Buy This Book: Gabriella, Clove, and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado

Whenever I start to despair about politics, I think of a book I read about 25 years ago when the Gare Bear and I were living on our fire tower in the northern California wilderness. Far from the madding (and maddening) crowd, I sat in the rarified air and read this book that will always make me laugh at the way politics will always be. From the flap:

Ilhéus in 1925 is a booming town with a record cacao crop and aspirations for progress, but the traditional ways prevail. When Colonel Mendonça discovers his wife in bed with a lover, he shoots and kills them both. Political contests, too, can be settled by gunshot. No one imagines that a bedraggled migrant worker who turns up in town–least of all Gabriela herself–will be the agent of change. Nacib Saad has just lost the cook at his popular café and in desperation hires Gabriela. To his surprise she turns out to be a great beauty as well as a wonderful cook and an enchanting boon to his business. But what would people say if Nacib were to marry her? Lusty, satirical and full of intrigue, Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon is a vastly entertaining panorama of small town Brazilian life.

Gabriella, Clove, and Cinnamon is a great book to digest in the context of Arizona profiling policy and the debate over migration and immigration.

Thought for Monday: Difficult is better than cool.

Today on Guardian, Robert McCrum is talking about The Secret of Creativity and quotes the "wonderfully transgressive" Grayson Perry:

"Being creative is all about being unself-conscious; being prepared to make a bit of a fool of myself. In my experience, embarrassment is not fatal." He followed this with some remarks about the dangers of "cool", and concluded: "I'd like to make a plea for difficulty over cool. In the end, being difficult is the coolest thing you can be."

Click here to read the rest and have a very uncool week.

BoxOcto's week in a nutshell

We had a pretty lively week here at BoxOcto. Three terrific author fly-bys, a couple LOL moments, and a few deep and thinky thoughts...
Monday
Joni said Buy This Book! The Singer's Gun
Nate invited you to a horror writers' roundtable. (Don't look in the soup tureen!)
Mylene eavesdropped on the conversation inside a writer's head.
Dr. KatPat called in the Phony Police.

Tuesday
Fred had 3Qs for author Emily St. John Mandel.
Colleen went viral with hilarious Bronte Girls Gone Wild.

Wednesday
Prolific Rita Nom Kylie Brant took us from Point A(agent) to Point B(book).
Amazon rethinkified their Kindle bestsellers.
New Authors Guild Pres Scott Turow called out the pirates.
Fred cracked us up with this important lesson from Mana3.

Thursday
Kiva.org facilitated global good karma.
Joni offered a memoir guru's take on Laura Bush's new memoir.

Friday
Rockin' Kate Rockland chatted up her book, Falling Is Like This.

Saturday
Colleen cut through the noise and cracked us up with a video of Darth Vader voiceover sesh.
President Obama's proclamation and an Armed Forces Day saaaaaaalute!

Tune in next week for more author interviews, book reviews, and publishing palaver.

But wait! There's more! (Great deal from Amazon on two books by yours truly)

Over the last 12 months, I've been working with Nancy Brinker, founder and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, on her memoir Promise Me: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer. This multifaceted project was beyond fascinating for me, and it was personal. I'm alive today thanks in part to cancer treatment developed with funding from SGK. I can't believe it's been almost ten years since the publication of Bald in the Land of Big Hair, my own memoir about chemo and how the experience led to the writing and publication of my first two novels (neither of which is about cancer.) Even more mind-blowing--the thing is still in print! It keeps going like an Energizer bunny year after year, and no one is more surprised than I.

At the risk of sounding like the Slap Chop guy, Amazon is offering a great deal right now. Preorder Promise Me along with Bald in the Land of Big Hair for less than the cover price of one hardcover book. "But wait! There's more!" says Slappy. If you preorder Promise Me now, Random House and Susan G. Komen for the Cure will send a free autographed copy of Promise Me to your sister or friend. Click here for details.

Armed Forces Day 2010: Saaaaaaaalute!

From the Presidential Proclamation, Armed Forces Day, 2010:

America's Armed Forces represent the very best of our national character. They have answered the call to defend our Nation, and their service and sacrifice humble us all. On Armed Forces Day, we pay tribute to these patriots who risk their lives, sometimes giving their last full measure of devotion, to preserve the vision of our forebears and the freedoms we enjoy.

This is my niece, fly girl Megan Darelius, currently serving in the Air Force in Iraq.

Cutting through the Noise

Like many other writers, I spent my early years trying to sound like someone else. Preferably, someone famous as successful, because I didn't understand that I could never be as good a Lavyrle Spencer or Stephen King or Larry McMurtry or Frank Herbert as the original article.

Over time, I forgot about emulating others and quit hiding Colleen Thompson. I let that voice develop, for better or for worse. Though not every attempt was a hit, of course, those successes I did find gave me confidence that I could run with the authentic me, allowing it to color everything I wrote.

Give yourself a million words or so, and you can cut through fear and noise and finally hear the authentic way your thoughts sound. And if your voice proves sufficiently unique and appeals to enough people, perhaps you, like Mr. Vader here, will get the chance to milk it for a lot of years to come.

Dreaming in Words: 3Qs for Kate Rockland, aptly named author of Falling Is Like This

I had to reach out and talk to Kate Rockland when I saw that her debut novel, Falling Is Like This, had been blurbed by Courtney Love: "This book is saucy, sexy, and well-written." I was even more surprised by NYT bestseller Emily Griffin: "Say hello to the new rock star in women's fiction." Women's fiction? With a 23-yr-old heroine and a punk rocker boyfriend?

Over the course of one week, Harper Rostov ditches her true-blue boyfriend and sows wild oats all over the vividly portrayed East Village. And Coney Island. And then finds her way home to New Jersey after she discovers that her brilliant musician lover (he buys humane mouse traps from PETA and recites Sylvia Plath poems) is hiding a dark secret. I'm predicting a lot of book club discussions revolving around That Guy I Should Have Never Gotten Involved With.

Kate, thanks for stopping by. Harper isn't exactly the archetypal Jersey Girl, but she definitely has some of the trademark elements working for her. What do you make of the current fascination with Jersey girls (a la shows like "Jerseylicious") and do you want Harper to dispel that image or expand on it?
I think New Jersey has been a long-standing joke to the other 49 states, especially to the snobbier New York and Connecticut, the states surrounding us. However, I am proud of the stereotypes that New Jersey reality TV shows accentuate. I like women with big hair and fake nails; the Stephanie Plum character in the Janet Evanovich books seems like a girl you'd want to have a beer with. On the other hand, people should know that while there are certainly Snookie look-alikes running around Seaside (we call it "Sleaze-side" up here in Hoboken, the North part of the state) and I probably went to high school with 100 Snookies, there are other kinds of people living in the Garden State such as intellectuals (Albert Einstein is from Princeton, for goodness sakes) and teachers and mothers and all kinds of people. Harper loves living in New Jersey, but she likes punk rock and the punk rock scene that came out of New Brunswick in the 1980's and gave birth to bands like Lifetime and The Bouncing Souls. So she's not the typical big hair, fake nails type of Jersey girl, but she would be friends with plenty of girls that look like that. She wouldn't judge or be bothered by being called a "Jersey Girl."

The girl version of the guy in "Almost Famous", you "followed around freakishly beautiful celebrities with a microphone" for two years as a staffer at Rolling Stone and Wenner Books (the magazine's book publishing arm.) Was this story writing itself in your head that whole time or did it come together from a different perspective?
The whole time I was doing reporting for Us Weekly and sitting at my desk at Rolling Stone while Billy Joel or Billy Idol or Madonna went strolling by for meetings, I felt like I was living in a land of fiction. But it was more the East Village that got my creative juices flowing. I lived on 9th street and first avenue, right down the block from Tompkin's Park, and everyone I was meeting in my early twenties was an artist of some kind. I was going to underground punk shows, I was dating older guys who took me to great concerts. My bartender for years ended up being the bassist for The Hold Steady, who made it big. Everyone around me wanted to do something interesting with their lives, and so did I.

Other than the ten-yr-old laptop, what does magazine writing have in common with novel process? And do you love one better than the other?
Magazine writing is cool because you have a deadline and you have to usually interview someone interesting in person or on the phone with a recorder, you have to do an enormous amount of research and try to not let your voice shake when you interview famous people so you can set them at ease so they say interesting things you can pull quotes from for your article. The more famous someone is, the less interesting things they say. They get famous and then they clam up. Writing fiction is more easy-going, until the end when you turn it in and need to make 1,000 changes to the manuscript. Magazine writing on a deadline is exciting but hard work; writing novels means escaping into another world, sitting at your laptop and essentially dreaming in words. I think I like book writing more, but going out and researching the new hot band, or going to a concert and interviewing a musician backstage or while on tour can be very exciting.

My standard bonus Q, if you don't mind: What are you reading?
I am reading three books as usual: Elizabeth George's This Body of Death, Zoe Heller's The Believers, and a non-fiction book by my friend Larry Smith's wife, Orange Is the New Black, about when she spent 13 months in jail. I want to know the juicy details of their marriage!

Falling Is Like This hit bookstores this week. Visit Kate Rockland's website for more.

There's no such thing as a tell-all memoir (nor should there be), even when it's spoken from the heart.

My Republican mom was probably surprised to see Laura Bush's new memoir, Spoken from the Heart, delivered to her Kindle on Mother's Day. My political opinions differ sharply from those of George W. Bush (not to mention my parents), and I've always found Laura Bush to be kind of on the Stepford side. I was never sure if she was just uptight or completely emotionally shut down. But last year, I discovered she was neither. While I was researching my forthcoming project, Promise Me: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer, a memoir by Nancy Brinker, founder and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and a close friend of Laura Bush for almost thirty years, I came upon a few personal letters from Laura to Nancy, and I spoke with Nancy at some length about their friendship. (That's not spilling any beans. In Spoken From the Heart, Laura talks about volunteering with Nancy's newborn foundation back in the 1980s in Dallas and tells how the two of them spent time with women in cancer wards in Budapest in 2002 while Nancy was ambassador to Hungary.)

As a writer specializing in the craft of memoir, I was eager to see how Mrs. Bush's book was done, and as you would expect, it is very well done indeed. Michiko Kakutani's opening thoughts in the NY Times review:

Laura Bush’s new memoir, “Spoken From the Heart,” is really two books. The first is a deeply felt, keenly observed account of her childhood and youth in Texas — an account that captures a time and place with exacting emotional precision and that demonstrates how Mrs. Bush’s lifelong love of books has imprinted her imagination. The second book is a thoroughly conventional autobiography by a politician’s wife — a rote recitation of travel, public appearances and meetings with foreign dignitaries that sheds not the faintest new light on the presidency of the author’s husband, George W. Bush.

I agree. For me, the impression of Laura Bush in the front half of the book is much more in keeping with the woman I learned about from those letters and stories. But why would we expect anything different?

Laura Bush is not free to say whatever she wants to say about her husband's presidency. There are rules. And worse yet, there are lawyers. I've been through a number of legal reviews for memoirs ranging from the mom of a sports legend to stage and screen stars to political mover/shakers, and it's incredibly stringent, even for the most low key folks. A memoir by a former First Lady would be subject to the highest level of cross-checking, spin-doctoring, temporizing, fact-checking, tact-checking, buffing, waxing, tweezing...I'm exhausted at the very thought of the "write-arounds" required to get the story from one year to the next. Some material is still classified information, and other material is just nobody's dang business. The question of what to share and what not to share in a memoir is always a complex issue, and for someone in her position, it had to be complex to the tenth power.

In the front matter, Mrs. Bush acknowledges the "talented and beautiful writer" Lyric Winik, a Princeton grad, book author in her own right, and Washington correspondent for Parade magazine, married to bestselling historian, Jay Winik. (Note to self: Never play Scrabble with the Winiks.) The book really is extremely well written--flawlessly constructed with a strong, sweet, consistent voice. Winik did a fantastic job of capturing the warmth of a southern lilt without burdening the book with hokey idioms or other forms of southsploitation.

I wonder if it crossed Winik's mind (though I'm sure it wasn't even an option) to end the book with election night 2000. As a writer, she must have known that the richly personal flavor of the book would turn guarded at that point. Readers are bound to feel that glass door sliding shut, but there was no way it could do otherwise. The moment Laura Bush became First Lady, her words and actions--like her ability to go to the grocery store or stand in line at the post office--were in a larger context, along with the very meaning of the words "freedom" and "isolation." Mrs. Bush doesn't complain about this dynamic, but she does mention it, and it's clearly felt in the change in tone. There's a loneliness about this book that's kind of heartbreaking at times. Maybe that's what's coming through loud and clear in what's unspoken from the heart.

Kiva fights poverty by connecting people around the world

Yesterday, my dad turned me on to this amazing organization called Kiva, through which individuals around the world receive micro-loans from other individuals around the world. When borrowers repay the loan, you have the option of being paid back or loaning the money out again.

I logged on today and made my first couple loans. Without a doubt the most fun I've ever had on the computer. Scanning through the loan requests, I came upon this profile of a guy looking to borrow money to restock inventory in his little store.

Jose Ibraham Colindres is 61 years old, and married to Santos Raquel Cabrera. They have no dependents, and their children live in the United States. Jose and his wife have a lovely home, get along well, work together, and love one another. They have a business in their house, a general store where they sell basic items needed by families. They also have income from a taxi. He will use the loan to buy grains, fresh goods, meats, and sausages. His greatest desire to be in good health, to continue working hard alongside his wife. (Translated from Spanish by Mary Jane Wilkie, Kiva Volunteer)

Jose and his wife were looking to borrow $1125. Well, I can't spring for $1125, but with fifty bucks from me and about thirty donations from other folks, he's hooked up and back in business. How great is that? Visit Kiva.org for more info. And bring Kleenex. I found myself newly reminded of the power of personal stories.

An important lesson from Mana3 and Me

Authors Guild President Scott Turow: Piracy up, royalties down. Where do we go from here?

Amazon bestseller list will be for best sellers (as opposed to most popular giveaways)

This today from Rachel Deahl at PW:

For some in publishing it may be a curiosity, for others a point of contention—Amazon’s practice of including free downloads in its list of most popular Kindle titles. It will soon no longer be an issue. A representive at the e-tailer has confirmed that the company will soon be dividing the bestseller list in two, one for paid books and the other for free titles. The date for the switch is vague—the rep for Amazon would only say it will happen in “a few weeks”—but the switch will certainly be noticed many in the industry.

Read the rest here.

From Point A (agent) to Point B (book): 3Qs for Rita Nominista Kylie Brant

Kylie Brant just scored a Rita nomination for Waking the Dead, the third book in her Mindhunters series. From the flap:

Former forensic anthropologist Caitlin Fleming knows bones. So the investigator is the first one called when seven sets of skeletal remains are found dumped in a makeshift graveyard in the Oregon wilderness. Each skeleton bears the same distinctive marks. And each is minus a skull. Cait needs outdoors guide Zach Sharper for one reason only — to help her find her way through the Willamette Forest as she pieces together clues.

Obviously, these two will have a pretty cool first date story to tell their kids. We flagged Kylie down to offer heartfelt congrats and ask three quick questions.

Kylie, thanks for joining us and congrats on your Rita nom! In Waking the Dead, you're seriously messing with people's heads (ba-dum-bum-CH!) and you really made it work as tightly woven psychological suspense. Did you know from the beginning how the story was going to come together, or were you finding your way through the maze along with Caitlin and Zach?
Oh, I'd be lying if I said I ever knew in the beginning how any book was going to come out. I'm definitely an organic writer. I love that term so much better than 'pantser'. I knew who the killer was from the beginning in this story...sometimes I don't. I always have an end point in mind but getting from point A to point B is like writing in the mist sometimes. I can see the important landmarks but I'm not always sure what's going to happen on my way to each of them!

The Mindhunters continues with another trilogy being released by Berkley in 2010-11. You must admit, this is a sweet gig. How did it come about?
I'd written over twenty books for Silhouette Romantic Suspense and had been wanting to write something longer and more complex. I'd never been agented, and started writing a single title novel on spec as I searched for an agent. I finished the book and sent queries to several publishing houses. By the time I signed with an agent, I'd received five invitations to submit the book and signed for another trilogy with Silhouette. Three months after those submissions, Cindy Hwang at Berkley made an offer on the first three Mindhunters books. I'm lucky that she's a huge fan of the series, and that she requested another trilogy last summer.

I was surprised to read that you're still teaching special ed at the elementary level, even with your prolific publishing schedule. Clearly, you're a time management goddess, but there's also the contrast between nurturing sweet little children and dumping headless corpses in a makeshift grave. How do you balance the two Kylies?
LOL. You've obviously not spent much time in an elementary school. Seriously, I've always loved cop shows, psychological thrillers and suspense. My favorite TV shows are NCIS and Justified. I write what I like to read; the same sort of plots I choose when I watch a movie.

One more quickie, if you don't mind: What are you reading?
I've just started Lee Child's Gone Tomorrow. I love Jack Reacher!

Click here to read an excerpt from Waking the Dead.