how many people will know or care?

Apparently the Globe editor is defending his beloved town, and that's nice of him.  At the same time, he must like something about the book or he wouldn't have bothered to mention it at all (and provide all that nice free publicity).  Confession:  I own the book and have read it. I liked it, and I didn't wonder why the Jamaica Plain police station was here rather than there.  It was a good story.

That's the bottom line: just tell a good story.

(Much as I may like the guy and the book, I'm not going to give him any more free publicity.  If you want to find out more, look here.)

I'd much rather you looked at my book, Golden Malicious, coming October 1st. 

This is called Blatant SELF Promotion.

An Author’s Perspective on Reader Reviews

Elizabeth Zelvin

Death Will Get You Sober has gotten some orchids and some onions from reviewers since it came out in 2008. But with today’s emphasis on reader reviews and two free days on Amazon bringing me a whole new magnitude of readers (40,000 downloads of the e-edition), I’m privy to much more of what readers who are complete strangers to me think. And the feedback is just as contradictory as it ever was.

My experience is nothing new. There’s a wonderful passage in Little Women (1868) about the reception of Jo’s first novel:

Well, it was printed, and she got…plenty of praise and blame, both so much greater than she expected that she was thrown into a state of bewilderment from which it took her some time to recover.

"You said, Mother, that criticism would help me. But how can it, when it's so contradictory that I don't know whether I've written a promising book or broken all the ten commandments?" cried poor Jo… "This man says, `An exquisite book, full of truth, beauty, and earnestness. All is sweet, pure, and healthy.'" continued the perplexed authoress. "The next, `The theory of the book is bad, full of morbid fancies, spiritualistic ideas, and unnatural characters.'… Another says, `It's one of the best American novels which has appeared for years.' (I know better than that), and the next asserts that `Though it is original, and written with great force and feeling, it is a dangerous book.' “

I have no doubt that the author was quoting from her own experience. Knowing I’m in the august company of Louisa May Alcott helps me maintain a philosophical attitude toward my own contradictory and sometimes wildly disparate reviews. The excerpts below all appear on Amazon, and are written, without exception, by readers unknown to me in person or online.

This was ok and I read about half of it before I realized that I was just plodding along through it and not really enjoying it

interesting point of view. very enjoyable easy read. I would read the whole series. It's easy to like the main character.

an eye opener. I found it very enlightening and refreshingly honest perspective. Throw in a few deaths of person's who society normally looks the other way when they pass and it was a very good read. I think you will be surprised how it unfolds.

The book was entertaining, good story, good dialogue, good pace. It kept me interested. I liked the way it wove in AA and Al-anon without hitting us over the head with it.

The tale is well-written and the characters are vivid and real.

an interesting but flawed book. The writing is weak. The dialogue is weak. Why don’t the main characters just report the nastiness to the police and stay the hell out of the way?

a thought provoking trip through the process of alcoholic recovery. a bang-up finish.

Bruce is an interesting character and his struggles ring true. The relationships between Bruce and his sponsor, and Bruce, Jimmy and Barbara were realistic I found the book to have a good mix of mystery and 12-step philosophy. And the ending was satisfying.

Almost an insult to AA. a tedious read If you know nothing abut recovery or AA I can't even imagine what someone would think about.

This could have been a real "downer", but there were places where I actually chuckled. A serious subject, well addressed, well handled.

Enjoyable characters and an intriguing plot line make this novel a fun read.

A very moving, sad story. I recommend to anyone who has a friend or loved one with an addiction problem of any kind.

It was boring! Did the author REALLY think ordinary people want/need to know all that information about AA? Just made me want to go to the kitchen and pour a glass of wine.

this one kept me reading. I had to find out who done it!

Very well written. The characters were endearing where you want to know if Bruce stays sober,

Creatively funny about the serious side of alcoholism...found myself cheering for the main character in his fight to remain sober. Interesting mix of characters and plot twists.

This is an excellent mystery with multiple layers and a good plot.

Very entertaining and easy to read book. Provided insight into the 12-step program.

I enjoyed the characters and their quirks and complex personalities. It was hard to put the book down and I found myself liking Bruce more as the story unfolded.

When a book keeps me up past midnight....you know I like it!

kind of boring. didn’t capture my attention.

The characters were believable and the story kept you interested

I found this book unrealistic. Characters did not seem believable.

draws you in from the beginning Suffused with wit and believable banter, The book is very well written; it moves quickly; its use of profanity is appropriate rather than gratuitous. almost a masterpiece. The ending fizzled.

Some truthful insight into the life of a recovering alcoholic. Simple enough to relate to and complex enough to keep me reading. I enjoyed the character development. Good to the end.

The book went downhill at the end.

It's an entertaining story line educational about the process of getting sober and AA. the story line of multiple murders and the story of recovery are completely linked so it isn't a preachy book.

Over the past ten years, I’ve developed some degree of the rhinoceros hide necessary to sustain a literary career. Only one of the many reviews actually stung:

She writes as someone on the periphery of the recovery movement and seemed to lack any real understanding of the dynamics.

Since I’ve spent twenty-five years working professionally with alcoholics and addicts and those who love them and have been very, very careful not to make public whether or not I have any personal connection with recovery, I can’t prevent this reader from thinking what she thinks, but I don’t have to agree. I’d rather take the word of the reader “coming up on thirty five years of continuous sobriety”.who wrote:


You…really seem to get it... a delightful read.



I once heard a senior editor with one of the big publishing houses say that the best way to deal with reviews is to ignore the bad ones and make the most of the good ones. So here are a few more that express the kind of praise I dreamed of:

Great read!!! I laughed and cried and could not put this down.

Heart warming and eye opening in many ways.

This was a delightful read that kept my attention throughout. I even learned something about alcoholism and recovery

Murder, suspense, funny all wrapped in one.

Etiquette for Authors

by Sandra Parshall

Ever get the feeling that your self-promotion is annoying people rather than enticing them to read your books? How much is too much?

Do you wonder what – if anything – you should do when you get a conference panel assignment that’s totally wrong for you?

Do you wish you knew the secret to getting book blurbs from writers you admire?

We addressed these questions and more in a program on author etiquette at last Saturday’s meeting of the Sisters in Crime Chesapeake Chapter. Writer Donna Andrews (the Meg Langslow mysteries), bookseller Eileen McGervey of One More Page in Arlington, VA, John Betancourt of Wildside Press, and I made up the informal panel, with Malice Domestic programmer Barb Goffman offering advice about conferences and other chapter members chiming in. I’ll summarize a few of the topics we discussed. Don’t take it as a personal insult when I use the pronoun “you” to refer to all writers. However, if the shoe fits...

Writers marketing mostly to other writers: This bad habit, fostered by the internet, doesn't do much to build your readership.

Most mystery authors participate on multiple listservs for writers. When you post the same news on all of them at the same time, we’re going to get a little tired of seeing it. We probably won’t mind if it’s the happy news of a sale, something your fellow authors can enjoy celebrating with you. But if you’re doing a 30-day blog tour, think twice before you post a notice every single day on every writers’ list you belong to. As chief moderator of the Sisters in Crime national listserv for seven years, I’ve received many private complaints about this sort of thing. Yes, technically it’s allowed under the rules. But when other members are begging the moderator to shut you up, you are not making a good impression.

Writers are readers too. But we shouldn’t be the primary objects of your promotion efforts. Other writers are your professional colleagues. We don’t want to be bombarded with your sales pitches on lists where we go for support and information about professional matters.

So where can you reach readers? Facebook, GoodReads and Twitter are the most popular venues at the moment – but all are rigged with pitfalls for writers. Again, overdoing the hard sell will work against you with your followers. Facebook is a social networking site, and while readers will “like” your author page and “friend” you on your profile page if they’re interested in your writing, they want you to talk about other things too. They want to hear about your pets, about funny experiences you’ve had, about the terrific book (by someone else) you’ve just finished reading and the movie you saw over the weekend. Then when you have a new book coming out, or you’re appearing at an event, you can announce it without fear of a negative reaction. If you use GoodReads, be sure you know the etiquette of this somewhat tricky site, and remember that it’s a place for readers to talk about books with other readers, not a place for writers to hawk their own books. 

Social networking is an art, and some writers hate it or can’t get the hang of it, but if you know how to do it right, it will help you sell books in the long run. (I happen to love Facebook, by the way. Please feel free to send me a friend request and to like my Sandra Parshall Books page. But I have made my share of cringe-worthy faux pas there and probably offended any number of people without even realizing I've done it.)

Other obnoxious forms of self-promotion: Be careful about pressing your promotional materials, unsolicited, into the hands of strangers in public places, hospital waiting rooms, doctors’ offices, etc. Some people may be delighted, but others will be offended. You don’t know these people. You don’t know what kind of mood they’re in, what the state of their health is, what’s happening in their lives and what worries are preying on their minds. You might not get the reaction you’re hoping for when you intrude and try to sell them something.

Ask permission before leaving your promotional material in other people’s professional offices. Most libraries also want you to ask permission before leaving anything. Some libraries don’t allow authors to put out bookmarks, cards, etc., and if you do it without so much as asking, you’re making enemies on that library’s staff.

Remember that nobody cares about your new book the way you do. Not even your mother. Not even your spouse. If your book is all you ever talk about, if you’re selling every waking second, wherever you are, people will start avoiding you.

Bookseller contacts: Eileen pointed out the all too common error of e-mailing to request a bookstore event and referring the bookseller to your Amazon page for more information. In case you haven’t heard, booksellers regard Amazon as an arch rival.

Bookstore events are unpredictable – even bestselling authors talk about signings where three people showed up, or none at all. Some major publishers have decided book tours are a waste of time and money. Discuss your ideas for promoting the event with the bookseller and decide whether it’s likely to be successful for both of you.

Book clubs: The book discussion groups Eileen hosts at One More Page welcome author participation in person, by Skype or telephone. If you make yourself personally available to book clubs, those groups will be more likely to choose one of your books for discussion.

Requesting blurbs from other authors: Donna made the point that you should stay within your subgenre. Don’t ask an author of humorous cozies, like Donna, to blurb your gritty thriller. Ask a writer whose own work appeals to the audience you’re trying to reach. Be polite in your approach and remember that you're asking for a big favor; no busy author owes you the chunk of time required to read your book and produce a blurb. If your request is turned down, accept the rejection with good grace and understanding, then move on to someone else. Don’t rant about it on your Facebook page, naming the author and calling him/her an idiot.

The more books you publish and the more conferences you attend, the larger your circle of writer friends and acquaintances will be. It’s easier to ask for a blurb from someone you’ve met personally and whose own books have something in common with theirs.

Submissions to publishers and agents: John Betancourt’s Wildside Press sometimes receives submissions that lack crucial details – such as the author’s contact information. This guarantees that you won’t receive a response, and it marks you as an amateur. Be professional in all your dealings with publishers and agents, submitting clean, properly formatted material, described and categorized in your cover letter, along with your postal, e-mail, and website addresses. If someone asks for an exclusive reading, agree on a time limit that won’t leave you hanging endlessly. Again, don't rant publicly about rejections.

Conferences: Barb Goffman, who has been program chair for Malice Domestic for several years, assured us that programmers for the various mystery conferences do talk to each other and they do discuss the authors who act like prima donnas.

So what should you do if you write dark, gritty mysteries and you’ve been assigned to a panel aimed at fans of lighthearted cozies? Tell the programmer right away that you wouldn’t be comfortable on the panel, Barb advised – but be polite about it. Don’t be angry that the programmer hasn’t had time to read everything you’ve ever written, and don’t fire off an accusatory e-mail. “Tone is everything,” Barb said. A polite and timely request for a change will almost certainly be honored. If you’ve been on one too many panels about a particular topic, point that out in your author questionnaire when you register, and suggest other topics you would prefer.

Don’t make your travel arrangements until you have your program assignment, so you won’t have to turn down a panel because you have a non-refundable plane ticket and must leave before the panel takes place. If you do make your reservations early, or you have discovered that no airline has flights to your hometown on Sunday afternoon, make sure the programmer knows when you have to leave. Conference programmers are not mindreaders.

If you accept a panel, give it your all. Those people in the audience want to be entertained. They want you to be enthusiastic and down to earth. They want to like you, and if they do, they will be curious about your books. Answer every question as if you’ve never heard it before and think it’s absolutely brilliant. Don’t hog the microphone, or cut off other panelists, or act bored or condescending, or turn all your answers into a hard sell for your books. Don’t show up drunk. (It happens, and it’s not cute or funny.) Audience members notice bad behavior, and they’ll dislike you for it.

Guest blogging: Most bloggers will be happy to host you – if you make a request rather than a demand, if you make the request well in advance, if you produce original, entertaining material (not something you posted elsewhere two years ago), if you avoid doing a hard sell, and you turn it in on time and in pristine condition, with no typos and no weird formatting that has to be manually removed. Remember that many blogs, including Poe’s Deadly Daughters, schedule guests months in advance.

Don’t ask for a guest slot, then promptly forget about it. Learn how to use a calendar. The blog owner has reserved space for you, and you have an obligation to fill it. Send in your guest blog a week or more ahead of the date it’s scheduled to run.

Writers with traditional publishers should realize that their publicists often have no clue about the way blogs function. This is equally true of publicists with both small and large presses. Those of us at PDD often receive e-mails from publicists who want to schedule guest blogs on short notice, as little as a week or two. Publicists also have an annoying habit of insisting that everything go through them, with no direct contact between blog host and guest author. And some publicists seem to think they’re doing the blog owners a favor, instead of the other way around. It’s usually best for writers to make their own guest blogging arrangements and do it well in advance.

Our chapter members probably could have talked for another couple of hours about the etiquette of being a professional writer, especially as it relates to online activities. The internet has been both a blessing and a curse, offering us many new ways to promote our books while multiplying our chances of offending both readers and other writers and magnifying our every mistake.

What advice would you add to this list?

If you’re a writer, what mistakes have you made that still embarrass you? (Come on, ’fess up. We all have stories like that.)

If you’re a reader, what writerly behavior has annoyed you? And which writers do you consider gracious and pleasant?

Right Brain, Left Brain, No Brainer

Sharon Wildwind

In the last decade neuroscientists have been busy hooking machines to people, and then asking them to do everyday tasks. The point is to watch which brain areas light up, when, and to what degree, when we go through our daily lives. What they’ve found so far is that our brain gospels are, in fact, myths. What they haven’t found is what to do with this new information, or more importantly, how to defeat those firmly entrenched myths.

New brain reality #1: there is no right-brain/left-brain division

Our brains work because of the huge amount of connective tissue that links both sides of the brains. When we do something brainy both sides of the brain are involved in doing it.

New brain reality #2: so-called learning styles are task-dependent rather than global

VARK, VARK
No, that’s not the call of a rare bird, but it’s a myth that should be extinct. It’s the abbreviations for learning styles
Visual = learn by seeing
Auditory = learn by hearing
Read-Write = learn by reading and taking notes
Kinaesthetic = learn by doing

In reality, each new learning situation is different, influenced by what we have to learn, how much of it is to be learned, how soon we have to learn it, the surrounding environment, and to what purpose and how soon we put the new knowledge to use.

All of which plays havoc, without offering solutions, with the idea of any group learning, such as in classrooms or at conferences. Learning will be different for each person at the desks or in the meeting room. One-size-fits-all won't work. As I said, researchers have yet to figure out how to apply these new realities.

New brain reality #3: learning is not age-dependent, it is interest-and-hard-work dependent

Study after study has shown that people of all ages can learn difficult and complex material. There is no best time of life to learn mathematics, or a second language, or a new art like weaving or pottery.

London taxi drivers have to have The Knowledge, yes, in capital letters. This means an intimate knowledge of London’s driving geography, her streets, her roundabouts, even her back alleys. To get The Knowledge they don’t rely on maps or GPS. They ride scooters for hours and hours through London.

Hooking them up to brain machines after they have passed The Knowledge exam shows that the brains of London taxi drivers have developed larger areas related to spacial representations and navigations. This is true across age groups, and independent of what language the drivers speak as their first language.

New brain reality #4: brain-training games work — for about six weeks

Whether it’s Sudoku, cross-word puzzles, Scrabble, or video games, all of them, done regularly, improve that aspect of the brain intimately involved in the task. In Sudoko for example, it’s the ability to determine which figure will meet the rules to fill a 9 x 9 square with numbers.

Contrary to the pervasive myth, Sudoku doesn’t improve memory, it doesn’t translate into better thinking skills, and the effect fades in about six weeks. By that time, the brain has learned Sudoku, so it files that skill with other learned tasks like brushing our teeth, or wearing matching socks. Then it’s ready for a new challenge.

What does seem to work in this new reality?

Exercise and eat healthy in order to keep the brain’s blood vessels and blood supply in good shape.

Exercise and sleep enough in order for our muscles to act as the chemical factories they were intended to be. Exercise stimulates dozens of chemical-productions in the  muscles; sleep gives our bodies a chance to distribute those chemicals in the body.

Prevent or reduce head injuries. Every injury, no matter how small, produce scar tissue. Damage from repeated injuries are cumulative; scar tissue does not go away. Scar tissue decreases brain function. If that scar tissue develops on the connective tissues that connect the hemispheres, it’s particularly devastating.

Immerse the mind and body in activities that are multi-dimensional, textured, ever-changing, require a variety of sensory inputs, and, many days, drive us crazy.

I think that’s an accurate description of being a writer.

Quote for the week
It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
~ John Wooden, 1910 – 2010, American basketball player and coach

In Quest of the Blue Jay

by Julia Buckley

We don't get too many interesting birds on my street; aside from the little brown wrens and sparrows who show up to eat the food in my feeder, we get pairs of cardinals (always a day brightener) and some pigeons and, rarely, a hawk who has come far out of his territory looking for food. (We also get rabbits, who apparently like bird food).

But lately we've been hearing the call of the Blue Jay--that recognizable "Thief! Thief!" cry in which he identifies himself as a scavenger.  Blue Jays were always a common sight in the campgrounds of my childhood, where their blue wings would swoop in to check out campsite garbage cans or bits of bread dribbled by careless children.

But try as I might, I can't see the bird himself (right now there seems to be only one) and I am longing for that flash of blue.  His call woke me up this morning, but the leaves on our front mulberry tree still obscure any sight of birds within.

Jays are considered very intelligent birds, and while their diet consists of things like acorns, seeds, nuts, and corn, they will occasionally eat other things, even rarely stealing things from the nests of other birds.  They are so canny that they will occasionally mimic the cry of a hawk--either to test for the presence of an actual hawk in the area, or possibly to scare off other birds who would challenge them for food (wikipedia).

This is the cry that has been luring me out of sleep in the morning:

http://www.birdjam.com/birdsong.php?id=5

While Jays in the wild have not been observed using tools (as have Crows, now considered to be the most intelligent animals), they have used tools in captivity--"have been observed using strips of newspaper as tools to obtain food, while captive fledglings have been observed attempting to open the doors to their cages" (wikipedia).

I must admit that I miss the Blue Jay and many of the birds that I once saw regularly in my childhood travels.
I'm going to investigate ways that I can lure him out of his tree and watch that lovely azure flight which would feed my nostalgia and my creative soul.

The winner of the drawing for a copy of Gigi Pandian's Artifact is pibroch47. Please contact Gigi directly at gigi(at)gigipandian(dot)com.

Where Research Ends and Writing Begins

Gigi Pandian (Guest Blogger)

Like many other writers, I often find myself in danger of becoming stuck in the “research phase” of writing a book. Making sure a book is authentic and believable is a worthy goal, but not if the writer isn’t able to extract herself from gathering facts for long enough to write the book!

I write mysteries about a historian who solves present-day crimes linked to historical treasures, so I legitimately have to do a fair amount of research. However, when I first started writing a book, I took things too far. I got too caught up in the details. I wanted to write an adventure that combined British and Indian history in an unexpected way, but it would have taken years to reach the same expertise on the British East India Company as my protagonist, get a full understanding of Mughal art and jewelry, read all the legends in Scottish folklore…

My research epiphany came when I interviewed a historian. She commented that I was getting too bogged down in the details. When she reads fiction, she said, she doesn’t want to read the same footnoted details that exist in academic papers—she wants to get caught up in the story.

I’ve learned that I need to do enough research to have a solid conceptual understanding of a subject, plus some intriguing gems to sprinkle throughout the book, but I don’t need to have the same expertise as my characters. Doing too much research can actually backfire—easily leading to “info dumps” with too much scholarly information jammed into the pages without furthering the plot or adding depth to the story.

I like my balanced approach much better. It allows me to have fun with research, doing a combination of online, book, and in-person research—and it also lets me get to “the end.”

My first novel, Artifact, takes historian Jaya Jones from San Francisco to the British Library in London to an archaeological dig in the Highlands of Scotland. When I visited London, I made the effort to get a researcher pass and to spend a day in the British Library reading room with the India Office Records. That gave me an understanding of the library’s research materials and let me experience what it was like to do research there, as the characters in Artifact do. But I didn’t spend my whole trip there—though I admit it was tempting! When I got home, I consulted my sketches and got writing.

I knew I wanted to set my second novel in India. I already had an idea for the starting point of the story, but I didn’t yet know where it was going. As usual, I started reading fascinating history books. I spent a lot of time at the San Francisco Library reading about India and San Francisco at the turn of the previous century and about pirates (yes, the book is called Pirate Vishnu, coming from Henery Press in February 2014). In spite of my best intentions, it was only with great effort that I was able to pull myself away from those history books and start writing my own story.

On a trip to visit family in India during the time I was writing the book, I planned a couple of excursions that I thought would help me with book research. A funny thing happened to my grand research plans on that trip: I came up with a plot twist that became integral to the book, but it wasn’t because of one of the special research side-trips I’d planned. It was only because I was allowing my mind to wander, rather than being focused on research, that I was able to come up with the idea. The mind is a funny thing. I’m going to try my best to remember that as I begin researching my next novel…

Leave a comment this weekend to enter the drawing to win a copy of Artifact.

Gigi Pandian is the child of cultural anthropologists from New Mexico and the southern tip of India. After being dragged around the world during her childhood, she left a PhD program in favor of art school and now writes adventurous academic characters in the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt mystery series. Find Gigi online at www.gigipandian.com (or Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest).

Women in Academia

by Sheila Connolly

After my post last week about The Battle of the Sexes and the status of women in the 1970s, it is ironic that the Harvard Magazine included in its most recent issue the results of a recent Harvard University study of faculty gender distribution at Harvard.

The authors report: "Women now hold nearly 23 percent of the tenured professorships in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, more than double their 10.7 percent share of 20 years earlier . . . 127 of the 557 senior faculty members during the 2012-2013 academic year."

It gets worse:  among junior faculty "the female proportion has fluctuated between roughly 30 percent and 40 percent for nearly two decades." Mind you, this is at a time when the proportion of women earning doctorates, a general requirement for senior academic status, across diverse fields, has been rising. In 2010 the Washington Post reported that women had passed men in receiving doctoral degrees.  And women hold a 3:2 majority on both undergraduate and graduate education.

Guess what:  Harvard admits that they don't do very well at recruiting women. Worse, they recognize that they trail far behind many of their peer institutions at every step of the process of attracting and keeping qualified women faculty. I'm sorry, but I don't think that's an accident:  if Harvard really wanted to recruit qualified women for their faculty, they could. I hate to say it, but this whole discussion sounds depressingly like it did when I was at Harvard in the 1970s.  Harvard doesn't want to change.

And if that isn't enough, the capper is another (tiny) article in the same issue of the publication, saying that The Committee of the Equality of Women at Harvard, founded in 1988, decided that "its goals had been achieved and it will dissolve this year." Uh-huh.

As a dues-paying member of the community of writers, where I know a lot of very smart, hardworking women, I refuse to say that we are any less intelligent and capable than our male counterparts.  Maybe we're just smart enough to realize being a writer and hanging out with kindred spirits

is a heck of a lot more fun that sitting through Harvard faculty meetings.

COMING OCTOBER 1ST

The Cuckoo’s Calling: A Review

Elizabeth Zelvin

As every reader must have heard by now, JK Rowling was angry she got outed as the author of The Cuckoo’s Calling. I hope she gets over it soon, because in my opinion, she needn’t be, and not because she might as well laugh all the way to the bank.

The book is a private eye mystery purported to be by a first-time author with a military background. It’s not a thriller, by the way, though it’s been called by the more bankable term. Anyhow, in spite of great reviews, it was tanking as an unknown author’s debut. It didn’t even sell the couple of thousand copies sold that most midlist authors manage. And then the secret go tweeted, by the publisher’s lawyer’s girlfriend’s sister, if I remember correctly. That prompted an awful lot of people to quote the proverb, “Three people can keep a secret, if two of them or dead.” (Benjamin Franklin said it first; I saw it attributed to the Hell’s Angels the other day, evidence that our cultural history is on the skids.)

I say thank goodness for that tweet. Without it and the subsequent publicity, which of course shot the book to the top of the best seller lists, we, readers at large, and especially mystery readers, would never have discovered The Cuckoo’s Calling and would therefore have been deprived of a great pleasure. Nor could she possibly have made it a series—publication of sequels to books that fail is one of those things that even winning the lottery (which Rowling did, metaphorically, with the success of Harry Potter) can’t buy. I’m sure I’m only one of many thousands of readers thrilled to hear that Rowling is planning to give us more of her appealing PI, Cormoran Strike.

So what makes this book so wonderful? What had this increasingly picky reader grinning with pure pleasure as she read? For one thing, her protagonist, Strike, is smart, complex, and above all, endearing, as is his secretarial sidekick, Robin. Some readers don’t mind not having a character to love. Not me. Rowling’s first post-Potter book, a literary novel called The Casual Vacancy, failed for me for just that reason. It was deftly written and did a good job with the socioeconomic issues she made her underlying theme, but every one of her multiple point of view characters had, as my father used to say, “feet of clay.” (Image from the Old Testament, Book of Daniel; first known use 1814 according to one dictionary source.) If she’d written another of the same kind the next time, I probably wouldn’t have bothered reading the book.

In The Cuckoo’s Calling, Rowling again uses multiple POV. She even pulls off a prologue in omniscient third person by giving us the scene of the death that drives the plot. But makes the story work immeasurably better by giving the majority of the book to Strike and Robin. Strike is an interesting man. Strike’s history is to some extent backstory, but Rowling skillfully uses our knowledge of these things to deepen our empathy with Strike. Every time someone throws in Strike’s parentage, it increases the reader’s partisanship as those he encounters in the course of his investigation blunders tactlessly past his boundaries—though not past his guard—on this painful subject. She also keeps up the tension in his relationship with Robin, making it a successful subplot with plenty more to come as the series continues.

These are virtues of the book as a novel. It also succeeds brilliantly as a mystery. Strike is a few steps ahead of Robin, the police, and the reader all the way through the investigation. The latter is a trick I wish I could pull off myself, but I know the limitations of my talent as a plotter of mysteries. The Cuckoo’s Calling establishes Rowling as a world-class mystery writer. I imagine she wanted to see how well she could do as a writer without readers being influenced by her fame as the author of the Harry Potter books. For my money, she has nothing left to prove.

"Ebooks are driving powerful behavioral changes among book buyers”

by Sandra Parshall

“This is more than simply a format change. Ebooks are driving powerful behavioral changes among book buyers.”
--Jo Henry, director of Bowker Market Research

Bowker, Pew Research, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), and other book market trackers continue to document the relentless growth of ebooks, along with the parallel decline in print book sales, and the changing attitudes of book buyers/readers.

The study that gets the most attention – because it’s big, in the number of book buyers surveyed, and it’s comprehensive in the range of questions it asks – is Bowker’s U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Review. The latest study, based on information from almost 70,000 Americans who purchased books in 2012, is available in its exhaustive entirety from Bowker for $999, but the findings most important to writers, publishers, and booksellers have been reported piecemeal in various publications and on book-related websites.

Here’s what I’ve gleaned from different sources:

By the end of 2012, online retailers held 44% of the overall book market, up from 39% in 2011.

Bookstore chains held less than 20% of the market in 2012.

Ebooks grew to 11% of the market, up from 7% in 2011.

Readers who own ebook reading devices have radically altered their book buying habits. By the end of last year, 80% of purchases made by these buyers were digital, up from 74% in 2011. They prefer ebooks over mass market paperbacks. They made 76% of all their book purchases, print and digital, from online retailers. (Tablets, by the way, are rapidly replacing dedicated e-readers as the devices of choice, according to the latest news on that market.)

Women still buy more books than men, and the imbalance is growing. Women made 58% of book purchases in 2012, up from 55% in 2011. Hardcovers were the only category in which men led in purchases.

At the end of 2012, 53% of book buyers said the state of the economy did not make them cut back on their spending.

Digital sales represented 24% of spending in the mystery/detective fiction market, 25% in romance, and 22% in science fiction. In terms of units, however, ebooks made up more than one-third of sales in those categories. The survey breaks out espionage/thriller fiction as a separate category from crime fiction, with digital sales accounting for 18% of spending and more than 20% of units sold.

Also in the mystery/detective category, 35% of spending was for paperbacks, 37% for hardcovers, and 3% for audios. In espionage/thriller fiction, 37% of spending was for paperbacks and 42% hardcovers.

In general fiction, 37% of spending was for paperbacks, 44% hardcovers, and 17% ebooks.

Despite the growth of ebooks, traditional print publishers didn’t cut back on production. On the contrary, they put out 3% more new titles in 2012 – 301,642, compared to 292,037 in 2011. At the same time, the production of reprint/print-on-demand/public domain titles rose to 1.4 million last year.

Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly Editorial Director and editor of Bowker’s Annual Review, noted with admirable understatement, “The book industry continued to change in some unexpected ways in 2012.”

A Perfect Writing Metaphor

Sharon Wildwind

Just when I thought the world couldn’t get any weirder, along comes a dress, not only made by magnets, but to my thinking, is a perfect metaphor for writing.

My husband and I are fond of the site, Wired. If you haven’t been there, it’s kind of hard to explain. It’s science meets geeky tech meets media meets business, and it consistently offers wacky, fascinating looks at the world.

My husband sends me links he thinks I will enjoy, like the one last week: These Sci-Fi Dresses Were Made Using Mega-Magnets. I figure someone has patiently stuck a lot of magnets together in the shape of a dress. I had severely underestimated how weird the fashion world had gotten.

Designers Jolan van der Wiel and Iris Van Herpen used magnetism and it’s ability to foster attraction and repulsion to grow a dress. When I watched the video in the article, I was struck with how those visuals were the perfect explanation on how to write a mystery.

• Start with some vanilla-looking liquid (Those amorphous ideas we start with.)
• Add some metal powder (Also known as raising the stakes.)
• Add some goopy red stuff (I don’t need to elaborate on goopy red stuff for mystery writers. We’re usually ankle deep in it.)
• Apply a strong magnet (This is that thing Stephen King talked about in On Writing: the way that certain characters and situations apply such a strong pull for us that we have to write them again and again.
• Sit back and watch something mysterious, lovely, and unexpected to form. (This is where the analogy breaks down the tiniest bit. We have to work darn hard to create that mysterious, lovely, and unexpected thing.)

Here’s the video. In it, Jolan van der Wiel is making a stool, but I understand that making cloth is done in exactly the same way. If you'd like to see the dresses themselves, click on the article link above.

The part that shows the formation process is from the 19-second mark to 1 minute, 59-second mark, but this is so short you’ll probably want to watch the entire thing.

The next time anyone asks you to explain the writing process, I recommend sending them to watch this video.

Quote for the week:

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

~ Erich Fromm (1900 – 1980), German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, and sociologist