THE IMPOSSIBLE MEME

Okay, we've all seen that meme: William Shakespeare wrote King Lear while under quarantine in London during the Bubonic plague.

The intention of circulating this (probably relatively true-ish) factoid, of course, is to make us all feel like a bunch of whining slackers. Want to feel even worse? Remember that Anne Frank wrote her famous Diary while hiding from the Nazis in a cramped attic in Amsterdam with her family of four and three other people. For two years. 

The fruits of these labors, composed under impossibly stressful conditions, are inarguably masterpieces, Frank's Diary for its honesty, optimism and compassion, and Lear for its brilliant and enduring insights into the human condition.

So what are the rest of us waiting for? Now that we're all under house arrest, we have nothing but time.

But consider too that Lear is one of Shakespeare's darkest plays, in every respect. It's full of howling storms and furious rages, delusion, betrayal, calamity, madness, folly, treachery and despair. Hard not to see at least a psychological parallel between the work itself and the temper of the times in which it was written.

Colette: Holed up like a Parisienne

So, if I wanted to write something gloomy and despondent, this would be the perfect time to do it! Indeed, there would be no excuse not to spend these grey, wet, solitary days hammering away at the keyboard, grappling angst and uncertainty into something (hopefully) brilliant.

But, no. Me, I'm trying to cobble together a lighthearted romantic comedy, full of magic and music, for Young Adult readers.

It's the second book (although not a sequel) stipulated in my contract for Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge, which was already too dark and perverse for the general YA readership, according to my Goodreads reviews. This new one is supposed to be fun and upbeat.

Hah.

Blissfully untarnished by reality

Not that it couldn't be done. When the Nazis marched in to occupy France, the celebrated novelist Colette was 67 (the same age I am now), and nearly bedridden. Yet, holed up in her Paris apartment for the duration, she produced Gigi. Harking back to France's golden age of the Belle Epoque, it told the sunny tale of a spirited teenage girl raised to be a courtesan who defies expectations by charming her designated client into marriage.

And I have no doubt that if my Art Boy was still here to shelter in place with me, he would have turned out three or four of his magical paintings by now, and sketches for many more.

His work was always blissfully untarnished by everyday reality; his ideas bubbled up directly out of the teeming wellspring of his own imagination — flying fish, joyous dancing figures, pink bunnies and all. How he would have relished the excuse to stay home and paint all day!

I'm trying to view this temporary (we hope) dystopian sojourn as an opportunity to be relished. That's what James would do! And who knows? If the present coronavirus lockdown stretches on for another eternity, a deep plunge into the imagination might be just the escape I need.



(Above: Act of Creation, James Aschbacher)

BEAST GIVEAWAY

Totally thrilled to announce the first pre-publication giveaway for Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge!

It all starts today (Feb 1) on Goodreads, and continues through March 10 — exactly four months before publication day, July 10.

If you're a Goodreads member (or even of you're not, yet; it's free to join), you're eligible to enter the giveaway.

Only three books (printed Advance Reading Copies, not digital) are being offered by my publisher, Candlewick, sponsor of this event. But if we get a good response, who knows? Maybe we'll do it again!

Just click on the link — it's live today.

And Beast of luck to all!

STAR SYSTEM

Okay, I know authors are expected to give their own books 5-star ratings over at the Republic of GoodReads, to bump up the average. But, I just can't make myself do it! What do you think of this strategy instead?

Also, interested to see the star-ratings piling up for Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge — even though I know for a fact that only five of the raters have actually read the book, including me and Art Boy.

Three other legitimate reviewers received ARCs from the publisher, Candlewick, but the rest of the raters are no doubt responding to the peculiar GR algorithms that confer traction within the community depending on number of books a person rates — whether or not the raters have read them.

I dealt with this topic awhile ago, here on the blog. What do you think?

On the other hand, I'm delighted that over 4900 members have put Beast on their shelves, so thank you, GoodReaders!

CAPTAIN'S LOG

Russell Brand as Captain Hook, by Annie Leibovitz

Captain Hook continues to have legs!

(And, why not; it was only his hand that got cut off.)

What I mean is that readers over at the Republic of Goodreads keep discovering Alias Hook and posting enthusiastic reviews!

Many early readers assumed the book would be YA (Young Adult) because it's about Peter Pan (although they were quick to discover my book is really about James Hook). And some were disappointed that it was not. But now, some of this late-coming crop of Goodreaders are actually relieved that the book is not YA.

Their comments have been interesting:

This was a book for people just like me - adults who still love magic and the fairy tales from childhood, but don't want to read another book about teenagers (I'm pretty sure 97% of all books now are YA action romances :/ )

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, much more than I probably expected too, despite the interesting premise. I had sort of pegged it as a young adult fantasy with probably many of the same themes that seem to frequently recur in that genre, but this is most definitely a grown-up book, with an adult's perspective of Neverland.

It does sometimes seem there are more YA fantasy series than anything else in the marketplace. Of course, lots of adults read YA because, as a writer friend recently observed, "that's where the ideas are." But it's up to writers to resist the lure of formula that could so easily lead to stagnation within the genre (or any popular genre).

This is useful to think about, since my next two novels will be YA. Keeping the stories fresh and the writing fresh — for readers of all ages — that's the challenge!

(Meanwhile, it's great to know that my James Hook continues to win fans. Pardon me while I blush over this Alias Hook review posted last week on the You Tube book review channel Liene's Library! Thanks, Liene!)

THE TAO OF HITCH

Here's some sage advice from the great Alfred Hitchcock, which crossed my desk last week:

"You use one idea after another and eliminate anything that interferes with the swift pace."

Hitch was talking about constructing a movie, but his words are also very useful for writing the first draft of a novel — as I am now.

And a writer slogging away in isolation seizes on any good advice she can get!

With Beast (finally!) loping off to the copyeditors, I'm ready to dive back into my next book. I submitted a proposal to my editor, and last Monday, I got greenlighted to go for it.

So now it's back to the keyboard for me!

Oh, and the reason I found myself consulting the Tao of Hitch? Santa Cruz Shakespeare is launching its 2017 season this summer with a new stage adaptation of The 39 Steps — described as "a madcap adaptation of Hitchcock's 1935 thriller."

I was invited to participate in a panel discussion of the story — stage and film versions — that SCS will present in conjunction with their production. (Venue and details tba.)

Scurrying to my dog-eared copy of that classic movie resource book, Hitchcock/Truffaut, to read up on the film, I found that priceless quote above on how Hitch kept the action moving!

Meanwhile, over at the Republic of Goodreads, they're doing a promotion on the "Joys of Re-reading." Big thanks to all intrepid Goodreaders who have been listing Alias Hook as a book they are reading for the second (or even third) time!

You readers rock!

BLOODY BOOK

What a great way to start off a foggy Friday!

Found this today on my Alias Hook page, over at the Republic of Goodreads. James Hook's voyage of conquest continues!

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

The promise of books!

The readers website Goodreads is democracy in action. Any reader can post a review, assign stars, and gush great billows of praise—or snark— about a book she or he has read. Every review, from zero to five stars to dnf (did not finish) carries the same validity, and nothing is ever censored for language, grammar, content, or opinion.

I've occasionally heard of a reader launching a vendetta against an author (or vice versa). But Goodreads is a mostly useful place for an author to find out what the Public—as opposed to your friends and family—really think about your book.

The first thing an author learns about Goodreads is there's no such thing as a consensus of opinion. Reviews are all over the map, criticism-wise, at least for my books.

For all the readers who complained about the flashbacks to Captain Hook's past in Alias Hook, there were just as many who loved the historical backstory. For those who accused me of the dreaded "Insta-love" in the love story, there were others who claimed things finally perked up as soon as the romance kicked in. Some thought the thrilling finale made up for the book's dreary, boring beginning, while others thought the drawn-out finale went on forever.

Still, the canny author might discover certain trends threading through these disparate reviews. In my case, the trending theme was reader expectations. Alias Hook was not what they expected.

What do readers want?

Why not? Most of them were expecting it to be a YA (young adult) novel.

Never mind that it was never promoted as YA, that my publisher, Thomas Dunne Books, doesn't even have a YA line. Never mind that it says "adult fairy tale" right on the dust jacket. The subject is Captain Hook and Peter Pan, the genre is fantasy, ergo, according to the prevailing rationale, it must be YA.

This was not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, some readers were indignant about it, as if they'd been purposely hoodwinked. But others praised the difference between my book and the YA genre fantasies they're used to. (Usually in multi-volumes, with kick-ass heroines battling their way through fantastic family legacies, dystopian futures, or sci-fi/fairy tale landscapes.) Many commentators were also pleased by their ability to rise to the challenge of reading it. (One reader—who loved it—proudly proclaimed "this was the first adult novel I've ever read!")

But here's the thing: an author, scribbling away in her bubble, can't possibly know—let alone write to—a reader's expectations. It's out of our hands. Alias Hook was not written with any particular genre, focus group, or reading demographic in mind; the story unfolded the way it wanted to be told as I went along.

Scribbling away in the bubble...

As most books probably are. The whole idea of YA is a fairly recent construct in the centuries-old publishing biz, this odd notion that a book has to be pitched to a very narrow window of age levels. ("Children's," "Middle-grade," and the very recent "New Adult" are also thriving sub-genres, at the moment.)

Books have not always been so strictly stratified. Once upon a time, a book was released into the world without labels, to find its own readership, regardless of age group.

Consider these literary classics: Huckleberry Finn, Moby Dick, David Copperfield, To Kill A Mockingbird. All are read by teenagers in high school today. Would they have been published as YA, if that category had existed back in the day? Would readers have been expecting Ahab's Daughter: Blood Feud (Moby Dick #2)?

Back over at the Republic of Goodreads, reader expectations color reviews on every page. (One reader complained that because the word "alias" was in my book's title, she was expecting a spy novel. And was, of course, sorely disappointed.)

Neither authors, nor readers themselves, can control readers' expectations. When I switch into critical mode myself, to review a movie or a book, I'm as guilty as anyone else in that department. I feel the pain of those disappointed GR readers. If one's expectations aren't met, it's hard to review the entity in front of you, and not the one that might have been.

(Above top: Childrens Book Week poster, N. C. Wyeth, 1928)
(Above middle: Beautiful Reader by Christian Schloe)
(Above bottom: Art Nouveau poster advertising ink)

ALGORITHM & BLUES

The keyboard is always waiting

The popular readers' site, Goodreads, is democracy in action; anybody can use it and everybody's opinion has the same value. It also proves the old adage that you can't please all of the people all of the time. An author learns pretty quick that however much blood, sweat, heart and soul you poured into your literary baby, there are plenty of readers out there for whom it is just not their thing.

And that's okay. The sooner you learn to tune out the babble of conflicting opinions, the sooner you can get back to the keyboard!

Most authors set up a page on Goodreads before their book's official release, when the only people who have read it are the author's mom and a few close, personal friends. So those first reviews are glowing, four or five stars out of five, racking up a 4.5 or even 5.0 "average rating." Then the pub date arrives, and the (dreaded) public starts chiming in.

I try not to obsess over my ratings, rankings, and/or stars. If you get all euphoric over a terrific rating, you feel obliged to get all miserable when your rating falls. So I'm not constantly on my Goodreads page; I'd rather be writing.

But Art Boy has no such qualms. When Alias Hook was released, he was checking my ratings several times a day. And he began to notice something weird. Within about a month, my book started racking up a ton of one-star ratings. Often, the readers who posted them came from someplace where my book was not even available (like Libya, or Saudi Arabia, although books can be ordered online, of course). And in every case, the person had either just joined Goodreads or added their list of ratings that month.

I couldn't be in better company, but still...

But strangest of all: in every case, Alias Hook was included in a list of 20 or so titles, most of them literary classics, each of which had only received a one-star rating. And it was always the same 10-20 titles: To Kill A Mockingbird, 1984, Romeo & Juliet, The Great Gatsby, Animal Farm, Little Women, Great Expectations, Lord Of the Flies, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and a few others. Company I'd be thrilled to have my book compared to in any other circumstances!

Often, these readers' lists only included 20 books—as if they had been asked to score 20 titles to qualify for something, and there was one list of titles that everybody was using. And then they'd just hastened down the list, ticking off one star for each title to get on with it.

I have no problem with a one-star review. No, really; if a person reads my book and decides it's not for them and says why, that's a legitimate response. The problem here was a sudden outbreak of one-star reviews posted by people who had pretty obviously not read the book. Bogus ratings that were skewing my precious "average rating" to way down below the Mendoza Line.

Help! Get me off this grid!

 At last, I broke down and contacted the social media diva at my publishing house for advice. I didn't expect anyone to purge the dozens of bogus ratings off my Alias Hook page; I'm sure that's contrary to the Tao of Goodreads. But, I asked, could I at least get my book taken off that list?

And here's what we found out: there was no "list," per se. But there was an algorithm (as opposed to "editorial selection," we were told, which could have been adjusted). Somehow, my book had been randomly sorted in with all these classic titles that were presented to incoming Goodreaders to be "rated" before they could move on to the next level of Goodreadership.

Why? How? Forget it, Jake, it's technology. It was like Tron, my poor little book trapped forever in an algorithm, battling to get out. An apt metaphor, I suppose, for the way James Hook is trapped forever in the Neverland, if you want to get all abstract.

The good news is, after another few weeks, the program shifted gears, and my one-star reviews stabilized. The downside is, now, whenever a new one-star review appears on my page (much less often than before), I have to admit I've earned it.

Still, this can be very liberating. As soon as you realize how impossible it is to please everybody, you can give yourself permission to stop trying, and go write your book the way it needs to be written.