Lynn Raye Harris

Last week, we were shopping for a book, and noticed that our local Borders had something unusual on the shelves: lots of print versions of books published by electronic publisher Ellora’s Cave. While the fact that print publishers are creating electronic versions of their books isn’t news, it’s interesting that a publisher that started exclusively in the online realm is in the financial position to offer print books. Yeah, the covers are still bad, but these aren’t the kind of books you read for the covers, if you know what we mean.

Courtesy of Booksquare. No, you definitely don’t read those for the covers.

Didn’t mean to be gone a whole week, but the holidays do that to a body don’t they? We had a good Thanksgiving, a long and fun weekend, and I’ve spent the last two days working hard on the newsletter I edit.

In fact, I’ve realized I’m going to need to make some hard decisions come January about what I can and cannot do next year. As incoming Aloha Chapter president, I’ll have plenty to keep me busy. When I mentioned writing an article on-spec for another publication recently, Mike nearly hit the roof.

“No more giving away your writing for a clip. You’ve got enough already, and you need to work on selling your novels.”

Um, yeah, he’s right. December is bad for getting anything done, so I’ll content myself with less. Maybe I’ll put together a business plan. I had one, but I never wrote it down so it didn’t seem real. This time, I’ll write it down and refer to it daily.

Someone asked me recently if I got more writing done because I lived in a warm and sunny place year round. Er, no. In fact, it’s kind of like those spring school days where you sat at your desk and gazed out the window at the birds and grass and imagined yourself frolicking. Except there’s no teacher keeping me in that classroom now.

You know you live on an island when, with a fast approaching holiday dedicated to eating, you have to drive to four different stores just to find the fresh herbs and whipping cream that your recipes call for. Does no one around here use fresh ingredients until Thanksgiving? Why the run on whipping cream and thyme? (Sage I can understand.) Mounds of basil are still available. Piles of oregano beckon. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme are off to Scarborough Fair or something. I’ll be glad when normal returns next week.

For holiday gift ideas, the New York Times has just updated their 100 Notable Books of the Year. Here’s a taste:

Fiction & Poetry

BEYOND BLACK. By Hilary Mantel. (John Macrae/Holt, $26.) Neurotic, demanding ghosts haunt a British clairvoyant in this darkly comic novel.

A CHANGED MAN. By Francine Prose. (HarperCollins, $24.95.) A neo-Nazi engages a Jewish human rights leader in this morally concerned novel, asking for help in his effort to repent.

COLLECTED POEMS, 1943-2004. By Richard Wilbur. (Harcourt, $35.) This urbane poetry survived the age of Ginsberg, Lowell and Plath.

EMPIRE RISING. By Thomas Kelly. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) A muscular historical novel in which the Irish erect the Empire State Building in a cheerfully corrupt New York.

ENVY.
By Kathryn Harrison. (Random House, $24.95.) A psychoanalyst is unhappy but distant until Greek-tragedy things start happening in this novel by an ace student of sexual violation.

EUROPE CENTRAL. By William T. Vollmann. (Viking, $39.95.) A novel, mostly in stories, of Middle European fanaticism and resistance to it in the World War II period.

FOLLIES: New Stories. By Ann Beattie. (Scribner, $25.) This keen observer of the surface of life now slows down for an occasional epiphany.

JESUS, JUICED:

Anne Rice’s 27th novel, “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” is No. 4 on this week’s hardcover fiction list. The book, like Norman Mailer’s “Gospel According to the Son” (1997), is a first-person account of the life of Jesus, though Rice cannily breaks off a smaller piece of that life, writing about him at age 7. (“It’s as if Rice is casting Christ as the new Harry Potter,” Chris Ayres wrote in The Times of London.)

The book has arrived to some of the best reviews of Rice’s career. There’s something about writing in the voice of Jesus that smooths out a writer’s prose; Reynolds Price, reviewing Mailer’s book in the Book Review, didn’t like Mailer’s “excess of self-effacement.” Yet Rice has been praised for pretty much the same thing. As Laura Miller put it in Salon: “Gone are such Ricean devices as passages of florid description, conspicuous high-end consumption, endless assurances of the main characters’ beauty and that odd, pseudo-archaic Germanic syntax that would later become a trademark of Yoda. (Pretentious it was.)”

Rice, who was brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, was an atheist for 30 years – and wrote “Interview With the Vampire” and a pile of other pop-gothic novels – before returning to the church in 1998. On “Charlie Rose,” she seemed grateful she’s been welcomed back. “I thought maybe,” she said, “I had been officially excommunicated.”

Stephanie Diani for The New York Times

Mike is back from DC, his coat stashed in the back of the storage closet, his jeans on a shelf, his shoes tucked away, his long sleeve shirts hanging where they won’t be disturbed until another chilly trip beckons.

“How was it?” I ask.

“Cold,” he says. “Freaking cold, rainy, and miserable. Did we really live there for ten years?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t miss it. I never want to go back.”

“True dat.”

He called me the first day he was there, saying “It’s so flat and so big, just goes on and on and on. I’d forgotten.”

And we both know DC is nothing compared to a big city like Chicago or New York. DC is actually a lovely city, the mall is beautiful, and the lack of skyscrapers is refreshing. But the metro area is gigantic when compared to this island we live on. I wonder how many Oahus could fit inside the Beltway?

Last night, I was startled out of a dream in which a giant wave was coming toward the house, and then I realized it was raining. Not just a little tap-tap-tap, but a downpour in which I could hear water rushing down the sides of the house, splattering the soggy ground. I worried about the creek behind us, then figured it hadn’t been raining long enough to fill a 12 foot deep trench. There’ll be many more nights like this, and days too, when the water pours as if it won’t ever stop and the news bleats flash flood warnings on a regular basis (turn around, don’t drown the voice from the National Weather Service says as it reminds you not to cross any body of water in which you cannot see the bottom).

Winter has arrived. Time for high surf, short days, lots of rain, and whales.

I’ve been stuck on page 168 of The Da Vinci Code for the past three weeks. Life is just too short and I cannot force myself to continue through this linguistic hell. When I mentioned to my friend Michael, three weeks ago, that I was stuck on pg 168, he looked at me with surprise.

“You mean you made it that far?”

“You didn’t?” I said.

“I picked it up in the bookstore and couldn’t get past the first page.”

That’s the benefit of a PhD in Lit, I guess. The crap meter works instantaneously.

I’ll wait for the movie. This sucker is going back to the library (thank heavens I started cleaning house today, or I’d have forgotten the darned thing was buried beneath a pile of papers).

Foucault’s Pendulum and The Last Temptation of Christ are much better written; Temptation, at least, is every bit as controversial as Da Vinci.

Finished The Egyptologist. I then checked out the Amazon reviews. A very mixed bag there. Partly, the problem is that some folks bought this book expecting a standard historical mystery/thriller in the vein of Elizabeth Peters. The book is not that at all. It’s a literary novel that explores class divides, poverty, madness, and self-absorption. It’s also a dark comedy, more like the movie Heathers where Christian Slater goes around killing the snobby girls that Wynona Ryder hates. The Egyptologist is Heathers in costume. But only sort of, so don’t let that statement make you think you know the plot.

Some people were upset to have figured out the main twist early on. In fact, I think it’s deliberately set up that way, but I also think it remains ambiguous enough for at least half of the book that you aren’t entirely sure what you think is the truth. It becomes increasingly obvious that you were right, however, but even then I don’t think you expect the ending. The answers to the questions are all there for the careful reader. I admit that being inside the head of Ralph Trilipush for such long stretches does get annoying, however. I know he’s a pompous ass and I don’t need to be banged over the head with it repeatedly.

But the book got a good review from Barbara Mertz, who also happens to be Dr. Barbara Mertz, PhD in Egyptology (U of Chicago, no slouch there). Dr. BM is also Barbara Michaels, novelist, and also, if you didn’t know it, Elizabeth Peters, the author of the wonderful Amelia Peabody series. Dr. Barbara Mertz, aka Barbara Michaels, aka Elizabeth Peters knows her stuff when it comes to Egypt. She also knows how to tell a rollicking good tale, so for those who bemoaned the fact this book was nothing like the Amelia Peabody books, well, it wasn’t meant to be and she knew it. It’s a literary novel, not a thriller, and it’s darned fine for what it does.

After finishing The Egyptologist at midnight, I picked up Doctorow’s new book. Mike is on a business trip to DC, so I didn’t have anyone beside me asking me to please turn out the light. In spite of that first long sentence, the story so far moves along at a good clip. Much quicker paced than the Egypt book. The first scene, in fact, reminds me of Aunt Pitty Pat in her carriage shrieking to Scarlett that they need to get out of Atlanta before Sherman gets there. You can’t start off a book much more tensely than with Sherman marching along behind you and torching everything in sight. This book promises to be a fairly quick read, surprisingly. We’ll see.

By now you know the winners:

Fiction, William Vollman, Europe Central

Non-fiction, Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Poetry, W. S. Merwin, Migration: New and Selected Poems

Young People’s Literature, Jeanne Birdsall, The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits and a Very Interesting Boy

I’m certainly not surprised that Didion won. The book is a tour de force, to trot out a hack phrase. It’s simply stunning.

OTOH, I just bought Doctorow’s book at Borders lastnight. I was sure he’d win, as were most people, simply on the force of his literary giantness. Though, as previously reported, that first sentence of The March is a kicker. In flipping through the book, however, I noted that the rest of the prose doesn’t suggest Ulysses redux. So I took the plunge. I had 20 bucks in my Christmas account anyway, so I got the book basically for free. Gotta love that.

I can’t begin it, however, until I finish The Egyptologist (by Arthur Phillips; see post on Reading Material). What a fun book! The egyptologist himself, a Mr. Ralph Trilipush of Oxford, Harvard, and who knows where, is the most deluded guy on the planet. He is so convinced of his own correctness that every setback, every proof negative, he recasts to make it favorable to his theory. He is a hoot! And the mystery is, really, who is this Ralph Trilipush anyway? Is he who he claims to be? What the heck is going on in 1922 Egypt? I’d be reading it now, except I’ve promised myself I will do some work today.

In my email today comes this:

Dear Lynn,

My name is Tracey Rosengrave, Marketing Manager for Xlibris Corporation, a Print-On-Demand Self-Publishing company. We are sending you this email because we have either learned about your passion for writing or we have had the pleasure of coming across some of your work. If you are interested in self-publishing, I’ve included a brief description of who we are below.

Key phrase there is SELF-PUBLISHING.

Everyday we help authors by offering flexible, inexpensive methods of publishing, editing, marketing, distributing and selling books both in trade and full color. I understand that each author has different requirements. And that is why we offer packages that are tailored to your individual needs.

Next phrases to pay attention to: BY OFFERING [...] INEXPENSIVE METHODS [...] PACKAGES TAILORED TO YOUR INDIVIDUAL NEEDS. (Honestly, where is the editor here? I’d write it thus: I understand each author has different requirements, which is why we offer packages tailored to individual needs.)

You should, in general, not have to pay someone to publish your work. They pay you, not the other way around. There are exceptions, sure, but be sure you know the difference before embarking on self-publishing. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not the best scenario either. For a good perspective on POD, visit POD-dy Mouth (and no, the Lynn Harris mentioned on her blog is not me).

Um, nothing.

Non-fascinating things I did today: finally finished editing the galleys for Strong Currents 2, the anthology put out by my RWA chapter. Co-editor Michael will be pleased, because when he flies back into Honolulu tonight, after 9 days on the East Coast, he won’t have to spend valuable catching-up-on-sleep time lighting a fire under my butt.

I also unpacked my Yamaha keyboard. It’s only been wrapped up for almost two years. Last night, whilst attending a meeting in the parish hall, I tinkled the ivories. Oh my GAWD! I sound awful. I have forgotten so much. Joanne, my lovely piano teacher in Deutschland, would be horrified if she knew the depths to which I have slipped (note: send card to Joanne, don’t mention piano playing). I have a piano, a beautiful antique thing from England, but it’s naturally out of tune after being shipped halfway around the world. Have I bothered to get it tuned yet? Of course not. And not because I keep forgetting (though that’s part of it) but because I don’t trust just anyone to tune it. It’s old and it can’t be tuned to concert pitch. I’m sure your garden variety piano tuner knows that, but I worry anyway.

So, for nearly two years, I’ve made excuses not to practice my piano playing. No wonder I stink. I stared at the music today and wondered what the heck some of those little bars and dots meant. I could feel the disappointment rising inside me, swelling into my throat and threatening me with tears of frustration.

And then, it clicked, that lovely Bach minuet I used to play so well. My fingers remembered what my mind did not. Still, it wasn’t as nice as it used to be.

Writing is the same, really. When you don’t practice it, you get rusty. You forget. Sentences that once would have flowed get bogged down in the mire. You have to fight your way out, clawing and scraping to get those words back, those fresh original words instead of the stock cliches that spring from your fingers to the page. It’s easy to get frustrated, to want to just plop your hiney in the mire and give up, or to put the music away and stash the keyboard in a corner.

The trick is not succumbing to that feeling.