Road rash! Drama! Really tight pants! Viva le Tour!

It's the Super Bowl of bone-crunching, gut-wrenching human endeavor, the one sporting event I can't keep my eyes off every year. High drama at hot speed, tight corners in tight britches, gorgeous spectators in haut couture and crazy Fellini cast costumes. The Tour de France kicks off in Monaco tomorrow. A quick overview of the grueling three-week course:


The Gare Bear was big into bike racing when I met him (back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, but I still remember that bike-racing backside with wistful fondness as we work the daily crossword puzzle...) Decades later, I did a book that required extensive research on le Tour. Gary and I did a long driving trip through France, caught a couple of the mountain legs of the race, and got completely swept up in the history and drama of this amazing event.

Rather than my own ugly American paraphrase, here's l'histoire du Tour in quaint French-to-English from the Tour de France web site:

The line between insanity and genius is said to be a fine one, and in early 20th century France, anyone envisaging a near-2,500-km-long cycle race across the country would have been widely viewed as unhinged. But that didn’t stop Géo Lefèvre, a journalist with L’Auto magazine at the time, from proceeding with his inspired plan. His editor, Henri Desgrange, was bold enough to believe in the idea and to throw his backing behind the Tour de France. And so it was that, on 1 July 1903, sixty pioneers set out on their bicycles from Montgeron. After six mammoth stages (Nantes - Paris, 471 km!), only 21 “routiers”, led by Maurice Garin, arrived at the end of this first epic.

Having provoked a mixture of astonishment and admiration, le Tour soon won over the sporting public and the roadside crowds swelled. The French people took to their hearts this unusual event which placed their towns, their countryside and, since 1910, even their mountains, in the spotlight.

Le Tour has always moved with the times. Like France as a whole, it benefited from the introduction of paid holidays from 1936; it has lived through wars, and then savoured the “trente glorieuses” period of economic prosperity while enjoying the heydays of Coppi, Bobet, Anquetil and Poulidor; it has opened itself up to foreign countries with the onset of globalisation, and now finds itself at the forefront of the debate on the malaise afflicting world sport in general. Over a hundred years after its inception, le Tour continues to gain strength from its experience.

Shortcuts

Returning from vacation to a raft of Stuff That Needed Doing Pronto, I finally found what I've been looking for throughout the month of June. My focus. Gone was the luxury of reading, even skimming, every Yahoogroups digest (a brief scan of the subjects assured me I wasn't missing much but the usual RWA summer squabbling), the temptation to mess around on Facebook or tweet (over it) or obsess about the success of failure of the new book, and the time to kill with inane, addictive Internet games (do you hear me, Bejeweled?). Seduced away from my work in progress by the siren call of an unfinished historical, I'd dallied with a retool of a proposal that will never see the light of day. But really, I know now, I was stalling, stuck on the Hard Work stage of a manuscript I'd hoped to finish early and harder, riskier work of a scary-looking new proposal.

The truth of it, a truth I need to stencil in block letters on my office wall, if not my forehead, is this: There Are No Shortcuts. None. There is only hard, sustained work, seasoned with the unpredictable, incomprehensible "luck" of opportunity.

Certainly, this is the advice I want to tell aspiring authors every time I give a talk or workshop, what I ought to tell the newly-contracted or self-published or wannabees who seek me out looking for a hand up, what I need to tell myself the ten times a day I get distracted.

The hard work part isn't a necessary evil; it's a joy, too, and the hum of one's creative machinery is the soundtrack of progress. It's the sweat equity component of success.

So what do you do to keep yourself on track? Do you find, as I do, a brief vacation can reforge your focus? Or have you found another strategy that serves you as well?

Infinite so far and Kevin Guilfoile on the promise at the start of every great read

To be totally honest, I'm not as pie-eyed in love with David Foster Wallace or Infinite Jest as most of my fellow Infinite Summerians, but I'm hanging in there and keeping up with the page count. I said at the start, I thought I'd be a better reader and a better writer by the time I get to the end of this book, and one of the reasons is the great commentary on the Infinite Summer blog. Today, Kevin Guilfoile speaks to the all-important reader/author connection at the heart of a great read:

When I teach writing workshops I tell students that one of the biggest mistakes I think writers make, even some experienced writers, is not doing enough from the start to build the trust of the reader. Many writers seem to expect people will read their novel just because they wrote it, which is insane. Reading a novel of any kind requires a commitment and in a marketplace of infinite choices a novelist needs to convince the reader that he not only has a great story to tell but that he can be relied on to tell it well. And he has to do that immediately. He has to promise.

Watch the Feed Me sidebar for Infinite Summer updates and click here to know more about Kevin Guilfoile.

Here's a Great Contest - Win Rita Nominated Novels

Over at historical romance novelist TJ Bennett's IMHO blog, she's giving away baskets of this year's Rita-nominated romances (including a signed copy of my romantic suspense finalist, Triple Exposure.)

All it takes is a blog comment. Hop on over and check it out!

Author/Reviewer Death Match Round 2: deBotton v Crain

Must be the heat.

Alain de Botton (author of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work to Caleb Crain (NYT Review of Books): "I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude."

Old: "I never read reviews."

New: "You won't like me when I'm angry."

Can't we all just get along? (Alice in Blunderland and a Few Simple Rules for a happier publishing community)

The publishing world was all a-twitter yesterday with gossip, bloggery, and a rush to judgment about the weekend meltdown of venerable bestselling author Alice Hoffman.

Just the facts, ma'am:
Sunday, the Boston Globe published Roberta Silman's review of Hoffman's new novel The Story Sisters.

Later in the day, Hoffman posted this response on Twitter:

A flurry of blah blah blah ensued, and Hoffman eventually posted this:

And that's why she's now being thrown into the volcano all over the internet.

First of all, the phone number was incorrect and Silman herself said there was no harm done. And one thing Alice and I agree on:

I think it would have been fine to post the number of the Boston Globe and the email posted with her public profile. Proffering an already public contact for a newspaper that "welcomes your opinion" would have been perfectly acceptable. Sadly, this looks like a personal email address, and twittering another writer's private contact info is very ungroovy. Clearly, Alice Hoffman understands this. She issued an apology, and that's all the damage control that can be done. End of story. Except it isn't. Now she has to get dragged through town behind a pickup truck of righteous bloggo wrath. And that sucks.

My heart really goes out to Alice Hoffman today, and I just want to say to her, "Peace be with you, girl. Hang tough." I don't know her, but she is an incredibly talented author. If she's a "diva," she's earned it, but everything else I've ever heard about her indicates that she's a generous and lovely person who supports and mentors her fellow artists.

Let's be honest, people, if this was Harlan Ellison or Dean Koontz or any MALE author, HE would be getting clapped on the back. Everyone would be having a ballsy old chuckle about how he "put that Boston bitch in her place." Let's admit that right up front. Women aren't allowed a slitting fraction of the blowhard moments men are freely applauded for in this biz. So before we proceed, could we please choke chain the snark Rottweilers?

At the root of this situation is the mounting pressure on authors whose sole ambition is to do good art. How is everyone so shocked that somebody snapped? I'm more stunned there's not a blogger buried in the backyard of every author on the Times list. The internet has changed the nature of books and book reviews in a way that is ridiculously punishing for authors and unhealthy for the publishing industry as a whole body, and my darlings, we are one body. Make no mistake. We are one body, and good art is our soul. We dare not strangle and kill it.

I would like to humbly propose a Few Simple Rules for a kinder, gentler publishing universe that would benefit us all:

Rule #1 Reviewers: SPOILERS IST VERBOTEN!
I keep hearing "Why all the fuss? The review wasn't even that bad." But the review contained spoilers. That makes it more brutal than the worst panning. And it's just plain bad, lazy-ass writing on Silman's part. An author spends thousands of hours crafting a story, agonizing over each small reveal, carefully unfolding little letters to the reader, or lying in wait to explode a sweet plot bomb. In the space of a five-minute read -- maybe 55 minutes at the keyboard -- Silman carelessly belched out every major plot turn in Hoffman's novel. That is beyond uncool. That's one of the most emotionally and financially damaging things that can be done to an author.

BRUCE WILLIS IS DEAD THE WHOLE TIME! Blaugh! KEVIN SPACEY IS KAISER SOZE! Fwaugh! How do you like that?

As a reader, I feel ripped off when a spoiler is plopped in my face, and as a writer -- Good God! I would literally prefer that someone come to my home and hit me in the kidney with a baseball bat. SPOILERS ARE SATAN. Why are we even having this conversation? Roberta, I know you know better. NO SPOILERS. Sheesh.

Rule #2 Authors: DO NOT ENGAGE
Fellow artisans, my darlings, we will never ever win this kind of battle. Discretion is the better part of valor. I carry my share of scars from blame-it-on-the-Chardonnay frays, and it's never worth it. Never. I now have a sign posted on my Wisdom Wall: DO NOT ENGAGE. That's why God created henchmen. Which brings us to...

Rule #3 Authors (and others): Do not DISENGAGE.
We have to be henchmen (in the most civil manner possible) for each other. I didn't email Roberta Silman to tell her off; she's entitled to her opinion. So am I. I emailed her editor and complained that I, as a reader, was robbed of my opportunity to experience this story as the author intended it to unfold. Fellow authors, PR Hildes, editors, could we all please muster some balls and stick up for authors once in a while?

Rule #4 Bloggers: Be nice.
The ability to take a horse-whipping is a huge component in an author's success. We know it going in. We take it daily. But how about a little compassion when someone stumbles? C'mon. In the last 40 hours, as bloggers swooped in with the poo-storm on Alice Hoffman, we quickly made the leap from "author experiences lapse in judgement" to "author is evil, evil syphilitic dragon diva who eats babies with hot sauce." I'm not begrudging anyone their say, but there's a nice way to say it, and we're all experts with the wordsmithery, right? Let's use our power for good and not for evil. Yes, she offered the tastiest tidbit of snark fodder since Judith Regan, but for the good of the oversoul, as the rabbi says, "Let the law of kindness be in your mouth." And if you just can't find it in yourself to be kind, then kindly shut up.

The conversation on the changing world of book reviews needs to continue, and I'd love to hear from publishing folks in all walks. Watch this space for more. I will do my utmost to offer my opinions with lovingkindness and a sincere wish that peace and prosperity be with us all.

About the C-word...and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "The Thing Around Your Neck"

Yeah, that's right. I'm gonna say it. Right out loud. The C-word:

Commercial.

I was just having a moment here, appreciating the shift in sensibilities I see in the Houston Chronicle's book coverage. I was optimistic when I saw Maggie Galehouse had been anointed book editor earlier this year, and (while I wish, oh, how I wish there was more book coverage, and I wish, oh, wish there was a modicum of local and regional author love) sure enough, the Chron's book coverage is better than it has been in a long, long time for the simple reason that it features books people actually read. Books that are -- gasp! choke! cough! -- commercial. They sell. People buy and read them, and not just because they're forced to order it for the author's 400 level nonfiction course.

A lot of the content in the Chron's book coverage is imported now. Sad for reviewers making their way through grad school forty bucks at a time trashing the literary debuts of the unlucky innocent; good for reviewers who are working their way through life as actual journalists. This means the books getting covered are the big books, but that doesn't mean only books with big names -- it means books with (potentially) big audiences. Some reviewers are predisposed to hate books that a lot of people are going to love, because -- well, dang, if I love a book everybody else loves, then how do I cling to the belief that I'm way smarter than them?

Yesterday, Galehouse's own contribution to the book section was a clear, not gushy, informative review of a book I really love: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beautiful short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck. I haven't read any of Adichie's other books, but a couple of the stories included in this collection were previously in The New Yorker, and they were lovely, so I was stunned when I saw the book dismissively panned by PW, who slammed the stories as "deflated" and "familiar." Whiffing the dusty frunge of snobbery, I wanted to support the author, so I bought the book on it's pub date and loved it. (Note to self: Post reader review on Amazon. Note to PW: Go screw yourself.)

The stories in The Thing Around Your Neck are beautifully written, the book is of excellent literary quality, and yes -- as God is my witness, Chimamanda will never go hungry again! -- it's commercial. A LOT of people are going to buy and love this book, and that in my humble opinion, is a good thing, even though it makes certain people predisposed to hate it.

What particularly killed me was how the author kind of skewers that predictable PW review in advance with the hilarious story "Jumping Monkey Hill" -- about an African writer's workshop taught by a pompous Englishman. This "old man in a summer hat" poo poos the work of the writers in attendance as "terribly passé" and not "reflective of Africa."

"I wasn't really attacking this man," Adichie said in an interview. "For me the story is about the larger question of who determines what an African story is. You have this workshop of African writers, it's completely organised by the British, then this person who has his own ideas ... imposes them on these young, very impressionable people. I remember feeling helpless. You're sitting there thinking, this is the result of 200 years of history: we can sit here and be told what our story is."

Now apply that dynamic to young American novelists, struggling to break through in this economy. When I see a debut novel trashed by some snuff-huffing academic, I'm not nearly as worried for the sales of the book as I am for the soul of the writer, who shouldn't have to be lectured by some Uncle Vanya about what her story ought to be.

Reviewers are an important part of the book business. It stands to reason that they would want the business to thrive, and that's not helped by a preponderance of negative, snarky smack-downs that often condemn a book simply because it's commercial, and the reviewer wants desperately to believe that he or she is not one of the herd.

Commercial isn't a dirty word, people. It's the objective: to have your work embraced by a wide audience. And that doesn't mean we, as an industry, should be pandering to Joe the Plumberians. It means we should support good literary work that will raise a wider readership to a more intelligent level, much like -- gasp! choke! cough! -- Oprah tried to do for years with her book club, despite the dismissive egging she took from the snotty literati.

Perhaps what it comes down to is respect for people in general and more specifically for readers. The difference between me and the cleverati is that I think PTO moms are smart. I think babes who read on the beach are going to do a spectacular job running the world someday. I believe that when an accessible, excellent book is placed in their hands, readers will read it.

I'm encouraged by what I see in the Chronicle these days, and I hope the crush on the newspaper biz will be a refiner's fire that creates a better book coverage across the country. And I would love to see books on a par with The Thing Around Your Neck become the standard for the craft of commercial fiction.

Greetings from "Down the Shore"

Thanks so much to Joni for carrying the load at BtO while I'm hanging out on the East Coast visiting my family and recharging my batteries. Husband Fireman Mike and I are having a ball "down the shore" in Ocean City, NJ (best boardwalk ever), eating way too much wonderful junk food, and soaking in the cool ocean breezes.

But Mike better watch himself. I've met a new summer love...

Have a great week, and try to keep cool, Houston contingent!

"When I want to be a director, I write a novel." (John Irving on the craft of fiction)

The best 73 seconds of craft advice you're ever going to get.

American icons

i-con noun a picture, image, or other representation of some sacred personage; a representation that stands for its object by virtue of analogy to it.

I'm not sure what these two particular icons say about our culture or who Americans are as a society, but I'll tell you this. It doesn't make me feel bad. I'm part of that non-generation born between Baby Boom and Gen Ex. Too late for Woodstock, too early for Nirvana. We gave the world feathered bangs, jeweltone blazers with shoulder pads, and the moonwalk. And the rest of you are just jealous that we had so much fun.

Go with God, Farrah and Michael.

Are you webervescent?

Ten years ago, at BookExpo '99 in LA, I was chatting with a well-known bestselling women's fiction author I admired, and we were both all excited because we'd just gotten -- dun-da-da-DAAAH! -- email. This was the creeping slow dial-up web of yesteryear, but we thought it was Star Trek and agreed that it was going to revolutionize the process for writers, editors, agents, and everyone else associated with the making and selling of books.

"My only worry," she said, "is that it'll be like 'video killed the radio star.' Now in addition to writing books, we'll be expected to look nice on screen."

Little did we know...

Website is totally last century. These days, authors are expected to have a "web presence." The problem is, social networking, twittering, facebooking, blogging, etc end up sucking us in and killing a lot of typing time. I have in me only just so many keystrokes per day. How best to use them?

Yen over at the Book Publicity Blog has a great post this week, examining "What kind of web presence is right for an author?" One size definitely does not fit all, and Yen breaks it down every venue into pros, cons, and whom it's best for. (Or who it's best for. Or for whom...oh, damn you, ever-changing Chicago Manual of Style! You know what I mean.)

Check it out. And keep your eye on the "Feed Me" sidebar for wise and witty updates from Yen at the Book Publicity Blog.

(And if the song is now stuck in your head, click here for the Buggles.

BURN THIS BOOK: PEN Writers Speak Out on the Power of the Word

No time to wax poetic today, but I did want to post about this important book. Ripping straight from their press kit:

BURN THIS BOOK was born out of a speech last April that Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison gave at the PEN International Festival dinner. Morrison observed that night, "A writer's life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity." As she paid tribute to the difficulties and challenges writers face in many parts of the world, she also reflected on the steep price we all pay when voices are silenced. This powerful, incantatory talk sparked a notion for a book of essays that would explore the issue and impact of censorship in the world.

Published in conjunction with the PEN American Center, Toni Morrison's speech now opens this collection of extraordinary voices from around the world: John Updike (in one of his final pieces), David Grossman, Francine Prose, Pico Iyer, Russell Banks, Paul Auster, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Ed Park, and Nadine Gordimer. The writers represent Nobel and other prize winners and they include writers who have had first-hand experience of censorship and its consequences.

About the Editor:
Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of many novels, including, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, and most recently, A Mercy. She has also received the national Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her fiction.

About PEN:
PEN is the leading voice for literature and a major force for free expression and the unhampered exchange of ideas and opinions worldwide. Founded in 1921, it is the world's oldest ongoing human rights organization, and it currently has 144 PEN centers in 102 countries dedicated to protecting the right of all humanity to create and communicate freely. By mobilizing the world's most influential literary voiced and an international network of writers, readers, and human rights supporters, PEN makes a difference every day in the lives of writers who are facing persecution around the world.

Click here to read David Grossman's "Writing in the Dark."

Click here for more info on PEN.

And click here for more about BURN THIS BOOK.

Higher Ground

Envision your literary agent in the Maori war paint. If publishing could dance right now, this is what it would look like. All biz with primal drive and a whole lotta soul, the perilous balance of funk and precision. Keep on striving for that higher ground, friends. (Thanks to my hip kid Jerusha for making me look at this amazing piece of choreography by Mia Michaels.)