Basic Instructions and a few thoughts on mentoring

Whacking your way through the banana stalks of life, you may become confused and require assistance. Fortunately, we now have Basic Instructions: Your all-inclusive guide to a life well-lived , which addresses such potentially tricky topics as "How to explain the plan" (code names can be invaluable), "How to apply the laws of physics to a relationship" (entropy dictates that heat and energy will dissipate over time), and "How to be suave" (make sure your compliments are well-worded and vague).

Basic Instructions was first seen in the Seatle Weekly, and creator Scott Meyer is also blogging about "The Adams Experiment":

For those who aren’t already aware, Scott Adams (The creator of Dilbert) has taken an interest in my strip. He e-mailed me out of the blue a couple of months ago to tell me that he liked my work. I wrote back that if he turned out to be one of my comedian buddies jerking me around, “A river of bloody tears (would) flow.” He verified that it was indeed him, and I started groveling.

The teetering edge of making it. As artists we strive for and fear the big break. What does it feel like to have a powerful mentor step in at that moment? "Fan-Freaking-Tastic!!" says Meyer. "And a little terrifying." And he is quick to add, "Yes, I recognize that I am the luckiest guy on Earth."

Mentoring is a delicate balance, however. Not only does that mix require the powerful advocate, it requires a strength of conviction from the mentee, a certainty about who/what/where/why he or she is as an artist. A week after "The Adams Experiment began, there's this pragmatic response from an artist who clearly plans to remain true to himself:

Many readers have expressed that Scott Adams is "ruining" my strip. I'm really touched that so many of you feel strongly enough about my strip to be concerned.

Think of Scott and me as two guys working on a car to see if they can get it to run better. We pop the hood, tinker with the carbeurator (It's an older car -- something with tail fins) then I drive it around the block a few times. If the change makes the car run better, we keep it. If not, we don't.

The point is this, I'm not going to let Scott do anything that will permenantly damage the car. I need to drive it to work tomorrow.

Like I always say, making a living as an artist is a high-diving horse trick. And unfortunately, it doesn't come with instructions.

Contract wars: Please, sir...may I have some more?

Colleen and I were coffee-talking yesterday about a migration toward the absurd that we're seeing in the agent agreements authors are being asked to sign. Colleen is the most contract-savvy author I know, so I'm going to bug her to comment on a series of specific issues (basket accounting, option clauses, sexy stuff like that) next week. Meanwhile, I wanted to offer a few thoughts about the topsy-turvy dynamic that starts where the entire publishing industry starts: inside writers' heads.

The author/agent agreement -- particularly for first-time authors -- is prone to lopsided contracts because the writer so often sees herself as the wide-eyed supplicant proffering a little bowl for any scoop of gruel that might dribble down from New York. The notion that "beggars can't be choosers" breeds a timid approach to negotiations in authors who have battled long and hard to get an agent's attention. Unwilling to blow the opportunity to gain representation, they're often willing to sign a contract that offers no guarantees or protections to the author who ends up agreeing to paragraph 8 subparagraph .1.2.5 in which she must hand over her immortal soul and date the agent's ugly brother.

But contracts are a lot more negotiable than many writers think. And writers have a lot more power than they recognize. Battles must be carefully chosen. Requests must be made respectfully with the understanding that none of this is personal. But authors have every right -- in fact they have an obligation -- to protect themselves. The first step is the simple recognition: What I do has value. This isn't Oliver begging the taskmaster for food glorious food. This is a conversation between two equals seeking to form a symbiotic alliance. You're looking for a business partner, not a tape worm. If the agency agreement is all about them and they're not willing to compromise, you're better off walking away.

Though it's mainly geared to screenwriters, I learned a lot from the The Writer Got Screwed (but didn't have to): Guide to the Legal and Business Practices of Writing for the Entertainment Industry by entertainment lawyer Brooke A. Wharton. (I wish she'd do a fresh edition. This one's getting a little long in the tooth.) Sample agreements, interviews with industry pros, and lots of legalese-to-English translation.

Asked about her book title in an interview on filmdependent.com, Wharton said:

I believe it relates to two separate things. One time a while ago I was negotiating a deal and at the end we all just looked at each other and admitted, “the writer got screwed.” But also it speaks to the writer’s position in the industry. The writer is never recognized or compensated commensurately for her or his contribution. But the writer is enormously important to the industry as it exists now, and as more venues are created in which writers’ product can be bought, sold, or exhibited, writers will become even more important. The word “content-driven” really means “writer-driven.”

Dog-Gone It...

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”
—Francis Bacon


My recently-adopted shelter mutt, Jewel, is a really sweet dog, but also really lucky. Really lucky we're suckers and haven't bounced her back to the shelter on account of her crimes against property. From the bathroom woodwork to a section of carpet, we had several major issues in the first few weeks she lived here. But we've worked with her, and she's much better now.

Well, mostly. She still eats my husband's shoes upon occasion, and the other day she chewed up a couple of paperbacks from my massive To Be Read stack. Seems the dog, like her owner, has developed a taste for romantic suspense. I've been trying to thin the TBR stack lately, but this really isn't what I had in mind. So now Jewel's back to getting crated in my absence, when she wreaks occasional havoc due to separation issues.

Or maybe I should buy her her own books, for example this doggie scratch n' sniff. Seriously... I kid you not.

Is it just me, or is this some kind of sign that our civilization is trembling on the precipice of Total Collapse? I love my dogs and all, and I'm very much in favor of the publishing industry (and authors) making a buck, but my "girls" would rather smell other things. And even if they weren't more interested in sniffing out my son's disgusting football socks, subatomic particles from last night's dinner on the kitchen floor, and each other's keisters, I'm not sure I want to fuel either canine's interest in the written word.

Around here, there are plenty of defenseless books with shivers running up their spines at the very thought.

Is there a literary equivalent of cinema verite?

Gary and I made the mistake of arriving spot on time to see The Bourne Ultimatum Saturday night. The only seats in the packed house were way up front, and after two hours, my eyes felt like a couple of fried eggs. Over hard. The whole movie is shot in cinéma vérité. ("French for cameraman with hangover," says my cynical spouse.) My eyes naturally fought to focus, and the effort left me with a C-clamp of a headache.

It got me thinking, though. What is cinéma vérité about? What does it actually do to the viewer, physically and emotionally? And is there a way to do the same thing with a book? An enlightening article on filmeducation.org sheds this light:

Cinéma Vérité literally means ‘film truth’ in French and was a style of film making developed by film directors in the 1960s. The film directors of the Cinéma Vérité movement strove for immediacy, spontaneity and authenticity in their films, primarily through the use of portable and unobtrusive equipment, such as small, hand-held cameras and the avoidance of any preconceived narrative line. Cinéma Vérité was characterised by the use of real people, as opposed to actors, in unrehearsed situations. Sets and props were never used and everything was shot on location.

Immediacy. Spontaneity. Authenticity. All those are doable. The challenge would be bringing that jarring in-your-face-ness to the narrative passages. A book that came close to achieving the cinéma vérité effect (for me anyway) was the fantastically funny and utterly out of hand novel Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison, which is actually a string of scenes as experienced by a Hollywood screenwriter with ADD. I was so engrossed in this book that I was genuinely unable to put it down while I got a mammogram. Talk about immediacy. Yeah, baby.

Insights, anyone?

(A little aside: How trippy was it to sit there watching the chase play out through the streets of Manhattan, London, Paris, and Tangier and be able to say, "Hey, we were there." Gotta love a movie that travels like we do.)

Titles: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly

I have to admit it. Lately, I've become a connoisseur of book titles. I admire the witty and evocative: from Leslie Langtry's 'Scuse Me While I Kill This Guy to Andrew W.M. Beirle's The Winter Of Our Discothèque and Ursula K. Leguin's classic The Left Hand of Darkness. Intriguing titles have enticed legions of potential readers to pick up the book and take a peek.

But recently, I've been noticing bad titles. Horrible titles that, were they inflicted upon one of my manuscripts, would cause me to boycott booksignings, change my name, and refuse to admit to this bastard offspring of my imagination. Please notice that I use the word "inflicted," because in any number of cases, that's what happens. The book's editor or someone from the marketing department takes one look at the title the author gave the manuscript and thinks, "That will never sell."
A new title is concocted, with or without the author's blessing.

Often, the folks from the publisher are right and the author is saved from her own stupidity/naivete/what-have-you. Gone with the Wind was originally called Pansy (urgh!). I'd meant to call my book Night Winds Futile the Winds, from a line of the Emily Dickinson poem, but everyone "heard" it as "Feudal the Winds," or some other nonesensical phrase. My novel Fatal Error (not the most original of titles) fits the book well and was chose after my idea, Heart Drives was batted down as "too romancy". And rightly so, for the book was more mystery/suspense and would have driven off that type of reader (as well as most straight men) with its original title.

But sometimes, you see a title and wonder, "What the heck were they thinking?" Harlequin and Silhouette have been the wellspring of some incredible clunkers of the "Having the Boss's Baby by Force" or "The Pregnant Cowgirl and the Prince" variety.
"Virgin" seems to be a common theme in some of the most excruciating titles, with terms such as "Bride", "Bought by", "Sheik", and "Passion" bringing up the (ahem) rear. I dunno, maybe dumb titles (and before you start flaming me, I'm calling some of these titles and not the books or authors dumb) sell, but it embarrasses me to see romance made into a caricature of itself when so many authors have labored so long to help bring the genre some respectability.

More recently, however, publishers of erotic romance have begun to put out (okay, I confess, there was a little pun intended) books with titles that make those above sound like Atlas Shrugged by comparison. Some are politically incorrect, some are offensive-but-wickedly-funny but all (or most, I gather) are selling pretty well.

The book business has to remain profitable to remain in business, but has it gone too far in terms of titles, covers, and content? What are your nominations for the best or worst titles you have seen of late?

And to rate the title of your manuscript (just for fun), you might try the Lulu Titlescorer. This rating engine gave my upcoming novel, The Salt Maiden, a 35.9% chance of becoming a bestseller. We'll see!

Freaks ’R’ Us: Inhabiting Alien Characters with Andrew W. M. Beierle

Award-winning author Andrew W. M. Beierle bravely writes for a market PW calls "small and finicky", but he does it so well, it's possible that he might just crack open a few minds outside the pigeon hole into which the monkey chorus has tried to cram him. Beierle is about to follow up his acclaimed first novel, The Winter Of Our Discothèque (best title ever, no?), with a book about conjoined twins, one of whom is gay. First Person Plural is being hailed by early reviewers as "utterly original," "intricately imagined," and "that rarity in fiction, a novel of ideas". Due out from Kensington this month(which frankly alters everything I thought I knew about Kensington!) it's been named a September 2007 Main Selection of the InsightOut Book Club.

In his essay "Freaks 'R' Us: Inhabiting Alien Characters", Beierle explains a little of the process he used to get into the heads of Owen and Porter Jamison:

In First Person Plural, I wanted to use my two-headed protagonists as a metaphor for the alienation I felt as a gay man. Despite the progress gay people have made since I came out at the age of eighteen in 1969, I remained constantly aware of feeling different. And I felt that no matter how hard I tried to fit in (short of going back into the closet), I would always remain as obviously different as if I . . . well, had two heads. Voilá.

Visit Andrew online to catch up on the book buzz and read chapter one.

How to Hurt the Ones You Love

Within the next two months, I'll be writing an article, "How to Hurt the Ones You Love," for an upcoming edition of the Romance Writer's Report, the trade publication of the Romance Writers of America. I chose the topic for this article based on the number of women -- nice women -- who tell me that one of their biggest challenges is heaping misery on the characters they've come to know and love. And not just misery, but the toughest challenges of that fictional person's life.

This has never been a problem for me. Maybe because, all rumors to the contrary, I'm not really that nice of a person. More probably because I find stories without conflict boring as hell, or I have this deeply-buried need to play the evil goddess. (See Kali, Indian goddess of destruction, above.) But unlike Kali, I don't get drunk on the blood of my victims (although I've been known to fantasize about such when stuck in gridlock traffic). I suffer along with my characters, even as I find their Achilles tendon and draw back my bowstring to take my best shot at it. (Let's hope there's not some kind of law against mixing mythologies in blog posts.)

If you're really going to show a character's growth, to shake this person down to the bedrock of her convictions, she is going to have to be severely challenged. There is going to have to be pain. Otherwise, why would she change a way of thinking that's been working for her (however poorly)? How would she get to a place where she could move beyond the flaw crippling her and find the strength to overcome challenges that would destroy the lesser version of herself? How can she deserve that happy ending and leave the readers cheering when she reaches it?

Do you ever find yourself thinking, "No, I can't do that to my characters. Anything else - but not that"? There may be a few times when you shouldn't. (I draw the line at whacking little kids and stomping puppies. There's some pain that's too painful for me to read about, let alone write.) A lot of times, however, that one "unthinkable" challenge may be the one the hero has to face, the one that will break down the character and then allow him to re-form a more worthy incarnation.

I'm looking for feedback for this article. Do you struggle with the temptation to wimp out when it comes to conflict? Do you have any great techniques for overcoming this aversion? And (keeping to my Indian theme), are there any sacred cows -- places you won't go in which to heap abuse on those poor characters? If your comment is chosen for inclusion in the article (I'll be limited by space and possible repetition), I'll be sure to (with your permission) mention your name and (if you're published, though you don't have to be) most recent book.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Avoiding work is an important aspect of my career strategy

I shudder to imagine what Colleen is going to think when she wakes up to find yet another color scheme on this blog. I've been noodling endlessly with the design all week. It's not my area of expertise, so there's been some frustration, but in general, I find it meditative. And every once in a while I have to do something that completely removes me from writing for a few days.

I don't believe in "writer's block", but like Pete Seeger and Jesus said, to everything there is a season. Sometimes it is not writing season. Unfortunately, I've become such a workaholic that it is not possible for me to not write unless I'm fiercely focused on something else. I used to paint trompe-l'oeil scenes around my house, but after the tree grew in the stairwell, Saint Basil of Cappadocia appeared on the coat closet door, my son's wall turned to a stack of cinderblocks, my daughter's room turned into a Monet landscape, and an Aztec sun god burst through the kitchen ceiling, my family begged me to stop. My work avoidance therapy this week came from the extraction of a graphic from a 1930s pulp novel and the obsessive compulsive search for the right color combo.

While I worked, I listened to hours and hours of music. For about three bucks a month, you can program your own station on Yahoo's Launchcast or listen to uninterrupted streaming of their genre stations. ("Classic Soul" and "Martini Lounge" are my current faves.) I've also been lifting weights and going to spin class every day, and let me tell you, the unpasteurized satan milkshake that is spin class puts me in a very specific head space. It's like a test pattern takes over my brain. A test pattern with German techno music. And pain. Lots of pain. But I love that feeling of utter autopilot. It's freeing for someone who can't shut off the noise of constant ideas long enough to fall asleep at night.

Shutting down the idea chatter for a few days opened the flow for one good idea to come shining through. And suddenly, it's writing season again.

Just Woke Up & Decided to Be Evil...

Not long ago, I read the first historical romance (I won't mention the title here) I've picked up in a long while, and I have to tell you, I was loving it. Wonderful, witty heroine, great, brisk pace, and a fabulous romantic conflict between the protagonists. Loved the author's voice, too. I was really enjoying myself... until I came to the villain, who was a mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash of the first order. His motivation didn't work for me, and I couldn't begin to make sense of his actions. To me, it honestly felt as if this guy woke up one morning and decided to be evil.

Since I write romantic suspense (and have an unfortunate tendency to ruin otherwise good books by dropping into hyper-analysis mode), I paid particular attention. Villains are my stock in trade. I like a down and dirty antagonist -- the scarier the better, and just this side of over the top, as the genre demands. But I try to stay mindful that every villain is the hero of his/her own story. That there's always a reason -- a damned compelling reason, to the villain's way of thinking -- that he/she is "forced" to resort to uber-naughtiness to achieve some "greater good." If you don't believe me, read interviews with criminals convicted of the most heinous crimes. The excuses they make for their behavior are incredibly complex, convoluted -- and perfectly rational in their minds. I've heard pedophiles rationalize things in interviews that broke me out in shudders and ignited my eyelashes. I've read the words of serial killers as they spun out the schizophrenic logic like an intricate web of poisoned silk. It's damned unpleasant putting myself into these peoples' minds to write a scene from my books' antagonists' point of view -- I often have to take a break or take a shower afterwards -- but that sort of immersion is critical in depicting an authentic evil. And compared to it, anything else tastes way too much like cardboard.

When it comes to villainy, how much is too much? And do you have any special tips you'd like to share for getting into character when the character's a creep?

Secret confessions of a debut novelist: a conversation with Ellen Meister

A Long Island PTA mom herself, Ellen Meister says she’s no stranger to the scandal and drama of the carpool set. (“I write, swear, sing, and dance,” she says, “all from the front seat of my minivan.”) An ad copy writer with a flair for storytelling, Ellen served as editor of an online literary magazine until Harper Collins picked up her debut novel, Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA. She is unabashedly in love with the English language. Her Applewood characters are heartfelt and human, and once you get to know their author, you’ll know why.

Let’s start with the backstory on Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA. Please tell me it has nothing to do with “Desperate Housewives”.
Back in 2000, I finally got the gumption to stop procrastinating and pursue my lifelong dream of writing a novel. My head was swimming with the notion when I attended the first PTA meeting of the year at my local elementary school. As I smiled, greeting all the other women with my best soccer mom persona, I thought about the fact that no one in the room knew I had this special dream. In fact, no one knew I had an inner life at all. Then it occurred to me that everyone there could be feeling something pretty similar. As soon as I had that thought, I knew I wanted to write about these types of women--to explore the pain, passion, heartache and joy hidden beneath facade of the perfect suburban housewife--and do it with humor and compassion.

I think Long Island women get a bad rap as being full of money and attitude. I can't honestly say that doesn't exist, but it's a distinct minority, and gets blown way out of proportion, even right here at home. One of the reasons I wanted to write Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA was to blow the myth apart. I wanted to show the honest heart of these suburban women, to explore the very real pain, passion and joy that often gets overlooked. Most of all, I wanted to do it with tenderness and humor, which was why it was so important for me to make the book more of a friendship story than anything else.

So introduce us to members of the Applewood PTA.
Maddie is an emotionally-needy ex-lawyer who thinks her marriage is on the rocks. Ruth is a brash and wealthy woman who seems to have it all, but her husband is impotent, brain-damaged and sexually inappropriate, so she hides a lot of pain. Lisa is a timid soul whose alcoholic mother made her afraid to shine. On the surface, I have nothing in common with them, but in my heart, there's common ground with each. I wouldn't be able to write about them if there wasn't.

The difference between the hard and paperback covers is pretty drastic. Did you love or hate one more than the other?
I love my new paperback cover! I think my publisher did a brilliant job with it. The apple works on so many levels. First and most obvious, it says "sin," which there is quite a bit of in the book. Also, it reflects the name of my fictional town, Applewood. And finally, since the story revolves around an elementary school, an apple is a great symbol.

Talk to me about the ins and outs of using George Clooney in the book. Wasn’t it a legal hassle?
The book was originally called George Clooney is Coming to Applewood. Some folks raised an eyebrow, asking if it was really okay to use his name. But when I pointed out that Al Franken wrote a book called Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, most agreed that it wouldn't be a problem. My editor and agents were unconcerned.

Alas, the lawyers at Harper Collins weren't quite so mellow, and put the brakes on at the last minute, saying I couldn't use George Clooney's name in the title without his consent. I was given 48 hours to get approval from Hollywood's most sought-after super hunk. Easy, right?

Fortunately, I'm married to a researcher, and he was able to get me the phone number for Clooney's agent in minutes. So I called the office and they barked out his publicist's phone number before hanging up on me. Then I dialed the other number had this conversation:

"Hello, my name is Ellen Meister and I got your number from George Clooney's agent. They said you were the people to call to—"

"Talk faster. I have people holding."

"IjustwrotemyfirstbookandIneedtotalktoMr.Clooney'sPubli—"

"Gimme your phone number and he'll call you back."

I blurted out my phone number and tried to explain the nature of my call, but she hung up before I could get it out. This was bad, because it was likely she got the impression that I was looking for a publicist. So I called again.

"THIS-IS-ELLEN-MEISTER-AND-I-JUST-CALLED-AND-LEFT-A-MESSAGE-BUT-I-WANT-TO-MAKE-SURE-YOU-UNDERSTAND-THAT-I-WAS-CALLING-TO-GET-PERMISSION-TO-GEORGE-CLOONEY'S-NAME-IN-THE-TITLE-OF-MY-BOOK—"

"Write us a letter."

"WAIT! I DON'T HAVE TIME! I'm in a terrible time crunch and—"

"Here's our email address. Good-bye."

So I wrote his publicist an email and got a quick reply saying it was a long and complicated issue and George Clooney didn't have time for it. I couldn't let it go at that without a bit of groveling, so I wrote back explaining that the book had been my life's work for so many years and that I'd heard that George Clooney was so accessible with a great sense of humor about himself and would he PLEASE pass it by him? The reply was quick. He DID pass it by George Clooney and the answer is no.

So that was it.

If it's any consolation, I like this title better. What’s next?
My next novel is called the The Smart One, and it's the story of a divorced former artist named Bev Bloomrosen, who's about to turn her failed career around and become a school teacher. But when she and her two sisters discover a dead body under the house next door, they come head on with the old childhood roles holding them back. It will be published by Morrow/Avon in 2008.

Let’s wrap it up with the $64,000 Question: Why do you write?
I was born in the Bronx to two devoted readers. I understood from an early age that the best way to get someone's undivided attention was to put words on paper. If I didn't write, I'd be ignoring the thing I'm best at, and that's a scary proposition.

Presenting Ellen Meister: Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA

When I told my friend Syd that I'd been asked to serve as president of the PTA at my kids' elementary school, she responded with a single word: "Run!"

Rather than go into the gory details of that experience, allow me to direct your attention to Ellen Meister's debut novel, Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA, now available in trade paperback. When the book came out in hardcover last year, the buzz fairy was definitely in the house.

"Meister's debut novel is heartbreakingly funny, her characters facing life's dramas and disappointments head on with wit and spunk." ~ Library Journal (starred review)

"Ellen Meister has written a beautiful book about love, life and friendship that you are sure to never forget." ~ Fresh Fiction

"With sexy characters, sharp dialogue, and snappy pacing, Meister's sassy, saucy debut novel could well turn into a movie of its own." ~ Booklist

"Comical yet poignant." ~ Kirkus Reviews

"George Clooney should be proud." ~ Mark Ebner, author of Hollywood Interrupted

Wait a second...George Clooney? PR explains it better than I can:

When a Hollywood location scout comes to Applewood, Long Island, and announces that the local elementary school might make the perfect backdrop for an upcoming George Clooney movie, the PTA's decorum crumbles like a cookie from last week's bake sale.

Enter Maddie, Ruth, and Lisa, three women who become the glue that holds the project together, forging a bond of friendship stronger than anyone could imagine. And not a moment too soon, as marriage woes, old flames, and scandalously embarrassing family members threaten to tear each of them apart. Is their powerful alliance strong enough to overcome the obstacles to getting the movie made in their town? And will their friendship be enough to mend their hearts and homes? Join them as they reach for the stars . . . and try to pull off a Hollywood ending of their own.

At once tender and hilarious, Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA is a captivating story that turns suburbia upside down...with more humor, heartache, and heat than one PTA can hold.

Tune in tomorrow for a conversation with Long Island author, editor, and proud PTA mom Ellen Meister.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go to the Newstand

A few days ago, I watched the movie North Country on DVD. Despite the overblown and highly improbable (dramatic as they were, they legally couldn't have happened that way) court scenes and the way the lily was gilded by piling on one too many dramas in the heroine's backstory, it was still worth watching for its terrific acting and, more importantly, the depiction of the kind of crude sexual harassment that way too many women have been subjected to in the workplace.

I remember some of similar abuse (though milder than that depicted in the movie), and I'm thrilled that women don't face nearly as much as they did even a couple of decades back. But a lot of the condescending, limiting attitudes are still in place, and in the literary world, I see this antiquated bullshit applied all too often to the women who write romance novels.

Take this article from the August issue of Texas Monthly, by Skip Hollandsworth. In it, New York Times bestselling romantic suspense author Sandra Brown is profiled in a piece called "The Woman on Top," which highlights Brown's massive success in the marketplace. Yet Hollandsworth opens with:
"As I walked into her office, she rose elegantly from behind her desk. In heels, she was nearly six feet tall, her body slender but curvy. Her reddish hair with blond highlights was perfectly tousled, and her lean face contained both well-defined cheekbones and soft, full lips. She was wearing a silky beige top that was cut just low enough for me to catch a tantalizing glimpse of a bra strap, and her spectacularly long legs were covered in form-fitting linen slacks that accentuated her pert posterior.

"'Hello,' I said softly, my breath making a hissing sound as I inhaled through my teeth. For a moment, she stared back at me, her brown eyes unblinking, and I could not help but wonder if she too felt something stirring deep inside. Was she, perhaps, already fantasizing about me pushing my way hungrily toward her and pinning her to the desk…"

Excuse me, but what the hell, Skip? And what were the editors of Texas Monthly thinking, to run this article as it was written? Sure, the magazine's known for its irreverent take on a lot of public figures, but I can't imagine a male author would have received this kind of physical scrutiny. More insulting still was the way in which Hollandsworth was lampooning her writing style with this personal affront, the way he counterbalanced each mention of Brown's fifty-five NYT bestsellers, her upcoming first printing of 650,000 for Play Dirty with assertions that critics (in spite of the positive PW review I read of this book) have "always been unimpressed by Brown," claiming her books to be "chock full of ... over-the-top characters, implausible if not impossible plot twists...and cliched happy endings."

For "balance," he goes on to describe his own (shocking) enjoyment of a Brown book he picked up (again, Play Dirty) while writing the article. Mostly in terms of how it wasn't Cormac McCarthy "nor even, really, Dan Brown or John Grisham"), but he kept turning the pages anyway, propelled by the many surprising plot twists, "even if many of them were unrealistic.") It's as if our boy can't quite bring himself to admit that sometimes, a fast, fun, entertaining read is all the reader asks.

I won't argue the fact that not all authors are created equal. I won't defend Brown's prose or tell you people don't have a right to choose their own books. But I will say that the tone of this article, and so many others written about female writers -- particularly writers of work meant for a largely-female audience -- is fueled by ugly, sexist attitudes as well as a desire to keep women in their place.

Though I usually enjoy Skip Hollandsworth's article and Texas Monthly's irreverent take on many subjects, I'm calling you both on this one. And wishing Sandra Brown a #1 NYT slot for her upcoming release.

No magic in Harry Potter sales at the indies

Excellent book industry article by Jeannie Kever in the Houston Chronicle yesterday. In "The tricky web woven around discount books: Selling Potter at a lower-than-list price hurts small book dealers", Kever examines morality, duality, and causality swirling around the fastest selling book in history.

Consider the screwy economics of publishing, where selling 150 books might be more profitable than selling millions. And where personal service occasionally trumps price.

"The retail book business is sort of unusual," explains Dan Neale of Brazos Bookstore. "If a book becomes real popular, the major retailers cut the price."

Brazos Bookstore, like many other independents, did not discount Deathly Hallows, charging the list price of $34.99.

"There's no way we could have (discounted)," says Lillie Woodard of Katy Budget Books. "In order to afford the (book release) party, we couldn't discount the book."

Kever reports that the big chains weren't even pretending they were going to make a profit on HP #7. For stores like Barnes & Noble, it was a loss leader to get people into the store. For Amazon, it was the mother of all publicity ops, where they proved they could ship when and where promised and staged a donation of $5,000 to the town that bought the most copies of Deathly Hallows. (A donation which pales in comparison to the millions of dollars in sales tax lost to cities and states, as one local bookseller points out.)

"Amazon was selling the book cheaper than we could buy it," Neale says. "I guess they chose to do that in the hope that folks will maybe buy something else. But we're not in the refrigerator business or the wide-screen TV business. We're in the book business."

The book business. Oy. An online Chronicle reader responded, "Who goes to a 'Specialty' book store to buy a major-release book anyway? Half-Price books buys for pennies on the dollar and usualy sells for 1/2 retail...if their model doesn't work, boo-friggin-hoo." And therein lies the problem.

The model did work as long as people bought books at bookstores. The Rowlings and the Grishams and the Kings were the rising tides that floated all the little midlist boats. People just don't clap on to the larger notion that they are trading a culture which values books -- and the people who create, love, and sell books -- for the price of a Caesar wrap and waffle fries at Chick-fil-A. There's no concern about the fact that entities like WalMart can influence what gets published and what doesn't.

The problem is not Amazon. Amazon is an animal following its natural feeding instinct like a great white shark. The problem is a culture in which most people genuinely think saving a buck-seventy on a pair of Levi's at WalMart is more important than having a Levi's factory in their community, and if that puts their neighbors out of jobs and erodes the national economy, well...boo friggin' hoo.

The world we live in is created by a zillion little decisions a day. Kever's article offers a reminder that at the very least, we should be more conscious about the book-buying decisions we make. If the few bucks we save is truly worth what we lose, we need to own up to having made that choice.