Quacking Alone

To query or not to query, that is the question.

I stay about a project ahead. So right now, I’m doing a final, pre-publication edit on Boz’s story, the third in my forever series – A Sixth Sense Of Forever.  My talented hubby, the graphic design guru, is working on the cover.  We hope to have it up and out very soon. 

I started editing Sixth Sense  after I finished my just-written legal-contemporary romance, Griffin’s Law.  In the olden days of yore, before the gates of freedom and the rise of the internet made self publishing financially viable, I’d be working on a query letter about now.  That means, I’d be getting out my old, faithful list of literary agents and crafting the best letter in the history of letters to try to convince them that they want, need, bloody have to read the full of my MS.   This time around, I haven’t even started the query. 

So I could be, perhaps should be, composing a letter to sell my MS to agents in the hope that one can sell it to a publisher.  The publisher would take a year or more to turn it into a book and then try to sell the book to Barnes & Noble, Wal Mart, Books a Million, etc.  If all of that succeeded, then the book might eventually, someday, be sitting on a shelf, trying to lure you -  all of you — to put it in their basket and take it to the register.

Today, I can skip all the steps and put it out there for you to read and hopefully buy and more hopefully enjoy.  And it’s not just little old me lured by the possibilities of getting it out there fast.  I understand that the Vonnegut estate is about to put the late, great literary geniuses’ final work, short stories, out as an ebook first.  If the goal is to get the work in the reader’s hands, ebooks do it a lot faster.

I love writing.  In my dream world, I’d get up every day and sit before my computer and write.  When reality and a day job don’t intervene, I’m a pretty prolific writer.  I don’t love trying to sell myself to an agent.  I don’t look forward to getting a query letter together and getting it out there so that eventually agents can request material.  I’d then spend weeks and weeks, sometimes months, and in the case of my last contact with an agent – over a year and a half – waiting to get the letter that says thanks, but no thanks.  Oh, I suppose I at least progressed in the process.  My latter letters all generally said, you’re a good writer, but….  Yeah, having folks who work with so many excellent writers say you can write is a compliment.  And I do and did appreciate it.  But it’s a back-handed compliment at best – you’re good, you’re just not good enough for me and I’ve decided you’re not good enough for publishers or the American public.

Self publishing is the ultimate act of democracy.  Am I good enough for the American public?  Will you enjoy the stories I so enjoyed writing?  Will you get my over-the-top style and understand it’s a little bit “I wish men in love acted that way” and a little bit tongue in cheek?  Maybe or maybe not, but I don’t have to convince a bunch of folks in the middle that I’m good enough to have the opportunity.  America is the land of opportunity and I can put it out there and let you decide. 

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Yes, Virginia, the economy isn’t just in the toilet – it’s already in the sewer. So it comes as no surprise that the publishing and e-publishing industries are circling the drain. Will they go the way of the job market, the housing market and the credit market? Not if we can help it. But can we?

Most of us don’t have the ability or the resources to hire a bunch of folks. We can’t even save them from the scary place after the unemployment benefits run out. We can’t buy a hundred houses or donate enough money so that the banks and credit card companies stop acting like Chicken Little. There are so many really big things we can’t do, can’t help or can’t stop that we lose site of one really, really ENORMOUS thing we can do, we can help, we can stop.

We can save publishing and e-publishing.

Yes, you and I and all of the regular average folks like us can save the industry that means so much, that has given us so much. Who hasn’t sat in the waiting room of a doctor’s office or by or in a hospital bed and read a book or an e-book to will away the worry? We’ve all given friends or family a small inspirational book or two about overcoming grief, suicide, addiction or debt.  Haven’t we all gotten up during the night to read a few pages from a book to chase away the fears and doubts that keep us from sleep or invade our dreams? Just think about all the things the words written by others have meant in your life.

I write romance because that’s what takes me out of my world and inspires me to enjoy or create another world, another place. The books I read and those I write have always included second chances that led to happy endings. When has that ever mattered more than today?  The news, the blogs, and even the water cooler conversations today are all about poor Bob who lost his job or Jane’s family who just got served with foreclosure pleadings.  If we let in too much of that negativity, then it begins to seep into our blood stream until it finds its dastardly way to our spirit.  Once there, the bleak black void will eat away at the edges until it’s destroyed the seat of our hopes and dreams.  Soon it will convince us that nothing is worth trying for, believing in or battling to save.

This year lots of families can’t afford their usual trip to the mountains or the beach.  But all of us can afford to buy a book that will take us to Paris or Tahiti or Mars.  Not only can we afford that book, we must consider it not so much an indulgence as an act of protest.  Whatever the rest of the economy and the bleak prognosticators throw at us, they can’t destroy the spirit that allows us to believe we can survive, we can overcome.  They can’t destroy our hope if we don’t wave the white flag and surrender it without a battle.

If every person who has ever gotten joy, hope, belief or renewal from the written word just buys one book or one e-book a week, then the industry that’s fed our spirits can survive.  And when we have a better week, instead of going to a movie, we can buy a second book or a third.  Come on now, we all know whatever entertainment we get from the movie will fade mighty fast.  But we’ll dig out those books time and time again.  The books and e-books that build your spirit, bolster your hope and make you believe in happy endings this month can do it again next month and next year. 

Yes, the economy has already circled the drain, gone down it and now lurks in the sewer, hoping it is recycled rather than washed out to sea.  And yes, the publishing and the e-publishing industries are now circling that drain.  But it’s not inevitable that the book and e-book industries go the way of the rest of the business world. 

Some things are still worth fighting for, and by God, I, for one, find books and e-books to be amongst the things I refuse to lose. 

We can be the stopper and plug the drain, one book purchase at a time.

Mary Anne’s husband here again with a brief announcement: A Golden Forever, the second book in Mary Anne’s Forever series, is now available in paperback from CreateSpace. It will eventually arrive on Amazon.com; when it does, I will provide a link to it on the book list page.

In the meantime, enjoy my wife’s blog entry about Michael Jackson the romance novelist below. AOFM, a.k.a. Hubby, out.

Okay, get your mind off of all the weirdness of MJ’s latter years.  As for the criminal charges, don’t go there.  Think about the music and the performances.  Get yourself in that mind space.  Maybe it’ll help if you squeal “Ooh” and “I’m Bad” three or four times.  Okay, focused now? 

 His death was tragic. Having a creative force like his snuffed out so quickly, so needlessly has deprived the world of years of music and magic.  So while it’s certainly his tragedy, his family’s tragedy, it’s also a loss for everyone who ever turned on a radio or downloaded music.  In the wake of the sudden loss there were many retrospectives and tributes.

As one of those tributes Fox re-broadcast the first American Idol finalist show of this season featuring the top 13 performing Michael Jackson songs.  I watch American Idol and enjoy seeing the group working and growing into music professionals.  It’s always fun to see someone working to make their dream come true.  But I’d forgotten about that MJ show because, at the time, it was just another show.  Too bad it wasn’t done later in the season with the gloved one giving the finalists performance critiques and suggestions. 

My favorite contestant of this past season was Adam Lambert.  We all recall that he finished second.  My only explanation for that is that Kris Allen was everyman — the one more like the average American watching on the sofa at home.  Adam has too much creative force to be contained or labeled in any one genre or tradition.  Adam will never be anyone’s everyman — but neither is Elton John and, of course, neither was Michael Jackson. 

As one of the last performances of the show, Adam Lambert did MJ’s “Black or White.”  Adam nailed it, standing out from the others like Sir Elton at a High School talent contest.  His performance impressed the judges too, including Simon Cowell, the one we love to hate and hate to love.  Simon’s comments made me think and inspired this post.  Simon said Adam nailed it because (and I’m paraphrasing here because I didn’t watch the episode with pen in hand) - To make a MJ song work , a performer has to be totally comfortable on stage, and he has to perform the song like Michael – over the top.

Why did that resonate with me? When Adam and MJ perform, they do it over the top.  When I write romance, I write it over the top.  For a writer or performer to succeed, he or she has to do it the way it comes naturally.  If Kris Allen tried to perform MJ over the top, it wouldn’t work for him at all.  It worked for Lambert because that’s how his art speaks to him.  It’s the same for a romance novelist.  You can only write romance over the top and have it carry the reader along if that’s how the story and the characters speak to the writer.  I understand MJ’s approach to music because I know it must have come as naturally to him as my stories come to me. 

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