Tag Archives: editing services

Homeownership

“What’s that smoke?” “Oh, he’s started mowing.”

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Where I live, irrigation is necessary to have lawns.  Call it wasteful if you will, but first know the realities:  our irrigation systems were primarily built to sustain agriculture, and by providing it to homeowners as well, the cost of that system is better supported.  Also, the Columbia is about half a mile wide near me, showing no signs of drying up any time soon.  Oh, and I have to pay $400 a year for it even if I don’t use it–‘water rights’ are associated with the property.  So, yes, we live in a desert, but not like the deserts of southern California, grotesquely overbuilt for the water supply and beseeching it from five states away to support breakneck sprawl.

Each year, this means some maintenance work for me.  In fall, I must shut off the main, and have the system blown out.  I pay a guy with an air compressor who does this every fall, enabling him to pay for a family vacation every year.  He’s willing, reasonably priced, pleasant and thorough.  If I do not do this, my entire underground piping system will be destroyed that winter.  Not ‘might.’  It will.  In spring, it’s time to turn the system on.  I don’t like mowing my very hilly obstacle course of a yard, so I’m in no hurry to do that.  It usually doesn’t happen until Mrs. Anderson comes to me (again) to ask me politely when I plan to turn them on, reminding me (again) that her raspberries are actually watered by my system, and won’t thrive unless I get moving.  I usually do.

That process involves turning on the main and running a test watering from the entire system, which is set out quite illogically.  It involves frequent drenchings at the very least, occasional slips and falls onto ass in wet grass, and often repair work.  If a whole valve is hosed, I call professionals.  If it’s just a broken sprinkler or riser (that’s the piece going from the pipe to the sprinkler), I get to dig in mud, use a special tool to extract any broken pieces of riser, put in a new sprinkler and correctly aim it, etc.  This was a good year, with only minor issues.  One year, I had five Old Faithfuls, in which the riser is completely broken off and water gushes 3′ in the air.  I learned about this when Bill, who has the misfortune to live downhill from me, came over and asked me quite courteously if I would see my way clear to do something about the water pouring down his driveway.

Once I do this, of course, I will soon need to mow.  Some years I sharpen the mower blade.  Most years I change the oil.  However, I am prone to overfill the oil.  My philosophy is that overfilling is not good, but a seized engine from lack of oil is rather worse.  This year, it seems, I went a little overboard even by my standards.  I learned this within about the first five minutes of my first mowing, when my mower horked up a very dense cloud of acrid white smoke.  This is not part of the usual plan.  The cloud’s thickness was quite impressive, like a mortar had thrown a smoke shell near me.  In some alarm, I turned the mower off, went in and did some research.  It seems that excess oil is vented into the exhaust pipe, so the oil had probably sloshed into there as soon as I had occasion to tilt the mower for any reason.  As soon as the pipe got hot enough, it started to cook off the oil.

Here is what’s amazing:  this happens nearly every time I change the oil, but by the time it does, I have forgotten the above explanation and must re-research this particular problem.  Why don’t I remember?

Maybe it’ll help if I blog it.  And if it doesn’t help me, people can at least smile in wry amusement that my neighbors can usually gauge my mower maintenance by the air pollution that results.

Editing/writing life

_In Search of Gentle Death_ now in print!

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And now, with the book safely on dead (hopefully gently euthanized) trees, I can tell the story of my small part in this important project by my friend and colleague, Richard N. Côté.  In Search of Gentle Death is a history of the modern right-to-die movement as it has evolved in many nations. I served as the final proofreader in a whirlwind, crash process earlier this year that had me seeing strange things due to eyestrain–and it was worth every moment.

I’ll skip the synopsis here, since the link provides one, but my enthusiastic endorsement of the book probably won’t stun you. As a participant, I can’t ethically put up an Amazon review.  I can tell you that Dick is a dedicated researcher and social historian, and he hasn’t failed us here.  Not one bit.  For some samples of his best previous work, I commend to you Strength & Honor:  the Life of Dolley Madison, and City of Heroes:  the Great Charleston Earthquake of 1886. If you are at all interested in the right-to-die movement, Dick talked to all the right people, which isn’t as easy as with, say, the quilting or racquetball communities. To a certain degree, the movement exists on the ‘down low.’ In many countries, helping a terminally ill person end life on his or her own terms can mean jail time. Even providing or publishing the information is illegal some places. Therefore, not everyone has these folks on speed dial, or can get them to speak frankly. Dick will tell you where the movement has been, is and is going.

For the project’s first five years, specifically until its final month, I wasn’t part of it except as a projected advance copy reviewer and general waver of pompoms. I’ve known Dick for some years, and he’s given me heaps of helpful guidance. Now and then we’ll have a fine chat on the phone, usually about our current projects and/or the current state of the literary markets. That’s how I knew about his progress with In Search of Gentle Death. So happened, at about the typesetting stage, Dick sent me an advance galley of the front material and first chapter of the book. After typesetting is supposed to come final proofreading. What Dick hadn’t known is that proofreading is my wheelhouse, one of the very few things in life I do well enough to have an unbearable ego about. I spotted a misspelled name and reported it to him. (Amusing side note:  it was that of the infamous Tim LaHaye, author of some apocalyptic religious novels.) I offered to be the final proofreader, knowing that if I saw that one on a cursory read, there’d be more. After I reiterated the offer a couple more times, Dick advised me in his trademark jolly way that I’d made the mistake of offering too many times, and as my punishment, he was accepting my service.

It would be a fast-paced, demanding job, and I was looking forward to showing my stuff. Editor Diane Anderson and editor/typesetter Betty Burnett seemed to have fine chemistry with Dick from the outset, so I’d be coming onto a team that was all business and tightly focused, with some work to do in order to show that I belonged. I’d also be pointing out people’s errors, which demands a certain degree of tact. In this world, no one hates you for doing that, provided you do so with professionalism and good humor. A license to nitpick.

My pace was about a chapter a day, sometimes a little more. The only work I did on the computer was compiling and e-mailing the list of items needing editorial attention. The actual proofreading involved printing the chapter, taking it upstairs, reading it, redpenning it, and slapping post-its on the pages. Dick told me I didn’t have to look up all the names. I ignored him and did it anyway, and glad I did–found a fair number misspelled, but as a whole the book was not heavily littered with typos. After my initial pass on a chapter, I set it aside for about eight hours, then came back and proofread the whole thing a second time with tighter focus. This typically turned up about as many items again as my first pass. In a couple of cases, when I saw a suspiciously low typo count, I presumed I’d been phoning it in, snarled at myself for slipping, and read it all a third time.

It was a mentality not alien to a totalitarian regime’s interrogators: everyone is guilty and must confess. Thus, the typos were there to be found, in my mind, and by the gods I had better get every one.  Ninety-nine out of a hundred was not satisfactory. If I needed additional motivation, I could always consider that Dick had been working on this for five years. Five years of a man’s life, great effort and expense invested. Yeah, I’d say that merits doing whatever it takes to do the job justice, even if not for the need on my part to justify a ginormous ego and some fairly loud boasting, to say nothing of simple professional pride.  Yeah, I was going to bust ass on it.

I did this work for about three weeks until I caught up on the previously typeset material.  About that time, I began seeing strange things in my lower right field of vision and went to my ophthalmologist, who told me my eyes were fine but sent me for a carotid ultrasound and (when that proved normal) a brain MRI. Of course, my friends all razzed me that they hoped the MRI found something. It did:  that I did have a brain, it was functioning as designed (for good or ill), and that nothing was wrong. I put it all down to eyestrain and stopped worrying about it.

Dick was still writing the last two chapters as my proofing caught up to him.  On those, when I got the galleys (literary-speak for edited but unpublished manuscript), I would be the bottleneck, the whole project waiting on what I might find. I think he was fully booked out by then, at utmost strain of effort to finish, though still keeping amazing good humor considering he probably wanted to just knock back a bottle of Chardonnay and sleep for three days. What I hadn’t told him at the outset was that in real crunch times, I have another gear. Can you imagine what kind of lunatic gets an adrenaline rush from proofreading under pressure? You’s lookin’ at him. I got both chapters turned around in about two hours each as they came to me. It felt like being the setup specialist in a baseball bullpen:  come in, throw a double-play ball, fan the next batter on two sliders and a knuck, put out the rally and hand it off to ace closers, lefty and righty.

Most of my interaction was with Dick and Diane, only much later in the project with Betty (with whom I’d have liked to get better acquainted, but we were, well, busy as hell). I’ve worked with a couple dozen editors, and most ranged from good to superb. This crew can all take their places in the top tier of that listing. Our relationship was bantery when it could be and frank when it had to be, such as if I was marking up something the author/editors had already decided needed to stay as given. (Editese: ‘stet’ is the term for this, short for ‘let stand as set,’ meaning “don’t change it.”) Probably 1/4 of my catches ended up stetted, I’ll guess. That’s perfectly fine. My work wasn’t to change anything, simply to notice and pass everything on for the team to evaluate. It was a wild literary ride, but a happy rollicking one, livened by Dick and Diane’s cheerful wit and a sense of socially productive work.

Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Glad I didn’t shut up about it in the pre-beginning! Dick, Diane, Betty, thanks for having me. Truly an honor.

Buy the book direct from Dick

Buy the book from Amazon (when it gets into stock there)

Editing/writing life

Needy writer syndrome

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This is not so much a condition as a phase most writers pass through.  It’s the phase where you are bugging anyone and everyone to read your sonnets, screenplay, novella, or whatever.  If you have matured somewhat in your writing, you may want honest critique.  If you have not matured in it at all, you just want them to tell you it’s great.  My own travels through this phase lasted longer than I am glad to report.

Unfortunately, most people don’t want to read it, and they really don’t want to give you honest feedback, in case it completely blows.  Take it from me:  if you give something to someone to read, and you don’t hear back, either they just kinda didn’t do it because they really just didn’t want to, or it was a terrible piece and they are afraid to tell you so.

If you were going to be really smart about it, you’d pick up a copy of Stephen King’s On Writing, digest and absorb its lessons, and then you wouldn’t benefit from this blog post.  However, you probably won’t buy and read that book.  In that case, what you need is a writers’ group–and I don’t say that very often, because I have had very little luck with those.

The benefit of the writers’ group is they are going to read your work and critique it.  Their critique may be fair or unfair, smart or dumb, but they will read it, and you will likely improve.  You’ll get past Needy Writer Syndrome faster because you won’t be after everyone to critique you, and that’s all to the good.

Married life

Marital justice

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As some know, I’ve had some bumps in the road lately, some very saddening.  And yet, even at such times, something funny can happen, and if one can’t still laugh, one simply rejects whatever the cosmos is doing to try to cheer one up. Not wise.

Tonight Deb and I were watching the Survivor reunion episode, where Colton had every chance to prove that he was something other than a twit, but wasn’t strong enough to do so.  Too bad.  At one commercial, rather than mute the TV and try to avoid seeing silent car advertising, I got up to hit the restroom.  Now, Deb at times thinks it’s great fun to block me from whatever I want to get done at a commercial.  I guess it’s just her way of being playful, but it isn’t always my favorite joke.  So, tonight, she hurried into her slippers hoping to get in my way, but even with bad knees I was too swift and agile for her.  Around the corner I darted.

She does not habitually admit defeat at that point.  As we all know, to urinate, men typically stand before a toilet and lift the lid (which we had put down previously, as we are admonished without cease, by guess whom).  I did in the typical fashion.  Deb sandwiched herself between me and the commode, confident I would not, well, just go anyway.  (I’ve been tempted a time or two.) I gave her the “really?” look.  No effect.

With an air of exaggerated defiance and satisfaction, she prepared to assume the traditional female posture of urination on a commode–in such a hurry that she didn’t stop to consider that the seat was up.  I saw this immediately but said not a word, of course.  Down she sat–on the icy porcelain, the thing no female wants to sit on, for several easily grasped reasons.  Her eyes went wide and she bounded up as I started laughing.  No normal laugh, but a belly laugh, the kind that doubles one over.

She used a profane term for me that means the rectal opening, and also called me a ‘meany’ as she fled.  There I stood, bent over laughing, trying to figure out how it was that I was the ‘meany’ and other choice terms, when it had been her giving me trouble in the first place.

“On the blog!” I called out after her.

“No way!” she exclaimed.

“You gotta own it, dear,” I rejoined.

Sure enough, after the show when I headed downstairs with my hasty notes, she tried to block that also.  However, I threatened to just go to her computer and post it, and she yielded with dire threats.

They didn’t work.  And I had a very difficult time typing this, because every time I think about it, I start laughing my head off.

Human relations

When you find yourself a human vending machine

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This is something that giving persons tend to see throughout their lives:  the toxic evolution into something not a friend, but a human vending machine.  When are you such a thing? When a person or person begins to take you for granted, make you their ‘easy way,’ expect some commodity of you on demand:  emotional support, information, some sort of effort on your part, whether you feel like it or not.  Those with specialized knowledge, especially in technology, particularly become the vending machine of choice because it’s ever so much easier to just impose on another than to use one’s mind and resolve it oneself.   Persons who do this are rarely emotionally stable, and tend to have significant issues.  I don’t know the official definition of co-dependency, but I suspect it plays in.

Such situations aren’t hard to identify.  The person involved rarely asks about your own life or needs; doesn’t really care, as machines don’t have needs.  He or she shows frequent signs of instability.  This person often praises you, perhaps to the skies, and why not? That’s supposed to be your payoff. That’s the unspoken deal, that you will be told regularly how wonderful you are.  A person constantly raging about his or her other vending machines, for example, doesn’t imagine you to be thinking:  and one day, it will be me.  And yet, if you are perceptive, that is what you are thinking. You as vending machine are being tapped for support because other vending machines have started eating this person’s quarters, perhaps.

To test this status is simple.  One day, simply eat the quarters.  Not angrily, not cruelly, simply don’t perform the expected behavior.  Most often that comes when you are at a limit, or at your lowest ebb in life, and simply can’t fulfill the demanded role–it’s not that you choose to eat the quarters, but that you lack the resources to process them.  In any case, the vending machine doesn’t operate as it always did.

If on that day, the individual simply kicks the vending machine and stomps off, yeah, that’s what it was.  Don’t feel too bad for the loss of a toxic situation.  On the phone, it usually takes the form of hanging up on you. In person, someone stomps off; on chat, someone fires a barb and logs off so as not to receive a rejoinder. I have a dear friend who moved away from a place she lived for decades, and most of her ‘friends’ reacted with shock and anger: the vending machine was not even going to eat their quarters, but was going to be removed from the vicinity. A few wanted to keep in touch, wished her well, and were happy for the improvement in her life, even if that meant less access to her.  Those few wanted her in their lives not for what she could do for them, but because they cared for her and believed, correctly, that she felt likewise. Everyone else gave the machine a vicious kick and stomped off, presumably to find another machine.

So on that day, when you eat the quarters, you’ll learn something about that person. If he or she now makes time to care for you, understand that you aren’t available in the normal way right now, and gives of him or herself, that was never a vending machine relationship–even if at times it looked like one.  In vending machine relationships, the machine isn’t allowed feelings.  If yours matter, then it’s not that sort of toxic dynamic.

If he or she kicks the machine and stomps off, my advice is to say nothing, turn, and walk away.  Don’t look back.  If that person shows contrition later, suspect it.  Rarely, it is a true epiphany; most often, it is sudden regret and realization that they may have permanently broken the machine, and a desire to get it back in working order.  You can accept the show of contrition, but it does not obligate you to resume vending machine status.  That’s the key. There need be no hard feelings, no animosity, but that does not imply that you must once again open yourself up to another kick. If you do, in my view, you are not showing much self-respect. If you do, you are partly the author of your own future misuse or abuse. How can it be otherwise? Let mistreatment sneak up on you once, well, anyone can get caught napping. Let it walk right up to you, say a few of the right words, and resume as before? Don’t allow that.  Respect yourself.

That person will need to find new vending machines (he or she has learned how to search for them over the years), and will do so.  Those situations will be toxic also.  However, you do not own that problem.  A very wise woman once taught me:  “Always ask yourself who owns the problem.  Whoever owns the problem needs to deal with the problem.  You can’t own anyone else’s problems.”

She was right.

Editing/writing life

Grammar trolls, bad grammar and spelling, and ye Impperfectiones of ye Englisch

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This blog’s basis is the life and situations of writing, professional and non-professional.  I find that area not well understood by most folks, but I can’t often put my finger on the right topic.  This is one.

Q: When I have bad grammar, do you look down your snout at me?

A: Mostly, no.

Why not?

Turn it around:  why? What can I gain from that? Maybe you’re brilliant but dyslexic.  Maybe you just suck at English. (If I can suck at math and be good at English, I’m sure others can arrange to suck at English and be good at other things.) Maybe you’re partly disabled and doing your damn best. I can’t know why you have bad grammar.  But the answer is the same:  why would I care? What can I gain from looking down my snout, picking on people for something they can’t help? That would benefit me how? Would I win friends and influence people? Would I effect change? Would it do any good, or would it just make me a snob? Surely there are enough literary snobs out there, and we don’t need another one in me?

When people deliberately or lazily use bad English, do you break into cold sweats of outrage? Start breaking stuff?

No.

But you should!  Why not?

For the same reason I don’t die of a massive stroke if they find a new source of spilled radioactive contamination at Hanford.  It already has so much mess that they can keep forever pretending to clean it up, a multi-generational non-work job they’ll assure that they never finish.  How does it matter if they find a little bit more? What will they do, get non-busy non-cleaning that up also? If your English isn’t good, oh, well; neither is most people’s.  Big deal; no one’s perfect.  Even if you hate smoking, does every discarded cigarette butt on the ground cause you to write indignantly to your Congressthief/MP/etc.? Do you accost every cigarette butt litterbug in anger? No? Why not? Is it because you have better things to do with your life?

Do you always strive for perfect grammar and spelling?

No.

But YOU’RE A WRITER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You noticed! (insert forty dippy emoticons and heart variations) Awesomecoolbeansaucelulzroflcopter!

Surely you want to sound as articulate as possible?

Why? This implies that I must care what someone thinks of my writing. Unless it’s an acquisitions editor in a position to hire/publish me, why? I take special care here, but not on a message board or in chat.

But it’s the principle! It’s your professional presentation, isn’t it?

Not always, it ain’t.  Sometimes I’m just being a person and don’t worry about it.  I live in the same world you do, with the same people and their (and my) English imperfections.  I do not work every hour of the day.  I sometimes sleep, watch TV, mow the yard, cuddle my wife, and at those times I do no work.  If you were an auto detailer, would you spend all your leisure time obsessively washing, waxing, vacuuming, q-tipping, armor-alling and spit-shining your car? What? Why not? Don’t you care what people think of your car? It’s your professional presentation! Surely you are too busy obsessing about its perfection to actually drive it anywhere?

But cars are for getting somewhere! Of course I would drive it!

And writing is for communicating.  Of course I would use it for a practical purpose.

You aren’t biologically compelled to proofread every word of English you see?

Evidently not.  Would anyone want to live that way? If you want me to proofread your English, please e-mail me and I’ll quote you my rates. (I am a really, really good proofreader.  Ask those who have worked with me.) Or, if you are a good friend, maybe I’ll give you a freebie. Some writers are not only not grammar and spelling snobs, but can be rather nice and helpful friends, just like your attorney friends will sometimes give you free guidance, or your computer nerd friends might help you figure out why your screen now looks all wrong. We might just be actual, average people.  Writing may just happen to be our line of work; we may be otherwise normal.

People often post deliberately contrived examples of English that is comically faulty.  Surely that, at least, must grate horribly on you?

No.

How can it not?

Because it’s generally lacking in comic merit, simple trolling. At what point in time has it ever made sense to encourage Internet trolls, especially when they don’t even amuse one?

Okay.  What DO you hate?

Stupid expressions and text-speak.  “Awesome sauce” inserted into decent English is like urine poured on otherwise good pizza.  And when you want to wish everyone a good night, ‘hagn e1’ is a lousy way to do it.

Sweet! I have found an area where I can taunt, tease, troll and provoke you over English!  Awesome sauce lol! Cool beans lol! R u mad @ me yet lol?

No.

But you have to be! You simply HAVE to be! I need a way to troll and annoy you!

Fortunately, you’re a good person in enough other ways and are allowed faults, just as I hope you’ll allow me my own (and they are plentiful).  As for this need to troll and provoke, that need is not my problem, so I should not take ownership of a problem I don’t own.  Do it deliberately once, I shrug my shoulders, hope it’s a flier.  Do it deliberately twice, the fuse’s wire burns through and I’m no longer paying attention to it.  Safety feature. Do it repeatedly, and I may wonder idly how this brings you joy, but I don’t wonder very hard, because wondering implies an interest in why you’d do that, and that wire burnt through.  If you want to sound that way on purpose just to try and make my day worse, do so.  When you stop, I’ll replace the fuse, and we’ll talk about something productive.

I simply don’t believe you.  Some aspect of all this must surely drive you insane.

If that were the case, I’d be insane by now: both passively from what people cannot help, and actively by both friends and enemies with a strange idea of fun.  If it drives you insane, well, I don’t blame you, but I suggest you refuse to allow that.  It worked for me.

It got you to write a long blog post on the subject. It did bother you! Neener, made you look!

No. It inspired me, made me want to write, explain, share. It motivated me to do some useful work, organize my thoughts a bit, think critically. It helped me realize that people can see why a mechanic doesn’t come home and immediately begin working on his or her own cars, but cannot see why a writer doesn’t necessarily critique everything he or she reads.

I think some writers do.

Then I’m sorry for them, but as I said before, we all have to own our own problems.  They’ll have to own that one.  I don’t want or need it–it would just be a hindrance to joy.

Editing/writing life

Old Hastings labels are the enemy, and Googone is my friend

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If you’re going to sell a lot of books–especially in Fine condition, as are many of mine–you want to be able to list as few defects as possible.  If you are a brick and mortar bookstore, you want to make it as annoying as you can to remove your price tags.

These interests conflict in many little puddles of Googone.

If you’ve never used it, Googone is an orange-smelling solvent that dissolves the gumming on labels.  It’s not harmful on your fingers, though I sure wouldn’t drink it, huff it like some kids do with airplane glue, or use it as a personal lubricant.  It is volatile, meaning that its will evaporate without a trace.

So what I do is this:  lay out a row of books, offending stickers up.  Drip Googone onto each sticker one drop at a time, being sure to soak it completely.  Some will often run down the spine or into the pages; don’t worry about that, as it won’t deform them like water would.  It works best on matte tags stuck to glossy dust jackets and covers, and worst/messiest on glossy tags adhering to matte dust jackets (they soak up the Googone and you must keep wetting the sticker down).  Let sit for about four minutes.

Start peeling up stickers, with great care.  In the best cases (B&N 30% discount stickers), a single peel, a wipe, a couple hours set out to dry fully, and you are done.  In the worst cases (small segmented Half Price Books tags, fossilized tags from the 1980s, and Hastings tags), you have to keep it soaked until the gum or fossilized gum finally starts to dissolve.  You could just keep doing that until it all dissolves, but that takes longer.

Once you have the paper up, you want to remove any gum residue.  If you were patient, or mopped behind the label with a Googone-wet finger, it’s moist and will wipe up.  If you were not, moisten it, give it a moment and then wipe.  Keep wiping with fresh Googone until all you can see is a light sheen of the stuff and all gumming is gone, clean up around the edges where it ran down, and set out to dry.

The biggest annoyance is the mess, that and the spreading stains which your instincts tell you have just made the book several times worse than if you’d left the tag in peace.  It evaporates (though I wouldn’t use any more than I needed).  Oh, and one more:  if your computer keys are marked with sticky labels rather than inset labels, you will very much wish to do a good job of washing your hands before you sit down at your machine.  I made that mistake once, and it’s a good thing I can remember which is N and which is M.

Editing/writing life

How not to get a book review

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First, allow me to direct you to a very good article by Jon at Crimespree magazine.  I’m not much into Jon’s genre, but I’ve been a reviewer at Amazon for quite some time.

Before Amazon changed its ranking system, I was high enough on their rankings that I took some pains to keep my local media from finding out (lest they bother me).  The majority of my review solicitations were quite faulty.  To wit:

  • Many wanted me to review galleys.  Uh, no.  If my only compensation is the actual book, you expect me to forego that?
  • One spammed me weekly about her children’s fantasy until I finally reported her to her provider when “no” and “get lost” did not suffice.
  • Lots paid no attention to the sorts of things I had reviewed in the past.  Does my body of work look like I read a lot of Christian-themed murder mysteries?
  • Some wrote so badly they unsold themselves.  If this is how you write when you are trying to get my attention, what kind of book did you commit?
  • A number wanted to send me e-copies.  While I can accept offering me the option, what that essentially says is that I wasn’t carefully selected–I was spammed, along with many others, as there is no cost to sending e-copies, thus no reason not to mailbomb the entire Amazon reviewer base.
  • Few sent me anything with even a hint of personal touch.  I wasn’t looking for flattery (and in fact was turned off by it), but some sincere reason:  why me, and not someone else?

Most radiated one of the greatest turnoffs about authors (and you’d be surprised about some well-known names who resemble this remark):  dividing the world into two groupings, a) those prepared to buy/promote/fanboy their work, and b) useless individuals.  I don’t go to writers’ retreats and after several tries, I’m not interested in local writers’ groups.  There is just too much of this, and the pain is not worth the gain to me.

So how do you get reviews for your published work? Realize:  you’re asking someone to commit to a thorough read of a book that 80% of the time will be mediocre (that’s just the average).  See it through his or her eyes, spending several hours of life in what the odds say will be suffering.  Explain why s/he should believe that it will not be suffering–not everyone, just that person in particular.  Not with flattery but with examples of your book’s merits germane to what the reviewer seems prone to review.  Do it professionally yet personally, conveying the message that you will gladly accept even a criticism-filled review.  Act like a credible professional contacting another credible professional.

Book reviews, Social comment

Tom Sawyer

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I just finished re-reading this eternal classic, and I hope some of you will do the same.  As a child, I had no idea of Clemens’ social commentary, which I can now appreciate a little more.

Then again, as a child of five, living in Kansas, I read it and immediately began to talk like a Missouri 1840s hillbilly kid.  What you may not know about Kansas is that while there is definitely a fair bit of Cletusism in the state, the population is rather divided about it.  As in:  there is one segment that embraces country everything, speaks with a rural drawl and makes no apologies for it.  My father comes from that stock, but more or less abandoned it to get an engineering degree.  My mother doesn’t, despite her ranching upbringing, and always wanted not to be identified with backwoods habits.  Not one bit.

Back home, this is somewhat accentuated by stereotypes and prejudices specific to Kansas and our Missourian neighbors, in which the perception is that Missouri has only one tooth and shares it out without even washing it.  Of course, it’s not true; it’s mostly good-natured joshing but underneath it lie some authentic prejudices with deep roots more terrible than the rest of the nation understands.  One of these days I’ll write about it.  Suffice it to say that the folk memory runs deep on both sides, and neither side was a wagonload of saints.  It’s a miracle we get along as well as we do now, probably because most sensible people realize the two states are not as different as the more prejudiced citizens of either would like to imagine.

So, along comes their son, a fairly precious little fellow whose idea of fun is to read through the whole encyclopedia, and he begins to talk like Tom Sawyer.  As you may know, erudition ain’t a feature of Tom’s character.

It did not go over well at all.  “But we wanted him to have access to great reading!”  Oops.

Fortunately, I got over it.  I still say ‘ain’t’ sometimes just to annoy her, or in cercles litteraires.  I’m at ease with both.  I like the down-to-earth rural life and basic practical wisdom of it all, and I like Brie.  Zero reason one can’t have both, as I see it.  If that doesn’t fit someone’s mailbox, they can refuse delivery and send it back.

This is the part where it’s about time to explain to why Tom Sawyer would be a good re-read.  Where Clemens shines for me is in his cynicism about mob mentality, stuffiness, pretense and the fickle nature of mass opinion.  The reader cannot miss it.  Clemens is laughing at his characters, which seems to be his literary wheelhouse.  In a lesser author, his laughter would come off mean-spirited and snooty; that’s probably how I’d ring if I set myself to the same storytelling task, which is why I don’t.  Clemens laughs at people without malice, and has you laughing at them too.  He ranks among our great.

Definitely a happy reunion.

Adventures

The abrupt truncation

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I apologize for the lack of further galleries.  Here’s what happened.  I tried to post a third, but WordPress barfed it.  Unfortunately, I learned that if that occurs, the only ways to get it are 1) start playing with a bunch of HTML code (which I simply am not going to do), or 2) re-upload the whole batch of pics.  Which takes about an hour including ordering, captioning and so on.  WordPress’s blithe expectation is that one shouldn’t mind doing either, as a tech support answer told me after about three days.  It is not my doing that the software barfs, and if there is one area in which I am impatient, it is in doing a lot of drudgery twice for no good reason other than ‘our software is faulty, sorry’.  It is very difficult to force myself to do an exacting task all over again, with no guarantee it won’t all throw up a second time.  How many times might it take?

What will probably happen, therefore, is that I will either load smaller galleries here (so that when WordPress barfs and I am handed a lame solution, I will lose less work), or I will just load the rest of the photos to Faceplant and caption them there.  If you have a preference please comment.  Mainly, I wanted the kind and faithful readership here to enjoy them first, in something of an intimate setting not dependent upon being my FB friend, and for the pics of the animals at least, we got there.