Bookish

June 28, 2010

The big horrible secret about writing books...

Eric Kayne Sonia and Javier Perez talk with author Oscar Casares at the Chronicle's Book & Author dinner in November, 2009.

... is that it's not enough to write them.

You have to sell them, too.

Which means that after years of toiling away at your computer, giving up who knows what kind of time (with loved ones) and money (from jobs you're not doing because you're writing a book), you have to slap a smile on your face and promote yourself at local libraries, bookstores, big-box retailers -- and even, in some cases, supermarkets.

Writers have different ways of handling it.

David Sedaris wrote a hilarious essay for The New Yorker about book tours. A few years ago, he was on a tour that started and ended in Costco. He got in the habit of buying stuff there and giving little treats away to all the people who bought books. Stuff like pain relievers and condoms.

I once heard Texas writer Oscar Casares tell a funny story about reading sections of his most recent novel, Amigoland, at HEB. In one store, they actually had him reading into the same loudspeaker the store used for communicating to employees -- the "Clean-up on aisle 7" loudspeaker. When a few of his friends his pulled into the parking lot to attend the reading, they could hear him from outside the store.

The Chronicle's Leon Hale wrote a column last month about how he's not writing another book because he can't sell the ones he has already written: "In malls you've probably seen a writer sitting out front of a book store, looking bewildered," Hale writes. "He's behind a table piled high with his books, and people are walking around him as if he's selling copperhead snakes. I could never stand to do that. If nobody showed any interest in me or my books, I'd get up and walk around, pretend to be a clerk in the store. I sold a few books that way. Books that I didn't write."

And last week, I got a charming and well-written e-mail from an author that started like this: "I'm a bit mortified to send this, but as an author, I can't help myself from wanting to do everything I can for my new novel, no matter how personally humiliating! My publicist is going to be sending out galleys and press kits next week for my new novel and I thought I might throw myself at your mercy to consider it for a review." (And I will, thanks to this well-written appeal.)

Writing is one thing, marketing is another. If you're even considering the first, you'd best have a plan of attack for the second.

Posted by Maggie Galehouse at 11:24 AM in | Comments (0)
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June 27, 2010

Death by peanuts

MR. PEANUT
By Adam Ross.
Knopf, 352 pp., $25.95.

Reviewed by Dwight Silverman

Marriage is the most complex of human relationships, bound as it is to situations and emotions that are, to put it mildly, intense. Marriage combines love, sex, faith, finances, devotion, anger, fear and self-worth, just to name a few of its volatile ingredients.

The passions that arise when any of these go bad is why so much literature and entertainment deals with the killing of a spouse. From cheesy episodes of CSI to the intellectual grandeur of Shakespeare, murdering a significant other is one of the most compelling plot lines that can be brought to any story.

Adam Ross' debut novel, Mr. Peanut, falls somewhere in between police procedurals and the Bard's sophisticated works. Yeah, it's a murder mystery -- actually, 1½ murder mysteries -- but it's also a complicated jigsaw puzzle of intertwined relationships, events and coincidences. There's even a little alternate-universe history thrown in for good measure.

Ross' protagonist is David Pepin, the founder of a successful video game company who's married to Alice, his college sweetheart. They met in a class devoted to the films of Alfred Hitchcock (feel free to roll your eyes) and have been together ever since.

But as is often the case, the relationship has deepened and morphed over the years. Both Pepin and his wife have become different people, and her changes include a dramatic weight gain. She's huge, but he likes her that way. Alice, however, is not always tolerant of him; her attitude swings between coldness and adoration.

That's when Pepin starts writing a book about killing his wife, even though he tells himself he'd never do such a thing. But when Alice turns up dead, Pepin's fantasies make him suspect No. 1. She's found at the kitchen table, her throat swollen shut. She's had an acute peanut allergy all her life, and she's either eaten them in a suicide bid or had them shoved down her gullet in a cold-blooded murder.

Investigating the case are two veteran detectives: Ward Hastroll and Sam Sheppard. After initially setting the murder scene, Ross then makes two major detours in his storytelling, exploring the relationships between the detectives and their respective wives.

Hastroll has not murdered his wife, but there are times when he wants to. She refuses to get out of bed, at least when he's around. He devises all kinds of strategies and trickery to get his wife to join the rest of the world, but she says she's not coming out until he "gets it" -- but she won't tell him what he doesn't understand. When he finally does figure it out, it's not until he's agonizingly close to the breaking point.

But Ross' novel takes an even stranger turn when he examines the marriage of the second detective, Sam Sheppard, a name that should ring a bell. In the 1950s, Sam Sheppard was a prominent Ohio physician who was tried and convicted of murdering his wife, Marilyn. Sheppard insisted that a bushy-haired man killed his wife and knocked him unconscious, but a jury felt otherwise. The verdict was eventually overturned (in a case that catapulted attorney F. Lee Bailey to celebrity status) and Sheppard was released.

In real life, Sheppard returned to medicine briefly, then tried his hand at professional wrestling. Ross' Sheppard becomes a homicide detective. Ross uses a solid third of the book to explore the relationship between Sheppard, his wife, a voracious mistress and the person who is ultimately responsible for killing Marilyn Sheppard. It's part history, part what-if, and thoroughly engrossing.

In the final chapters, Ross returns to Pepin's story and then, astoundingly, ties all these threads together. As Mr. Peanut cruises to its conclusion -- and there's no sense of winding down, even as you're turning the final pages -- you wonder just how Ross is going to make this work ... but he does.

Ross is a careful and disciplined writer. There isn't a lot of showy prose, but he's a master plotsmith, and one who understands just how characterization can drive a story. This may be his first novel, but it's written as though he's been doing it for ages.

Dwight Silverman is the Chronicle's computer columnist and interactive journalism editor.

Posted by Maggie Galehouse at 12:00 AM in Chronicle Book Reviews | Comments (0)
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Friendship is tested in Five Days Apart

FIVE DAYS APART
By Chris Binchy.
Harper, 272 pp., $24.99.

Reviewed by Jenny Dial

Chris Binchy's latest novel, Five Days Apart, will be sold as a love story when it hits stores Tuesday, June 29. The overarching plot is simple: Two friends fall in love with the same girl. She chooses one, and the other is left with a broken heart.

It's a lot more complicated than that, though. The love story is just a subplot for the real story about the true nature of friendship. Five Days Apart channels the classic John Knowles novel A Separate Peace in that it is a brutal and refreshingly honest look at friendship.

David is a recent college graduate who has lived comfortably in the shadow of his best friend, Alex. The book opens with the two of them at a house party in their hometown of Dublin, Ireland, where Camille is introduced. Camille is pretty, magnetic and different than any girl David has ever met. He is immediately, obsessively and blindly in love with her.

But of course Camille doesn't choose David, she chooses Alex -- the handsome, outgoing, life of the party. Then the drama begins. David is the center of the story and the reader follows him as he enters the real world, gets a job and a new apartment. On the surface, he forgives Alex for "stealing" Camille and continues to hide his jealousy.

Binchy's writing is dense without being heavy; the way he makes David's feelings for Camille known creates uncomfortable scenarios for all three characters.

As the story progresses over the course of a couple of years, things change and conflict arises, and everything comes to a head. The characters have to make decisions, and while the girl remains between Alex and David, it becomes clear that their friendship is what is under the microscope.

We all know a David, an Alex and a Camille, and we have all heard this story before. But in Binchy's world, we are forced to look at it from another place, to examine what goes into the common love triangle that floods books, movies, TV and real life.

A few of the subplots, like David's plans for work, drag a bit, but only because the anticipation of the main story is always at the forefront of the reader's mind.

Five Days Apart is a great antidote to the typical summer novel. There is no guaranteed happily ever after, and while it's an easy read, it is one that will leave you deep in thought for days.

Jenny Dial covers sports for the Houston Chronicle.

Posted by Maggie Galehouse at 12:00 AM in Chronicle Book Reviews | Comments (0)
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Local book events: June 27-July 4

• René Saldaña Jr. will read and discuss his work, followed by an onstage interview with mystery book aficionado David Thompson of Murder By The Book, 3 p.m. today (June 27) at Talento Bilingue de Houston, 333 S. Jensen. Information about this Cool Brains! Inprint Readings for Young People event: 713-521-2026 or go to inprinthouston.org.

• Linda Castillo will sign and discuss Pray for Silence, 6:30 p.m. Monday (June 28) at Murder By The Book, 2342 Bissonnet. Information: 713-524-8597.

• Karin Slaughter will sign and discuss Broken, 6:30 p.m. Tuesday (June 29) at Murder By The Book, 2342 Bissonnet. Information: 713-524-8597.

• Jodi Compton will sign and discuss Hailey's War, and Julie Kramer will sign and discuss Silencing Sam, 6:30 p.m. Wednesday (June 30) at Murder By The Book, 2342 Bissonnet. Information: 713-524-8597.

• Barry Eisler will sign and discuss Inside Out (signing line numbers available Tuesday with purchase of book from Murder By The Book) 6:30 p.m. Thursday (July 1) at Murder By The Book, 2342 Bissonnet. Information: 713-524-8597.

• The Houston Great Books Council sponsors a discussion on Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution -- the Legislative Branch, 1 p.m. on July 4 at Barnes & Noble, Westheimer at Voss. Information: 713-465-7389.

Posted by Maggie Galehouse at 12:00 AM in Local Book Events | Comments (0)
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June 24, 2010

Do you buy books based on best-seller lists?

Fotolia

Best-seller lists have long been the go-to place for readers, authors and publishers to determine which books are hot.

But the New York Times bestseller list -- the standard for the reading public -- reflects book sales from weeks earlier, a lag time that seems archaic in a digital age. For example, the best-sellers that will appear on the list this coming Sunday, June 27, are based on book sales for the week ending June 12.

The numbers are pulled from thousands of venues including independent book retailers; national, regional and local chains; and online and multimedia entertainment. So the New York Times best-seller list is and has always been an educated guestimate, rather than a literal count of all books sold. Industry insiders say that the list is as much about velocity of sales in a given period as it is about cold, hard numbers. Nonetheless, for an author, making the list means everything.

But Amazon and e-books may change this.

Amazon's bestsellers are updated hourly. Some of the titles are the same as the titles on the Times list. Some aren't.

Kindle split its best-seller list last month, creating one for paid titles and another for free titles. Last week, both the Kindle and the Nook dropped their prices, making e-readers more affordable than ever.

Although e-books sales still account for little more than 5 percent of all book sales, industry experts say that number is growing fast.

So I have two questions:

1. As readers, how closely do you pay attention to best-seller lists?

2. Do you think that e-books will change the way we count book sales and, in turn, shape what makes best-seller lists?

Posted by Maggie Galehouse at 09:52 AM in Tangents | Comments (13)
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June 21, 2010

"Silly Tart" -- create your own burlesque name!

Beau Allulli Jo Weldon.

Tips for devising a burlesque stage name:

1. If a name springs to mind, first check out the list of performers on burlesquehall.com. You don't want to steal someone else's name.

2. Think of adjectives that apply to you or to a character you'd like to identify with, such as "jammin" or "saucy," and mix them with the names of some of your favorite things, like "Jammin' Jelly" or "Saucy Boots."

3. Look for inspiration in juxtaposition. Combine the first name of your favorite actress with the last name of your favorite actor, or the name of your street with the name of the last restaurant you visited.

4. Play with name generators on the Internet.

5. Consider a nickname your friends like to call you, especially if you hate it.

6. Use a name related to a hobby, like "The Knitting Queen."

7. Make an anagram of your real name.

8. Ask your mom. She named you once, she could name you again!

Now, by the guidelines of No. 2, my burlesque name could be Silly Tart.

Following the recommendation of No. 6, my burlesque name could also be The Bookish Brat.

What's yours?

*These tips come from The Burlesque Handbook, a new title by Jo Weldon. Weldon is the headmistress and founder of the New York School of Burlesque.

Posted by Maggie Galehouse at 04:13 PM in Tangents | Comments (2)
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