I generally am happy to see a WD in my mailbox (that’s Writer’s Digest, in case you’re wondering if I’m missing an M).  Nevertheless, I’ve always thought the apostrophe is misplaced and lately there has been this nagging suspicion that their editorial board just doesn’t get it.  Joe Konrath has a better perspective on the industry (unfortunately, his participation in his blog is going on a hiatus).  However, he doesn’t get it completely either.

WD still propagates the myth of legacy publishing (this myth states that an author needs an agent, an editor, publisher, and publicist, with one of the Big Six providing the first two of the last three, the agent taking a hefty cut just for getting an MS , short for manuscript, beyond the slush pile where all unagented MSs go, and the author generally providing his or her own marketing–in other words, he or she can contract the publicist.  Joe and others like Barry Eisler have shown that the Big Six publishing houses are now built on sand and moreover have their heads buried in it.  Sure, they’re trying to invade and control the new digital paradigm, now revolutionized by eBooks, but they’re choking—they still live their myth and are making badly formatted eBooks at exorbitant prices (one that I will not name created a mini-scandal when people started complaining about formatting and price).

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(Carla Neggers, MIRA, Saint’s Gate, ISBN 978-0-7783-1235-2)

A convent on the rugged coast of Maine is the scene of a vicious murder in Carla Neggers’ new novel Saint’s Gate.  With this book, Ms. Neggers also introduces a new series and two new protagonists, FBI agents Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan.  It is a dark mystery, full of intrigue and suspense.  The characters are interesting, the locales spectacular, and the plot well constructed.  Relax in your recliner, pour yourself a taoscan of fine Irish whiskey (see later why this is appropriate), and enjoy.  It is fun to read.  I read it in two evenings—it displaced all my other writing and reading activities.

I had the uncanny feeling that the author has a psychic hold over me—to use modern vernacular, she knew how to jerk my chains.  First, the locales:  the California and Maine coasts are my two favorite spots in the U.S.  Except for climate, they are similar—waves pounding against steep, craggy cliffs topped with pines and other magnificent trees.  Big Sur and Mt. Desert Island hold a special place in my travel memories.  I grew up in California; my father painted its coastline.  My first trips to Ogunquit and Bar Harbor left me yearning for more.

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As a continuation of my post about the digital publishing revolution, I’m dedicating this post to eBook pricing.  One reason:  I’ve decided that the emphasis in my future participation in this revolution will be on eBooks.  While my main motivation for this decision is control—my control—over the publishing process, there are many others.  I touched on some of those reasons for all self-publishing options in that previous post.  One aspect of that control, of course, is determining the pricing for your eBook.

Barry Eisler’s new John Rain thriller, The Detachment, is priced at $5.99 for a Kindle download.  That price is right in the middle of the standard Amazon range of $2.99 to $9.99.  OK, for purists, the middle would be $6.50, give or take a few cents, so, if you take dollar steps from $2.99, it could be $5.99 or $6.99.  Don’t ask me why the used car salesperson’s 99 is present—why not $6.50?  This is all part of the craziness—and the fun!  Will you be more likely to buy a book at $5.99 than $6.50?  For one of my books, maybe.  For Barry Eisler, the price might not matter much.

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I wrote my first novel during the summer I turned thirteen.  It was terrible but not unlike the movie City of Angels (the angel was a woman in my story—yeah, I know, they’re supposed to be sexless creatures, but the movie got it wrong too).  I’m a born story-teller and should have bitten the bullet and become a writer, journalist, or something similar, but I decided to take advantage of the Sputnik panic (read:  $$$$ for studying) and become a scientist.  No regrets there.  It put a lot more PB&J sandwiches on the table for my kids (better said, arepas, empenadas, sobrebarriga, papas criollas, yucca and maduros—we were living in South America for a long stretch of time).

Nope, no regrets.  I kept writing and reading and recording my experiences and now I am, finally, a full-time writer who incorporates that life-time of experiences into his writing (I often wonder about young MFAs who have none).  I’ve been writing full-time long enough that I thought it might be appropriate that I write about some of my experiences with this new digital publishing paradigm shift that has revolutionized the world of publishing.  Since I’m opinionated, this is in my free wheelin’ op-ed blog to allow others to comment (all part of the fun).  Here we go, a summary of what works for me.

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Writers’ Digest publishes its list of recommended websites every year.  Mine is different…and much shorter.  Last week I just added it to “Steve’s Writing” page here on this website.  In this post, I’ll divulge the reasons for my choices—all personal, all subjective.  All sites on “Steve’s Writing” are linked to the corresponding website—just double-click to open up a separate window.

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Wouldn’t you know it?  I was gifted a copy of Jeffery Deaver’s Carte Blanche, his new 007 thriller.  Put a book in my hands and I start turning pages.  In this case, they were real pages, although I understand that the book is also doing well as an eBook.  I was curious, I’ll admit.  What could Mr. Deaver do with Bond that hasn’t been done before?

Pre-existing biases and genre prejudices shouldn’t count in the reviewer’s world even though, in my case, I’m also a writer with my own way of doing things (which continuously evolves, but that’s another story)—the title of Jane Friedman’s well known blog, There Are No Rules, is really a corollary to the writer’s commandment “Know what the rules are.”  Yet a writer’s style goes beyond rules and is as personal as his fingerprints.  I generally like Deaver’s, but, as I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, I didn’t want to have anything to do with James Bond.

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By now I suspect that many Jeffery Deaver fans know he has gone over to “the dark side.”  Either he’s an Ian Fleming wannabe, is tired of Lincoln Rhyme, has run out of ideas to write about, or was enticed by a multi-million dollar contract, but his new 007 adventure Carte Blanche has been released.  Too bad.  Even Jeffery Deaver can’t haul me kicking and screaming back to 007.

Now, don’t get me wrong—writers pick up famous series and do marvelous things with the settings and characters that are already established.  The continuation of Ludlum’s Bourne series comes to mind and even some of the Star Trek books aren’t bad as space operas, although they’re more fantasy than sci-fi, of course.  The difference is that the writers of those series’ continuations aren’t as well known as Jeffery Deaver.  C’mon, Jeff, what gives?

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Writing about the children’s book Valiant, Dog of the Timberline in a recent post about Westerns, reminded me that, even in a story not about animals, critters can play an important role.  Mice to mongooses (mongeese?), swans to elephants, pigs, cats, and dogs—literary animals have filled the pages of world literature.  Whether anthropomorphized or not, animals can actually become main characters that bring life to a story.  Here’s a quiz.  Match up the following names with the animals I just listed:  Leda, Napoleon, Horton, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Argos, Stuart Little, Mrs. Norris.  Then find the famous authors that wrote about that named animal.

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When I’m tired of writing or the business of writing (editing and marketing) and there is nothing else on the agenda, I go to the TV like any normal American.  Well, maybe not normal.  I’m choosy about what I watch.  Reality shows are out.  “Castle” is good for a chuckle—there’s a lot of good sexual tension between Beckett and Castle, but the writers often try to do too much by fitting a mystery with innumerable plot twists in the forty minutes of TV screen time (I’m subtracting out the annoying commercials, of course).  So, I channel surf, starting with the Encore channels.  I’ve caught up on some good westerns that way and revisited some of my favorites.

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Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 couldn’t be written today.  I’m not sure what temperature a Kindle or a Nook would burn at, but it certainly isn’t 451 degrees (233 degrees centigrade for those enjoying a saner temperature standard).  And burning those neat gizmos wouldn’t really do the trick—you’d really have to go after the whole internet.  I can turn on my laptop or Kindle and download just about any book I care to read, but that book still exists on some server somewhere.  You’d have to destroy them all.

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