The Demon of the Cavern of the Black Mountain

Why not try a book?

2012-01-31T06:13:00.000-08:00

The Joy of Books

2012-01-11T07:36:00.000-08:00

This is from Type Books in Toronto. Just wonderful.

5,000 books reportedly thrown out in Occupy Wall Street raid

2011-11-15T11:27:00.000-08:00

(From the LA Times)

More than 5,000 books in the Occupy Wall Street library were reportedly thrown away when police moved in to remove protesters from Zuccotti Park in New York early Tuesday.

During the police raid, Occupy Wall Street librarians tweeted, "NYPD destroying american cultural history, they’re destroying the documents, the books, the artwork of an event in our nation’s history," Galleycat reports. "Right now, the NYPD are throwing over 5,000 books from our library into a dumpster. Will they burn them? … Call 311 or 212-639-9675 now and ask why Mayor Bloomberg is throwing the 5,554 books from our library into a dumpster."

The Village Voice has asked city officials what happened to the library books, but has not yet recieved a response. "I watched the stuff thrown into sanitation trucks and just crushed," Lopi LaRoe, a 47-year-old Brooklyn artist, told a reporter.

The library, which started out as a box of books and grew to a collection of more than 5,000, was originally out in the open air. Rocker, poet and National Book Award winner Patti Smith donated a tent to house the library and protect the books from the weather.

It had hosted readings by authors including Douglas Rushkoff, Jonathan Lethem (along with a quiet but curious Jennifer Egan) and Lynn Nottage; on Friday, a group of volunteers read Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street."

According to the Associated Press, hundreds of police officers in riot gear raided Zuccotti Park, evicting protesters who have been camping out in the Wall Street park since mid-September to call attention to economic inequities and the distribution of wealth. The New York Times reports that 200 were arrested.

Initial reports suggest that the park's occupants were told they would be able to reclaim their items the next day. "But it could be argued that city authorities have junked much that once made up Occupy Wall Street," Time magazine reported. "Perhaps most tragically, Occupy Wall Street's roughly five thousand-volume strong People's Library, compiled through myriad donations and painstakingly catalogued by Occupy volunteers, was reportedly thrown out."

A judge has signed an order allowing protesters to return to Zuccotti Park with their belongings; further court action is expected Tuesday.

What that means for the books, no one yet knows.

Books on Shirts

2011-07-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

Cool T-Shirts from Out of Print Books! For each book they sell, one book is donated to a community in need through their partner Books For Africa.

http://www.outofprintclothing.com/

Even Demons Need Heroes

2011-07-19T15:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, the Demon has been feeling down lately. Two recent rejections from agents will do that. And then, I came across the most effing unlikely hero: Comic Sans Font! The Demon stands in awe of his take-no-prisoners/"you talking to me?"/"hasta la vista"/"Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?" attitude.

Effing excelsior, dude!

I'm Comic Sans, Asshole from joehollier on Vimeo.

From: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/07/im_comic_sans_asshole_animated.html

Of Lou Gehrig, Kate DiCamillo and Yamashiro Tomoe

2011-07-06T08:52:00.000-07:00

Argh! The Demon is greatly annoyed. Why? He came upon a list of the Top 100 Speeches as deemed by scholarly experts. Guess what? Lou Gehrig's farewell speech was...well...it was dissed! It ranked #73 on the list.

The Demon wishes no disrespect to the other speeches rated higher, but c'mon! With a mere 277 words, Lou Gehrig established a heartfelt connection with 61,000 fans at Yankee Stadium and with many more for generations to come. Two hundred and seventy-seven words - that's all it took.

And that recalls an earlier post on this blog about the power imbued in the economy of a few words:

I found the following observation (confession?) from Kate DiCamillo at The Pippin Insider: "Telling stories is hard work; the stories that I like, the ones that seem most powerful to me, have an ineffable quality of one word seeming to do the work of ten words."

One word for ten? Sounds daunting, eh? How about one word for a hundred? Let flash back to an earlier post of mine where I asked whether it was possible for one hundred words to the job of ten thousand. (i.e., a ratio of one word for one hundred). Here’s what I wrote:

Is it possible for one hundred words to the job of ten thousand?

I've been contemplating this question since reading a wonderful short story, Bog Rhubard Shoots, by Yamashiro Tomoe (it's from the book, Reflections on the Way to the Gallows). It tells the tale of Mitsuko, a young Japanese woman, who, in the 1940s, was sent to prison for her involvement in the left-wing political movement (as was her husband, who was assigned to different prison).

Under the terms of her conviction, Mitsuko "could write only one letter of postcard length each month. Even though the frequency and length of the letters were limited, they still had to be checked over by four persons: the guard, the chief guard, the chaplain, and the supervisor of the guards. Under these circumstances, one hundred words had to do the job of ten thousand in the letters that Mitsuko and her husband exchanged. If a letter written under restricted conditions failed to pass the censors and was stamped 'To be handed over upon release,' the letter itself would probably shed tears."

And one last thing: "...today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." That's the line everyone associates with Gehrig's speech. But there was another line: "When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed, that's the finest I know." That's the line that sends shivers up my back. It's why his speech is finest I know of.

'nuff said!

An exercise in first lines

2011-06-28T08:20:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the first line of a book is of great importance. It must be true: I read it in a book! Here are the results of my recent efforts at crafting first lines...

I once loved a woman who loved the Muppets.

He counted the bars as they went up, each like a giant meat hook mounted upside down, and wondered how many it would it take to do the job.

This is a story of three crows gathering in the moonlight, fireflies dancing by a stream, and dust, more beautiful than stars, floating in the sunlight.

If you had to write a story to save your life, what would you write?

It is Thursday and I am blind.

Once there was a rose and a sword.

I must have been born with a broken heart; that is the only possible explanation.

Time travelers are dicks, destiny is for douchebags and eternity isn't what it seems like.

Deep in a cavern, far beneath the Black Mountain, the demon woke from his nightmare.

Above a mountain glade a procession of Black Butterflies followed the trail of blood, dark and shiny upon the grass, towards the stricken, snow-white deer: in their wake, the Golden Dragon followed.

Anticipating Kate DiCamillo's Next Book

2011-04-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

(DISCLAIMER: I am in a very silly mood. So silly, I cannot be held liable for any logical fallacies or literary mayhem herein.)

rising..............an

tiger elephant

A crashing

down!

WHAT NEXT?

I just read, The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo. I am currently reading The Magician's Elephant, also by Ms. DiCamillo, in which an elephant comes crashing down through the roof of an opera house. Tigers rising and elephants crashing down, oh my!

What can we expect in Kate DiCamillo's next book? Perhaps something lateral? Here are my less than lucid speculations:

Sideways Monkey: Jack gets cold feet during his bachelor party and suffers a concussion due to an unseemly incident involving a motorcycle helmet. When he wakes, Jack discovers he is all alone in the world except for Miles, an enigmatic, Merlot hating, pot bellied monkey. Together they learn valuable lessons in friendship and how to stage a fake automobile accident.

The Night of the Reclining Giraffe: Ten year old Izhtak Schwartz hates Passover, having nearly gagged to death on Matzoh when he was seven. Like an Easter Bunny running for his life, Izhtak flees and through pluck, along with assistance from a clever plot device, makes his way to Africa where he meets a sarcastic, pagan-worshiping giraffe. Izhtak takes an liking to the long neck's embittered view of the world and nicknames him, Groucho. After many life-threatening, yet hilarious adventures, the boy has an epiphany about Passover. In the story's stirring climax, he teaches Groucho the Seder and the importance of reclining while they eat. Together they recline, eat Matzoh and imbibe of Manischewitz wine as wild hyenas and meerkats serenade with a Hip Hop version of Hava Nagila.

The Raven's Lateral: Billy, like his older brother, Biff, wants to quarterback the Ravens football team in the Chincoteague youth football league. Alas, Coach Parker Derm, the crippled yet vibrant gridiron mastermind, has installed a new trick play requiring the deft and precise execution of the lateral pass. Alas and alack, for Billy, no matter how hard he tries, is unable to master the deceptive pass! Then, one night, a friggin' raven taps on his bedroom window and teaches the aspiring quarterback to look beyond the hash marks.

Patience!

2011-04-11T15:17:00.000-07:00

What will happen when I get a nibble from an agent who wants to look at my manuscript? How will I react to the waiting period? Will I be patient or...

Two scenes, from two very different movies, come to my fevered brain. The first is from My Cousin Vinny. I must confess, I will probably be like Marisa Tomei's character: my literary clock is ticking!

Meanwhile, I imagine my agent is watching this and, much like Yoda, is saying, "I cannot teach him, the boy has no patience!"

Sigh!

Will I Feel This Way By Spring's End?

2011-04-03T08:10:00.000-07:00

This poem, from Yosa Buson, caught my fancy!

The end of spring--
the poet is brooding
about editors.

(Translated by Robert Haas)

Supreme Court Rules Predicates Unconsitutional

2011-04-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

By Gram Marian, Disassociated Press – 1 hr 52 mins ago

WASHINGTON, DC - The Supreme Court has just ruled that predicates are unconstitutional. The case, Ms. Pelling v. Panda Ring, was the first grammar related case ever heard before the court. In an unanimous decision, the court stated, “We are a nation of laws, not men. Therefore, laws, not predicates should govern our behavior, despite the beliefs of certain well-meaning, but overly educated citizens. The Rules of Grammar cannot be allowed to stand above the Constitution, even within the confines of a sentence…”

In a related decision, the court voted 5-4 in favor of eliminating the use of ellipses…

The Power of Books

2011-03-28T05:33:00.000-07:00

I found this on 9GAG.com:

http://9gag.com/gag/93799/

This may cause nightmares for writers and aspiring authors

2011-03-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

Woke up at 3 A.M. with the following in mind as a prologue to my novel. (Warning: writers and aspiring authors may have nightmares as a result of reading this).

THE DEMON OF THE CAVERN OF THE BLACK MOUNTAIN

Deep in a cavern far beneath the Black Mountain, the Demon woke from his nightmare. He rose from the jagged granite slab that was his bed, shaking his head to bring wakefulness. As he did this, droplets of dark oily glop flew from his face, raining down upon the stone floor. Fiery eyes glowed red and then pulsed as he remembered the horrid dream.

Like all his nightmares, it had been about an author who was going to write a story.

The Demon hated authors and the stories they wrote. Then again, he disliked most anything you and I love such as ice cream, good music, spring days with lots of sunshine and even chocolate (sad, but true!). More than anything, he hated a good story. With every fiber of his being, he despised tales filled with imagination and the joy they brought to young readers.

His purpose in life was a cruel one: to stop authors from writing stories. To that end, he was utterly ruthless and had many tricks up his sleeve. For example, he knew all eight hundred and eleven ways to make writers doubt themselves (so they would lack the confidence to write even one sentence). He had mastered twenty-one effective techniques to fill the mind with excuses not to write. So dedicated was this crusher of creative spirits, he even knew a dark magic spell that transformed the joy of writing into a grinding agony.

More of the nightmare came to mind and it filled him with complete disgust.

He had dreamt of a very special kind of author who was going to write a one-of-a-kind story!

He had encountered these kinds of authors before. More often than not, he had been able to stop them from writing; their stories never saw the light of day. But every once in a while, an author succeeded despite the Demon’s best efforts. Of these, there were three authors the Demon despised more than anyone.

One was a jovial man, with a handlebar mustache, who wrote of a girl named Dorothy and her adventures in a place called Oz. “Only a fool would be amused by a stupid Scarecrow, a rattling Tin Man and a Lion scared of his own shadow!” said the Demon with a mouth perfectly suited for snarling.

Then there was that fellow, a professor at some fancy British college, who wrote of little people with hairy feet whose homes were holes in the ground. “What were those little critters called?” The Demon struggled to recall. “Hobbits. Ugh! Pure rubbish!”

Most recently, a woman had written a book – no, she had written seven books – about a young wizard at a school of magic. The books had been widely popular, a situation the Demon found deeply, deeply offensive; it even hurt his feelings. “How could I have allowed her to do that?” he moaned in a very un-Demon like way.

He squeezed his oily palms against his goo-covered forehead and thought about what he had done wrong. "I made the same mistake with all three authors: I failed to take the ultimate step of kidnapping their characters."

Kidnap them before the story was written! Yes, that was the only foolproof way to sabotage an author. Imprisoned in the deepest cavern on earth, far below the Black Mountain, the characters would be doomed. Over time, they would become pale, embittered ghosts, their stories forever untold.

Yes, this time he would be sure to kidnap the characters! No author had ever been successful in the attempt to rescue their characters. The Demon allowed himself to enjoy a small smile. It was an odd sight to see on his monstrous, goo-covered face.

“Author, I will find your characters!” The Demon issued his warning through grinding teeth. He stomped his foot into the floor of the cavern and shards of granite flew everywhere. “I will find them and steal them from you.”

The Demon howled with glee.

A Great Comic That Never Happened

2011-03-17T09:23:00.000-07:00

As a kid, it was all about Marvel Comics! That included the original Fantastic Four as illustrated by the indomitable Jack Kirby. The good folks at the Comic Alliance and Tom Scioli, artist of Image's Godland and American Barbarian, imagines Jack Kirby's My Little Pony in "what would have unquestionably been the single greatest comic book of all time."

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/03/16/jack-kirby-my-little-pony/#ixzz1GsGZDktv

Jane Ire

2011-03-12T07:05:00.000-08:00

A new movie version of Jane Eyre is due to be released any day now. That got the Demon to imagining a hybrid (a.k.a. mutant) version of the novel combing the classic sensibilities of Charlotte Bronte with the modern, sick-puppy sensibilities of Quentin Tarantino.

"The richness and depth of the book is universally respected yet often undiscovered..."

2011-03-01T05:50:00.000-08:00

That quote comes from the website of artist, Brian Dettmer who creates beautiful pieces from altered books. Try doing this with a kindle!

For more, be sure to visit his website at: http://briandettmer.com/

Flash Fiction Badge

2011-02-27T05:27:00.000-08:00

Kudos to the Merit Badger for providing truly useful merit badges for our websites.It is especially notable, even noble, is that she has provided a slew of badges for reading and writing! In fact, here's a Merit Badge she created for Flash Fiction:

Well, the Demon is known for his, well, perverse sense of humor. This is his version of the Flash Fiction badge!

Which way is the bus traveling?

2011-02-26T09:10:00.000-08:00

A fun exercise!

Make Sure Your Characters Have the Right Problems to Solve

2011-02-24T11:09:00.000-08:00

Tension and resolution: they are mission critical to a great story. Thus, it is important that our characters have truly worthwhile challenges or problems to resolve. The choice of the "right problem" can be tricky for a writer, devilishly so.

As a bit of a reminder, as well as a fun exercise in problem solving, I humbly offer the following:

For best viewing, click on the arrow, let the viewer load, scroll over "More" and click on "Full Screen," then use the arrow on the bottom to advance the slides.

Hold that query letter, save the universe!

2011-02-23T06:02:00.000-08:00

I was reminiscing about a favorite short story of mine, The Nine Billion Names of God, by Arthur C. Clarke. For those of you not familiar with it, here is a synopsis(Source: Wikipedia):

This short story tells of a Tibetan lamasery whose monks seek to list all of the names of God, since they believe the Universe was created in order to note all the names of God and once this naming is completed, God will bring the Universe to an end. Three centuries ago, the monks created an alphabet in which, they calculated, they could encode all the possible names of God, numbering about nine billion and each having no more than nine characters, in their alphabet. Writing the names out by hand, as they had been doing, even after eliminating various nonsense combinations, would take another fifteen thousand years; the monks wish to use modern technology in order to finish this task more quickly.

They rent a computer capable of printing all the possible permutations, and they hire two Westerners to install and program the machine. The computer operators are skeptical but play along with the monks.

The operators engage the computer. After three months, as the job nears completion, they fear that the monks will blame the computer, and by extension its operators, when nothing happens. The Westerners delay the operation of the computer so that it will complete its final print run just after their scheduled departure. After their successful departure on ponies, they pause on the mountain path on their way back to the airfield, where a plane is waiting to take them back to civilization. Under a clear starlit night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time that the monks are pasting the final printed names into their holy books. They notice that "overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."

That got me to wondering/fantasizing: what if the purpose of our existence was simply to produce nine billion query letters? And once the nine billionth query letter is written, will the stars will go out with nary a fuss?

So maybe the next query letter, the one you happen to be writing, will be the nine billionth query letter. Feeling lucky, punk?

Becoming the Child

2011-02-19T10:58:00.000-08:00

Today, I find myself in a foul, bitter and pessimistic mood. Seeking words of encouragement, I turned to Awakening Osiris. This is an excerpt from the chapter, Becoming the Child:

What I hate is ignorance, smallness of imagination, the eye that sees no farther than its lashes. All things are possible...When we speak in anger, anger will be our truth. When we speak in love and live by love, truth in love will be our comfort. Who you are is limited only by who you think you are....

'nuff said!

Robotic Edition of Huckleberry Finn

2011-02-16T11:34:00.000-08:00

With tongues planted firmly in cheek, comedians Gabriel and Etta have set out to replace every use of the "N-word" in Mark Twain's classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with the word "Robot." A satire of the American educational system, the finished book will explore the problematic nature of simplifying complex historical truths. It will also serve as a nice preview to the eventual robot takeover.

Grammar people, c'mon! Seriously!

2011-02-03T08:57:00.000-08:00

The most unlikely champion of good grammar...Weird Al!

A Deadening Sensation

2011-01-29T08:07:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine is taking a course at Georgetown University that takes an analytical, structural look at literature. She was explaining how the professor analyzed and broke down the sentence structure used by Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises. As I listened, I had curiously conflicting reactions: at the intellectual level it was interesting...but at the gut level, the place from which my writing and imagination pours forth, it felt deadening.

Why this reaction?

The answer lies in an observation by Robert Pirsig from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: “When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts. Mark Twain's experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty. Something is always killed.”

Something is always killed...that explains the deadening sensation.

'nuff said!

What the iPad taught me about dealing with criticism

2011-01-28T08:52:00.000-08:00

Writers, aspiring and successful, have to deal with criticism...often lots of it. I've considered shopping for an electric cattle prod, or even a quality used flame thrower, to ward off such unwarranted (in my mind, at least) aspersions and fault-finding. Well, I read the following piece about the nitpicking, know-it-all, nay saying nimrods who knocked the iPad when it was first launched.

"Maybe underwhelming isn't the right word," wrote Engadget editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky. "Unimaginative might be more accurate..."
Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik called the iPad "less than revolutionary" and "underwhelming."
Adam Frucci at Gizmodo wrote a scathing early review, titled "8 Things That Suck About the iPad."
Monica Guzman, with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, took issue with the device's name... "the 'iPad' name seems at worst odd, and at best -- just a little bit funny."

(The above is from the Huffington Post.)

For the record, Apple has sold nearly 15 million iPads. So much for the critics! Still, I wonder if I can get a Cattle Prod app for my iPad...

Censoring Mark Twain

2011-01-19T07:00:00.001-08:00

Regarding the censoring of Huckleberry Finn, Bill Maher has the final word!

Haiku as Query Letter

2011-01-10T15:59:00.000-08:00

On two previous occasions, I imagined various authors using Haiku by Basho for their query letters (first post, second post). This time we'll try the Haiku of Chiyo-ni.

to tangle or untangle
the willow---
it's up to the wind
   The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

morning glory -
the truth is
the flower hates people
   The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

green leaves or fallen leaves
become one---
in the flowering snow
   Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

purple cloud
isn't it the same color
as the iris?
   The Color Purple by Alice Walker

From the mind
of a single, long vine
one hundred opening lives
   Sideways by Rex Pickett

2011 Rereading Challenge

2011-01-09T07:51:00.000-08:00

Curiously enough, one cannot read a book:

one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader,

an active and creative reader is a rereader...

Vladimir Nabokov

Reading challenges seem to be popular: bloggers post a list of the new books they wish to read during the coming year. In the spirit of Nabokov, I've set a different challenge: a list of books I wish to reread in 2011.

In no particular order, they are:

- Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

- Blindness by Jose Saramago

- Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clark

- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

- Night by Elie Wisel

- The Essential Fantastic Four, vol. 2 by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

- An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks

- Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

- Dracula by Bram Stoker

- Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer

- Something, anything by Ray Bradbury!

'nuff said!

Can a Book Save Your Life?

2011-01-04T09:35:00.000-08:00

From the folks at Electric Literature!

If you had to choose one song (continued)...

2011-01-04T08:02:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post, I asked: if you had to choose one song upon which to base a novel, which song would you choose? My choice at that time was Black Horse and a Cherry Tree by KT Tunstall.

Call me fickle, but I've been watching the Wallander TV series which is introduced with a haunting song featuring a beautiful Aussie voice. The song is Nostalgia by Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo.

Here are the lyrics:

Tram wires cross Melbourne skies
Cut my red heart in two
My knuckles bleed down Johnston street
On a door that shouldn’t be in front of me

Twelve thousand miles away from your smile
I’m twelve thousand miles away from me
Standing on the corner of Brunswick
Got the rain coming down and mascara on my cheek

Oh whisper me words in the shape of a bay
Shelter my love from the wind and the rain

Crow fly be my alibi
And return this fable on your wing
Take it far away to where gypsies play
Beneath metal stars by the bridge

Oh write me a beacon so I know the way
Guide my love through night and through day

Only the sunset knows my blind desire for the fleeting
Only the moon understands the beauty of love
When held by a hand like the aura of nostalgia

My Christmas Reading List

2011-01-01T08:34:00.000-08:00

From the ever wonderful, always informative, Better Book Titles:

http://betterbooktitles.com/

The Digital Life Sacrifice - a lack of imagination?

2010-12-29T11:19:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, on December 1, a slew of celebrities died, well sort of. Alicia Keyes, Lady Gaga, Jay Sean, Justin Timberlake and other stars offered themselves up for the Digital Life Sacrifice, killing their cyber selves through a blackout on Twitter and Facebook.

It was for a good cause: to raise a $1million for the AIDS charity Keep A Child Alive.

It also got the Demon to thinking, “So let me get this straight, Lady Gaga won’t tweet again until the money is raised?” Something felt wrong about this – it lacked imagination.

What do I mean by that? Let’s begin by considering a point made by JK Rowling in a speech at Harvard. She talked about a time when she worked for the Amnesty International Office in London.

“Amnesty mobilizes thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet…Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds; imagine themselves into other people's places.”

Imagination, that was JK Rowling’s point. "We do not need magic to transform the world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have power to imagine better." And that, I believe, is the power of Amnesty International: they call on us to imagine, empathize and act.

This point-of-view stands in stark contrast to the gestalt of the Digital Life Sacrifice. That event, as near as I can tell, did not challenge people to imagine much beyond a day or two without tweets from their favorite celebrity. For that reason, this effort felt strangely disconnected from, and without empathy for, the very people in need of help; it felt like a failure of imagination.

Of course, Alicia Keyes and her colleagues were acting with the noblest of intentions for the worthiest of causes, but I would challenge them in the future to challenge our imaginations a bit more.

‘nuff said!

Four Reasons Your Query Letter Failed

2010-12-22T16:19:00.000-08:00

Why do query letters fail? The Demon surveyed the most respected literary agents and here, in their own words, are four reasons they've rejected your query letter:

“To whom it may concern” no longer works at this agency; we fired him/her years ago.
You propose to write a novel that is “somewhere between Gone with the Wind and The Little Engine that Could.” Frankly, my dear, I don’t think you can, I don’t think you can, I don’t think you can.
Thank you for assuring us that your manuscript is “complete, finished, done and over with.” That just about describes your chances with this agency.
Gee, what a fascinating coffee stain on the lower left-hand corner of the letter…would that be Mocha Java or Sumatra?

The Rules of Querying

2010-12-20T06:54:00.000-08:00

The Demon has decided it's time for some rules to guide aspiring authors as they go about the Herculean task of querying literary agents:

No bitching! Okay, you are allowed a small whine only after your fiftieth rejection.
No voodoo dolls. If you’re stupid enough to think this will work, odds are you’ll end up sticking the pin in your hand instead of the doll.
No dart boards with pictures of famous literary agents.
Never imply that Tony Soprano is a friend of yours and he really, really wants to see your novel published.
As much as you hate being ignored by agents, Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction should never become your role model.
Hunger strikes are fruitless.

More Haiku as Query Letters

2010-12-19T08:56:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post, I looked over several haiku by Bashō, the famed Japanese poet of the Edo era, and tried to imagine which author might have used which haiku for one of their query letters. Here are a few more:

In my new clothing

I feel so different, I must

look like someone else

(The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain)

With dewdrops dripping,

I wish somehow I could wash

this perishing world

(The Road by Cormac McCarthy)

Taking a nap,

Feet planted

Against a cool wall.

(Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain)

Bright red

the pitiless sun

autumn winds

(Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury)

Lightning

clenched in the hand:

torchlight in the dark

(Frankenstein by Mary Shelley)

No Country for Snowmen

2010-12-17T06:53:00.000-08:00

From Rejecting Sobriety, this holiday poster lampoons a movie based on the book No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. It made the Demon chuckle!

http://rejectingsobriety.com/

Another Third Sentence Thursday

2010-12-16T13:38:00.000-08:00

The third sentence of this book reads, "She had a little thin face and little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression."

OMG! This must be YA novel, probably of vampire/Twilight genre, featuring a heroine based on Paris Hilton having a bad hair day. Will she be forced to choose between the handsome, yet fashion-impaired vampire Luigi or the debonair werewolf, Omar, who suffers the heartbreak of psoriasis? And what of her darling pet albino Chihuahua who is aptly named Assassin? What unspeakable (or is it unbarkable?) secrets does this vicious little critter hide?

Fortunately, this novel is none of the above. It is the story of Mary Lennox, a nine-year old girl who is the heroine of The Secret Garden, which was published in 1911, way before Ms. Hilton's time.

The Pleasure of Books (part 3): Long Live Print!

2010-12-13T07:29:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post, The Pleasure of Books, we touched upon the touchy subject of print versus E-books. The Demon, being partial to print, was therefore delighted to find the following book, with the spot-on title, It's a Book by Lane Smith.

Third Sentence Thursday

2010-12-09T06:42:00.000-08:00

Sniffy Kitty's Mostly Books Blog has started a new meme: Third Sentence Thursday. The goal is to find a funny thirdy sentence of a book and make some egregious commentary on said sentence (or something like that!).

My chosen third sentence is from Jim Butcher's White Night:

Usually, by the time the cops call me, things are pretty frantic; there’s at least one corpse, several cars, a lot of flashing blue lights, yellow-and-black tape; and members of the press – or at least the promise of the imminent arrival of same.

Jeez buddy, you just have to be the center of attention, don't ya? Cripes, it's because of people like you that "I" appears twice in the word narcissist. Okay, I'm putting down this book; I need some time for myself...

The Much Awaited Sequel to Despereaux!

2010-12-08T11:15:00.000-08:00

Desperadeaux: Being the tale of a Mouse, Billy the Kid,

Some Vigilantes, and a Pocketful Full of Gold Coins.

This eagerly awaited sequel to Despereaux features Desperadeaux, who is none other than the nephew of Despereaux. Unlike his uncle, Desperadeaux finds himself bored with the provincial ennui of Europe, the self-absorbed inanity endemic to those of royal blood and the seemingly never-ending arguments about how to make the perfect bowl of soup. What’s more, he’s doesn’t understand why Despereaux thinks unrequited love is the best thing since sliced croissants.

Fortunately for Desperadeaux, the New World beckons! Following a harrowing boat ride across the Atlantic (suffice to say, scurvy was the best thing that happened on that voyage!), he makes his way West to New Mexico where he meets none other than Billy the Kid. The famous outlaw is a man of many and massive faults, but he recognizes in the diminutive varmint a talented gunslinger. He tells Desperadeaux, “You might have the littlest gun in the West, but you got the quickest draw!” In no time, the rodent’s hardscrabble demeanor and deadly aim endears him to Billy and his gang.

“Reckon you and me are gonna do some serious wreckin’ round here,” says Billy as they saddle up for a foray into town.

“Oui, pardner. Oui!” murmurs Desperadeaux with a rueful grin.

The Pleasure of Books, part two

2010-12-07T07:31:00.000-08:00

This is a follow-up on the previous post about The Pleasure of Books. It got the Demon to thinking and then he remembered the following scene from an old Star Trek episode where Samuel T. Cogley, a 23rd-century attorney, makes a passionate case for the value of old-fashioned books:

The Pleasure of Books

2010-12-05T06:50:00.000-08:00

This spot on cartoon is from New Toons on the Blog. It's based on an insightful tweet by Hope Larson and features a cameo appearance by T.S. Eliot along with hundreds of selfless books who volunteered to serve as extras.

The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of “Writer's Block”

2010-12-03T06:06:00.000-08:00

Apparently this was actually published in a refereed journal!

From: Grasping Reality with Both Hands

Bildungsromanmania!

2010-11-30T15:42:00.000-08:00

Today the Demon pays his respect (well, sort of!) to the bildungsroman, the coming of age novel. Wikipedia describes it as "a genre of the novel which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood."

Here are several, heretofore undocumented, variations of the bildungsroman:

The Rückwärts-Richtung-Bildungsroman. This is the "reverse direction" Bildunsroman. Examples include The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or any novel featuring Merlin, who was reputed to age backwards through time.

The Ich-Will-Nicht-Erwachsen-Werden-Roman. This is the "I won’t grow up novel" and, of course, we're referring to Peter Pan. Astute readers will likely complain this isn't a bildungsroman since the protagonist doesn't demonstrate growth. This only proves that astute readers ought not waste their time perusing this blog!

The Déjà-vu-Bildungsroman. Think of the movie Groundhog Day where the protagonist, Bill Murray, achieves growth only after living the same day over and over and over again.

The Roman-Gladiator-Bildungsroman. These are stories of ancient Rome featuring young boys sent off to the ludus for gladiator training. This variation of the bildungsroman tends to be problematic as most protagonists do not live long enough to reach adulthood.

The Willy-Loman-Bildungsroman: This fall-from-grace variation was epitomized in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Technically, it's not a bildungsroman, but who cares, the phrase just rolls off the tongue!

A Study in Contrasts: Aging, Atwood and Bradbury

2010-11-27T06:26:00.000-08:00

How to describe an aging woman's body? Here are two examples, starkly different, from two writers, each wonderful in their own way.

First, from Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye:

I think of Cordelia examining the growing pouches under her eyes… Gnarling has set in, the withering of the mouth; the outlines of dewlaps are beginning to be visible, down towards the chin…She drops the bath towel…looks over her shoulder, sees in the mirror the dog's-neck folds of skin above the waist, the buttocks drooping like wattles…

Next, from Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine:

She sat down next to him on the swing in her nightgown, not slim the way girls get when they are not loved at seventeen, not fat the way women get when they are not loved at fifty, but absolutely right, a roundness, a firmness, the way women are at any age, he thought, when there is no question.

Hard to imagine a more stark contrast, eh? And that's the wonder of good writing, folks!

A Grammar Girl Nightmare on Elm Street

2010-11-26T06:55:00.000-08:00

The Demon is a fan of Grammar Girl and recommends her book, Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. To show his appreciation, the Demon offers this little homage:

Grammar Girl versus Freddy Krueger!

Haiku as Query Letter

2010-11-22T06:56:00.000-08:00

Recently, I read a fascinating comment about the query letter: "...because it is short, it's like the haiku of writing. It has to convey a vivid and memorable impression with as few words as possible."

What a wonderful image! And that sparked an idea. I looked over several haiku by Bashō, the famed Japanese poet of the Edo era, and tried to imagine which author might have used which haiku for one of their query letters. Here goes!

Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die

This feels like a Stephen King novel.

Wrapping dumplings in
bamboo leaves, with one finger
she tidies her hair

Margaret Atwood

A weathered skeleton
in windy fields of memory,
piercing like a knife

The Lovely Bones by Alice Seybold

I would like to use
that scarecrow's tattered clothes
in this midnight frost

Used by Neil Gaiman if he ever decided to re-imagine The Wizard of Oz.

Could I be a Genetic Enchanter?

2010-11-20T06:27:00.000-08:00

Last night, I began reading Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. Ah, it does me good to reunite with a favorite author from my youth! However, I do notice that with age I am more likely to read an author’s introduction. When I was a teen, I did not have the patience for introductions – it was dive into the novel, full speed ahead with the plot, onwards with characters development.

Happily, I found the following gem, my reward for taking the time to read Mr. Bradbury’s introduction:

I was amused and somewhat astonished at a critic a few years back who wrote an article analyzing Dandelion Wine plus the more realistic works of Sinclair Lewis, wondering how I could have been born and raised in Waukegan, which I renamed Green Town for my novel, and not noticed how ugly the harbor was and how depressing the coal docks and railyards down below the town.

But, of course, I had noticed them and, genetic enchanter that I was, was fascinated by their beauty. Trains and boxcars and the smell of coal and fire are not ugly to children. Ugliness is a concept that we happen on later and become self-conscious about.

Genetic Enchanter…oh gawd, I love that phrase! Could it be possible that I am one? Could it mean that I, in some tickle-my-fancy manner, bear the slightest of kinship to the likes of a Ray Bradbury?

Sigh!

Banana Moon

2010-11-17T04:47:00.000-08:00

If you had to write a story to save your life, what would you write, where would your story begin?

Perhaps you’d find yourself beneath the desert sky one early evening, listening as young voices cry out, “banana moon!” There’s silver up above and children’s laughter floating in the air. With head bowed, you trace a broken heart in the sand.

The morning comes, the children dream of sand and silver and loving hearts, a plane ascends. Looking down you see, wandering amidst the mirage of bright lights and improbable fountains, those who have forgotten the magic of the desert. You close your eyes and listen for the sound of laughter; thirty minutes and one hundred and sixty miles later passes and you hear none.

Meanwhile, the man besides you, somber faced and grey-suited, is lost, but in a good way, as he reads Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. A flight attendant brings you coffee and you ask for two sugars – the first for the coffee, the second you pour upon your tray so you may trace a broken heart. The plane purrs and rattles, the heart disappears.

Four days’ mail crams the mailbox and the unpacked suitcase is left to fend for itself. You walk to the bathroom, open the medicine cabinet and scowl; the door is open so the mirror reflects the wall, not your face. Soon, forty-two red and green pills float in the toilet bowl. You urinate but the deadly little armada refuses to sink. There’s nothing else to do but flush and walk away.

If you had to write a story to save your life, what would you write? Perhaps you’d write of a seemingly ordinary man in a grey suit who had an ordinary job, ordinary friends and uneventful days. But once a month, about the time the banana moon comes, he remembers the magic of the desert. One those days, while everyone else still sleeps, he rises early to usher in the dawn with soft laughter.

Later, when all are sleeping, he smiles as he remembers the sound of children’s voices.

Yes, on those days when the banana moon comes, he is the first to laugh and the last to smile.

Literary Jewels

2010-11-16T11:36:00.000-08:00

From Littlefy Jewelry: Littlefly jewelery is made by laminating hundreds sheets of paper together, then carefully finishing to a high gloss. The paper is selected and carefully removed from a book, and the jewelery re-inserted in the excavated space.

An utterly ridiculous posting about LOTR

2010-11-12T06:06:00.000-08:00

The recent news that director Peter Jackson will be taking the reins of upcoming Hobbit movie has gotten the Demon thinking about how books eventually end up as movies. Clearly, the LOTR movies benefited greatly from Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI). Ironic that a movie about such an ancient time could only be rendered by the most modern of technology, eh?

The first book in the LOTR trilogy was published in 1954. But what if (and here comes the ridiculous part of this post) Tolkien had published it much earlier, say in the late 1920s? One could imagine the first LOTR move being made back in the 1930s with stars such as Clark Gable and, who knows, even WC Fields!

Here are two screen capture from this movie. (Note: The graphics may look amateurish; it's simply my attempt to painstakingly recreate what the special effects would have looked like for a movie from the 1930s)

Clark Gable as Aragorn as he speaks to
the troops before the Black Gates of Mordor

WC Fields plays Gollum!

A note to readers of this blog: it's okay to groan!

Commas - in or out?

2010-11-10T10:08:00.000-08:00

The Demon came across an interesting post by Daniel Adler entitled, Lamentation for the Comma, in which he states, "Oh, comma! Dear friend, connector of clauses, I am ridding my writing of you!" He correctly observes that commas are "sometimes burdensome."

Thus, it easy to imagine Lady Macbeth declaring, "Out, damn'd comma! out, I say!" Or maybe it should be “Out damn’d comma! out I say!” Okay, it's easy to imagine if you're me!

But as a counterpoint, let's invoke Oscar Wilde who said, “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

Commas! You can't live with 'em and you can't live without 'em!

'nuff said!

One Word for Ten...or a Hundred?

2010-11-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

I found the following observation (confession?) from Kate DiCamillo at The Pippin Insider: "Telling stories is hard work; the stories that I like, the ones that seem most powerful to me, have an ineffable quality of one word seeming to do the work of ten words."

One word for ten? Sounds daunting, eh? How about one word for a hundred? Let flash back to an earlier post of mine where I asked whether it was possible for one hundred words to the job of ten thousand. (i.e., a ratio of one word for one hundred). Here’s what I wrote:

Is it possible for one hundred words to the job of ten thousand?

I've been contemplating this question since reading a wonderful short story, Bog Rhubard Shoots, by Yamashiro Tomoe (it's from the book, Reflections on the Way to the Gallows). It tells the tale of Mitsuko, a young Japanese woman, who, in the 1940s, was sent to prison for her involvement in the left-wing political movement (as was her husband, who was assigned to different prison).

Under the terms of her conviction, Mitsuko "could write only one letter of postcard length each month. Even though the frequency and length of the letters were limited, they still had to be checked over by four persons: the guard, the chief guard, the chaplain, and the supervisor of the guards. Under these circumstances, one hundred words had to do the job of ten thousand in the letters that Mitsuko and her husband exchanged. If a letter written under restricted conditions failed to pass the censors and was stamped 'To be handed over upon release,' the letter itself would probably shed tears."

Sigh!

A Bookstore with Just One Book...Your Book!

2010-11-06T06:32:00.000-07:00

What if there was a bookstore that specialized in just one book? And it happened to be your book? Shelf after shelf would have but one tome, your tome! A customer walks to the Self-help section and finds…your book! Another customer goes to the Exercise section and finds…your book!

Guess what? This really happened. In 1997 Al Fahden was looking for a way to promote his book, Innovation on Demand. So he opened a bookstore in downtown Minneapolis that was stocked with just one title, Innovation on Demand.

Kinda cool, eh?

There was even an article, Tome Alone, in People Magazine.

Kindle: Semaphore Edition

2010-11-03T16:28:00.000-07:00

Following on the spectacular success of our Kindle: Morse Code Edition, we are introducing Kindle: Semaphore.

For more literary semaphoric thrills, check out Monty Python's version of Wuthering Heights in Semaphores.

If you had to choose one song...

2010-11-01T17:18:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting thought exercise for a writer: if you had to choose one song upon which to base a novel, which song would you choose?

After much cogitation, reflection and sundry caffeinated-related activities, I would choose Black Horse and a Cherry Tree by KT Tunstall. The first two lines of the lyrics make for a killer book opening: Well my heart knows me better than I know myself/So I'm gonna let it do all the talking.

And the last line of the song makes for a boffo novel ending: I can't quite get there 'cause my heart's forsaken me.

Okay, I got me a beginning and an ending, now I gotta fill in the rest. In the meantime, here's video of Ms. Tunstall:

Spell check your tattoo!

2010-10-31T06:24:00.000-07:00

From Geeky Tattoos.com

Author Smackdown

2010-10-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

From the Marketing Ideas Gone Awry Department.

Let's face it, there are times when book marketing could use a bit more oomph! Heck, they might even take a lesson from the folks at World Wrestling Entertainment who bring us such delights as this:

What if the same approach was applied to promoting books? For example, we could pit Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling, nonfiction book, Blink against James Patterson's recently released thriller, Don't Blink. Imagine the excitement of an Authors Smackdown featuring two famous authors in a cage in the middle of Madison Square Garden. It'd be literary mayhem at its finest!

Of Jersey Shores and Spartacus

2010-10-28T16:35:00.000-07:00

Judging by the reaction to a recent post by Deanna Fei – entitled, Why Every Writer Should Watch Jersey Shore – the TV show, like many reality shows, is polarizing; you either love it or hate it.

So let’s dive into this imbroglio and examine the issue as only the Demon can (or would dare). We’ll take a thought-provoking journey from the Jersey Shores all the way to France to take a potshot at the ghost of Flaubert, then we’ll return home to invoke our First President before heading off to the coliseums of ancient Rome. (I need the Frequent Fantasy Miles^TM).

Ms. Fei writes, “Maybe my sense of humor is unevolved, but too often, I pick up a novel that's been described as hilarious, only to find that the laughs are mostly located in the author mocking his own creations for being less clever than he and his reader.”

The reference to mocking ones own creations reminded me of my extreme distaste for the novel, Madam Bovary. I could feel disdain and contempt oozing from Flaubert’s pen as he engineered the demise of Charles and Emma Bovary. Then again, what else should we expect from an author who believed that “"hatred of the Bourgeois is the beginning of virtue…”

I take umbrage at the notion that virtue begins with hatred.

Which brings me back to Jersey Shores – and pretty much all reality shows – I tend to hate them, “them” being the show, not the people. Truth is, I have nothing to say about the players in the show, good or bad, because I know nothing about them.

Specifically, it is the fish bowl venue that defines reality TV, where every facet of person’s life is on display, that I abhor. This is most likely because I am an introvert and would never seek to maximize my public exposure in such a way. Furthermore, I find much wisdom in the following from George Washington: “Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.”

Therein lays the clash of philosophies. If you are like me, and subscribe to Washington’s point-of-view, Jersey Shore, or any other reality show, is likely to rub you the wrong way. It’s not a right or wrong thing, it’s personal idiosyncrasy.

It also explains why I regard Jersey Shore as a spectacle, which leads me to another TV show: Spartacus, Blood and Sand (thankfully, this isn’t a reality show). The Roman Gladiators were commodities, pawns in the grand games played out before thousands of spectators. Are the stars of reality shows that much different? Are they not pawns whose lives are played out on millions of TV screens? Both get used up and spat out, so to speak. At least the truth of this was contained in the Gladiators’ oath, “I will endure to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword.” Perhaps those in a reality show should take an oath that begins like this: “I will endure to have no privacy, to be cancelled at any time…”

There’s no doubt that shows like Jersey Shore are polarizing. You either love ‘em or hate ‘em. I’m in the latter camp. However, I do not claim to be right or have the higher moral ground on this subject, Still, as an aspiring author, I feel it’s my duty to understand the origins of my antipathy, for better or worse.

Jeesh, I hate it when I get all philosophical and introspective like this. To cure myself of this malady, I am going to “veg out” tonight and watch the World Series.

‘nuff said!

The Morse Code Kindle

2010-10-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

Introducing the Kindle: Morse Code Edition. All your favorite novels translated to Morse Code. Read and listen to the beeps, the dashes, the pauses...oh my!

Wouldn't you love to read Moby Dick in Morse Code?

You can listen to this classic in Morse Code as well!

The Tony Soprano Query

2010-10-18T07:24:00.000-07:00

What if Tony Soprano was an aspiring author? How might he handle the challenges of finding a literary agent? Sounds like a great idea for a book!

Tony Soprano has got himself an unpublished manuscript.

Lord knows, he’s got a great story to tell. It’s all in there: the whacks, the goomahs and, of course, the importance of family.

One day, serendipity brings him into contact with the literary agent of his dreams, Stella Portalucia. Tony starts to tell her about his book but she cuts him short. “Send me a query letter,” she says. He is crestfallen; she explains, “it ain’t personal, it’s how I do business.”

Tony doesn’t handle rejection very well but he’ll do anything to do business with Stella. Now, the man who has carved an empire amidst the teeming turnpikes of New Jersey must do the unthinkable – he must write a query letter!

Meanwhile, Carlucci Cacciatore, a former priest turned publisher, has secretly approached Tony’s wife Carmela about publishing a tell-all book. He’s made a damn fine offer.

So much for the importance of family.

A "fear sum" novel

2010-10-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

Today, we reimagine a classic Tom Clancy novel, The Sum of All Fears:

From this:

To this:

A brilliant mathematician must

help the U.S. break a secret code.

But a rare phobia cripples him!

The Handbook for the Persnickety

2010-10-15T06:48:00.000-07:00

In his previous ~~rant~~, er, post, the Demon indicated he was in a persnickety state of mind. This inspired the Spawn-of-Query-Letters-Rejected^TM to reimagine a classic management book, The One Minute Manager.

Instead of:

Why not a special edition for persnickety crowd?

Story is NOT the by-product of magic!

2010-10-14T12:20:00.000-07:00

The Demon is feeling persnickety, cantankerous and audacious today. Which means someone, perhaps a Pulitzer Prize winning author, is going to feel his wrath...

I was reading Summerland by Michael Chabon when I came across the following, "take everything back to zero as long as magic and its by-product, story..." Huh? Is Chabon saying story is the by-product of magic? Do they really give authors prizes for writing such fallacies?

Story isn't a by-product of anything. To speak of it that way is to diminish its power and, yes, its magic. Story is not akin to whey, rising like a watery afterthought during the cheese-making process. Yeah, this is a visceral reaction on the Demon's part and it's hard to offer a logical proof to refute Chabon. But this persnickety, cantankerous and audacious Demon knows that story is not, has never been and will never become a by-product of magic or anything else. You listening, Chabon?

Perhaps the closest thing to a proof I can offer is the following from Elie Wiesel: "God made man because He loves stories."

Yeah, that sounds just about right!

Penguin Classic Covers Revised

2010-10-13T15:42:00.000-07:00

I came across these at Amy Fleisher's website.

She did these to celebrate the 75th anniversary

of Penguin Books and to revamp "their most popular Classic

book covers to be more Penguin-centric.”

Penquin-centric indeed!

Bill Maher's New Rule: Nobel Committee Must Rename The Prize

2010-10-12T15:52:00.000-07:00

The Reader-Writer Covenant

2010-10-09T09:24:00.000-07:00

In a blog posted at HuffingtonPost, Randy Susan Meyers asks, “What is the relationship between reader and writer?”

Her answer: “I believe there should be a covenant between writer and reader. What it is that you, the writer, are offering to you, the reader? (Because I can't imagine a writer who is not also a reader.) Are you making a bargain with the reader and then keeping to it? Are you offering the reader the same qualities that you want when you're the reader? Are you offering them your very best?”

Alas, as someone who is going through the process of seeking an agent, I am painfully aware there are two other parties involved – the agent and, eventually, the publisher. Along the way, there must be offerings to them as well as to the reader. It is a practical matter: without an agent and publisher, the covenant between writer and reader cannot be consummated.

I say this after having been rejected by thirty-five agents (yeah, par for the course). I also say this after having received some confirmation that the reader – writer covenant is more than a figment of my imagination. I asked a former writing instructor of mine, who has published several well-received novels, to review my manuscript. Her reaction:

“I first need to let you know how very much I love this book. It is exactly the sort of story I would have been thrilled by as a child. The characters are marvelous. It is playful, intelligent, imaginative, and even, at times, poignant. It functions on many levels, able to provide pleasure to both young readers and to their parents. And, ultimately, it offers a valuable message about individuality and creativity.”

Wow! I have experienced the ultimate writer’s thrill: the visceral connection with at least one reader who loved what I had to offer. Even better, my writing instructor recommended me to her agent! (Alas, he doesn’t handle children’s books – which I understand, an agent needs to stay focused on what he does best).

Meanwhile, as I continue to query, Meyer’s observation leads me to wonder: what does the query letter have to do with the covenant?

Let me elaborate with an additional observation from Meyers’s blog: “I want books that have dug deep, whatever the genre, and proffer those best hours of my day…Magic happens when writers tell their personal truth and dare to let their ugly out. That's when a writer has kept their covenant.”

Keeping the convent, eh? Well, one definition of the word covenant reads, come together – furtherance of cause.

Maybe I am just whining or allowing myself to be too easily discouraged – yeah, I should wait until the fiftieth rejection before feeling that way – but too often I have felt disconnected from the magic of my book during the querying odyssey. A query letter simply does not feel like a good first step for coming together in furtherance a cause – if indeed my book could ever become a cause.

Sometimes, in my darker moments, I look at my query letter and feel like a huckster, trying desperately to please an agent, any agent! I’ll use the finest clichés, proffer irresistible emotional hooks (however irrelevant to the plot) and even invent a new literary device (can I patent that?) to further my cause.

Then I realize I am perilously close to abandoning the magic and truth of my writing. If I continue on this course, I may end up like the narrator in Robert Pirsig’s Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, when he says: “What I am is a heretic who's recanted and thereby in everyone's eyes saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin. I survive mainly by pleasing others.”

Sigh!

One Hundred Years of Solitaire

2010-10-08T07:19:00.000-07:00

The Demon pays homage to One Hundred Years of Solitude:

The world’s most talented and self-absorbed card player wastes his life.

Truth in book titles

2010-10-02T06:31:00.000-07:00

From Better Book Titles: the gist of one my favorite books, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami, is captured succinctly in the title.

Note: Cover art done by Mike Molina (http://candlemakesbomb.blogspot.com/)

Banned Book Week

2010-09-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Demon gives a shout out to the American Library Association for their Banned Book Week project.

I hope it's "okay" to quote "this" blog...

2010-09-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

The Demon came across a blog that "amuses" him: the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.

Here are "some" samples:

If you want see "more" quotable "misquotes," be sure to visit: www.unnecessaryquotes.com.

Grammar Lesson

2010-09-17T04:42:00.000-07:00

Source: Weird Al.

Obviously, my favorite section in a bookstore!

2010-09-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

"The store exists for the reader, not for the publisher or the marketer.”

2010-09-03T06:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a great article entitled, On Not Changing With the Times: How Manhattan’s Three Lives & Co. Bookstore Endures. The owner, Toby Cox, puts it succinctly, “the store exists for the reader, not for the publisher or the marketer.”

And that's reminded me, as I send out query letter after query letter, my book exists, not for the literary agent, not for the publisher and not for the marketer - it exists for the reader.

'nuff said!

Another book cover reimagined

2010-09-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post, the Demon remagined a dull book cover. Now it's time to offer an alternative to the cover for Joel Osteen's A Better You:

The alphabet revisited!

2010-08-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

Normally we use pencils to write the alphabet...

but what if the pencils were the alphabet?

Libraries

2010-08-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

An ode to libraries...nuff said!

Stopping by Woods to Tweet

2010-08-21T07:03:00.000-07:00

What if Robert Frost was alive today and an avid user of Twitter?

A book cover reimagined

2010-08-17T05:14:00.000-07:00

Choose a book about a dull topic...

Tweak the cover just a little and voila!

Isn't that so much more interesting?

George Orwell meets J.K. Rowling

2010-08-13T12:41:00.000-07:00

Today, the Demon revisits a classic, Animal Farm:

Let's imagine a new version that combines the dystopian allegory of George Orwell with the magical imagination of J.K. Rowling...Animagus Farm!

Awful Library Books

2010-08-03T14:50:00.000-07:00

From the blog, Awful Library Books, come these terrible tomes:

Blandness

2010-08-02T07:09:00.000-07:00

Blindness by Jose Saramago is a fascinating tale.

So why not pay a humorous homage with the following?

A mysterious plague causes everyone to lose their
sense of taste. Emeril Lagasse cries “Bam!” to no avail and
The Iron Chefs are reduced to nothing more than an
hour-long fury of cooking signifying nothing.

“Ladies…Welcome to Fight Club.”

2010-07-26T04:24:00.000-07:00

What happens when you combine these two books?

You get this...

The World is Fat

2010-07-25T05:13:00.000-07:00

Today the Demon shifts his attention from the world of fiction to nonfiction in order to lampoon a popular book by Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat...

This book, which has been a popular business read, begins well enough with a first chapter entitled, “While I Was Snacking.” The author, Mr. Freedme, discusses his experience sitting on a couch, his coffee table littered with debris from McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Starbucks, Taco Bell and Baskin-Robbins. At that particular moment, he happens to be watching the world championships of Sumo wrestling when, lo and behemoth, Torsten Scheibler, a 440-pound wrestler from Germany captures a gold medal.

Initially Mr. Feedme’s observations are lucid, acute and scintillating. He asks provocative questions about globalization, the retail economy and vividly paints parallel trends in international sports and the fast food industry as a metaphor for more broad-reaching sea changes. He astutely explores how a sport such as Sumo, whose very essence is Japanese, has become become embraced internationally, attracting both fans and athletes from around the world.

From there, the book’s promising beginning is utterly obliterated as Feedme launches into a bloated and turgid premise that gives rises to a series of distended chapters entitled, “Ten Forces that Fattened the World.” The author have may begun with the belief that the Sumo wrestlers he saw on the TV screen that day, alongside with fast food debris on his coffee table, could be woven into a coherent set of ideas. Alas, Feedme's intellectual drawbacks become abundantly evident as one peruses the chapter titles for each of the Fatteners:

- Fattener #1. 4/19/75 – Double-Stuff Oreo’s introduced

- Fattener #2. 11/8/87 – First online menu appears

- Fattener #3. The blueprint is drawn for a Starbucks within a Starbucks

- Fattener #4: Weird Al releases his music video, Fat.

- Fattener #5. The Jenny Craig Heresy

- Fattener #6. The Global Calorie

- Fattener #7. The Cooking Channel in High Definition

- Fattener #8. Ingesting, inhaling, insourcing and indigestion

- Fattener #9. Boink: Eating without thinking

- Fattener #10. Atlas bulks up on steroids so he can shrug more easily

This is a book filled with cute inanities and readers are more likely to find intellectual substance in an assortment of Twinkies and Devil Dogs.

A great title for a book

2010-07-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

From the mind of a child! I think this would be a wonderful title for a book, right up there with Love in the Time of Cholera...well, sort of!

Practical use of the colon

2010-07-12T05:39:00.000-07:00

From GraphJam.com:

Gulf oil spill spreads to Amazon.com

2010-07-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

The catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf continues to spread. I just visited Amazon.com and was horrified to see crude oil washing over their website. This is truly a disaster!

Okay, this was created by visiting Instant Oil Spill, a project of A Cleaner Future. Instant Oil Spill brings the Gulf crisis right to any computer screen. Go to Instantoilspill.com, enter in the URL of any website, hit the "Spill Now" button, and watch the page fill with swirling crude (digital, of course).

Disclaimer: No books or websites were harmed in the making of this post.

A thought about books being made into 3-D movies

2010-07-10T15:17:00.000-07:00

Classic books for young readers, revisited

2010-07-05T04:51:00.000-07:00

I grew up reading Mad Magazine, so it's easy for me to imagine the following "classics" for young readers.

The Black Scallion by Wally Fearley:

A rare Arabian legume helps a talented but traumatized teenage girl win an international cooking competition.

James and the Giant Leech by Raul Dahli Lama:

A gigantic but compassionate leech starts growing in the yard by a house on a hill. Occupying the house is James, a little boy whose parents died in a tragic incident involving a vacuum cleaner and a blood transfusion.

Bored of the Flies by Willy Leading:

A group of 21st Century boys wash up on a deserted island. Without their Wii, Playstations and Xboxes, all they can do watch the flies that inhabit the island. Boring!

The Poet Laureate and Stephen Colbert

2010-07-01T10:18:00.000-07:00

First, congratulations to the next U.S. Poet Laureate. The Library of Congress announced Thursday that William S. Merwin will become the 17th U.S. Poet Laureate this fall.

While we're on the subject, let's revisit a former laureate, Robert Pinksy, and his notable appearance on the Stephen Colbert show where he moderated a " Meta-Free-Phor-All" contest between Colbert and actor, Sean Pean.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Meta-Free-Phor-All: Shall I Nail Thee to a Summer's Day?

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Fox News

Thrice Upon a Time: Inflationary Language with Victor Borge

2010-06-29T11:58:00.000-07:00

What if the English language evolved to reflect inflation? Victor Borge provides the answer!

Battlestar Grammatica

2010-06-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

This is the work of students in Stylistics, the quirkiest course at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill’s Creative Writing Department. It may be the quirkiest creative writing course in America.

An Extremely Dangerous Word

2010-06-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

Armageddon. Apocalypse. Cataclysm. These are words used to describe the end of the world and while they invoke images of doomsday, the words themselves are harmless. You can say them as often, and whenever you want, and no devastation will occur.

There is, however, another word, a most unlikely word, if misused, could result in total annihilation. The word: tattarrattat. Originally coined by James Joyce, it is believed to be the longest palindrome in the English language. It is also an onomatopoeia. You may say the word once, but take the greatest care not to repeat it too many times.

Why?

An upcoming article in the prestigious scientific journal, The Journal of Irreproducible Results, reveals the terrifying findings of a recent study. The prominent physicist, Helvetica Edison, while conducting research at the Large Hadron Collider, happened upon a strange quirk involving palindromic onomatopoeias – words that are simultaneously palindromes and onomatopoeia. The discovery, he noted, “frightened me to the core of my being.” If you were to recite a word such as tattarrattat a thousand or more times in a row, the world would come to an end. Edison’s calculations demonstrated that a rip in the fabric of the space/time continuum was highly probable and the resulting black hole would swallow the earth.

“The odds of any one person being able to correctly pronounce tattarrattat a thousand times consecutively is extremely low, but it only has to happen once – and poof! – we’re toast.”

Grammar Pet Peeves from Huff Post. Your, err, you're going to love this!

2010-06-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

From HuffPost: Their readers chose the worst grammar, spelling, punctuation, and malapropism mistakes ever.

People who break the rules of grammar

will end up in the GRAMMAR SLAMMER!

Unleashed Imagination

2010-06-13T05:38:00.000-07:00

From the artist, Enkel Dika, wow! Makes me wish I still had my old typewriter.

Taming Your Characters

2010-06-12T05:36:00.000-07:00

My favorite scene in Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince takes place when a fox asks to be tamed by the Little Prince.

The Prince asks, “What does that mean – ‘tame’?”

“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to establish ties.”

“‘To establish ties’?”

The fox goes on to explain, “To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other…To you, I shall be unique in all the world.”

Maybe it’s all the coffee I’ve been drinking this morning, but the fox’s explanation seemed especially relevant to character development. For any character an author writes about, odds are, there are thousands and thousands of similar characters in thousands and thousands of other books. The question becomes: how does the author establish ties between the character and the reader, make the reader feel a need for the character and, above all, make that character unique in all the world?”

Ah, to succeed in creating ties to the reader and to tame my characters! Hmmm…how the heck am I going to do that? I’m not sure, but I suspect it will involve drinking a lot of coffee!

Tragic accident mars book diving contest

2010-05-23T07:26:00.000-07:00

The first annual Dive Kiddo, Dive! contest, a book diving competition for young readers, took a tragic turn when an attempted triple twisting backflip from the dangling-participle-pike-position went horribly awry. Eleven-year old Dexter Clarr sustained neck injuries deemed “severely embarrassing but not life threatening.”

Dive Kiddo, Dive! was the brainchild of bestselling author James Patterson. His website, ReadKiddoRead.com was created to encourage young kids to become lifelong readers. “If we want our kids to dive into books, then why not a book diving contest?” explained Patterson. “I figured it could become as popular as the La Quebrada Cliff Divers of Acapulco.” The competition had proceeded smoothly until it was Dexter Clarr’s turn to compete. Suzie Kindel had just completed an artistic dive during which she used semaphores to spell out, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

“It was quite inspiring,” noted Patterson. “We were in the midst of nothing less than a classic sporting event. And then that Dexter kid…oi!”

When asked if he was concerned about a lawsuit, Patterson replied, “For those of you kids who are thinking of suing me for reckless endangerment or whatever, take a long hard look at the waiver form you signed. In other words, read kiddo, read! You’ll find it is absolutely iron-clad!” Patterson then gave a shout out to his attorney.

As for Dexter, he will live despite the permanent crick in his neck left by the accident.

An unexpected muse

2010-05-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

Elaine, an aspiring author, stumbles

upon the most unlikely of muses

while on her way to Macy's.

The Duke of Assonance

2010-05-10T05:02:00.000-07:00

I'm imagining the following as a skit -- perhaps on the Muppet Show: It is a historical drama entitled, The Duke of Assonance, featuring a handsome young duke named Sir Alexander Van der Lance. He rules over the duchy of Assonance.

The Duke, like all the characters in the skit, has a funny manner of speaking. In the skit, the duke is greatly upset with his royal chef. “Are you deaf, Chef Jeff?” rages the duke. “You mistook the duke’s taste in food and now I must rebuke the cook. Above all, serve no dish of fish for that is my wish. I cannot take the hake and fluke makes me puke. Cod fattens my bod, trout worsens my gout, eel makes me squeal, shad makes me a tad sad, bass makes me crass and smelt won’t make me svelte. As for anchovies – oh puhleeze! Remember to stab the crab, slam the clam, wallop the scallop, stick a hot poker in the croaker and smack the mackerel against the bell. After that, place the halibut in a catapult and toss it all the way to Lilliput. As for flounder, it makes me rounder but grouper won’t make me super. What’s more, mahi mahi is yucky, yucky, the taste of shark is off the mark, perch leaves me in the lurch and sardines look like little fiends with their beady little eyes. And please do not prod for I will not eat the scrod. Now go and flush the snapper down the crapper and never, ever serve tuna to the Big Kahuna.”

There is also Alliterative Allie, a bumbling young chambermaid who works in the Duke’s castle. “I tripped terribly while trying to traipse and tidy at the same time,” she says to explain how she fell and twisted her ankle. Throughout the skit she is seen hobbling around the castle on crutches.

Eventually, the Duke falls in love with the fetching young lady. “My chance for romance here in the duchy of Assonance!” he exclaims as he kneels down before Alliterative Allie who, of course, is on crutches. “Will you be my Duchess on Crutches?” he proposes.

“Marry? Me? Most certainly!” shrieks Allie with joy. “My, my, a marvelous marriage in the merry month of May. Magnificent, miraculous, momentous…”

(NOTE: This is what happens when an aspiring writer has too much time on his hands).

You’re never really done for...

2010-04-29T05:05:00.000-07:00

From a quirky movie, The Legend of 1900, comes this quote: "You’re never really done for, as long as you’ve got a good story and someone to tell it to." Or as I see it: "You’re never really done for, as long as you’ve got a good story, a great query letter and one more agent left on your mailing list."