Who is Lucy Forrester? Jane Davis talks about her new novel and the transformative impact of childhood illness

I've been too buried to blog lately, but I couldn't let a new Jane Davis novel drop without a shout out. Jane is the fabulous Brit who wrote (among several) Half Truths & White Lies, winner of the Daily Mail first novel award, and I Stopped Time, one of my favorite reads last year.

Today, Jane pops in to answer a few questions about her new book My Counterfeit Self, in which political activist Lucy Forrester (a cross between Edith Sitwell and Vivienne Westwood) is nominated for a prestigious award by a dead man with whom she had a love/hate relationship. Was it a cruel joke or a rare opportunity? Who is this Lucy Forrester?

And another question...

What’s the story behind your latest book?
It’s the story of a radical poet and political activist called Lucy Forrester, who’s a cross between Edith Sitwell and Vivienne Westwood. Having been anti-establishment all of her life, she’s horrified to find that she’s been featured on the New Year’s Honours list. (This is list prepared by the Queen for people who have made a considerable contribution to British life in some substantial way – arts, culture, business, charitable works and so on). To be honest, the idea of writing about the life of a poet came directly from reader reviews. Several comments that my prose was like poetry. I had no idea if I could actually write poetry but this gave me confidence that I might be able to convince readers that I could see the world as a poet does.

It’s an intriguing title. What does it mean to you?
Lucy’s parents behave so appallingly that she is freed from any feeling of obligation to live up to their expectations. She moves out of the family home, decamping to bohemian Soho. In distancing herself from her parents Lucy adopts a new personality that she hides behind. Although she insists that she lays herself bare in her poetry, it’s keeping secrets from those who love her most that is her undoing.

We meet Lucy Forrester as a young child. How difficult is it to get inside the head of a young child and convey their consciousness without ‘talking down’?
I remember childhood as a very frightening place, and all of the articles I have read about childhood psychology reinforce that memory.

I don’t have children of my own but the mother of my godson put to me, ‘You only know what comes out of their mouths. You don’t know what’s going inside their heads.’ But, of course, the author does have to know. I don’t think that a child’s head is an uncluttered place. They are absorbing any number of new facts daily, and have to give them a context within their limited knowledge, something we as adults have to do less often – although we still experience similar pain barriers, learning a new piece of computer software, for example. I hope there is nothing twee about the way that I write children.

Lucy is a polio survivor. The impact of childhood illness interests you, doesn’t it?
Very much so. The child is set apart, both literally and figuratively. They’re looked at differently by family and friends. And, of course, they have to draw on tremendous inner reserves. I saw a documentary about Jim Marshall, inventor of the Marshall amp. He suffered from tubercular bones and spent his childhood in and out of hospital. At the time, with no effective antibiotic, his condition was potentially fatal. The disease starts in the lungs, spreads through the bloodstream and attacks the spine and weight-bearing joints. Cocooned in plaster casts, he missed out on formal education. It was his father who suggested that he try tap dancing as part of his physical recovery. That gave him an incredible ear for rhythm, and the rest is history. It’s impossible to say how different Jim’s story would have been if he hadn’t contracted the disease, but it’s fair to assume it changed him.

When I started researching the polio, I was surprised by just how many people in the public eye have suffered. Martin Sheen, Donald Sutherland, Joni Mitchell, GwenVerdon – and like Jim Marshall, Gwen was encouraged by her mother to dance as therapy for her polio-afflicted legs.

In Lucy’s case, I also wanted to give the idea of physical separation, a life lived on the attic floor of her parents’ home, her sense of abandonment, which leads to a fear of abandonment in later life. She calls herself the Out of Sight Out of Mind Child.

Why Polio?
At its peak in the 1940s and 50s, polio was the world’s most feared disease, paralysing or killing half a million people a year. Lucy contracted the disease just before the discovery of the vaccine, but even after the availability of the vaccine, people continued to die. In 1961 there were 707 acute cases and 61 deaths. And, of course, like the folk singer Donovan, a few unlucky children contracted the disease from the vaccine.

This isn’t the first time you’ve tackled the issue of survival.
No, I addressed it in These Fragile Things when my main character Judy faced her own near-death experience. In both books, there is the idea of a trade-off. You survive, but there’s a price to pay.

In My Counterfeit Self, Lucy isn’t the only survivor. Obsessed by her fear of nuclear bombs, she had been sold the line ‘the victims wouldn’t have known anything about it’. And of course, for many, that was true. But the final death toll at Hiroshima was double the estimated number of immediate casualties. Some survived only to die slow deaths, and then there were those who had to go on living, who had to rebuild.

You’ve mentioned Hiroshima. CND is the main political cause that Lucy throws herself behind. Why that choice?
Lucy is a rebel with a cause. Again, the timeframe of the novel made CND an obvious choice. Her early memories are of war. Fear that there was going to be a third world war permeated her adolescence and then 1956 happened, the year in which so many people were spurred into action because the government seemed determined to drag the country into war with Egypt over the Suez Canal. CND is one of the few causes that has remained in the news. Whichever your viewpoint, feelings tend to run high. I must admit, until I started my research for this novel, I was totally unaware of the plight of the British atomic veterans who suffered injury as a result of taking part in peacetime nuclear testing. I should point out that there isn’t a direct link between CND and the atomic veterans, many of whom are pro the nuclear deterrent. But the fact that our veterans remain uncompensated seems very unjust. Given the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I refuse to believe that the risk of likely injury wasn’t foreseeable. I felt that the atomic veteran’s cause was something Lucy would throw herself behind unreservedly. And I took my steer from a Yeats quote that says it takes fifty years for a poet to influence an issue.

You also focus on the treatment of women at this critical moment in history. Why was that important to you?
It was impossible to skirt around it. I read about Carol Ann Duffy’s complaints about old-school poets groping young female poets and the sense of entitlement they had. When I think how things were when I first went out to work, I can’t believe how little I challenged that sense of entitlement. There were certain men you were warned not to get in a lift with (invariably older, invariably management, so there was no one to complain to). On the other hand, these were men you didn’t want to meet in the stair well. So you had the choice. The lift or the stair well. The lift was quicker. You took the lift. That was how it was. But this was the mid-eighties. You only have to watch a film like Twins - something considered to be family entertainment - to see that it was thought acceptable to ask a woman to dance and then grab her arse.

Arse-grabbing aside, at the time there was an inclination to treat work produced by women differently from work produced by their male counterparts. I read an article about the poet Stevie Smith recently. There was talk of her cropped hair, baleful expression, little-girl dresses. We were told she was dotty, batty, silly, odd, childish, droll, or “fausse-naïve” (Philip Larkin’s term). It’s difficult to imagine these descriptions being applied to a man. But the article goes a step further. Readers, we are told, are ‘reluctant to think of her as a professional poet, more as an amateur folk artist, a hit-or-miss ingénue (or enfant terrible).’ (Ouch!)

Jane Davis lives in Carshalton, Surrey, with her Formula 1-bsessed, beer-brewing partner, surrounded by growing piles of paperbacks, CDs and general chaos.

#TheStruggleIsReal Why I’m Not Mad That You Didn’t Hire Me (Freelance editor Jerusha Rodgers on a millennial dilemma)

Today we hear from Jerusha Rodgers (aka "The Plot Whisperer") of Rabid Badger Editing in a post prompted by a conversation about agism in publishing, which I see from the perspective of a, um...let's say "experienced" author/book doctor in my 50s and she sees from the perspective of a fresh new face in her mid-20s. Ironically, yes, she had to explain to me about "the struggle is real."

Shortly after graduating, a friend of mine posted the greatest Facebook status ever: “I would love to reenact some the of the fantasies in Fifty Shades of Grey, specifically the one where she gets a full-time job straight out of college.”

With an economy that clings to safety (read: tradition and money) and a workforce and community that strives for advancement (read: cooler, more accessible stuff), applicants whose limited practical experience is backed up by open minds and inherent expertise in the use of technology often get left out of the running. It’s the struggle forcing many Millennials to create career paths instead of follow them.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a house where I was taught the value of what my mom calls “the tangible intangibles.” Did my year backpacking the world add a highly sought after internship or years of dutiful service at a publishing house to my resume? No. It left a discouraging gap in my renter’s history and an intimate knowledge of third world medicine. But it did teach me how to solve problems under pressure and in the face of complications. It made me find ways to bond with people whom, on the face of it, I had absolutely nothing in common. It changed the way I see opportunity and the way I define advancement. It made me realize that taking a business call at 3am Malaysian time is really not the end of the world; it’s just doing your job well, and that’s worth it. All of these are traits that employers want brought to their projects, but they want them to be learned from twenty years of climbing the corporate ladder. It’s not because there’s anything inherently better about it; it’s just that that’s how it’s been done in the past.

The problem with this line of thought is that the times, they are a-changin’. We no longer live in the world we did twenty years ago, and no one is better prepared to work in the current climate of technology and connectivity than the people who grew up in it. We have a different (read: better) understanding of how things work than what people can learn in an SEO class, but there isn’t a way to put that on your resume. There’s no spot to say, “My social media experience goes back to when you needed a college email address to sign into ‘The Facebook,’ and I knew what MySpace Angles were before there was a name for them.”

Artistic fields are always a gamble, so when the going gets tough, the bosses stop taking chances. They’re less open to “Well, no, I’ve never done that, but I know that I would excel in that project because of X, Y and Z,” because to them sounds like, “Hold my beer and watch this.” It’s totally understandable that employers are nervous to stick their necks (read: wallets) out for a newcomer, but the behind-the-scenes reality is that projects suffer for it. Newcomers push boundaries, bring fresh perspectives and incorporate an understanding of the technology-based world we live in that has taken a lifetime to learn.

And we can never explain why that’s better than twenty years of corporate experience, because if you don’t already know why, you’ll never understand. You’ll just have to hold our gluten-free craft beers and watch this.

My Facebook-free summer begins today. And I LIKE it.

A while back I adopted a small policy that triggered big change: "Facebook only while standing." That simple step made me suddenly mindful of the way I'd been unconsciously getting on FB at my desk, in the car, as I lay in bed or sat at the table in a restaurant.

I justify the time I spend on social networks as part of the "platforming" I'm obligated to do as an author and ghostwriter, and I'm more than willing to admit that maybe I'm just not doing it right, but the net gain for me has been very low. It certainly doesn't justify the time it's taken away from reading and writing. Even Mark Coker of Smashwords said this year at LBF that loitering on FB and other social network time-sucks was one of the worst mistakes commonly made by indie and legacy published authors alike. The days when LIKEs converted to book sales have expired. Now we're just nickle and diming ourselves to death.

The only thing I'll really miss is lurking and spying on my kids, their cousins and my former students. I stayed through the first week of June so I could participate in a virtual baby shower for my nephew and his wife, which is the only way our globe-spanning family could come together and the most brilliant thing I've ever seen orchestrated on FB. I also communicate with authors in the UK, Greece, Italy, South America, Australia and France via FB, and I participate in a lively forum for ghostwriters on both sides of the Atlantic.

But as much as FB has the power to bring us together from the far corners of the world, it also pushes us apart by allowing us to imagine that flipping a LIKE on a photo of someone's raspberry blini is the same as being their friend. FB is the hall pass that allows us to feel okay about neglecting real world relationships. It's a local anesthetic that makes us feel less lonely than we really are.

Habits die hard, but I deleted Facebook from my phone this morning, and it didn't hurt one bit. I'll still have Messenger, so the kids can get in touch with Aunt Joni if they need to. I'll have to Skype my Dad and call my sisters. I'll have to read the news and think for myself and watch adorable ducks by the pool instead of kitten videos. I'll read a book in bed, watch passing scenery in the car and gaze across the dinner table at the man I love instead of staring down at my iPhone.

I'll be posting on this blog, and whatever posts here or on my Tumblr gets robo-posted to FB and twitter, but even if it didn't, I don't think I'd be missed. Plenty of clever memes, breakfast shots and daily noise to fill in the slimmest blank. I'll be back in September, and I'm pretty sure I won't have missed anything I haven't seen before.

I talk about books because books are my life. Pardon the F**K outa me. (Rant Alert)

Something that really got under my skin this week: an author friend of mine was erased from Facebook. Both her personal account and author page were yanked without warning and apparently without an opportunity to appeal.

Facebook has yet to offer any explanation, but there's been speculation that it had something to do with her being an author who uses FB and Twitter to network with readers and fellow authors -- just as we've all been trained to do, whether we're mainstream, indie or hybrid.

[Update: FB eventually responded that my friend, author Jessica Bell, had identified herself as "Author Jessica Bell" and "author" is not her real name. Here's her new FB author page.]

Facebook played the perfect crack dealer, luring us in with the free sample, and now that we're hooked, they want us to pay. Over the past 18 months or so, they've made dramatic changes to the way posts are seen on your timeline, and if it smacks of self-promotion, they want to force it into an arena where the poster pays for every eyeball. And that's fair. That's their bag. Facebook is not a charity for artists or anyone else. What isn't fair is the jackbooted way they've gone about it, especially if that includes the instant elimination of a network the author built over five years of following the rules.

That network is not all about self-promotion. Writing is, of necessity, a lonely profession. Online networking gives authors more than a place to advertise. It gives us a community, colleagues, a worldwide water cooler we can gather around. Yes, we talk about our work, because our work consumes us a lot of the time. Our work is important to us. Not every word we say about it should be cast as "self-promotion," but authors seem to be subjected to some heightened sense of propriety in this area.

A few years ago, I did a self-actualization/empowerment meditation thing via Oprah.com. I enjoyed getting all thinky thoughtsy and participated in various discussions about it until there was a call for everyone to post something about a moment when she felt empowered and specifically listed "starting your own small business" as an example. Many posts were about women selling arts and crafts, catering, consulting and breaking away from a big company to freelance in one way or another.

So I posted something about stepping outside the mainstream publishing arena, recovering rights to my backlist books and starting my own indie imprint. I did not mention any book titles or offer a link to my website, even though all the freshly empowered cupcake caterers, jewelery distributors, handbag refurbishers, etc offered links to Etsy and other sales venues. Within hours, my account was shut down and I received a brusque email scolding me about "our policy against self-promotion" but not offering any insight into why my small business endeavor was any different from the other artists and entrepreneurs whose posts remained.

When Amazon instituted new censorship algorithms into their review system, they deleted many of the book reviews I'd posted along with many reviews posted on my books. Only positive reviews, of course. Reviews by people who state right up front they haven't read the book and the lady who gave my book one star because her credit card wouldn't go through -- oh, those stay put, because Amazon is all about "preserving the integrity" of their review system.

I know there have been a lot of authors who paid for or bartered reviews on Amazon and abused publishing etiquette in general, but I have never been one of those authors. I came up in old school publishing, which is positively Lutheran in its sense of propriety. I have yet to receive any explanation of this supposedly incestuous relationship I have with the reviewers who gave me positive reviews or the authors I've reviewed positively, most of whom were total strangers to me. Meanwhile, among the reviews I posted that stayed intact are several for authors with whom I do have relationships. But those three authors are published by Amazon's own imprints. The kindest word to describe Amazon's integrity is "selective".

The net result is that my books have very few reviews, and those are mostly from the old hardcover and paperback editions. It's hard to quantify how damaging that's been to my book sales, but I have no doubt it's hurt me financially. It's prevented me from participating in certain promotions, and it's made me afraid to post reviews supporting books I love because I don't want to risk damaging other authors by association.

The time-honored incestuous blurbing and reviewing that goes on every day in the legacy publishing world makes Amazon's integrity algorithm even more infuriating/laughable, but beyond that is the general web-wide lack of concern about people in any other industry talking about their businesses. Disdain for the crass stench of self-promotion seems to be reserved for authors. People who talk about plumbing, law, medicine, basket weaving and teaching are somehow immune.

I talk about the books I'm reading a lot more than I talk about the books I'm writing. I do far more to promote others than I do to promote myself, and I'm sick of being scolded, censored and shamed because I happen to speak about books -- or about my life -- from the perspective of a writer and editor. It reminds me of high school, when I was called "Miss Dictionary" and told I might get asked out on dates if I wasn't always reading.

Yes, my Facebook page has a lot of posts about books. I eat, sleep and breathe the art of setting words in rows. Books are a huge chunk of my life, on and off the social network. That's not me bragging or hyping or advertising. That's me being passionate about what I do and advocating for other passionately creative people.

So Facebook: 1) Thank you for the opportunity to engage online with folks who share common interests, because I go for many days -- most days, in fact -- without talking to anyone but myself, my husband and my office mascots, Venus and Data.

And 2) Pardon the f**k outa me if us and our durn literacy occupy valuable space that could have been devoted to another cat video.

That is all.

Free-spirited freelance editor Jerusha Rodgers on adventures in publishing and life

Bestselling author Dr. Wendy Walsh calls her "an author's dream date." I call her The Plot Whisperer. Today's guest blogger, freelance editor Jerusha Rodgers, offers a snapshot of her life and bookish times...

There was cheering and shouting, a general riotous din, when I clicked ‘Save and Publish’ from poolside at Eighty8 Backpackers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On the other side of the high whitewashed wall and down a street narrowed with street vendors, huge furls of barbed wire blocked off a park where Cambodians protesting unsafe working conditions and unlivable wages in factories came dangerously close to men and women decked out in full riot gear.

The protests and riots had been ebbing and flowing (mostly flowing) for a year, and the cause had already had casualties. It was a tumultuous time in the country and in my life—I was, well, let’s just say I was between visas, between jobs and holed up in the only hostel I could find that took credit cards. One year later and on the other side of the world, people cheered and shouted to celebrate Mexico’s totally unexpected victory in the Battle of Puebla (most people were just celebrating tequila and sombreros).

I’m drinking to the victory of a different battle this week: The one-year anniversary of publishing my first (and presumably not last) book. If that doesn’t sound like a hard-won victory, you’ve probably never written a book—but after you buy mine, you’ll totally be able to. With everything that’s changed—menus and conversations are in English, but no more sparkling pool—everything sure has stayed the same—perpetually working on a new book and still don’t have A/C even though it’s hotter than Hades—and I love this strange little life I’ve lived.

Most of my book was written in Colorado, where I spent hours a day at the corner gastro-pub when I didn’t have heat, but some of it was written in Texas. Some final tweaks were added between bites of Pookie’s pad thai in Koh Lipe, Thailand, and it was polished in Cambodia in a bustling movie theater/restaurant where I worked.

I kept thinking about what advice I would someone to give me when it came time to write the story of my year abroad. What would I look for to guide me through a process that’s about discovery and hard choices and advertising and self-reflection and more discovery. And the hardest part: Putting all of it together in a way that means as much to the agent/editor as it meant to you when you lived it.

YOUR TITLE HERE: How to Craft a Killer Nonfiction Book Proposal takes a tried and true formula that NYT bestseller Joni Rodgers has applied to dozens of successful book projects and makes it accessible for writers of all levels. I break it down so you can easily access exactly the info you need, and it isn’t bulked up with a bunch of boring, out of date junk about the publishing industry (which has changed since I started writing this post).

And because I was always the one asking for an example to make sure I did everything just right, I’m even including two sample proposals with notes. Swoosie Kurtz, Joni Rodgers and the team at Perigee Books were kind enough to lend Swoosie’s actual proposal for her book Part Swan, Part Goose, so you can see exactly what it takes to seal the deal with a publisher.

Jerusha Rodgers is the founder of Rabid Badger Editing and author of YOUR TITLE HERE: How to Craft a Killer Nonfiction Book Proposal. 

Leading Irish Indie Author Orna Ross announces Secret Rose: unique crowdfunded tribute for #Yeats2015

So excited to be traveling to Sligo, Ireland this summer to help celebrate the publication of WB Yeats short stories, The Secret Rose, and Orna Ross’s novel, Her Secret Rose, in a special edition replica of Yeats 1897 publication, which is being created with the help of Yeats fans, including yours truly.

Secret Rose, a crowdfunded tribute to WB Yeats’s fiction by bestselling Irish author Orna Ross, Director of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), will launch in Sligo at the Yeats International Summer School 2015. This specially crafted replica of Yeats’s 1897 first edition — blue-cloth bound, intricate gilt impress, printed on laid paper equivalent — will match the original design by Yeats friend and fellow mystic, illustrator and designer Althea Gyles. It’s set to become a must-have souvenir of Yeats2015, Yeats’s 150th anniversary year.

The double book contains Yeats’s short stories from The Secret Rose (1897), and Ross’s long awaited new novel, Her Secret Rose (2015) that tells the story behind those stories, centring on the relationship between the Irish poet and his long time love and muse, Maud Gonne. An amalgamation of in-depth research, Ross’s award-winning writing and her reverence for Yeats’s poetry, drama and fiction (“I’m a super-fan,” she says), Secret Rose will launch at the Summer School at Yeats House, Sligo, on August 3rd 2015 at 5pm.

Says Orna Ross: “As an indie author, I work mainly in digital but for Yeats2015, I wanted to create a special print book and to bring these neglected stories to the attention of Yeats fans. It surprised me in researching the 1897 book’s publishing history to find out that WB Yeats was an indie author too, as we define that at ALLi: working closely with his friend Althea Gyles on the design and seeing himself as the creative director of the book, all the way through the publication process.”

Running until 31 May 2015, Ross’s crowdfunder offers a variety of rewards from £5 to £1,000, to satisfy all Yeats’s fans and book lovers. The project gives readers the opportunity to move closer to Yeats through attendance at the famous International Summer School programme in Sligo, or closer to Ross through her popular creative mentoring program. Also on offer is attendance live or online at the book launch in Yeats House, Sligo; a special night out and dinner with Ross and friends at the house of Damien Brennan, President of The Yeats Society; and a first edition of Yeats original book, with illustrations by his brother, Jack B Yeats. All supporters also receive copies of Secret Rose and a grateful acknowledgement of their contribution in supporting this unique literary project.

“I’m excited to be resuscitating these important stories for a new generation,” Ross says.

The Novel gets falsely reported dead more frequently than Willie Nelson

Had to laugh this morning when I saw this Vox list of 30 times the novel has been declared dead, from 1902, when Jules Verne declared the novel had been replaced by newspapers, to 2014, when the death of the novel got its own Twitter.


Seems fishy to me that the novel sort of gelled into the form as we know it during the same era that literary criticism became a thing, and now, as literary criticism loses ground, critics are stepping up the novel death watch.

My humble opinion: it's literary criticism that's on the brink of extinction. The novel just has a severe case of gout brought on by a spavined publishing industry business model that just came into being within the past 75 to 100 years. Storytelling was around thousands of years before that, and it will be around as long as human beings cling to the planet.

To me, the most baffling thing about the "novel is dead" debate is how little is ever said about life support for authors.

What We Really Are: What's changed about the way people view indie publishing?

Remember the "What they think we are/What we really are" meme trend back in 2011? Navigating the unmapped territory of self-publishing for the first time, flailing away at this new thing being called "platforming" (part of a whole new vocabulary that also included "meme" and "gamification"), I created this one for indie authors. I laughed out loud this morning when I saw it reposted on Facebook, partly because you never know where this sort of paper sailboat will end up, partly because it's been such a bullet train the past few years. It's good to stop once in a while and look out the window, surveying where we are and noting how far we've come.

What literary agents think we are
THEN: Agents were actively discouraging established authors from self-publishing and warning debut authors that it was the kiss of death, smacked of desperation, made you look like a loser.

NOW: There are a few luddites, but most agents have recognized that self-publishing--when it's done right--works hand-in-glove with a career in mainstream publishing for established authors who want to maintain creative control over their work and for emerging authors who want to hone their craft skills and build a foundational readership. I also see agents actively trawling for successful indies who might bring big bucks from a corporate publisher.

What old school publishers think we are
THEN: As a glut of 99 cent books gushed forth, gutting book prices and empowering Amazon with an insane amount of sway over the marketplace, corporate publishers were forced to wake up and smell the revolution. Everything we'd been told about the necessity for "gatekeepers" became moot as the gate was summarily torn off its hinges and tossed over a cliff. Still working with big publishing houses on ghostwriting projects, I saw palpable resentment toward "undeserving interlopers"--and palpable fear as the sea change brought a wave of layoffs, mergers and downsizing.

NOW: Again, luddites aside, publishers are looking to indies for potential projects that have already proven their market and can be produced at a lower cost because the book, in most cases, has already been professionally edited and the indie author is savvy in the ways of promotion. I always said that traditional and indie publishers could learn a lot from each other, but we'd have to move beyond a lack of respect that cut both ways. I do see that happening now on both sides. More important, I see the concept of "sides" becoming obsolete as more and more authors discover that, in the long view, the greatest creative and financial opportunities reside in a hybrid indie/trad career.

What Amazon thinks we are
THEN: Creating the world's most user-friendly, powerful portal for self-publishing authors was a brilliant keystone in Amazon's strategy to launch Kindle and change the way people buy books. They needed a massive number of books--quality optional--at rock bottom prices, and they initially set it up so that the rewards for authors were potentially huge. In true gold rush tradition, sporadic stories of big money fueled the fervor. There's never been a shortage of dreamers.

NOW: With the recent introduction of Kindle Unlimited, indies have gotten a taste of what the traditional publishers felt like three years ago. Indie incomes have plummeted. Amazon's own publishing imprints are on the rise, and the book deals they offer rarely, if ever, involve significant author advances. I've always likened Amazon to the sand worms in Frank Herbert's Dune. You try your best to scramble aboard and ride, but there's a strong chance you'll be gobbled up by the beast.

What readers think we are
THEN: My original thinking with the piñata was that readers would be pleasantly surprised by what's inside, but over the following year, a lot of my indie friends felt like they were being beaten with sticks. As bullies and trolls took over, Goodreads was like a bar I just didn't want to hang out in. It took a while to recognize that the loudest readers are not the ones who buy the most books and that the truly bookish readers were being overwhelmed by the tsunami of books coming at them online.

NOW: Things are improving on both sides of the discoverability equation. Authors are getting better at connecting with the right conversations and spreading the word about their books, avoiding overzealous hand-waving. Readers are connecting with authors in a whole new way, taking online reviews with a grain of salt and getting savvier about reading the Kindle sample before snapping up a cheap book. The marketplace is coming around to the idea that the price point on books should be roughly the same as the price point on a bottle of wine, and expectations for enjoyment can be raised and lowered accordingly. Most important, people are reading more than ever with decreasing awareness about who published a book or what genre it's supposed to fit into. The Harry Potter generation is coming of age, and they do love a good book.

What we think we are
THEN: You know how pirate rules are. More like guidelines. We were renegades with hearts of gold.

NOW: We're still the swashbucklers of the publishing world, but we've become better merchants. Now the indies who succeed are businesspersons with a healthy surviving streak of Jack Sparrow. One terrific trend with huge benefits for authors and great bargains for readers: the box set. Indie authors have the agility to band together for pop up projects like Outside the Box: Women Writing Women, which brings together seven bestselling, award winning and critically acclaimed authors in an anthology of seven full-length novels with a common thread--strong, idiosyncratic heroines--including my first novel, Crazy for Trying. (Here's Jane Friedman's blog about the experience.)

What we really are
THEN: From the beginning I always said indie publishing was like my Smart Car. All about agility and economy.

NOW: Indie publishing is still the Smart Car. What's changed is the publishing world around us. American car trends have moved away from the ridiculously outsized suburban assault vehicles of the '90s and 'Noughties, embracing electric and hybrid cars and small, super-efficient, super sexy little vehicles with high gas mileage and low overhead. Same goes for publishing. It's all about getting where you need to go.

#themesongdujour Grateful Dead "Touch of Grey": I will get by! (Thanks, Book Gorilla.)

Today's theme music, Grateful Dead's "Touch of Grey" was inspired by a great blurb about my new memoirella, Love & Other Natural Disasters, a starred title today on BookGorilla.com:

"Think "Molly Ivins meets Anna Quindlen to the tune of 'Touch of Grey'...Not your Mama's Erma Bombeck, but the best of “Earth to Joni”, the syndicated newspaper column chronicling family life, politics and culture, and welcoming readers into the Rodgers household, where life is for living, love conquers all, and pancakes are what’s for dinner."

PS ~ Love & Other Natural Disasters free on Kindle this week!

RWA Shout Out & Thank You Gift

Hey, Houston RWA! Thanks for inviting me to spend another delightful Saturday with you. RWA gatherings have hosted some of my favorite speaking gigs over the years. I'm always in awe of the positive energy, the generosity of spirit and the abundance of talent.

Since I was invited to speak this Saturday about my mini-memoir First You Write: The Worst Way to Become an Almost Famous Author and the Best Advice I Got While Doing It, I wanted to make it available to the vibrant Houston RWA authorhood (and other RWA chapters), along with some of the novels featured in the sometimes calamitous but mostly pretty funny story of my publishing journey.

The books below will be available for free exclusively on Kindle Friday, Saturday and Sunday, March 8-10. Just click on the cover image. Enjoy!

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Big 6 & Back Again: My publishing journey as illustrated by my hair

(Originally published on Boxing the Octopus.)

This is me at the time of my first professional writing gig. In 1976, I was an 8th grade misfit at an academically boffo but ideologically stifling Evangelical school. Girls in my class consumed True Confessions Magazine every month. (Who loves porn more than Puritan's, right?)

Reading the stories typically titled "My Father Sold Me" or "A Sophomore's Secret" or some such, I thought, "Heck, I can do that." Because I knew virtually nothing about sex beyond the vague "pulsing" and "engorging" alluded to in True Confessions and the "manroot" physiology of my book-a-day Gothic romance novel habit, my erotic tragedies relied heavily on witty dialogue and lush descriptions of locations, current pop music and fast food. For $1/page, I wrote customized stories starring a classmate and her made-to-order crush. In cases where the crush was a real boy who failed to live up to expectations, a brief epilogue featuring his untimely death could be had for a quarter.

Word spread, and I expanded my business to a local roller skating rink, passing off the folded pages in the privacy of the grimy girls' bathroom like a drug dealer. On the first day of 9th grade, I was ironing my hair on the ironing board and branded a broad stripe down the front of my nose. This pretty much set the tone for my high school years.

Here's me at the time I started writing my first novel, originally titled MacPeter's Midlife Crisis. I'd given up ironing my hair, and apparently, it was particularly humid the day this photo was taken.

In 1981, I was a late night DJ at a rock station in Helena, Montana, crazy in love with a brilliant but damaged Vietnam vet, and supplementing my income busking at bars and tourist attractions. The novel started as a script I intended to enter in a playwright competition. During my super-useful college career as a theatre major, part of my Stanislavsky acting training included writing character studies, and mine usually ran about 12 times the recommended length, spinning out elaborate backstory and imagining offstage scenes.

I was still reading a book a day, but had moved on to Tom Robbins, Irving Stone, Eudora Welty and all things Bronte. I worshiped authors, and it never occurred to me that I could have a book published. I was writing this story purely for the love of laying words in a row.

Needless to say, it was about a late night DJ and the brilliant, damaged Vietnam vet with whom she was crazy in love.

Here's me when I started writing my second novel, Sugarland. 

I was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1994, shortly after my husband and I moved to Houston with our two small children.

After years of dabbling, I'd finished my first novel, now titled Last Chance Gulch, queried it to six dozen agents and publishers and collected six dozen rejections. I had zero hope of ever being published, but in the crucible of chemo, I suddenly understood why I was writing: because I'm a writer.

So I wrote.

Here's me when I got my first book contract in 1996. Gary started shaving his head to be in solidarity with me during chemo. And no we're not on the same cricket team; the sweats were 3/$10 at Wallgreen's, and we were flat broke. And that's not a wig; my hair came back jet black and kinky a la Shaft.

The amazing Fred Ramey (now at Unbridled Books) pulled my first novel from the slush pile, masterfully edited it from a 124K word swampland to a lean, mean 93K word fiction machine, and literally saved my life. Fred gets the credit for the most fitting book title of my career: Crazy For Trying. The advance was $4,000. We promptly took the kids to Disney World.

While Crazy For Trying was in the pipeline, I lost my remission and turned to adjunct therapies to supplement the chemo. Above my desk was posted Isaac Asimov's famous two-word answer to being asked what he would do if he knew he had one year to live: "Type faster!"

Here's me in Good Housekeeping Magazine in 2001, when they featured a Book Bonus excerpt from my memoir Bald in the Land of Big Hair, which got my name on the bestseller lists for the first time.

My second batch of regrown hair was straight and mostly gray, so I was a different shade of red almost every month. I was also exploring my new publishing career, which was wide open, because I'd stumbled into it with no preconceptions, expectations or plans. And nothing to fall back on. Marjorie Braman, my fabulous editor at HarperCollins, encouraged me to write a syndicated newspaper column while I got busy on another novel. That led to an advice column for a national magazine.

In 2004, I was invited to do my first collaboration at Simon & Schuster, which led to a collaboration at Random House, which led to a whole lot of other stuff, but I did eventually finish my third novel, The Secret Sisters, which was pubbed by HarperCollins in 2006. Ghostwriting was something I'd never really thought about until I started doing it, but these great stories came along, and I'm a writer, so I wrote them.

And here's me today. I've done more than a dozen books, several of them NYT bestsellers, and worked with fantastic editors at five of the Big 6. I've learned that publishing, like personal style, is a process of constant reinvention, adaptation and a whole lotta get over yourself.

The decision to indie pub my backlist ebooks and forthcoming fiction has opened a thrilling new chapter. I'm not leaving traditional publishing behind. I plan to work hand in hand with my agent and transition my indie pubbed ebooks to print deals with standing houses. But I've grown up a lot. I've been to the puppet show and seen the strings, as they say. I began my writing career delivering stories directly into the hands of readers, so indie publishing feels like coming full circle. On roller skates.

I've given up trying to color my hair dark. The few strands that aren't white are bleached blonde to blend in. The only thing that hasn't changed is that daily longing to find the right words, the compulsion to set them down on paper. And so I write.

Kill Smartie Breedlove

Pulled the trigger on my new novel on Thursday. Huge THANK YOU to 18,000+ readers who welcomed Smartie to the world and made her debut the #1 mystery download on Kindle!

From the official flap copy:
A deliciously quirky whodunit by the bestselling author of SUGARLAND and THE HURRICANE LOVER…

Recently widowed private dick Shep Hartigate, a dishonored cop reduced to chasing cheating spouses for a ruthless Houston divorce lawyer, teams up with free-spirited pulp fiction writer Smartie Breedlove to find out who’s killing the inconvenient exes of Texas—including Smartie’s BFF, Charma Bovet, a centerfold with a heart of gold. Could Shep’s gorgeous but unscrupulous employer really have a secret bimbo/mimbo hit list? Or is Smartie Breedlove a few peeps shy of an Easter basket?

A colorful cast of problematic lovers, longsuffering family, and stalwart friends (both two-legged and four-legged) close ranks around Smartie and Shep as they sift clues and maneuver to stay alive. Calling on her longtime companions Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Daphne du Maurier, Smartie finds a roadmap to the hardboiled plot twists and U-turns drawing her perilously close to a damaging past that left her scarred and now threatens to destroy her.

NYT bestselling ghostwriter, author and indie publisher Joni Rodgers is known for creating characters that resonate, dialogue that crackles with wit, and plots that surprise. If you love a great mystery woven with skill, humor and compassion, KILL SMARTIE BREEDLOVE will not disappoint.

Kill Smartie Breedlove is just $3.99 on Kindle.

An Author's Declaration of Independence

A year ago this month, after fifteen years and a dozen books in the corporate publishing world, I founded my own digital press, Stella Link Books, to publish my backlist and forthcoming fiction. In February, live from the London Book Fair, I published First You Write: The Worst Way to Become an Almost Famous Author & the Best Advice I Got While Doing It, a mini-memoir about my journey from small press to Big Six to indie. In celebration of Stella's first birthday, First You Write is free on Kindle Thursday through Saturday, July 5-7.

Meanwhile, here's my personal Declaration of Independence, which originally appeared on Boxing the Octopus last year:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for craftspeople to dissolve the business models which have connected them with the marketplace and to assume the separate and equal station to which the Nature of Art and Nature’s Creator entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That all writers are not created equal. Talent is innate and a matter of opinion. Craft skill is hard-earned and subject to interpretation. Artistic integrity is a personal choice.

That writers are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. And that among these are a Publishing Life, Creative Liberty and the pursuit of both income and Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Publishers are instituted, deriving their powers from the supply of writers and the demand of readers.

That whenever any Publishing Model becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Writers to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Publishing Model, founded on principles and distributing powers in a form most conducive to the Income of Writers and the Happiness of Readers.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Publishers long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. History hath shewn that Writers are willing to suffer, while evils are sufferable, rather than grow a pair, take responsibility for their own creative choices and champion their work in the marketplace. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations evinces a design to humiliate, disempower and pauperize them, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Publishing Model, and to take Responsibility for their future security.

The history of the present Publishing Model is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations. In every stage of these Oppressions — the inefficacy of the broken Query system, the specious calculation and inequity of Advances, the vagary and abuse of anonymous Reviews, the steady drift of commitment from Art to Celebrity — We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

I, therefore, the Representative of Myself as an Artist, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of my intentions, do solemnly publish and declare, that I am, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent.

That I am Absolved from all Allegiance to the Old School Publishing Model. That all the fear, prejudice and inertia that held me back is and ought to be totally dissolved.

That as a Free and Independent Artist, I have full Power to create my own Books, contract Alliances with other Artists, establish Commerce, and do all other Acts and Things which Independent Publishers may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, I pledge to the practice of this craft my Life, my Fortune and my sacred Honor.

Joni Rodgers (paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson)
July 2011

Download First You Write free on Kindle July 5-7, 2012 and look for the new Stella Link eBookstore--a whole new indie book-buying experience--this fall.

A visit to Pensacola Beach and thoughts on branding oneself as sacred

Expanding on a comment I posted earlier in response to Dan Holloway's excellent post on The Cynical Self-Publisher about the difficulties of consistent branding in the current publishing/social networking environment.

Yesterday, I sat at a particular spot by the Gulf of Mexico in Pensacola Beach, where I lived when I was a kid. It was a dive back then: a small row of shabby Nixon-era townhomes with long flanks of empty beach on both sides and flea-infested, trash-strewn empty lots across the street. Now it's all swankypants. The old place was destroyed by a hurricane in the 1990s and replaced with high dollar apartments and upscale houses side-by-side the entire length of the once God-forsaken road.

I won't nostalgically argue that the old place was better. It wasn't; it was a shithole. But it was a shithole with a beautiful white sand beach. Yes, it's crowded now, but back then it was lonely. Yes, it's overly commercial now, but back then it was ill-maintained because only a few people cared about it. Eventually, all these new things will fall away and be replaced by something else.

What remains constant is the beach. The white sand and blue Gulf -- that's the source of the spiritual, recreational, educational, physical, emotional, financial power of this place.

All of which is to say that branding has to be about who we are, not what we do. Our nature is consistent; money, bizzyness, trends and opportunities are not. Each of us has this powerful natural wonder within ourselves. The question we're asking (though we might not like the sound of it) is: "How shall I best exploit this?"

The broad strokes are obvious:

In any development, as many windows as possible should face the beach. Key to our commercial value is a firmly fixed focus on the art and craft of writing.

Boardwalks and roads should be kept up properly. We have to make our work accessible and reader-friendly. This encompasses everything from excellent grammar to a well-designed, easily navigable website.

The beach must be protected from pollution. Greed, jealousy, negativity and grasping are bound to make an appearance. They should be disposed of quickly and appropriately.

Access to the beach should be open in some areas, controlled in others. Our secondary goal is to welcome as many readers as possible; our primary goal is to lead happy lives. We must reserve significant quantities of time, love and creative energy for ourselves, our work and our personal relationships.

Above all, the beach should be shared, enjoyed and loved. Honored. Because the beach came from God and ultimately belongs to God. It's both fiscally prudent and spiritually healthy for the beach to be consistently branded as sacred.

"Rock the Casbah" The Clash

It's all about the casbah this week. Sometimes you have to remind yourself that while your work is/should be/really must be personal to you, it's just business to everybody else. Don't let the bastards get you down.

The History of the English Language in 10 minutes

The History of the English Language in 10 minutes

Indie Authors: What We Really Are

People wonder why, after a dozen books in the corporate publishing industry, I decided to go indie with my own digital press, Stella Link Books. One factor in the decision was the transition from driving a big fat family truckster SUV to my smart car convertible. I suddenly wanted everything about my life to be fun, austere, economical, fun, a conversation starter, fun, fun, wide open up top, flipping the finger to the very concept of status symbols, and (lest we forget) FUN. On my to-do list: a post entitled "Everything I Need To Know About Publishing I Learned From My smart Car," but right now, I need to blow on some sunscreen and head for Galveston.

Neil Gaiman's U of Arts commencement address

Rolling Stones "Street Fighting Man" (live in 1969)

"Hey! think the time is right for a palace revolution, but where I live the game to play is compromise solution."