-- Consuelo Saah Baehr

E-publishing is a miracle that has changed my life.

I was born in El Salvador to French/Palestinian parents who quickly divorced and went their separate ways.  At age five my mother and I traveled to the U.S. by bus through Mexico so I could join my father and get an education. Throughout the trip, I drank Coca Cola.  It was made with syrup and soda at the time and still had traces of cocaine so I arrived a mild dope addict.  My mother left me with my father and five uncles in Washington, D.C. where they ran the prestigious boutique department store, Jean Matou, a favorite of Bess Truman and Jackie Kennedy. My father once refused a check from Bess Truman who had purchased a black nightgown.  “But Mr. Saah,” she said, “I live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”  “I don’t care where you live,” said my father.  “We don’t accept checks.”  My Uncle Charlie had to take him aside and knock some sense into him.

I didn’t know it then but this sort of childhood was the best preparation for being a writer. The solitary life of a child who has to invent friends in her head is often a preamble to inventing stories for publication. After college I wrote advertising copy for the Macy Corp and several Madison Avenue agencies.  Marriage and three children followed and the writing was silent until a stunning Op-Ed piece in The New York Times brought a flurry of offers from book publishers. The result was the personal memoir, Report From The Heart (Simon & Schuster). Four novels followed: Best Friends (Delacorte/Dell); Nothing To Lose (Putnam's); Daughters (Delacorte/Dell) and 100 Open Houses, a Kindle original.

To me, publishing for the various e-readers is a miracle that has changed my life.  It is as important to authors as the printing press.  The sledgehammer of traditional publishing kept me silent for several years.  Traditional publishing is bleak, bleak, bleak interrupted by ten minutes of happiness the day your agent sells your book.  There follows a year of silence while they “produce” the book.  The publishing moment is brief.  If your print run is in the low to mid five figures, your book is DOA.  Two years of your life are gone.  The Prozac year follows.  With e-publishing, I can accommodate my two passions:  writing and commerce.  The best part is that the writer is in control.

Life Balance and a Date with the Mouse

-- Michael Scott Miller

I don’t have the type of day job where when the 5 o’clock whistle blows, I get to race home and leave the job behind.   No, my day job requires 50+ hour weeks and attention to my Blackberry when I’m not in the office.  And then there’s the whole writing thing.  In order market my novel, I’ll spend another 1-2 hours per day planning, plotting, scheming, …er, reading, researching, promoting, and interacting with readers and authors.  I also have three kids, ages 15, 13, and 8 to whom I try to give as much attention as they want (and sometimes more ).

How do I do it?  I’ll share what I do here and maybe some of it will be of value for you, whether it helps you structure your days more effectively, or simply provides a measure of relief that you aren’t the only one cramming everything possible into a day, catching a few hours of sleep, and getting up to do it again.  I managed to squeeze in a trip to Disney World a few weeks ago and not get hopelessly far behind, so with that in mind, here are my self-imposed rules for keeping life in balance, set to the music of Disney.

Let’s go fly a kite…

The first rule is that the family comes first.  Period.  Unless I am absolutely unable to break free, when the kids ask to go outside and play ball, ride a bike, help them study, read with them, whatever, my mind immediately goes to, “Can I find a way to say ‘yes’?”  Most often, I do.

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, it’s off to work we go…

The second rule, which ties closely into the first, is to work when the kids are otherwise occupied.  I’m more of a morning person than a night person, so I’ll get up early and work on some aspect of my writing, be it marketing, interacting with other authors on social media, or actual writing before I start my day job.  Sure, I could spend more time with the kids more in the morning, but anyone who has seen kids get ready for school knows that this is definitely NOT quality time.  I am fortunate to have a wonderfully supportive wife who handles the morning duties.  That allows me to also start the day job earlier, which in turn, allows me to come home earlier, increasing the evening quality time with the family.  Most often, I’ll still end up doing a bit more work, either day job related or writing related, once the kids go to sleep.

Look for the bare necessities…

Dishing Up the Sun: Mash-ups and Cross Genre Authoring

-- Edward C. Patterson

“There is nothing new under the sun,” or so the Good Book tells us. Still, authors strive to engage readers with original material — unique engagements found only between book covers or e-book reader index lines.  I face this issue every time an idea morphs through my imagination. And I’m not alone in this. It’s a hard spot to be in, because many readers, although they say they want a unique and original read, prefer to swim in comfortable channels — the formulas of genre. So an author either needs to challenge the reader or feed them with off-the-shelf macaroni and cheese. If a novel landscape is too strange, readers might look the other way. If it’s too familiar, readers will just ingest another romance or historical fiction or hard-boiled detective Dick story, not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, I believe that authoring is a two way street — that the reader partners with me. The tale may begin in my imagination, but it unravels and sets seed in yours. There it grows to full term and lingers.

I’m a yarn spinner — realistic, fantastic, and historic. Whatever strikes my fancy, I’ll tell it as a tall tale. Tales are not spun over the entire arc, but in every paragraph, phrase and word. In fact, a reader should be engaged every time they pick up my books. They should regret putting the book down — guilty, even. Like all tall tales, my novels are lies that reveal truths. Therefore, I’m not a creator of plots, fleshing them out until it’s beefy enough call it a novel. Plots are extractions after a work is finished — simple threads describing, in a pale way, what already exists between the covers. Initial plotting suffocates the authoring process. It denies possibilities that are born and thrive as I tell the story, first to myself, and then to you.

Few stories are unique. I mean, romantic triangles were etched on the walls of ancient Egyptian tombs and repurposed in the opera Aida. Knights have been slaying dragons, vampires have been sucking blood and clever old ladies have been solving mysteries in quaint English villages for as long as authors have cared to relate such yarns to a willing audience. However, lately, interesting things have been popping up. Fantasy has gone political as in the works of China Mieville (who even turns his protagonists into Kafkaesque bugs) and Jane Austen has been sparring with . . . zombies. Even the Wicked Witch of the West from our childhood dreams has had a roll in the hay and has become an Animal advocate (Animal with a capital “A”). Mash-ups are an interesting concept, which, when applied to a realistic landscape, produces strokes of genius like His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik’s landmark series that marries World War I-fashioned dragon squadrons to the meticulous details of the Napoleonic wars.

The mash-up, at first, seems to be a collection of strange bedfellows. However, when given a realistic spin on the yarn, it can engage a reader’s imagination like no other. When it does, mash-up is not an appropriate genre tag. When you take Austen and zombies, it’s appropriate. The reader knows from the outset that something different may happen like mixing oatmeal with ravioli. However, when the mash-up is a blend of genre elements, the reader doesn’t know what to expect.

Let me speak from experience. I have several novels that blend various genre elements into drinkable brews, and will continue to spin such yarns. However, two of my works approach the mash-up stage without preempting the reader’s expectations.

Turning Idolater is . . . well, what is it? Authors learn that by mixing genres, it’s hard to market a book under one heading. We usually wind up peddling it under several umbrellas. Turning Idolater is a gay romance minus the explicit sex. That the romance is between an eighteen year old Internet stripper and a thirty-five year old author adds interest, but that’s not unique, although the Internet elements give the work added dimension. That the youngster is also attracted to the novel Moby Dick and happens to possess an original edition (a gift from a trick) upsets the paradigm. The fact that there are other men vying for the couple’s attention is a normal romance complication. That there’s a serial killer on the loose, bodies turning up in the Hudson River, and an ongoing investigation pushes the work into the mystery category . . . a bit.

The secret of sewing these disparate elements into a cohesive whole — one that constantly engages the reader, is to drive the work through its characters and create realistic, identifiable settings. When a reader is secure in their surroundings, they can track character development. When the more imaginative portions of the story-blend comes wafting over them, they will find it hard to disengage . . . until the end. As a result, the yarn spinner must be transformed from a writer into an author, sewing a tapestry of old New England whale stories, Dickensian style sweat shop anxiety (in Turning’s case, a strip shop), a gripping crime thriller and a deeply, emotional love tale of the Shakespearean kind. I guess it would have been easier to pen a sex-laden gay romance with a Sherlock Holmes whodunit, but that would only engage a reader’s time and not their imagination. I wanted Turning Idolater to linger, and not like stale garlic.

Another example from my canon is my latest work, The Road to Grafenwöhr (pronounce Grafenveer). In this case, it originated as an autobiographical extension of my novel Surviving an American Gulag, which relates my Army experiences through basic training. I planned this second book to continue relating my adventures when I was stationed in Bavaria —1968, during the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. What evolved even surprised me. That particular area of Germany, the Oberpfalz, teems with folklore and legend. Therefore, I decided to mash-up real events and experiences with a fantasy tale that draws on the Brothers Grimm and Stephen King. I also detailed barracks life and relationships following Jane Austen’s meticulous pattern, where the interaction between the characters become a mosaic drawing the reader through the story.

My protagonist, an imaginative GI named Quincy Summerson (a name derived from two literary characters – Peter Quince in Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and Esther Summerson in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House) finds himself swept up by his own imagination as it connects to the ancient folkways of the forest near Grafenwöhr. I marry fantasy elements with the real world that existed at that time and in that place. Quincy’s journey is a fateful one. By the rules of mash-up, as his imagination enters the twilight world, he should have arced downward, degraded and extinguished, befitting the horror and paranormal genre. However, I decided to take a different tack, choosing a heroes journey, providing Quincy with all the traditional elements that support a neophyte developing (in this case ripening) into a Homeric hero. In fact, I allowed Quincy to dictate his course to me. I fought him tooth and nail right to the bitter end, but I’m glad he won out. I am happy to report that initial feedback from my readers has also approved his decision. (Bravo Quincy!)

Not every work should be an amalgamation of disparate elements — a mash-up. However, when art calls from the sidelines and insists on a rich palette — the full spectrum — an author must be on guard to rise to the occasion. J. R. R. Tolkien teaches us that to engage the reader on the journey, we must create a familiar world — a comfortable environment for the imagination to take seed and grow. Then, and only then, can young soldiers meet dead Roman ghosts or dragons replace fighter squadrons in great sea battles off the coast of France (bravo Novik). There may be nothing new under the sun, but readers crave more of the same, but in diverse ways. We can either dish it up until they are sated and put it aside, or serve them old bottles in new wine and win their minds forever. Let the new wine flow.

Edward C. Patterson

Author of
Turning Idolater
The Road to Grafenwöhr
and other works see: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002BMI6X8
Website: Dancaster Creative www.dancaster.com