Don’t Touch My Book

That’s what Facebook seems to be saying to the rest of the world. Facebook is suing a social networking site for teachers because it uses the word “book” in their name: Teachbook.

According to Chris Crum of WebProNews, here’s part of the beginning of the suit filed by Facebook:

Defendant Teachbook.com LLC rides on the coattails of the fame and enormous goodwill of the FACEBOOK trademark. Misappropriating the distinctive BOOK portion of Facebook's trademark…

The Teachbook site is more than just socializing, though. According to WebProNews,

It lets teachers create lesson plans, instructional videos, and other teaching resources. It lets users manage their classroom communications with secure parent-teacher communication tools….It lets teachers communicate with colleagues through discussion, chat, blogs, etc. It lets them create and manage online courses and instructional modules. It lets teachers manage student grades by recording, calculating, and sharing them within the Gradebook.

Crum also points out:

It's also worth noting that Facebook just launched a product called "Facebook Places," even though Google (their direct competitor) already had a product called "Google Places".

What do you think? Will Facebook win the lawsuit?

My Sunday

What did you do yesterday? I spent the day making myself crazy (which isn’t a terribly far walk).

I maintain three websites. My own. One for a friend. And one for the company that my husband and I own. It was that company one that was and still is driving me crazy.

After many hard drive crashes and many years, it has become so convoluted it’s unmanageable. I don’t know why but whole folders replicate themselves. Instead of having two templates, I have three copies of those two templates in various hidey holes on the site.

During the breakdown of the site, which you can see in this picture, I discovered spam has been deposited in two folders. Hundreds of spam from places like Abercrombie Fitch and Naked Women for You.

What you see in that picture took me hours. I call it the tree layout of the site.

Now I think my only choice is to recreate the entire site, somehow delete everything that’s online and put up the new version. Then figure out how to stop spam. It’ll take me days if not weeks to do that. In the meantime, the site has glitches that I can’t correct. Grrr.

I’m seriously going to look into taking Dreamweaver classes. I taught myself Dreamweaver. Clearly, I had a crappy teacher.

Get Your Free Books

If you’re a medical student or a parent of a medical student, you’ve probably heard of Kaplan Publishing. They produce those books for preparation to take exams like the GMAT, Med School, etc.

Right now, you can get free ebooks of all their standardized test prep until August 30th.

To get a copy, you have to go to Kaplan’s iBookstore on your Apple iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. You’ll find more than just medical prep books there, too.

Titles include Law School Labyrinth, Med School RX, MBA Fundamental Accounting and Finance, Portable GMAT, NCLEX-RN, the PMBR Finals series, Kaplan’s MCAT subject review series, and Kaplan AP guides.

I’m not sure if you have to have some kind of ID that shows you’re a student. If not, some of these might be good resource books for writers.

Any med students out there?

Free Books

A milestone has been reached. A publishing company has published its four millionth free book. Yep, you read that right. Four million free books.

The company is Studentreasures Publishing. They have free student publishing programs that “enable students to write, illustrate, and publish full-color, hardbound books.”

Since 1994, more than 300,000 teachers from over 15,000 schools have participated in the Studentreasures publishing program.

How about that! If you like, click over and read the press release.

Are We Reading More?

Recently, The Wall Street Journal took a look at reading habits. It wasn’t based on a huge number of people, but it did show some interesting trends.

A study of 1,200 e-reader owners by Marketing and Research Resources Inc. found that 40% said they now read more than they did with print books.

The study by Marketing and Research Resources Inc. looked at three devices: the Kindle, the iPad and Sony’s Reader.

You might argue that 40% is not a big deal, but consider that a 2007 study by the National Endowment for the Arts found that about “half of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books for pleasure.”

Forrester Research estimates that “11 million Americans are expected to own at least one digital reading gadget by the end of September.”

Thriller author Michael Connelly has the same attitude as my husband:

"There is the advantage of being able to carry multiple things. I travel a lot—believe me, I notice the weight."

There’s a lot more to read in this article – including ebooks and libraries, the number of male reader vs female readers of ebooks, and the problem with page numbers in ebooks.

Do you have an eReader? Do you read more?

Book Embargoes

Even if you don’t have pre-teen or teen kids, you probably remember the brouhaha about trying to keep the Harry Potter books a secret before the due date for them to be bought. The cover was kept secret, bookstores were threatened with retaliation if they sold them before the official premiere date and so on. We heard a lot about that embargo, but embargoes are not all that uncommon.

GalleyCat reports that Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins was recently broken. The LA Times reviewed it and included spoilers. GalleyCat also asked if reviewers should be bound by embargoes.

I’m including a link to the LA Times review, but if you are a fan of the series, you might want to read it after you’ve read the book.

Most of us don’t have embargoes on our books. We send out review copies and ARCs and are ecstatic when someone reviews the book, even before it comes out. But, if you’re a big name or you have an anticipated book coming out, you might be hoping for a big splash and don’t want anything leaked that might spoil the excitement.

So, what do you think? If the publisher asks for no spoilers before the official pub date, should reviewers abide by the request? If they don’t, should that publisher take the reviewer off their list? Or would the publisher just be shooting themselves in the proverbial foot by doing that?

More eBook News

Publishers Weekly had an article on a Dallas-based company called enkHouse. David Marlett, who formed enkHouse, has put together partnerships to develop enhance e-books and apps.

Marlett has been talking to a number of major film studios about using their material as the basis for enhanced e-books. "It will be a bit of reverse engineering," Marlett said, explaining that enkHouse will build enhanced e-books from the video, soundtrack, and scripts created for movies. What will tie all the projects together is storytelling, he said.

Marlett, in some cases, is bypassing the print book. He has a stable of writers and graphic artists who “take an idea—a film script, an ancient text like the Kama Sutra (of which enkHouse has an enhanced e-book version in the works), or movie and turn it into an enhanced e-book.”

According to Marlett, he knows what he’s doing is beyond regular books, even though it is story telling. He feels we’re now going through a redefinition of what a book is. What he’s creating is not reading a book, yet it’s not watching a TV.

What do you think it should be called?

Where the Big Bucks Go

Which author tops the list of highest earners? Stephanie Meyer of Twilight fame?

Nope. Guess again.

James Patterson. According to Business, he earned $70 million in the past year.

Of course, that number does include his contract to write 17 books total by the close of 2012. That deal alone is worth about $100 million. Overall, Patterson, 63, has sold more than 170 million books worldwide.

Meyer came in second at $40 million, then Stephen King at $34 million, followed by Danielle Steele at $32 million. Ken Follett came in fifth with $20 million. The other five in the top ten are: Dean Koontz, Janet Evanovich, John Grisham, Nicholas Sparks and J.K. Rowling.

This ranking was put together by Forbes. According to Entertainment, Forbes based the earnings on “books, film rights, television, gaming deals and other income from June 1, 2009, through June 1, 2010.”

Poor J.K. Rowling didn’t release a book this year, so her numbers were down and she only made it into the tenth spot. I’d still settle for her $10 million, though. Actually, I’m not at all envious of any of these best-selling authors. They set the bar that the rest of us aspire (dream) to jump over.

Mermaid Tales: Picnicking

Been a while since I told a Mermaid Tale, but yesterday’s post on cookbooks and food made me think of mermaids picnicking. And we did. Every show.

Before the show, we’d pack our picnic bags with fish food, salt shaker, celery, and a drink. The bag had a draw string that we looped over our wrist. And the draw string had a bottle opener tied on.

When we heard our cue, we’d swim out to the show area, sometimes in our tails, sometimes not. (We didn’t always wear the tails. That’s another story for another day.) We’d swim to the lily pads, which were fixed atop a metal pole. The poles were lying on the ground, so we’d use our air hoses to inflate the contraption and raise the poles upright. Then we’d swim up and sit on the lily pad.

As you might imagine, though, sitting on the lily pad and trying to eat our picnic would be hard since we’d keep floating up, what with breathing from the air hose and the buoyancy of the tails. Never fear, each lily pad had a L-shaped bar that we would slide our legs under. Being anchored was important because the first thing we did, after waving to the audience, was remove our face masks.

We then could see nothing. Squat. Everything’s a blur.

But that didn’t matter. What was important was that the audience could see our lovely faces.

First, we pulled out the fish food and crumbled it in our palms. Hundreds of small fish swarmed us. We waved our hands and released the food. The fish darted and gathered, eating the food as it floated down. Once they disappeared along with the food to the bottom of the show area, we began our picnic.

With great showmanship and flair, we pulled out our celery and the salt shaker. We salted our delicious meal. Okay, it wasn’t actually salt. It was sand. Salt kinda disappears when it gets wet. Then we waved our celery around so the audience could see it (and so we could wash off the sand). Then we ate. And in case you’re wondering about those pesky veins in celery that tend to get stuck between your teeth…we stripped those before going in the water. We stored the leaves back in our picnic bag.

Then pulled out our colas. Okay, they weren’t actual colas. We filled the bottles with Hawaiian Punch. Hey, before you condemn, have you every burped underwater? Using our bottle opener, we pried off the cap. When you remove the cap, you have to be fast in putting your thumb over the opening. Drinking a cola under water is actually easier than you might think. It’s just like drinking on land. Take a breath of air, put bottle to lips, exhale air into the bottle which causes the liquid to go into your mouth. Remove bottle from lips, quickly sliding your thumb over the opening. Swallow. Take a breath of air. Repeat until cola is gone.

Then, holding the empty bottle upside down, we twirled it so it went upward, then tipped and, filling with water, began to sink. We caught it in our picnic bags. People, of course, clapped, so we grinned and waved.

Then we cleared our face masks and put them back on and waved some more. Then we released the valve on our lily pads and, as they began to collapse and float back to the bottom, we gathered our picnic bag and swam back to the volcano.

You’d be surprised how filling a celery stick and Hawaiian punch are. Three to four times a day. Three hundred and sixty-four days a year. For three years. Wish I could stick to that diet now.

My Kind of Cookbook

Julie Bosman, in The New York Times, wrote about a cookbook that I think I’ll look for in the store. It originally came out in 1960, but has been updated by the daughter of the author. When the original author shopped the cookbook to six male publishers, they rejected it. A female editor at Harcourt, Brace loved it. It sold more than three million copies. The title of the cookbook?

The I Hate to Cook Book.

Oh yeah. My kind of book.

Recipes that use cake mixes rather than sifted flour and making it from scratch. Canned soup. Canned mushrooms. Uh huh. You heard me. Thirty minutes in the kitchen, not four hours.

Yep. My kind of cookbook.

Commercials in Books

Not long ago, the buzz was about books that had sponsors. The writer would feature, say, a brand of car or vodka or something, in the book. That was a carry-over from products that got featured in movies, like having a character obviously driving a Camaro, or in television, like all the judges on American Idol drinking Coke. Writers, for a short while wrote books specifically for sponsors.

But that’s not what we’re talking about today when we say “commercials in books.” Now it’s…commercials…in books. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about this.

Maybe you won’t see them in print books. The WSJ tells you why:

But historically, the lack of advertising in books has had less to do with the sanctity of the product and more to do with the fact that books are a lousy medium for ads. Ads depend on volume and timeliness to work, and books don't provide an opportunity for either.

E-books, however, are a different matter.

Google has taken the first steps in this direction. Its Google Books archive—a collection of over 10 million scanned books from the world's largest libraries—displays advertisements next to search results. It's a small step to imagine Google including advertisements within books, especially since its 2008 settlement over copyright violations with the Authors Guild. For its part, Amazon filed a patent for advertisements on its Kindle device last year. And Apple has recently entered the advertising game with its iAd platform for mobile devices.

Right now on a lot of e-books you can read sample chapters for free. In the near future, that “free” may come with a commercial. Having commercials in books will also bring in a whole slew of new problems.

Ad agencies will be involved in creating a standard form for digital ads. Technology companies will be crucial to implementation. A new set of contracts will have to be created to manage these new costs, revenue sources and control rights.

Link over and read the full article. It’s interesting, not just for this, but also for its timeline of the eReader.

As an author, would you mind having commercials embedded in your e-book? Or would it depend on your cut of what the company paid to advertise?

A Call for Young People to Read

There’s an article in the Huffington Post that’s convoluted, but worth reading. It’s called Reading With or Without Depression by Robert David Jaffee.

The article starts with a story of a young boy with behavioral problems who couldn’t read. One teacher introduced him to Mother Goose and the illustrations and poems caught him and he began to read.

The author tells his own story of not liking to read. He says his struggles came from depression. He now judges his mental health by how well he reads.

As a species, we have been speaking for at least 50,000 years, but we have been reading for only about 5,000, so speech comes much more naturally to us than does reading, which is not as hard-wired into our brains. Studies by neuroscientists have revealed, however, that the more one reads the more neural activity goes on in one's posterior lobe.

Jaffee questions how the children of today will develop their reading skills when a Kaiser Family Foundation study showed that children and teens spend more than 7 ½ hours on electronic activity every day.

A recent study by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, found that when low-income children were provided with free books over the summer, their test scores went up. The study also revealed that children improved their reading comprehension even when they were reading books that would not be considered literary.

Both of my kids read a lot as kids and teens. They still read a lot. What about yours? Are they young? Grown? Do they read?

Emerging Technology

According to Jonny Evans, who blogs at Computer World, three companies are defining the future of publishing: Amazon, Google and Apple. He starts by saying, “Apple is reinventing the electronic planet.”

Evans points out that other eReaders are moving toward the iPad model.

 Barnes and Noble today introduced new versions of its Nook-branded eReading software for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Nook is also available for PC and Android systems.

The free app joins Amazon's own Kindle app, Apple's own iBooks app, both Marvel and DC's big comic-reading apps and a bevy of smaller eBook-reading apps on the iTunes store.

Apple will soon be selling 7-inch iPads, in fact. They’re designed primarily for text books and will appeal to schools. Apple is also extending its presence to new markets overseas.

Other companies are introducing new ideas. Nook has a LendMe feature, another step in eBook publishing.

While Evans noted:

Amazon recently claimed to have sold more eBooks than physical books, but few took this claim seriously -- the company is clearly pushing its own Kindle device.

He also said:

 Random House CEO, Markus Dohle expects eBooks to make up over 10 percent of the publisher's revenue by next year.

You can link over to see what Evans recommends the Kindle do to compete with the iPad and what the rumors are concerning the Android Kindle. What do you predict for the Book eWorld?

Are e-Readers Green?

That’s the question asked by Green Computing – just how green are eReaders and are they greener than print books? From what I gathered, this article was in response to an op-ed in the Independent Book Publishers Association’s monthly journal by Raz Godelnik, the president and co-founder of Eco-Libris.

Godelnik argues that e-Readers contain toxic materials and will contribute to the electronic waste stream. He also noted, “If you try to find out about the environmental impacts of Amazon's Kindle or B&N's Nook, good luck with that. Except for Apple, none of the companies that sell e-readers makes environmental data available.” Godelnik says that mobile devices will contribute to a “rapid growth in energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with so-called cloud computing over the coming years.”

Matthew Wheeland, the author of the Green Computing article, agrees that the iPad is not “a planet-saver.” On the other hand, he notes that book publishing has its own eco-footprint.

If you order a book online and have it shipped 500 miles by air, that creates roughly the same pollution and waste as making the book in the first place. Driving five miles to the bookstore and back causes about 10 times the pollution and resource depletion as producing it. You'd need to drive to a store 300 miles away to create the equivalent in toxic impacts on health of making one e-reader -- but you might do that and more if you drive to the mall every time you buy a new book.

Wheeland concludes by calling on both the print industry and the e-industry to do more to be green – with “greater energy efficiency, less toxic manufacturing, greater recyclability, and more responsible sourcing.”

Do you think print and e- publishers will ever reach a point where “green” trumps “sales”? Oh, and since you’re here, define “cloud computing” for me.

Remember Your Libraries

As authors, we focus on selling our books to readers, to bookstores, to online bookstores, to reading groups, to whoever will buy them. We sometimes forget that libraries buy books, too. And people check out those books and could become avid readers of other books by that author.

So, not only is it good to remember libraries, we should support them and pay attention to them.

To that end, I read a report in the Library Journal on the recent ALA 2010 in DC. ALA stands for the American Library Association. Like just about all of us, the ALA is having budget problems. Even attendance at ALA 2010 was down. The attendees -- 26,201 in total, with 19,513 attendees and 6,688 exhibitors – were upbeat and focused.

The Library Journal article is a long one and I urge you to read the full report, but here are just a few highlights:

Consonant with findings unveiled at the conference that the most important role for library computers is supporting job seekers, followed by access to online government information, Emily Sheketoff, executive director of ALA's Washington Office, noted that states use LSTA [Library Services and Technology Act] monies to pay for databases used by job seekers.

At the popular Top Technology Trends panel, hosted by ALA's Library & Information Technology Association (LITA), the topics included cloud computing, the impact of the iPad, and the ereader price war. If the latter leads to $50 ereaders by next year, as discussed, that could be disruptive to the book and library worlds.

As for a near-term trend, Dempsey suggested that as search platforms like Cambridge, MA–based Pubget's search engine for life-science PDFs make an increasing amount of a library's collection instantly available electronically, they will come to be seen as the primary way to access a library's materials.

Sacramento, CA–based information technology consultant Joan Frye Williams said libraries should work toward being the place that content creation happens, to "stop being the grocery store, and start being the kitchen," she said.

 You can also read how libraries across the country are multi-purposing their facilities and you can get ideas how you, as an author, could help both your library and yourself.

If you’ve spoken or taught a class or done something with a library, tell us about it here in the comments. It’d be fun to hear the different ways we can support libraries.

Here’s a New Twist

Nothing new in book publishing? How about the US government making money on a book’s advance and royalties?

Not every book, mind you. I’m talking one book in particular – a book put together by a Congressional panel on the causes of the Great Recession.

The book will be available online for free, yet 5 of the 5 publishing houses approached offered bids for the proposed book. Now there’s a deal in the works with Hachette Book Group’s Little, Brown for an expected December release.

Doesn’t sound a like a big seller to you? Actually, Business Week thinks it will be, saying sales are expected “to be brisk, particularly for the e-book version containing links to documents, audio tapes, and video clips.”

Although this seems to be the first time taxpayers may get some of the money, it’s not the first time government inquiries have been made into books.

The 9/11 Commission Report, published in 2004 by W. W. Norton—which passed on the economic crisis book—holds the record for the genre, with more than 1 million copies in print. The Starr Report, on the investigation of President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, sold 200,000 copies.

Don’t think I’ll be checking my mailbox for a check.

Sacrifices for Publishing

What would you sacrifice to publish? Sleep? Time with family? Vacations? Your life?

According to The New York Times, there’s an author who has published knowing that he may give up the last one. He’s Tibetan. His name is Tragyal, but he writes under the name of Shogdung. His book, The Line Between Sky and Earth, will most likely be the main evidence against him.

The New York Times says:

The book, published illegally in March, is a poetic, painstakingly written indictment of Chinese rule and a call for a “peaceful revolution” against what Mr. Tragyal describes as Beijing’s heavy-handed governing style.

The NY Times also noted:

If recent history is any guide, the trial will be brief and the penalty severe.

Did Tragyal realize the dangers of publishing his book? Yes. At the end of his book, he wrote:

“I am naturally terrified at the thought that once this essay has been made public, I will eventually have to endure the hot hells and cold hells on earth,” he writes. “I may ‘lose my head because of my mouth,’ but this is the path I have chosen, so the responsibility is mine.”

What would you sacrifice?

What Topic Would You Choose?

SXSW (pronounced South By Southwest) is a huge event that takes place in Austin, Texas, each year. It covers multiple areas: Interactive, Film and Music. In 2011, it will take place March 11- 20.

Even if you can’t come to the events, you can have input on what is covered by the publishing panel. MediaBistro has an article where you can read about some of the topics being considered and then vote on your favorites. Each topic is described in the article, but I’ll give you the list of the first 15 out of 30 questions:

1. "Why Authors Should Think Like Indie Bands"
2. "Futureproof Publishing: Interactivity, Magazines, Journalism and Augmented Reality"
3. "The Independent eBook Revolution: Is Big Publishing Dying?"
4. "Indie Publishing: New Technologies & Crowdsourcing Thematic Content"
5. "The Magazine Formerly Known As 48 Hour"
6. "+5 Sword of ePublishing: Lessons from Tabletop RPGs"
7. "Imagining a Nimble World: Challenging the Publishing Industry"
8. "Fahrenheit 452: Will Self Publishing Overtake Traditional Publishing?"
9. "Write a Book? Surely You Can't Be Serious!"
10. "The Truth About Landing the Book Publishing Deal"
11. "So You Wanna Write A Tech Book"
12. "Author 2.0: Taking Control of Your Marketing Platform"
13. "21st Century Publishing Models: Turning Tradition Upside-Down"
14. "Reinventing the Magazine Experience for the Digital Era"
15. "Publishers Need Advertising: Is Mobile the Answer?"

You can link over and read the descriptions and see what you think. Just knowing the topics, does any particular one stand out as one you’d want to hear or participate in?

Book Review: The Secret Speech

The protagonist of The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith is Leo Demidov, a former Secret Police Officer in Russia. The Secret Speech is a sequel to the New York Times Bestseller, Child 44. When I read The Secret Speech, I didn’t realize this was the second in the series. And, truthfully, I didn’t need to read the first one. The Secret Speech stands on its own.

It was a bit difficult to get into this book. The names are unusual, of course, and hard for me to pronounce in my head as I read. The dialogue is handled differently from what we do in the States – it’s not set off by quotation marks, but rather put on a separate line with a hyphen and italicized.

Those are minor things. I kept reading and was rewarded with a fascinating story with layers of emotions and a tale that takes place in a country and time I know little about. The back of the book contains questions for a Reading Group. You can look through those and get a glimpse of how complicated and layered this book is.

Here is the back cover blurb:

Stalin is dead, and the brutal Soviet regime once held together by fear is beginning to unravel, leaving behind a society where the police are the bloodiest criminals of all. Former Secret Police Officer, Leo Demidov is struggling to put his former career behind him, to make a life for himself, his wife, Raisa, and the two young sisters they adopted. But will the mistrust and betrayals from Leo’s own past shatter his family’s ability to love and forgive—or destroy them in ways unimaginable?

The Secret Speech is a gripping story that will keep you reading. There are times you won’t like Demidov for the things he has done. There are times you’ll desperately hope he survives and regains his adopted daughters and wife. You’ll also wonder how these characters could do the things they did. They are, however, true to the times and to their situations. Once you get into the story, you’ll keep reading every chance you get.

I give The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith a: Hel-Yeah!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FTC Disclaimer: This book was sent to me by the Hachette Book Group, but that’s not why I’m recommending it, nor did it influence my review. Here in the States, we learn about history when we’re in high school. Mostly United States history, but a bit of world history as well. You can take World History in college also. It tends to be watered down, adjusted to fit the sensibilities of the day (don’t even get me started on what Texas has done to its textbooks). That’s why it’s important to read books written outside the U.S. or written about times and worlds outside the U.S., both fiction and nonfiction. It’s a good idea to go places, too. I’d suggest Russia, but it’s pretty smoky there right now. Hmm, wonder if my next book to be read is set in a resort on a Caribbean island? They don’t teach that much in high school either.

Re-Branding as an Author

 Sylvia Dickey Smith is a brave woman. While still in high school, she married and became a pastor’s wife, eventually traveling with her husband to various small towns, including 6 years in the Caribbean Island of Trinidad. All this while raising 4 kids. As if she wasn’t busy enough, at the age of 41, she started college and completed a BA in Sociology and a Masters in Educational Psychology. You could say that, like her characters, she came into herself.

Now, she writes about women coming into themselves. She understands them, their motivations, their thoughts, their desires. But Sylvia, who also spent two years studying spiritual warrior training under a shaman in New Mexico, doesn’t get stuck in one genre. She’s branched out from mystery to women’s historical fiction. And today, she’s going to tell us about making that move in genres and how she’s re-branding herself.

Please welcome author Sylvia Dickey Smith.

Switching Genres

Since my first three books were part of a mystery series, why did I switch genre and write a historical novel? Wouldn’t that confuse my readers? When a Sidra fan heard the new book wasn’t a Sidra, she said, “But I miss Sidra. I love that woman!”

Sidra, as you may know, is the protagonist in my mystery series, and a strong woman with spunk and a resolve to find her own way in the world. I love Sidra too. I’m sure It comes as no surprise to anyone that there’s a lot of me in Sidra. Her lessons reflect many of mine. After thirty years as a subservient, obedient wife, I did a 180 at midlife and started on my own course. (I suppose a little bird watching overheard would discount obedient/subservient for the last five of those thirty! Changing directions often comes slower than we realize when we’re in the midst of the turn.)

But after I finished writing the third Sidra book, Dead Wreckoning, and started on the fourth, this voice that whispers over my shoulder advised that if I kept going straight into another Sidra book the story would be more of the same. That I needed to take a break from her, let her go off on her own a little while, and for me to do the same and expand my own repertoire—to challenge myself to write something totally different.

 I pulled out an old, really bad attempt at a NaNoWri project I’d written a couple of years ago. I reached the 50,000 word count goal, but the last 25,000 words were garbage.

The working title of the draft, A War Of Her Own, came even before the story did. It is very loosely based around the lives of my mother and father, and their family during those years. The story takes place, again in my hometown, but this time set during WWII. Once again, my protagonist, Bea Meade, is a subservient woman of her times, who discovers of what she is made and learns to stand in her own power. I took a chance that readers would fall in love with Bea Meade, too.

So, it wasn’t that I intended to write a historical novel. I just had a story stirring in my gut that wouldn’t be quiet until I gave it voice.

This process has led me to rebrand myself more into a women’s fiction writer—which, in the long run, crosses genres anyway. And this new ‘branding’ fits my passion. I love writing of women who find their voice, who learn to speak for themselves, to give a firm NO when no is what they wish to say. I believe women must learn to give that firm no before they can claim the triumphant YES!

Who knows what will come next? Will I write more mystery? More Sidra Smart? Sure I will—but not until Sidra is ready for me to—possibly book after next. Right now I’m writing The Swamp Whisperer—a tale about Boo Murphy, an old woman in Dead Wreckoning, who demanded her own story. Viva la old women!

Thank you, Sylvia.

You can find out more about Sylvia’s books on her website, including A War of Her Own, Sylvia’s latest book. Another thing you should know about Sylvia is that she’s been recognized for her willingness to support other writers and to mentor them. She is the 2010 recipient of the SAGE Award, given out by the Barbara Burnett Smith Mentoring Authors Foundation.

Remember, if you sign up in August to subscribe or follow her on her blog, your name will be entered into a drawing for a free copy of A War Of Her Own.

Are you thinking about writing in different genres? Or maybe you think it’s time to re-brand yourself. Feel free to use the comments section to ask Sylvia questions about both these topics and her books.

Author Sylvia Dickey Smith

 Sylvia Dickey Smith writes women’s stories. Her own life could be a story. She came from a Scots-Irish family and grew up in the Cajun culture of southeast Texas and has lived in Trinidad and Tobago. At 40 years old, she went to college and kept going until she’d achieved her B.A. in sociology and a Master’s in counseling. Now, she uses her education and life experiences to write fun, compelling novels.

Her first Sidra Smart mystery is called Dance on His Grave, then came Deadly Sins, Deadly Secrets. Her third in the series is Dead Wreckoning. Her latest book, A War of Her Own, veers from the series and takes us back into the past and the life of a woman named Bea Meade.

 A War of Her Own is set during WWII. Bea Meade struggles with demons from her past, demons that haunt her, yet she can’t understand why. She’s also struggling with a husband who spends more time in the bars and with another woman than with her. Even though this book is set during WWII, a time when women began to move into the workforce, Bea has never been anything but a faithful wife and daughter. If she’s going to save herself, though, she’ll have to learn what she’s capable of doing.

Sylvia Dickey Smith’s move from mystery to women’s historical fiction is one that she felt compelled to do. Tomorrow, she’ll tell us why and how she did it – and what will happen to Sidra Smart and the other characters her readers came to love.

Sylvia has a great blog. If you haven’t visited her there, click over. By the way, if you sign up in August to subscribe or follow her, your name will be entered into a drawing for a free copy of A War Of Her Own. If you already have a question for Sylvia, you can leave it here today or just say hi.

Google-Eyed

I love Google. I use Mozilla Firefox as my browser, I search via Google, and I am totally gmail (for my personal email, my domain/business email, and my company’s email). And yet…

Do I trust them with my books?

Google’s goal is to scan every single book in the world. How many is that? According to the LA News Monitor, it’s 129,864,880 (and increasing). How can it do that?

By June, the company has scanned 12 million books and expects to complete the scanning of existing books within a decade, Google Books engineering manager Jon Orwant said at a conference.

Over 129 million books scanned within the next ten years. Google doesn’t seem to stop even when the book is out of print but still under copyright. They scan it anyway. There probably aren’t many of those kinds of books, right?

These books comprise about 65 percent of the world’s books. Google has been accused of infringing on author copyrights by scanning in the books, according to class-action lawsuits filed by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in 2005.

Google has said it will “give royalties to the authors and sell digital copies of these books.” Why don’t the holders of the copyrights have the say-so as to whether Google copies the books? Google seems to be saying, we don’t care if you have the copyright. We’re going to copy it, but, hey, we’ll pay you.

I know this has been going on for quite a while. It was five years ago that the class-action lawsuits against Google were filed. A judgment from the U. S. District Court hasn’t been issued yet.

I have a feeling a great many authors would say, sure, scan my book, just pay me for each sale. I also have a feeling that most authors would like to be asked before their books are scanned. Wouldn’t you? Or maybe not.

Twitterific

I’m on Twitter. You’re most likely on Twitter. Celebrities, politicians, news anchors are on Twitter. Seems like there are only a few people on the planet who are not on Twitter.

Most authors would agree that it’s a great way to build your social platform, get the word out about your book and/or blog, and meet people.

Now, contrary to what you may be thinking, I’m not here today to tell you to join Twitter, if you haven’t, and to start tweeting. I am writing to suggest (not order, since it’s totally up to you) that you might want to watch this latest video by the Twitter crew.

I think it’s cute. I’ve watched it multiple times. My son walked by my office last night and said, “You’re watching that again?” There’s a reason, though. My daughter’s in it, twice. A reason for you to watch it, other than it’s cute and my beautiful daughter is in it, is that it appears Twitter is hiring. That’s good news in this economy.

Sideway Sunday 8-8-10

We’re slipping sideways again today, although slightly on the topic of writing. I was looking though some pictures I took last year and one immediately made me think of writing. If I titled it, I would call it Layers.

Your story, be it a short story or a novel, needs layers. It needs to be more than “start here and go there.” Things are hidden, emotions are stirred, the suspect is there but unknown, clues are dropped, even the protagonist is hiding something, or there are other ways you build layers into the story. You hide, in plain sight, things from the reader. The clues, the motivation, the lover or killer, there in the shadows, waiting for that moment when the light bulb goes off and the reader thinks, of course, I should have seen it.

Here is the picture I took at the Grand Canyon that, to me, shows those Layers.

Do Celebrity Books Sell?

They don’t sell to me, but they do sell. Some more than others. But what makes one celebrity book a best-seller, but not others?

Is it how well the author is known? Maybe not. Oprah is huge, but the book Oprah by Kitty Kelley has only sold 115,000 copies, according to an article in The Associated Press. 

Is it when a big celebrity dies? Apparently even the death of Michael Jackson couldn’t produce more than a couple of briefly best-sellers:

Only a couple of Jackson biographies, briefly, were best sellers, among them Ian Halperin's "Unmasked" and J. Randy Taraborrelli's "Michael Jackson," an updated edition of an older book.

According to The Associated Press, the key to making a celebrity tell-all a best-seller is to have the celebrity involved in the writing, either by doing the writing themselves or active in providing information to the writer or ghostwriter. It apparently also helps if the celebrity has something to say.

I don’t buy celebrity books. Do you? If you do, do you feel like you got your money’s worth? Is there a celebrity whose book you would buy?

Book Review: Grace Under Pressure

 Grace Under Pressure by Julie Hyzy is the first in a series called A Manor House Mysteries. It’s what’s called a Cozy mystery. You can tell by the cover which shows what looks like an elegant tea room disrupted by a bullet hole in the window overlooking a lush green lawn. If not for the bullet hole, you’d think this a wonderful place to sip tea or coffee with friends. And it would be except…well…it’s a mystery and someone gets killed.

Grace Wheaton, second in command to the curator of Marshfield Manor, is new to the job, but quite capable of stepping up when needed, taking charge, and even solving the murder. Not that that’s an easy job, mind you. Not only is there a murder, there are unsigned letters demanding money, a stalker, and secrets about the Manor that Grace isn’t privy to. Grace is indeed under pressure to uncover the murderer before she loses her job or gets killed or both.

In a way, Grace Under Pressure had the feel of a book set in a time of quiet elegance where people did indeed sip afternoon tea and women wore long dresses and gloves. But although Marshfield Manor is quiet (normally) and elegant, this is modern day and Grace not only has to solve the murder, she has to try to get the staff to move into the computer era, while she’s still dealing with the Manor’s secrets and secrets from her own past.

This was what I would call an easy read. The characters are likeable and multi-dimensional. The story flowed well. Nowhere did I get lost in the plot. There were enough twists and surprises to keep me reading. And although the mystery is resolved in the end, there are things unfinished that would make me want to read the second in the series.

I give Grace Under Pressure by Julie Hyzy a:
Hel-o!
(my rating for a new series or author that I’m glad I read and am looking forward to reading more)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FTC Disclaimer: This book was sent to me by Kaye Publicity, but that’s not why I’m recommending it, nor did it influence my review. I reviewed it because I liked the cover, I liked the characters and the plot was interesting. Okay, I also read and reviewed Grace Under Pressure because I’ve never been any place like Marshfield Manor. It would be cool to stay in a grand mansion and have the staff cater to your whims, sit in an elegant tea room and sip from pretty tea cups and eat finger sandwiches. I don’t mean sandwiches made of fingers. Maybe sandwiches made by fingers, but not with fingers between the crustless bread, instead of cucumbers and homemade mayo, or whatever they serve in elegant manors. They probably don’t serve mayonnaise. That sounds a bit “mundane” for such a place. Oh, dangit, now I’m hungry for white bread slathered with mayo. Excuse me…

Carolyn J. Rose

 Author Carolyn J. Rose is here today to talk about back story and how she used it in her latest book, Hemlock Lake. She’ll also be stopping by over the day to read comments and answer questions.

Welcome Carolyn J. Rose.

The role of backstory in Hemlock Lake

What happened before the story contained between the covers of a book began can be crucial to the ways in which both characters and plot will develop. It can even determine where things will stand on the final page.

Events that took place in the past can cast a long and dark shadow over the future. Events set in motion because of past tragedies, gains, losses, or emotional upheavals, can wound a character’s body, mind, and soul. How those wounds heal and the scars they leave can shape thought, action, and emotion.

 In Hemlock Lake, the past overlaps and seeps into the present in the form of relationships locked into the structure of childhood, townspeople fighting change, a patriarch dying by inches, a lover lost in the aftermath of war, roles decreed by ancestry and tradition, and two ghosts who recreate the final moments of their lives in dreams Dan Stone dreads, but cannot escape.

As he tells Camille Chancellor, an outsider and the one person he feels he can confide in, “Sometimes I feel like one of those butterflies pinned to a piece of cardboard inside a display case. I can see where I’d like to fly to. But I can’t escape without dragging the pins and cardboard with me.”

In less symbolic terms, as my husband Mike Nettleton often puts it, “No matter where you go, there you are.”

Confronted with a setting or background that can’t be changed, a character faces hard choices: fight the situation until it breaks him, give in and go with the flow, or get out. The character who takes that last course of action faces two additional choices: renounce the past, break clean, and start anew, or continue, in a fresh setting, to be influenced by past events and emotional baggage.

In order to redefine himself, Dan moved far from the remote Catskill Mountain community where he was born and raised. But when his mother’s terminal illness brought him back, he discovered that nothing he’d accomplished while he was away changed opinions held in Hemlock Lake. He finds that only that part of his life up until he left is important. He feels out of synch, inferior, still the quarterback who couldn’t lead his team to victory, still the boy who didn’t like to hunt, who lost himself in books.

When someone threatens to torch an upscale development in his hometown, Dan is assigned to the case. He finds himself in a no-man’s land between newcomers and long-time residents who oppose the development and stonewall his investigation as they cling to the way things were. Bound by what he calls “a family code of honor to meet responsibility and do his job,” Dan can’t walk away, and he can’t go with the flow and sandbag the investigation. He stays and he fights—to solve the crimes and free himself of the past.

As those who read Hemlock Lake will discover, that fight is nearly fatal.

Thank you Carolyn.

What about you? How do you use back story in your books? Leave your comments and questions before you click away!

Hemlock Lake

Agents and publishers want you to start your book in the middle of the action. Forget the backstory; just plop me down in the middle of something exciting. Okaaaay. But then, how do you insert that backstory that’s needed to explain character behavior? And what do you include? And when?

 Carolyn J. Rose has written nine books, some on her own and some with her co-author, Mike Nettleton. She’ll be here tomorrow to talk about back story and how she used it in her latest book, Hemlock Lake.

In addition to being a multi-published author, Carolyn spent 25 years as a television news researcher, writer, producer, and assignment editor in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. She lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her husband.

Before you zip away to write down your back story questions for tomorrow, take a gander at the book trailer for Hemlock Lake.



If for some reason, the trailer doesn’t work for you, just link over to watch it on Carolyn’s site.

The Changing E-Book

Most of us are still thinking of the e-book as a book read on an electronic device. And a great many of us don’t have an e-reader yet. But the e-publishing world is not waiting on us to get one. They’re constantly changing and increasing the experience of reading on an e-reader. Now, according to The New York Times, you don’t just read text – and we may just be changing from the “e” in e-books standing for “electronic” to standing for “enriched” books.

The new multimedia books use video that is integrated with text, and they are best read — and watched — on an iPad, the tablet device that has created vast possibilities for book publishers.

Publishers are doing more than just transferring printed words to the electronic world.

Simon [and] Schuster has taken the best-selling “Nixonland,” first published in hardcover in 2008 in a whopping 896 pages, and scattered 27 videos throughout the e-book…. Penguin’s edition of Mr. Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth” comes with video clips from an eight-part television series based on the book

While these types of additions may not work for every book, publishers are looking for ways to enhance e-books. The New York Times said:

… eventually the books could regularly feature full-length movies and photo slideshows. For authors who are open to the concept, new books could be written with multimedia in mind.

Do you see the opportunity for multi-media in the book you’re writing? Would you write a book, trying to include such an opportunity?

Is There an Uprising?

Yesterday, I read an article in The Bookseller called, “Makinson: direct to consumer model does not work.” The focus of the piece was on Penguin chief executive John Makinson who says authors still need publishers and trying to bypass them in this digital age will fail. He, in fact, says, “I am not aware of any successful direct to consumer publishing model that exists.”

He contends authors need publishers to edit and publicize.

What I found most interesting was not what he said, but what was said in the comments section. Those are more worth reading than the article itself. Here are just three snippets from different commenters:

The music independents by-passed the industry, so why not the same for books, and anything else for that matter? Mankinson knows this deep down but of course he's not going to admit it, he's been making a pile of loot out of those who do the hard graft for a long time and would like to continue to do so.

The only really essential service publishers provide at the moment is distribution; the future may eradicate that need as online retailers increase in popularity. I wish publishers were essential and really were the protectors of literature that they pretend to be, but they are becoming less critical every day.

In five years, the big publishers may well be wiped out. If you want to know why, just ask your local newspaper man what's happened to him.

A lot of you are published authors, either through the traditional method or through ebooks (or both). What do you think?

Sidetrip Sunday: Take a Look

I’m veering off-topic today, taking a sidetrip for a change.

 First off, a correction of an earlier goof. This past Thursday, I hosted the wonderful children’s author, Christine Verstraete. Remember her book, Searching for a Starry Night? She wrote a great post on Getting Kindleized. Many of you commented. Christine came by several times to answer questions and to ask who the woman was in the picture in her post. I thought she was kidding.

Christine Verstraete

Late in the day, I realized she wasn’t kidding. I’d posted the picture of someone else. I immediately corrected my goof, but by then, most of you had already come by. Here is the correct picture of Christine Verstraete. Take a good look and memorize her face. I don’t want anyone to see her signing books some place and go up to her, snatch away her pen and tell her she’s not the real Christine.

Which brings up the question…if you saw someone signing a book that wasn’t theirs, would you out them or figure it was another Helen goof?

Secondly, here’s today’s picture. This was taken back in May from our hotel room window in Las Vegas.

We were looking right down the strip. Off to the right, you could see the mountains, their peaks still covered in snow. We were there for a conference. Although I’ve been to Vegas quite a few times, this was our first hotel room that overlooked the strip. It was fabulous at night to turn off the lights in the room and look through the corner-to-corner, floor-to-ceiling window at the strip lit up. If we go back again, I want this same room.

Happy Sidetrip Sunday!