Istoria Books Blog

Joyce Yarrow Reads from THE LAST MATRYOSHKA

2012-03-03T08:45:00.000-08:00

Read an interview with Joyce Yarrow ("From Crime-Ridden Bronx to Crime-Ridden Mystery Novels") here.

Joyce Yarrow: From the Crime-Ridden Bronx to Crime-Ridden Mystery Novels

2012-02-28T00:01:00.003-08:00

Istoria Books is thrilled to release Joyce Yarrow's mystery, The Last Matryoshka, this March. Here Joyce talks about her life, her PI brother, her writing, and her thoughts on "place as character":

Tell us about your writing journey -- when you started, if you always wanted to write mystery, what led you to mystery writing.

Joyce: Ah, my writing journey. Most writers start as readers. The public library was just a few blocks from our apartment in the Bronx and was definitely the safest place in our crime-ridden neighborhood, where gangs rumbled every night and even walking to school could prove perilous.

My own writing juices began to flow when I discovered the music hidden within words. I set William Blake’s poem, “Infant Sorrow” to a melody with guitar accompaniment and went on to become a full-fledged singer-songwriter, with many side journeys into poetry published in short-lived magazines. Wonderful days! When I moved to Los Angeles, I got caught up in the film world and was hired to script narration for a documentary (my first gig as a professional writer). This meant sitting in the editing room and “writing to picture,” a great discipline for a writer—you have to let the visuals speak for themselves and use words merely to enrich the viewer’s experience.

Joyce Yarrow

I loved writing for film and TV, but the cleaner my prose grew the more I wanted to try my hand at writing a book in which words would be allowed to breathe. The gap between writing scripts and short stories to authoring novels seemed impossibly wide and I wondered if I could close the distance by writing a mystery novel. The mystery genre is highly structured and requires strong characters, a tight plot that builds suspense, and a satisfying solution at the end—at least I would not get lost in the wilderness of literary fiction (that came later). An avid mystery reader, I was a total neophyte when it came to mystery categories. So when my first book, Ask the Dead, was published and hailed as Bronx Noir, I had to look up noir to make sure I knew what that meant.

You are a Bronx native. Can you tell me a little about what growing up there was like? How'd you land in Seattle?

Joyce: I vividly remember reading The Little Princess at the age of eight. Growing up in the Southeast Bronx, it was easy to relate to a heroine who survived by living entirely in her imagination. We lived on a street that had the highest crime rate in New York (no kidding!). Being observant was also a prerequisite for survival. I think this vigilance on my part gave me some foundational skills as a writer – I became a people watcher at an early age out of necessity.

I’ve sampled life in places all around the country and settled in Seattle because of the supportive scene here for artists of all kinds. The Northwest has much natural beauty and is also a great place to raise a family. Not to mention the plentiful micro-breweries…

A matryoshka
(pronounced ma-TROO-shkah)

You have a brother who was a P.I. Your protagonist, Jo Epstein, is a P.I. Did you rely on your brother heavily for background?

Joyce: My brother Rick has carefully reviewed my books for accuracy about the P.I. lifestyle. It irks him that in so many books the P.I.’s end up not being paid. I was only 14 when Rick finished criminology school and was hired to conduct his first surveillance—a warehouse in New Jersey. I begged him to take me with him and we still laugh about that. Maybe that night was the genesis for my becoming a mystery writer – I wanted to find out what I had missed!

Can you tell us any funny/interesting stories your brother shared with you about being a P.I.?

Joyce: My brother is the soul of discretion – a prerequisite for staying employed as a P.I. However, Rick did share the following story with me recently:

Many years ago, in Los Angeles, an elderly Italian man came to see me. He said he thought his wife was cheating on him. She was always late coming home from work and wouldn’t tell him where she’d been. He handed me a photo I assumed would show off his ‘trophy wife,’ some kind of blonde bombshell. Instead I saw a swarthy, short, very plump woman dressed in black.

The next evening, I waited at the sewing factory for end of the shift. When the doors opened, out came what seemed like hundreds of short, plump women, all dressed in black. It was impossible to pick out his wife.

The next day, I bought a box of chocolates and asked the security guard to give it to Mrs. __ when she came out. The strategy worked and I followed her out the gate. She went to a church where a bingo game was in progress. And as it turned out, she went to a different church every night to play bingo. Her husband disapproved of gambling but was immensely relieved to find out that bingo, rather than infidelity, was the reason for his wife’s strange behavior.

The Last Matryoshka takes place in Russia, as well as New York. Tell me a little about your trip to Russia for research, how much of it made its way into the book.

Joyce: I have been accused of becoming a novelist simply to justify my wanderlust. The trip to Russia with my teenage son was the epitome of mind-expanding adventure. We stayed in what was once a communal apartment in Moscow and Ian never complained about the lumpy bed or the bland food. But when we entered Vladimir Central Prison and the doors clanged shut behind us , he turned to me and said, “Mom, this is not the usual tourist experience, is it?”

In addition to the prison, almost every place we visited in Russia made its way into The Last Matryoshka. Lena’s apartment in Moscow, the Monastery of St. Euthimius and the Matryoshka factory in Suzdal, the headquarters of the Moscow Criminal Police at 38 Petrovka Street, the chaos at Sheremetyevo International Airport, even the disco of the Vladimir Hotel. The trip was invaluable . So was Google Earth, which I used to explore many settings in The Last Matryoshka that I did not visit personally.

The settings in The Last Matryoshka -- both Russia and New York, but especially Russia -- are so strongly portrayed you can almost hear balalaika music in the background! Tell me a little about why such strong settings are important to you as a writer, how they almost become a separate character in your books.

Joyce: Like a bass player in a band, a story’s setting plays an essential role that is often not fully appreciated. How can one tell a credible tale without including geographical and cultural details that reveal personality and create atmosphere?

Scandals, the New York nightclub where Jo Epstein exchanges security services for rent, is a “person” as much as a place. As Jo puts it:

Scandal’s was like a woman who dressed down every night, progressively shedding her layers of respectability. For dinner she wore her business clothes—hosting those who were out to impress a client with trendy insider dining and phony “I bumped into so-and-so” stories. The poetry slam loosened things up—definitely casual—but some basic coherence was still required to deliver words from the stage. It was after hours when Scandal’s jettisoned her inhibitions and stripped to her undies, sleek lingerie, thongs, whatever was handy. At that point it was my job to prevent bad things from happening—to keep an eye on what went on in the bathrooms that wasn’t related to hygiene, to listen for voices that crossed the boundary from boisterous to confrontational, and to make sure it was the drinks, and not the police, that kept coming.

Why did you decide to make Jo a poet? It's such an unusual combination -- poet and P.I. Were you tipping your hat to other famous investigators with unusual hobbies (Sherlock Holmes and the violin, for example)?

Joyce: I had no idea I was going to write about a poet/detective. Until one night at the Sit ‘n Spin (a bar in Seattle that shared space with a Laundromat), the Slam MC started ad-libbing on stage. Her street-smart wisecracks, mixed with erudite comments on performance poetry and rabble-rousing quips, got me to thinking. What if she were actually a private investigator moonlighting as a poet? I got out my notebook and Jo Epstein was born.

Who are your favorite mystery writers/series?

Joyce: I teach workshops on The Place of Place in Mystery Writing, and some of the mystery writers I feature who consistently create memorable settings are Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, and Kate Atkinson. And of course Georges Simenon—Inspector Maigret is Paris. I also read a lot of non-genre fiction and lately many Indian authors, such as Kiran Desai, whose sense of place is so palpable you can touch, taste and smell the atmosphere in every paragraph.

Will readers be seeing more of Jo Epstein?

Joyce: Maybe.

________

The Last Matryoshka by Joyce Yarrow (Istoria Books, March 2012)

Full-time private investigator/part-time poet Jo Epstein travels to New York and eventually to Russia to help clear her emigre stepfather of a murder rap and to discover who is sending him threatening messages in the form of Russian nesting dolls (mastryoshkas). Her journey takes her to dark places in her stepfather's background and in Russia's history as it shrugged off the weight of communism and embraced a frightening new freedom.

"Intricately layered like the Russian nested doll of the title..." Library Journal
"You'll want to discover the secrets buried in The Last Matryoshka..." Lesa Holstine, Lesa's Book Critiques
"Joyce Yarrow....may very well prove herself to be the Mickey Spillane of the 21st century...." Seattle Post Intelligencer

PRESS RELEASE: Two Russian-Themed Novels Acquired!

2012-01-31T12:04:00.000-08:00

January 31, 2012

ISTORIA BOOKS ACQUIRES DIGITAL RIGHTS

TO TWO RUSSIAN-THEMED NOVELS:

Joyce Yarrow’s mystery: The Last Matryoshka

and

Russian native Mary Fisherov's historical love story: Love’s Destiny Foretold

Istoria Books, a digital publisher dedicated to releasing “eBooks You Want to Read at Prices You Want to Pay” ™ has recently acquired digital rights to two novels, both with Russian elements.

Istoria will publish Joyce Yarrow’s mystery, The Last Matryoshka, in early March 2012. The Last Matryoshka was released in hardcover by Five Star/Cengage in December 2010. A mystery as layered as the Russian nesting doll of its title, The Last Matryoshka follows a poetry-writing P.I. as she attempts to keep her Russian émigré stepfather from being fingered for murder. Action in the book takes place in both Brooklyn and Moscow. Library Journal has praised The Last Matryoshka, calling it an “intricately layered tale of vengeance and hatred flavored with a Russian cultural backdrop…”

Yarrow is a Pushcart nominee, whose stories and poems have been widely published. Her first book, Ask the Dead (Martin Brown 2005) was selected by The Poisoned Pen as a Recommended First Novel and hailed as “Bronx noir.” A Bronx native, she now lives in Seattle and gives regular workshops on the use of place in novels. Yarrow is represented by Stephanie Rostan of Levine and Greenberg Literary Agency.

In May 2012, Istoria will release Love’s Destiny Foretold by Russian native Mary Fisherov. A sweeping historical love story that brings together an exiled Russian countess, an opera singer, and a world-traveling playboy in the slums and mansions of late nineteenth-century New York City, Love’s Destiny Foretold is a combination of delicious action and witty surprises, for fans of larger-than-life storytelling, epic romance, and some sly satires of contemporary Russian government. Fisherov lampoons Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev through two Russian agents in her novel.

Fisherov is an internationally published writer of literary fiction whose novels have been translated into German, Spanish, and French. She has been awarded several literary prizes in her native Russia. Love’s Destiny Foretold is her first work in English.

Fisherov, who comes from a literary family, is on the Classics faculty of a California state university.

ABOUT ISTORIA:

Istoria Books, founded in 2010, publishes fiction in a variety of genres: romance, women’s fiction, historical, literary, mystery, thriller, sci-fi, fantasy, young adult. Submission guidelines are available at their website--www.IstoriaBooks.com

Istoria Books releases are available on all major ebook etailers, most notably Amazon’s Kindle store, Smashwords.com and Bn.com, in addition to others.

A humorous piece by Istoria Editor-in-Chief Libby Sternberg about the evolution to the Kindle (“From Papyrus to Gutenberg to Kindle”) was published by the Wall Street Journal on January 5, 2011.

Reviewers interested in Istoria Books offerings should contact Libby Sternberg at LibbyMalinSternberg@gmail.com or IstoriaBks@gmail.com

###

The Iconic Cowboy: The Virginian

2011-12-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

by Libby Sternberg

My first encounter with The Virginian was the television show of the same name back in the 1960s, the one with James Drury in the title role and Doug McClure as his pal, Trampas.

The Virginian, TV style

His pal? In the book, Trampas is The Virginian’s adversary, not his friend.

But I didn’t make that shocking discovery until thirty-some years after the TV show, at a period in my life when I was reading absorbing old stories I’d passed over during my teen years. The first in this reading journey was Catherine Marshall’s Christy set a few decades after The Virginian, not in the wilds of Wyoming but in the equally foreign (to me) terrain of the Smoky Mountains.

Both stories have similar themes, however. They deal with questions of morality in the face of lawlessness. The heroines of both books have to reconcile their church-and-school-learned views on right and wrong with the reality of wrongdoers. The heros in both books have to actually deal with the wrongdoers. In the Virginian’s case, action involves painful decisions.

I swooned over the Virginian and his romance with the feisty schoolteacher Molly, two strong characters from opposite backgrounds. She was educated; he was not. She was at ease in society; he was not. They both shared a principled view of the world. His views, however, were put to the test, while hers were tested only by reflection.

Owen Wister masterfully built up their attraction by first building strong characters. From the moment readers encounter the Virginian, they are fascinated by him. He’s the iconic cowboy—strong, fair, a doer, not a talker. Molly, the woman he comes to woo, is equally strong, though, but in different ways. Her character unfolds with relentless drive, as steady and forceful as the train that first takes her from Bennington, Vermont on her journey west.

Bennington—I knew at least part of that journey. Not too long after reading The Virginian, my family moved to Vermont. But I made regular train trips back to my native Maryland, probably following some of the same tracks as Molly on the very first part of her fictional passage to a new life beyond her staid New England existence.

The first time I read the book I became so swept away in the romance at its core that other parts of the story remained in memory’s shadows. Only later when I reread the novel did I become aware of its historical aspects—the Johnson County range wars, the fight against corruption, the moral ambiguities involved in striving for freedom and independence.

Nothing summed up that latter theme better than the final dramatic passages in the book, involving, of course, a shootout of High Noon proportions. I don’t think I give anything away by reproducing part of the argument between the Virginian and Molly just minutes before this scene. It encapsulates the moral debate running through the book:

“I am not going to let him shoot me,” he said quietly.
“You mean—you mean—but you can come away!” she cried. “It’s not too late yet. You can take yourself out of his reach. Everybody knows that you are brave. What is he to you? You can leave him in this place. I’ll go with you anywhere. To any house, to the mountains, to anywhere away. We’ll leave this horrible place together and—and—oh, won’t you listen to me?” She stretched her hands to him. “Won’t you listen?”
He took her hands. “I must stay here.”
Her hands clung to his. “No, no, no. There’s something else. There’s something better than shedding blood in cold blood. Only think what it means! Only think of having to remember such a thing! Why, it’s what they hang people for! It’s murder!”
He dropped her hands. “Don’t call it that name,” he said sternly.
“When there was the choice!” she exclaimed, half to herself, like a person stunned and speaking to the air. “To get ready for it when you have the choice!”
“He did the choosing,” answered the Virginian. “Listen to me. Are you listening?” he asked, for her gaze was dull.
She nodded.
“I work hyeh. I belong hyeh. It’s my life. If folks came to think I was a coward—”
“Who would think you were a coward?”
“Everybody. My friends would be sorry and ashamed, and my enemies would walk around saying they had always said so. I could not hold up my head again among enemies or friends.”
“When it was explained—”
“There’d be nothing to explain. There’d just be the fact.” He was nearly angry.
“There is a higher courage than fear of outside opinion,” said the New England girl.
Her Southern lover looked at her. “Cert’nly there is. That’s what I’m showing in going against yours.”

As I reread and absorbed the themes of the story, I became newly appreciative of Owen Wister’s craft. He’d taken a real part of American history and fictionalized it. In doing so, he probably made it more real to readers than a dry examination of the facts of that time, especially of the gray shades between all those white and black hats. That’s the beauty and power of fiction—to make reality… more real.

When I decided to write a western historical, I have to admit to having The Virginian on my mind. Not the exact details of the story—no, I wasn’t interested in re-creating that. I knew I wouldn’t be able to come close to what Wister had achieved.

But I did want to place an iconic cowboy and a strong-willed, if troubled, woman in a setting where they’d both have to deal with moral questions that challenged their principled views of the world. Thus, my novel Kit Austen’s Journey was born, the tale of a woman trying to escape her past to start a new life only to realize that she cannot stop herself from falling in love, especially when the object of her affection is the archetypal western man—strong, resolute and kind.

_________

Readers can find Kit Austen's Journey for Kindle here, for Nook here, and for other ereaders here.

The Virginian is available for free from Istoria Books. Go to our website at www.IstoriaBooks.com and look for the "Free Favorites" section

Tell Us Your "Going Home" Story

2011-10-11T04:36:00.000-07:00

Homecomings stir our hearts. From the story of the Prodigal Son to that of a warrior returning from deployment, from a lonely lover reuniting with his beloved to a long delayed family reunion -- the act of going home touches something in our souls. Sometimes it is joyous, sometimes painful. But it is never inconsequential.

Jerri Corgiat explores this theme in her five-book family saga, Love Finds a Home. Set in small town Missouri, the series follows a generation of sisters as they navigate life and yearn for love. They search in the context of an extended family, with all the personalities and baggage, comfort and stress that go with it. But for all of them, finding love is an act of finding family, of going home.

Istoria Books invites you to share your "homecoming" experiences. Post a comment featuring a favorite memory of your own "coming home" story. Tell us what going home means to you. We will share the responses with our friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook, look here; on Twitter, keep an eye on #istoriabooks.

Five contributors will win a free copy of any book on our inventory (go to our website to view our books). Please email us to let us know which book you would like to receive if you win! We will also send periodic compilations of selected entries from the blog.The contest will end October 31, 2011.

A Grandmother Speaks Again To Her Grandchildren and the World

2011-10-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

The Old Ashburn Place by Margaret Flint won the Dodd Mead Pictorial Review Best First Novel of 1935 prize, and the author went on to write numerous other books. Several of the authors' grandchildren -- Leslie S. Lebl, Sara M. Barnacle and Istoria President Matthew T. Sternberg -- worked to bring The Old Ashburn Place to 21st century readers after Ms. Flint's novels went out of print. It is now available as an ebook through Istoria Books. Below is a roundtable discussion among the three grandchildren about their grandmother and this project. Matthew and Leslie are siblings; Sara is their cousin.

Did you read The Old Ashburn Place or any of your grandmother's novels in print?

MTS: I must admit that until we started this project, the only of Grandma's books I had read was Dress Right, Dress, which I picked up shortly after my mother's death in 2002. I was interested in it because Mom was the model for one of the characters. The Flint books were always on the shelf and I always knew what they were, but they somehow seemed remote -- of another time -- and it didn't occur to me that perhaps they held meaning for me.
LSL: I read most of them when I was a teenager -- and didn't care for them very much. In retrospect, that's hardly surprising, as Grandma's focus was on adult dilemmas. I thought then that she was too pessimistic; now I find her depictions spot-on.
SMB: I read two or three when I was still living in my parents' home, but it wasn't until I inherited my mother's complete collection at her passing in 1999 that I read through them all. My mother read the whole cycle every year. She had been her mother's secretary and research assistant, yes, and household help, up until she went into the WAC. For her, the novels were a very real connection to her own early life and especially to her mother. After reading the novels for myself, I became interested in seeing if any regional publishers would like to republish them. Not. My mother made a scrapbook of her mother's newspapers articles, and I enjoyed reading them -- short vignettes about life in Maine.


When do you remember learning your grandmother was a prize-winning novelist? Did your mother tell you?

MTS: Mom told me about the prize early on. I don't specifically  remember when. She said that style of novel caught on in the '30s but eventually went out of style. That was the reason she gave for all the books being tightly bunched chronologically with nothing before or after. She also said the publisher had gone bankrupt, although I don't if that's fully accurate, as Dodd Mead didn't go out of business for many more years.
LSL: Mother told us about Grandma's prize, but also that her life was difficult, despite that success, especially after Grandpa died.
SMB: As far back as my mother could remember, she recalled the clack of her mother's typewriter at night. Margaret Flint got fired up to be a writer in college. She later took a short story writing course but experienced straight rejections for years and years. Her first attempt at a novel was the big success. I suppose my mother or one of the aunts must have told me about it, but the knowledge of the prize has always just been part of my family consciousness.

Did you ever see your grandmother at work writing? Did she ever talk about her life as an author/novelist with any of you or in your presence?

MTS: I was only five when Grandma died. I remember her as a remote and severe elder, although that was probably just the perspective of a shy child responding to a much older authority figure. The only thing I remember her talking to me about was telling me to behave myself.
LSL: My memories are similar to Matthew's. Although I was a few years older, I was completely intimidated by Grandma.
SMB: My grandmother's typewriter sat on a big office desk in the corner of her living room. Although she would put away her work when we appeared, we were well aware of her work. Perhaps because we lived nearby and could drop in for many short visits instead of one long vacation each year, my recollection of Margaret Flint is very different from Matthew's and Leslie's. For my brother and sister and me, she was the "Ga-dee" of hugs and cookies. She took real interest in our doings and sayings. She read stories to us at the fireside. She definitely had high standards, in housekeeping, morals, and kid behavior, but Ralph and Beth and I knew how to fly beneath her radar. I don't mean we did sneaky things (okay, except learning how to silently lift the lid on the fudge jar). We felt it was such a privilege to be at her house that we just chose to be good. It boils down to basics, too. At that time, my parents' house did not yet have indoor bathroom plumbing, but Gad-dee had not only a bathroom with a deep, clawfoot tub and aromatic soap, but she had a lavatory just off the kitchen hallway. It was Ralph and Sara in Wonderland when we visited her. I think our relationship was also colored by the fact that there were conflicts between our grandmother and the ambitious and passionate aunts, but my easy-going mother and her ambitious, passionate mother were pals. What I knew about Margaret Flint's ongoing writing I picked up from being a little pitcher with big ears.

Did you hear her voice when you read The Old Ashburn Place?

MTS: I don't hear her voice because I don't remember her voice. What I hear is my mother and her two sisters. We often visited Grandma in Maine in the summers. I was always attracted by the northern New England accents. Add to that the Yankee mindset, and the book brings back all sorts of memories.
LSL: The oddest thing is not that I hear her voice, but that in her descriptions of nature, I hear my own. I feel as if she's seeing the landscape with my eyes -- something I've never felt before. So I wonder if I wouldn't have enjoyed knowing her as an adult.
SMB: Like Leslie, I can barely distinguish her love for that part of Maine from my own. Being a little older than Leslie and Matthew and having grown up in the hood, I knew or knew about a number of the people, places, and situations which show up in the books. I have a feeling that as I turn the pages, my grandmother will appear as a character, as I knew her.

As you worked on the novel, can you describe what it meant to you to be involved in this project?

MTS: It meant many things on both the emotional and intellectual levels. We are preserving a literary snapshot of a time and place that meant much to the formulation of my family and which would otherwise be lost as the technology of reading evolves. We are preserving the memory of a family matriarch. As we charge into the 21st century, I didn't want the world to lose sight of that piece of the 20th century. Perhaps as I get older myself, I'm more aware of what it will mean to eventually be forgotten. I'm not claiming that our project is a profound cultural event, just that an important era in our family life should not be forgotten. Only one of my mother's five siblings is still alive.
LSL: I agree with Matthew's observations, but for me, it was  just fun to discover how well-written and compelling the story was, and how fresh it felt. I think digital publishing is going to make available all kinds of literary treasures that up to now have been confined to the far reaches of a few libraries.
SMB: Many family members over the years have wished for this moment, when Margaret's influence as a writer would be extended.  I am thrilled that Matthew and Libby (Sternberg, Istoria's editor-in-chief) finally found the right way to do it, and did it, and included Leslie and me.

The Old Ashburn Place was published in 1936 -- the same year Gone With the Wind, Absalom, Absalom, We, the Living and other well-known novels were released. What do you think its place is in the history of literature?

MTS: That remains to be seen. Mother always said Grandma's problem was that the market changed and her style of fiction went out of style. I'm sure that's so. As was pointed out in one of the literary analyses of the book, the Depression spawned a movement to return to the simplicity of rural life. Grandma caught that wave and rode it for a while. Then America entered the post-war era and the 1950s, and society was off in another direction.  However, reading the book after all these years, I can't help but wonder if maybe we've come full circle. Maybe this view of a man (Charlie Ashburn) trying to live his life according to clean ideals while stumbling over all the barriers imposed by human nature will speak to an audience seeking to redefine values in the very confusing world of today.
LSL: No idea!
SMB: I second both responses. As long as humans are interested in the doings of their fellow humans, there should be readers for Flint novels.

Did the novel tell you something you didn't know about your grandmother?

MTS: Working on the book also gave me a much-belated insight into who my grandmother really was. Because I remembered her as judgemental (again, perhaps the false memory of a small child), I always assumed her worldview was insular. It wasn't. She saw people as they were -- warts and all -- and captured them in her writing. She wrote about real people in a real world. I now see her in an entirely different light.
LSL: I think Grandma would fit right in with the 21st century view that no subjects should be off limits.
SMB: For me, knowing my grandmother influenced my reading of her novels. As her six children left home, she kept all their letters home. Although that collection was broken up at her passing, when her house changed hands within the family, I have had opportunity to read many of them and learn something of the adult joys and clashes that may not have penetrated a child's field of vision.

Why should contemporary audiences read The Old Ashburn Place?

MTS: As mentioned above, although the story is set a century ago, the struggle to live a clean life in the face of human frailty is eternal. Books may be changing from paper to electrons but love stays the same. Our world has gotten more "modern" and "advanced," but we would be fools to think that human nature has changed one iota. I think people are sensing that. My hope is that they will see in Charlie Ashburn glimpses of the spiritual struggle we all still go through generations later.
LSL: I think today's readers should read it for pure enjoyment. It's a good story, as relevant today as it was when it first appeared. The insight into a specific region at a specific point in time is just an added benefit.
SMB: Because they are good reads. They tackle serious issues in a forthright but compassionate way.

----

The Old Ashburn Place by Margaret Flint is available now for Kindle and Nook. Read more about the author and this book at the Istoria Books website and contact us at IstoriaBks@gmail.com or sign up for our mailing list here (the subscription box is in the margin!).

Libby Interviews Libby About Aefle & Gisela

2011-09-01T13:48:00.000-07:00

by Libby Sternberg

Libby Sternberg

My alter-ego, Libby Malin, has written another book, some piece of puffery she's calling Aefle and Gisela. Aefle and Gisela--what kind of title is that? Hmmph. While I write serious fiction and young adult novels, she continues to ~~waste~~ use her talents to write fluffy comedic pieces. Today I interview her about this latest effort.

Libby Sternberg: Aefle and Gisela is a comedy. Why on earth would anyone want to read it when there are so many other serious books with important topics and themes out there. For example, there's my book, Sloane Hall, a retelling of Jane Eyre that has been praised by Bronte experts and that explores very weighty themes such as obsession and forgiveness.

Libby Malin: Uh, this interview's about my book, right? Aefle and Gisela?

Libby Sternberg: Of course it is. But getting back to my question, why would anyone want to read a light piece of tomfoolery that probably only produces a brief and very temporary reaction, maybe a few smiles or a giggle or two, when they can be reading more important books that linger in the mind and heart, such as my mystery Death Is the Cool Night which deals with class differences and alcohol abuse?

Libby Malin

Libby Malin: Well, actually Aefle and Gisela deals with class differences, too. And, uh, I think humorous books can have a lasting effect, as well. Anyway, in Aefle and Gisela, the heroine owns a car dealership, and the hero is a college professor.

Libby Sternberg: So he's Aefle and she's Gisela?

Libby Malin: Only metaphorically speaking. She's DeeDee and he's Thomas. But he's a history professor whose area of expertise is an obscure poetry-writing medieval monk named Aefle and his secret lady love, Gisela. In some ways, the stories mirror each other.

Libby Sternberg: Aha. So it's a story within a story.

Libby Malin: Mmm, sort of. Mostly it's a satire.

Libby Sternberg: Couldn't make up your mind, could you? Why, that's why I stick to one theme in Lost to the World, which explores the complex questions of medical ethics during the polio vaccine trials of 1954. And, of course, the protagonist's grief over the loss of his wife. And post-war America. But other than that, it's a very clean, singularly targeted look at --

Libby Malin: Uh, could we get back to discussing Aefle and Gisela? I was saying it's a satire. A sharp satire, actually, of the Ivory Tower.

Libby Sternberg: What, ho! A satire of the Ivory Tower?

Libby Malin: Since when did you develop a British accent?

Libby Sternberg: Go on, tell us more about this satire business.

Libby Malin: "Tell us more?" -- How many alter-egos do we have here? Okay, about the satire part -- I thought it would be great fun to write a story about conformity and the courage it takes to resist it. What better place to set it than in a supposedly open-minded environment?

Libby Sternberg: Voila--the liberal arts college campus? Why, I actually think that's a brilliant idea!

Libby Malin: Thank you.

Libby Sternberg: Well, since you're my alter-ego, I can take some credit for it, too.

Libby Malin: Who says I'm your alter-ego? Maybe you're my alter-ego.

(Muffled strangling and growling noises.)

Libby Sternberg: Ahem. Isn't satire a bit on the dry and brittle side?

Libby Malin: It can be, even when it's hilariously funny. But Aefle and Gisela also has a very touching love story in it as two very different people learn to accommodate each other. They fall in love, of course.

Libby Sternberg: Of course, and so you have several things going on here at once, I see. A comedy. A romance. And a satire. You couldn't quite make up your mind, could you? As I said, I try to stick to one broad theme in my novels. Certainly no more than two. Obsession and forgiveness in one, class differences and alcohol abuse in another, medical ethics and grief in another. And in a book I'm writing now, I'm going to be--

(More growling and strangling noises, this time much louder.)

Libby Malin: Unfortunately, Libby Sternberg was suddenly incapacitated. I'll finish the interview on my own by telling you a little about Aefle and Gisela...

Aefle & Gisela by Libby Malin is available for Kindle, Nook and other e-readers. It tells the story of history professor Thomas Charlemagne as he attempts to shed the "Timid Tommy" reputation of his past by stopping a wedding on a dare. When it turns out to be the wrong wedding, legal problems ensue that could wreck his career as the world's leading expert on a poetry-writing medieval monk, Aefle, and his secret love, Gisela, both of whom provide a template for Thomas’s own struggles with life and love.

Buy the book for Kindle here.

Buy the book for Nook here.

Buy the book for other e-readers here.

Hurry—it’s on sale for only 99 cents as part of a book launch promotion!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: LIBBY MALIN

Libby Malin is the award-winning author of romance, literary, mystery and young adult fiction. In an attempt to thoroughly confuse her reader fans, she writes comedy under the name Libby Malin and serious fiction under the name Libby Sternberg. Her first young adult mystery, Uncovering Sadie’s Secrets, was an Edgar nominee, and her first romantic comedy, Fire Me, was optioned for film. She lives in Pennsylvania, has three children and one husband, and confesses to watching “Real Housewives” shows despite enormous amounts of culture-guilt.

Visit the author’s website at: http://www.LibbyMalin.com

Some praise for Libby Malin's other comedic novels:

Booklist -- Malin creates a world of wit and chaos that is …smart and insightfully written (My Own Personal Soap Opera).
Publishers Weekly -- Malin's latest is heavy on humor… (she) coaxes plenty of laughs (My Own Personal Soap Opera).
Jo-Anne Greene Lancaster Sunday News -- Fire Me ...had this reader chuckling out loud.
Washington Post -- The love story is charming and will be appreciated by any woman with bad taste in men who somehow inexplicably ends up with Mr. Right. (Loves Me, Loves Me Not)
Publishers Weekly -- A whimsical look at the vagaries of dating... an intriguing side plot adds punch and pathos to the story...(Loves Me, Loves Me Not)
Booklist -- Malin's clever debut toys with chick-lit stereotypes and offers quite a few surprises along the way. (Loves Me, Loves Me Not)

Print Rights as Subsidiary Rights?

2011-07-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

by Libby Sternberg

You own a business. It does reasonably well. Then the economy tanks. And what's worse, a new product appears that grabs market share from your primary source of income. In a matter of months you lose one-third of your sales. Time to cut back.

Welcome to the world of mass market paperback publishing.

According to the Association of American Publishers, net sales for mass market paperbacks slid by 30.1 percent in the first five months of this year compared to the same period last year. Here are the figures:

Mass Market Paperback
2010 YTD net sales: $264.8M
2011 YTD net sales: $185.1M

The full AAP story is here. (The headline is a wee bit confusing -- mass market paperback sales are not the same as adult paperback.)

Meanwhile, ebook sales continue to climb, with an increase of 160.1 percent over the same time period last year.

And also meanwhile, authors who had previously been published in print continue to dabble in self-publishing their material in e-book formats while new authors jump into the e-book market, forgoing the traditional publishing route entirely.

And...to add more to ponder...publishers continue to struggle with pricing in the e-book market, some of them moaning publicly about how they can't afford the lower price points e-book readers have come to expect -- usually below $5.00 with many books being offered at least initially for 99 cents.

Let me address this latter point first. The quotes that I've seen from publishers whining about low e-book pricing usually boil down to affordability -- for them, that is. They simply can't afford to offer e-books at too low a price because they'd lose money.

Here's a round-up of the rationale I've read from publishers on e-book pricing: It takes them X-number of steps to get a print book ready for digital release. Each of those steps costs them something. Therefore, they resent low pricing. Their worlds would be a lot happier if authors and e-publishers would get with their program and keep e-book prices higher.

But here's the problem -- e-book pricing is not about their needs. It's about the consumer's needs. Publishers should take a hard look at what e-books are competing with. They're not just competing with other forms of books. They're competing for a consumer's disposable "pleasure" income -- money he or she has decided to spend on something fun but not necessary -- and the choices consumers face in that market range enormously. Instead of spending, say, $11 on an e-book whose quality they're unsure of, they could a) buy a bottle of wine; b) rent a movie; c) buy some music; d) get an order of those really good egg rolls they like; e) buy some gourmet cupcakes., etc. (My choices are heavy on food. Hmm...must be hungry.)

The point is that the skeptical reading consumer (skeptical because, perhaps, of previous bad choices in the book market) sees that $11 or even $7 price tag and doesn't think "what other book can I get for this amount?" He or she is thinking "What other thing can I get for this amount that will give me as much, if not more, pleasure?"

That same consumer then sees an array of books priced below $5, many at 99 cents, and the choice of a book suddenly moves up the list of ways to spend their disposable income.

But this price battle leads to a larger point -- if more and more authors are taking control of their own publishing destiny by contracting with e-publishers (such as our own, Istoria Books) or handling e-publishing themselves, why don't traditional publishers consider a new paradigm, one that could save them all that money they spend on the "X number of steps" involved in digital release and actually make them some money on e-books priced for market expectations.

Here's the rub -- this new paradigm would require them to release control of the books for the e-market to the author.

Think about it -- authors often have the time and the motivation to get their books on the e-market. They're willing to go through the "X number of steps" themselves or to contract with someone who will. They don't have huge overheads, as print publishers do.

Why don't print publishers license e-rights back to authors? Let the authors take control of the book's e-marketing, including pricing, and instead of taking royalties from the publisher, the author pays a small percentage back to the publisher on net sales.

An aside: for many down-list authors, "royalties" is a foreign concept, and they're unlikely to see any from their print publisher anyway.

Licensing eliminates all those pesky steps the publishers moan about in taking books to the e-market. It allows them to focus on print, their primary market, and just collect the checks for the e-book editions without having to hassle with the conversion and marketing of them. Yes, they'd probably cringe seeing their authors offer e-books for 99 cents. But that's part of building readership and consumer trust. Low pricing lures consumers to a product. The more consumers who buy and like a book, the higher the possibility of getting that elusive "buzz" going that publishers yearn for.

And that brings me back to the other aspects of author-publisher relationships that are changing -- the authors who bypass print entirely, launching books themselves in the e-market. Then, if they realize some success, print publishers come along and offer a print contract. This has already happened with YA author Amanda Hocking, who was selling thousands upon thousands of copies of her e-books before she landed a print contract with St. Martin's Press. And recently, there was the case of Jon Krakauer, whose expose, Three Cups of Deceit (of Greg Mortenson's bestseller Three Cups of Tea), started life as an e-book and recently sold to Knopf for print.

In these cases, it's as if print rights become the subsidiary rights, isn't it? The author dives into the e-book pool because of its enticing freedoms -- freedom to write what he/she wants without a print publisher's constraints or just the freedom to publish without going hat-in-hand to the Big Six in New York. But that doesn't mean authors forgo a future in print.

Now, finally, back to the statistics that started this blog and the implications of all my points.

For some publishers, losing a third of their market share could be devastating. Genre publishers, for example, release the majority of their books in mass market paperback. Seeing "gold in them thar hills" of e-publishing, publishers are releasing previously print-published books into the e-market. But the problem is they still need to go through all those conversion steps to reach that market, so they're loath to price their e-books at what e-book consumers want.

More and more authors, meanwhile, don't mind taking the time to convert their own books for the e-market or releasing new ones straight to that market. Since they don't have the massive overhead of print publishers, they can offer their books at an appropriate e-book price point. Not only that, in many ways authors have become better equipped to actually sell their books to the reading consumer, a territory traditional publishers ceded long ago when they decided to focus the majority of their marketing resources on bookstores, encouraging the author to reach out directly to readers. (I've often joked with fellow authors that publishers know how to select, edit and print books, but they don't know how to sell them.)

In this new world, publishers should consider e-rights licensing agreements with authors, relinquishing control of the e-books to the people who actually have the motivation to sell the books.

In this new world, Big Box Bookstores will continue to fade in dominance as authors and publishers slowly learn how to find actual book readers instead of booksellers in the market.

In this new world, selling print rights could become akin to selling subsidiary or secondary rights after an initial e-book success.

Them's my thoughts. Now, scurry on over to the Istoria Books website and take advantage of the Gift of Summer Reading Sale -- most of the inventory is marked at 99 cents, including the first book in award-winning romance author Jerri Corgiat's Love Finds a Home series, previously published by Penguin.

Addiction, Divorce, Blindness... Romance? Part II of an Interview with Author Jerri Corgiat

2011-07-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Award-winning author Jerri Corgiat continues her conversation about her wonderful romance series, Love Finds a Home, talking about her inspiration, research and future projects. (For Part One of this interview, click here.)

What was the inspiration for these five wonderful romances?

Author Jerri Corgiat

One of my favorite childhood authors was Janet Lambert. She wrote a considerable number of Young Adult books focused on the fictional Parrish family. Hopefully I don’t get any of this wrong as I haven’t read these since I was a teen. (You know. About ten years ago. Cough.) The first book had a character named Penny Parrish. She was just entering adolescence in that book. By the time there were no longer any new books (or perhaps I’d grown up and moved on), Penny was in her forties. Ms. Lambert had written books about Penny’s siblings, about her siblings’ friends’ families, about their children…

I was an only child. I loved being part of that family, loved revisiting all those characters, particularly since I was experiencing some issues in my home life during those years.

When I started writing romance, the trilogy was the big deal. (Perhaps it still is; I don’t keep up with the trends.) Each of three books usually featured one of three sisters or three brothers. So, I thought, why not just keep writing about different family members and/or their friends over a span of decades? Take Me Home actually features the ex-husband of the heroine of Follow Me Home.

There are about fourteen years of story time between the first and fifth books, so some of the youngsters in the first book, Sing Me Home, are young adults by the fourth book, Home By Starlight.

By the way, most people like reading the books in order, but it’s not necessary. They’ll each stand on their own.

Did you struggle to keep family relationships and history straight through all five books? How did you deal with that?

The relationships weren’t hard to keep straight, no. These people are real to me. Keeping straight their ages—and grades of the children—requires feats of memory I don’t possess.…

So if I lost the detailed, handwritten chart I have for this purpose, any future for this series would be toast!

By the way, in Home at Last, I did get someone’s age confused by a year. And if you read it carefully enough to compare it with the first two and find the error… don’t write to tell me who it is; I already know.

All the books deal in some way with a serious underlying issue: rehabilitation after drug and alcohol abuse, troubled children, divorce, an affair with a married man, midlife crises, blindness--how did you research these topics?

Addiction and divorce and blindness, oh, my! Wow, reading a list of the issues I incorporate into my stories can make them sound as if they’ll be depressing reads. So let me clarify upfront that they aren’t! They include humor and warmth and, above all, optimism. There are laugh-out-loud moments. How can there not be? I don’t write perfect characters, and human nature is, simply, often quite funny.

Now, caveat aside… for elements in my books that are outside of my ken (be it blindness or how to weave or adoption law or how to raise chickens and donkeys), I draw on several sources.

I read copiously, both from the internet and from the library. (Writer’s tip - I often find, for smaller topics, that children’s nonfiction books have just the right amount of information, complete with pictures.)

I call on experts. For example, a weaver educated me on her craft for my heroine’s occupation in Home By Starlight. An optometrist and ophthalmologist, as well as a friend who had experienced serious brain trauma, agreed to interviews for the same book. For Home At Last, with its sub-theme of troubled adolescence, I drew quite heavily on a book by Barbara Bartocci called My Angry Son as well as the very impressive Ozanam organization (www.ozanam.org), whose main campus is located near where I live. They opened their doors to me and shared their mission and stories.

I also rely on personal experience. I’m an alcoholic (soon to hit my 25^th anniversary of sobriety) and, like so many, have also dealt with alcoholism as a codependent, so I have some insight into the disease and its effects, wisdom I’ve found in twelve-step programs I can share (without preaching), as well as an education obtained from my own rehab program and those of others. (Anonymity is an important part of those twelve-step programs, so I’ll add that all of the characters in my books are entirely fictional.)

And while I supplemented with research such topics as homophobia, bipolar disorder, abandonment, suicide, disability … caring for aging parents, recalcitrant children, divorce, midlife crises, and death…these issues have also impacted, if not myself, many people I’m close to and even more that I’m not. It’s not necessary to look far for insight on these issues!

Still. Even though I try to be careful, as do most authors, unintentional errors creep in, so I hope readers will forgive me any mistakes.

By the way, I like to do this research before the first draft because some small detail may spark an intriguing plot point and there’s an added bonus of meeting many interesting people as I look for experts to question. Also, it’s far easier than writing the first draft.

What I find so impressive about these stories is how well you deal with the serious background issues (mentioned above). You don’t sugarcoat them. Tell me a bit about your decision to handle them realistically.

We all bring some kind of baggage into our relationships, whether we’re young or old. Of course, this baggage is the stuff of conflict and so can form the heart of a book. It seems to me that such issues naturally meld with the story of a developing or changing relationship, be it in a romantic involvement, a friendship, or between family members.

Of equal importance, I like to capture a character’s growth at moments of adversity. It’s interesting to me how people change—and how many people rise to challenges—when faced with events outside their control. (Sometimes I wonder if any of us make major changes without a precipitating event. We get comfortable in our ruts!)

No, I don’t sugarcoat, and as noted above, I try to be accurate—for one main reason. Many readers, including myself, deal or have dealt with some or many of these very real and often life-shattering challenges. I feel an obligation to be as sensitive and accurate to those situations as I can. I am always fearful of trivializing someone’s pain by fictionalizing it.

I do write Happily Ever After books, though, so sometimes I’m resolving issues much more simply and quickly than happens in messy reality.

You live in Kansas but your books are set in Missouri. The descriptions make you want to run out and book a trip to the Ozarks. Did you grow up there? Tell us about your reason for setting the stories there.

I wish there was a place like Cordelia, Missouri, because I’d move there in a heartbeat! The Missouri Ozarks hold a special place in my heart as I spent most of my summers there from the age of ten to college, and then—after our tiny homestead (I’m talking tiny --think of the pink trailer in Follow Me Home!) became mine—the bulk of my son’s summers, as well. The poor abode finally fell apart a few seasons ago, which was actually serendipitous because the course my life has taken since then means I can’t be there as I once was. And, yes, I miss it.

Or rather, I miss what it once was. The lake in the books, Kesibwi, is reminiscent of the Lake of the Ozarks when I first knew it, back when most of the shoreline was undeveloped and fishing resorts held sway; the resorts and large homes and huge boats were the exception, not the norm.

Like Kesibwi is an idealized version of the Lake, Cordelia is an idealized version of a small town in the Ozarks—actually, in a larger sense, of any small town life. As a child, I visited extended family in the small town of Oakland, Nebraska. The fictional settings I created for these books sprang fromfond childhood memories of these small towns, unblemished by that later loss ofinnocence we all experience.

The books were initially published in paperback by Penguin’s Signet line. You must have been overjoyed when you got word from your agent about the first book’s sale. Tell me about that.

I was stunned. Simply stunned. I remembered sitting down hard in a chair at the kitchen table and finally saying, “Tell me what questions I should be asking, because I can’t remember a one of them.” I’d peddled Sing Me Home for over two years, trying to find an agent. Once my agent (I still have her) raised her hand, she sold it in a matter of weeks. I hadn’t expected a sale that fast, if at all!

Are you working on anything right now? If so, would you mind telling us a little about it?

Sure! I’m once again experimenting with a blending of ideas that grew out of my love affair with the Gothic novels of Victoria Holt and her peers long ago. It’s a little bit family saga, a little bit mystery, a little bit romance, and, as it’s set in the 1920s-1940s, it’s also historical. One of those family-secrets-revealed books. I’m excited about it. My agent would be, too, if I’d only get the danged thing done.

I also have some ideas for future books in the Love Finds a Home series but hesitate to commit the time until I’ve finished my current project. Perhaps audience demand will change my mind. I’m hoping readers will let me know what they think and tell me if they’d like to read more.

And, dipping into a whole ‘nother kettle of fish, I’m also contemplating a creative format for a nonfiction book on alcoholism, codependency and recovery. The trick there is finding something that hasn’t already been done—and done well—umpteen times before me.

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The Love Finds a Home series by Jerri Corgiat follows the extended O'Malley clan in Cordelia, Missouri as they confront both life and love challenges. Books in the series include:

Sing Me Home-- Lil O'Malley falls for the children of rehabilitated country star Jonathan Van Castle before he has a chance to try to steal her heart.
Follow Me Home -- When Alcea O'Malley Addams's husband betrays her, luxury and self-worth go out the window...until an old flame comes into town, leading her to reevaluate her past, her value and her future.
Home at Last -- Marigold (Mari) O'Malley returns home to lick her wounds after a big-city career sinks under the weight of a relationship with her boss. Her broken heart begins to mend when she reconnects with a bad boy from her past who teaches her how to trust and take chances at the same time.
Home by Starlight -- Widow Patsy O'Malley remains fiercely independent until a broken ankle and an itinerant musician (from Jonathan Van Castle's band) both knock her off her feet.
Take Me Home -- Florida Jones thinks she has the perfect fiance and the perfect life planned until a car accident results in injuries that threaten her sight. An unlikely helpmate guides her to recovery, where she ultimately "sees" the love that is most important in her life.

www.IstoriaBooks.com

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Abso-Damn-Lutely, Romance Deserves Respect -- Part I of an Interview with Author Jerri Corgiat

2011-06-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

Jerri Corgiat is the award-winning author of five romance novels in the Love Finds a Home series. Originally published by Penguin's Signet line in paperback, they are now being released with great pride by Istoria Books. (See end of post for descriptions, or visit www.IstoriaBooks.com)

Jerri Corgiat

Part One of the interview, about writing, publishing and life in general, begins below.

Did you always want to write romance or women’s fiction?

No! In fact, I was actively avoiding romance because I knew it wouldn’t earn me my rightful place on Oprah. Not that I’m shallow.

I’m chagrined to admit I was a snob. I had a very skewed idea of what romance writing was. I hadn’t read any romance novels after I’d gone through the so-called bodice rippers of the early 70s, never dreaming what a wide spectrum “romance” had grown to cover.

Anyway, the universe had something different in mind for me, as the universe is often wont to do, also to my chagrin. I got this idea for a love story, and despite my attempts to dismiss it, it wouldn’t leave me alone. I finally broke down and started writing it after reading an interview with bestselling romance author Kathleen Eagle in a monthly Borders’ flyer. The title of the article? I Never Intended to be a Romance Writer. She’d struggled with similar issues as she wanted to be known as A Serious Writer. I don’t think anyone would doubt her books have merit, and she’s certainly experienced some serious success with them. What was good enough for Ms. Eagle was more than good enough for me…

Just don’t ask me how long it then took me to tell anyone I was writing a -- gasp -- romance.

Your books were classified as romance, but, to me, they have a whiff (or more than that!) of women’s fiction to them. What do you consider them? What do you think is the difference between the two genres?

Whenever I see this topic raised, I sure wish they’d all just be classified as “good books!” But, sigh, books are no longer thought of in quite those simplistic terms—at least not by publishers and booksellers.

I’d say romance has its primary focus on a romantic, monogamous relationship; women’s fiction has its primary focus on some passage or event in a woman’s life and may or may not include a romance, too. That sounds simple, but even with those definitions, I often can’t, well, categorically say a book is a romance with women’s fiction elements or women’s fiction with romantic elements. It’s a spectrum – I can only recognize those that fall on one end or the other. The rest is a matter of opinion!

Yes, the Home books land somewhere in the middle. In fact, although there are plenty of highly successful authors who went before me with similar works, writing a crossbreed presented a major hurdle in finding an agent for Sing Me Home, although Sing Me Home is definitely more a traditional romance than the other four.

It’s an unfortunate fact that if print publishers can’t put a label on the spine of a book to identify where it should be shelved in a big box store—and so find the appropriate audience—they aren’t very interested in buying it, if they’re interested at all. Unfortunate, because I’m absolutely positive that a large number of excellent books have been rejected only because it wasn’t easy to pinpoint a target audience.

Do you think romance deserves more respect from the writing community?

Abso-damn-lutely. And not just by the writing community but by critics as well as the general reading public. Far too often, romance is dismissed as soft porn or as the pejorative bodice ripper or, even sans sex scenes (like they don’t appear in other genres?), as so much fluff. Yet romance spans the spectrum of all other genres: sci fi, mystery, suspense, historical, romantic comedy, fantasy, inspirational, family saga, series... name any other type of book, and there will be a subset of romance.

Romances can be dramatic or comic or both, told in first or third person, be rapid-fire page turners or linger on delightful prose. People display complete and total ignorance of the genre when they throw them all into the same box.

When anyone exhibits contempt for romance, I find it amusing to ask them what movies they’d name as favorites. Rare is even the man who does not include a romance among them… Gone With the Wind. Notting Hill. Jerry Maguire. Titanic. Casablanca. When Harry Met Sally. The Wedding Singer. Something’s Gotta Give. Like Water for Chocolate. Water for Elephants… It’s more difficult to identify movies that have no romance than those which do.

When did you start writing?

I can’t remember not writing; I did stories and poems and letters—lots and lots of long, long, loooong letters where I exaggerated excerpts from my life. It probably scared people to see my return address appear on the envelope. (Hmm. I still do this. Peruse the archives at www.jerricorgiat.blogspot.com.) I started my first novel—the one I titled My Learning Curve, which was ultimately consigned to the trash can to spare humanity—in the fall of 1998. I finished the first incarnation (there would be several others) of Sing Me Home, the first book that sold, sometime in 2000. There was definitely a learning curve!

Here's an easy question--who are your favorite authors?

Holy moly! Easy question? No way! I read all over the map, and I have an impatient, internal editor. Despite the fact that she’s only one, subjective opinion and not any All-Knowing Authority, she’s grumpy and picky about what she likes. If she’s still nattering away, pointing out flaws or, worse, dozing off by the time I hit page 50 of any book, then I move on. Any author who gets past her is thus a favorite: someone I’d recommend. As for prioritizing those "favorites," I just couldn’t do it.

There are so many excellent authors and such a cornucopia of books and wide variety of readers... Pretty cool situation, if you think about it.

Is there any one book you’ve read that influenced you (in life, writing) the most?

A book called Building Your Field of Dreams by Mary Manin Morrissey. Close second: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I spring from a New Thought mentality.

What was the hardest part of writing the Love Finds a Home books?

It involved writing books.

Seriously, my husband and I were talking the other day about why I frequently procrastinate with writing. Yes, I enjoy it, much as anyone enjoys any job they love, but if it was a friggin’ breeze, I’d have no trouble getting and keeping my rear in the chair. Writing a book is not easy!

(Don’t believe me? Try it!)

Author Jennifer Lawler recently said, “Every time I finish writing a book, I wonder how I did it and why I’d want to do it again. And then amnesia sets in.” That is so true.

Your books were published before the e-book revolution started, so publishing has changed since your first sale. What advice would you have for writers trying to break into the business today?

Run for the hills!

Okay, seriously. Big discussion for little space, but I’ll give it a try:

If you haven’t finished a manuscript, don’t worry about it now. You can’t sell what you don’t have. Besides, with the rapid changes taking place in the industry, whatever you decide now is not likely to apply later.

If you already have a manuscript ready for market, you have a difficult decision to make.

Print publication still garners advances, often good (and sometimes even stellar) advances. So that’s guaranteed money with distribution into all or most major outlets (some publishers are much better than others).

On the downside, print publishing contracts are difficult to get, and it can take months—even years—to land one. That doesn’t mean give up, if that’s your goal. I had a stack of agent rejections three inches high before I made my first sale. Maybe that last query didn’t do it—but it might be the next one.

Also a consideration: royalties on ebooks in print contracts (yes, print publishers will want both rights) tend to be onerous: small royalties and no end in sight for rights reversion (which is an issue I won’t go into here, but it’s an important one).

With epublishing, by contrast, while you’ll eschew any advance, you’ll start collecting a percentage of sales—in a timely manner. (Believe me, there’s little in the traditional publishing world that’s timely.) And those sales can be the gift that keeps on giving: No books need go “out of print.” On the internet, books can live forever.

Independent epublishing is an easy nut to crack. Format, upload, and voila! You’re a published author. But therein also lies its thorniest problem. Most readers lack the patience to sort through the multitudes of available ebooks. Instead, they are increasingly relying on sites like dailycheapreads.com and goodreads.com to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

I find this exciting—readers are becoming the gatekeepers instead of traditional publishers.

But getting the word of mouth to rise to the top in a crowded field is also tough. It’s always been hard; now it's even more so. (And if any author had this mastered, we’d all have stopped writing long ago and made our fortunes presenting seminars—to other writers.)

So that’s where the new breed of independent epublishers comes into play, with their editorial staff who are selective about which authors—new or established—they’ll represent.

I’m treading into these waters via Istoria, my ebook publisher. I know the principals of this company, know their dedication and professionalism and zeal where promotion is concerned. (A zeal that’s as lacking as timeliness in the traditional publishing world.) I’m betting my books that someday in the not far distant future, readers will recognize the Istoria brand as one they can depend on for a good book.

For Part II of this interview, click here.

__________________

The Love Finds a Home series by Jerri Corgiat follows the extended O'Malley clan in Cordelia, Missouri as they confront both life and love challenges. Books in the series include:

Sing Me Home-- Lil O'Malley falls for the children of rehabilitated country star Jonathan Van Castle, leading to a marriage of convenience while he fights a custody battle ... and eventually fights for her heart.
Follow Me Home -- When Alcea O'Malley Addams's husband betrays her, luxury and self-worth go out the window...until an old flame comes into town, leading her to reevaluate her past, her value as a woman and her future.
Home at Last -- Marigold (Mari) O'Malley returns home to lick her wounds after a big-city career sinks under the weight of a relationship with her boss. Her broken heart begins to mend when she reconnects with a bad boy from her past who teaches her how to trust and take chances at the same time.
Home by Starlight -- Widow Patsy O'Malley remains fiercely independent until a broken ankle and an itinerant musician (from Jonathan Van Castle's band) both knock her off her feet.
Take Me Home -- Florida Jones thinks she has the perfect fiance and the perfect life planned until a car accident results in injuries that threaten her sight. An unlikely helpmate guides her to recovery, where she ultimately "sees" the love that is most important in her life.

Film/TV Markets for E-Books: Discuss

2011-06-21T05:10:00.001-07:00

by Libby Sternberg

E-publishing is rocking the book world, opening up new markets for authors and publishers, shaking up traditional publishing's approach to readers. Much cyber-ink has been spilled on this topic, so I want to briefly touch on a subject that I haven't yet seen addressed.

That is, how to sell film or TV rights to e-books.

And the answer is: dunno yet. It's evolving. But I firmly believe there's a new business model here waiting to be shaped into a successful venture. I'd enjoy a discussion of this topic, so weigh in, fellow book lovers.

First, let's review how film and TV rights are usually handled in the DTB (dead tree book) world.

An author sells her Novel That Will Last Through the Ages (NTWLTA for short -- oh heck, let's just say, "Novel") to Publisher A through Literary Agent Z.

Publisher A does all its publishing stuff--editing and proofreading the book, choosing a cover, typesetting, laying out the pages, alerting bookstores to its imminent release, and even, on rare occasions, trying to actually sell the book to consumers.

Agent Z, meanwhile, sends out word to her agency's subsidiary agents that the Novel is available. Agent Z will often find herself pitching the Novel to these subsidiary agents as if she were pitching to a publisher. The subsidiary agents in the film/TV side of the biz aren't necessarily interested in every project that Agent Z's firm has to offer. They want "high concept" or "action-packed" or whatever Hollywood thinks is hot at the moment. Nonetheless, let's assume that Agent Z is a whiz at elevator pitches and manages to get film/TV agency interest from Big Agent H (for Hollywood).

Big Agent H (BAH, for short) manages to get a film option for the Novel.

Much rejoicing occurs in Author's home. Much champagne-cork popping (inexpensive champagne). Huzzah!

Back at the offices of BAH and Z, smiles abound, but few Snoopy Dances of Joy. The reason--a film option doesn't involve a lot of money unless the property's a bestseller. The big money's in the actual sale. So this means BAH and Z are splitting down the middle enough money for a nice dinner out in a five-star restaurant. And they both know that while many books might be optioned, few make it into film. (Which is the origin of the old saying, "Many are caught, but few are frozen." No, wait, that's fishing industry wisdom.)

But in our scenario, Novel does make it into film! A Big Star and Studio pick up the option, buy the film rights, and before you know it, the Author is remodeling her kitchen, planning beach vacations for her family, and going to the spa twice a week with the proceeds, as well as photo-shopping her online author pictures on her website.

BAH and Z now pop their own bottles of champagne, do the victory dance, and use their proceeds to put down payments on new cars.

Let's take this little story template and place it over the e-publishing model. We have to skip over the first few steps, though, because in the e-book world, some authors go directly to self-publishing on their own or to e-publishers (such as Istoria) that don't require agent-submitted works.

There is no Agent Z, in other words, in the e-publishing model. Without Agent Z, it becomes difficult to snag BAH. Many BAHs will actually say "bah" to authors approaching them out of the blue with a book not published traditionally or not a megaseller or not represented by a variation on Agent Z.

But what if that were different? What if film/TV agents started trolling the e-publishing world for good stories that matched the talents and goals of their other Hollywood clients (directors, writers, producers, actors)?

What if these BAHs decided that traditional publishing isn't the only place to find great stories, and instead of relying on the Agent Zs of the world to "screen" out the undesirables, BAHs will find other ways to mine the rich motherload of great storytelling that has opened up in e-publishing.

Sure, it will be challenging for BAHs to figure out how not to waste too much time sifting through material that's not suitable. Currently, as pointed out, they rely on Agent Zs to do that for them, for the most part. Instead of relying on others' judgment of material, they'll have to start relying more on their own.

But the payoffs could be higher since they won't be splitting a commission any longer. They're handling the film/TV rights as a completely separate entity.

I hope some film/TV agents start considering a new model. Like a lot of other aspects in e-publishing, it will require a more pro-active approach -- going way beyond what might ordinarily land on their desks through the efforts of Agent Zs.

-----

Check it out: the 99 cent Lunch Reads collection at Istoria Books -- two short stories per volume.
Watch for: the upcoming Love Finds a Home romance series by award-winning author Jerri Corgiat!

Editing Tips: Telling Your Story Your Way

2011-05-16T04:22:00.000-07:00

by Libby Sternberg

Before putting on the Editor-in-Chief hat at Istoria Books, I edited books for a couple other publishers. I still edit for one of them on a freelance basis.

My editing experiences run the gamut from full-blown line editing, where I make substantive suggestions for changes, to copy editing, where I correct grammar, check facts, and straighten out continuity problems and the like.

Here are some random observations on how to edit your own manuscripts in order to ensure your readers "get" your story, told your way. These suggestions include both the substantial and what might seem like the picayune (and, yes, I, as a writer, have made some of the mistakes mentioned myself):

1. Heed the red lines: When I first typed the line above, I misspelled "picayune." Blogger was helpful enough to underline my mistake in red, alerting me to my error. Most, if not all, word processing programs do the same. Don't ignore these--fix them. You don't need to fix them during your first pass when you're on fire with the passion of creating something wonderful. But surely you can and should correct these mistakes during revision. Often, you'll find these red lines showing under compound words that aren't really compounds -- "voicemail," for example, is not one word, and the little red line tells me so. Why is this important: a few misspellings here or there aren't going to sink your chances of having your manuscript acquired if you've written a gangbusters story. But once your precious work is in the hands of editors, you want them to catch the important stuff--maybe when you said Sally's eyes were blue on page 5 and green on page 75, or maybe where you inadvertently put eight days in a week or forgot that your protagonist's mother is deceased so she can't make an appearance late in the story. The point is, the more you ask an editor to fix, the more chance there is that the editor will miss something important while catching all the little problems. Sure, it's the editor's job to capture all those mistakes, but do you really want to take a chance on having something important slip by because you've left so much to tidy up?

2. Keep track of time, characters and family relationships: This rule is important for the same reason as the one above. The more you ask an editor to fix, the more chance there is she'll miss something else important...or the more chance there is she'll change something in a way you don't like. Sure, you'll probably have an opportunity to okay the editor's changes, but why set yourself up for the back-and-forth with editors that might create tension as well as more mistakes (the more keystrokes, the more possibility for error)? When you are in the revision stage, keep a notepad handy and jot down things such as how many days you account for in the book, whenever you mention a specific day ("on Saturday, he would go into town..."), and character descriptions as well as the preferred spelling of their names (unless you want the editor to choose among several different spellings you use). It's far better for you, the author, to fix these things the way you want them fixed, rather than having an unknown editor suggest changes when deadline pressures allow for little flexibility.

3. Don't clutter the manuscript with names your readers don't need to know: Unless you have a compelling reason to do so, you shouldn't find it necessary to name all characters in your book if they don't play a pivotal role in the plot. So, for example, if your heroine goes for a haircut, you don't need to tell us her hairdresser's name is Sue unless she has a conversation with Sue, (all those "the hairdresser said" lines would get tiresome) or unless Sue is going to show up in some way later. When you name characters, readers subconsciously try to remember them, not knowing if they'll be crucial to the story later on. When you clutter the manuscript with unnecessary names, you clutter the reader's mind with unnecessary information. Keep them focused on the story and the characters you want them to care about.

4. Similarly, don't throw in a bunch of back-story about secondary characters unless it's critical to something in your story: Does your reader really need to know that Sue, the hairdresser, is married to Al, who owns a shop on Main Street that sells custom-built cabinetry? Not unless this info relates to the plot or the tone in some critical way. Sure, it's good for you to know secondary characters' back-stories if you're writing dialogue for them or having them interact with your protagonist. It keeps them real in your own mind, and you're more likely to write them as real people and not caricatures. But your reader doesn't need to know all that information.

5. Avoid the info dump: If you're writing a historical, you might get excited about all the interesting factoids you're coming across concerning the time period and characters you're dealing with. It's a great temptation to write long paragraphs that begin something like this: "In the year blah-blah..." -- sharing those fascinating facts with readers but not in a way that advances the story. It's okay to sprinkle these facts throughout the book, but be careful not to slip into a nonfiction approach to writing fiction.

6. In historicals, be careful of your language: Not every word we use today was in the lexicon back in the day. You might be surprised, in fact, at how many words and terms we use regularly today simply weren't around or in common usage even 80 years ago. There was a wonderful scene in the BBC television series Downton Abbey, set in 1914, when the Dowager Countess mentions a character saying something about his "weekend." Weekend, she commented, what on earth is that? For members of her class at that time, it was a foreign concept. If in doubt, look it up. You don't need to be a purist--after all, you're writing fiction, you will be using contemporary spellings of words, and you are setting up an artifice where characters might express themselves in contemporary terms so today's readers understand and sympathize more easily--but some words jump out at the reader as anachronistic.

7. Do you really need that accent? Having a French character continually use "Z's" for the "th" sounds is not only tiresome, it's a bit lazy. It means you've not tried any other way to communicate the different tone of that particular person. I once edited a book where the author included a Central American woman whose "voice" was vividly conveyed. Every time she "spoke," I could hear her gentle accent. Yet not once did the author use a wrong spelling to convey her accented pronunciation. He did it with sentence structure and word choice. Someone for whom English is a second language might use more formal words--for example, automobile for car, occasionally. If you can convey an accent with these techniques, it keeps the manuscript cleaner and more readable.

8. If you put a gun on the mantel in Act I, someone has to fire it by the end of the story: I'm paraphrasing the great Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. What he means with this advice is that if you include something or someone that is capable of having a dramatic impact on the story, your readers will keep waiting for that impact to occur. They'll keep one eye on that gun on the mantel, in other words, throughout the story. So, for example, if a secondary character appears whose ex-husband is about to be released from jail after serving time for domestic abuse, the reader will reasonably expect that sinister character will have an impact at some point. If you're not going to use that big "gun," don't include it unless you want readers distracted throughout their read as they wait for the "big bang" that never comes. They might even feel cheated if they don't hear it.

Okay, those are my "rules" in a field where there really are no rules. But these are suggestions that might help your story have the impact you're hoping it will have, without readers distracted by small mistakes or big disappointments and without editors changing things in ways you don't like.
___
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THE "STORY" IN "SHORT STORY"

2011-05-02T11:25:00.001-07:00

by Libby Sternberg

Years ago, my sister and I belonged to one of those mail order book clubs, the ones that entice you to join up with offers of "four books for one dollar." From that point on, the club would send monthly fliers announcing their latest offerings, with one special--if you didn't want that book, you had to send in a card saying "no, thanks." Otherwise you'd get it. I ended up with a lot of books this way.

One of the volumes my sister received during her first four-for-a-dollar deal was the collected short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was already a fan, having read The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, and Tender Is the Night. Reading his shorts allowed me to visit his world some more. I devoured them. I think I read them all within one dreamy adolescent summer. "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" stayed with me for a long time. Others blended into one another in memory, leaving behind a warm sense of enjoyment. Rarely did they disappoint.

As I grew older, I almost lost touch with short stories. My reading time was spent with novels and nonfiction. Then, at various times, we ended up subscribing to the few mainstream magazines that still carried short fiction -- The Atlantic, Harper's, The New Yorker -- and I once again began to read shorts.

Let me amend that: I tried to. Regularly, I'd force myself to stick with the stories in these magazines to the bitter end. And it was often a "bitter" end in that I had not enjoyed the flavor of the story by the time I was done. Rarely did I remember them at all--not even the sense of them, of what they'd been trying to say or where they were set or who the characters were, let alone what the overall story arc contained. As to prose that sang--it often fell flat to this reader's ear.

Two exceptions stand out. One was a short story by Amy Tan. It happened to be a chapter from her debut novel The Joy Luck Club, which I made sure to buy when it was released.

The other was a haunting tale of a woman in California waiting for her husband after he went off to war in the Pacific during the 1940s. I just remembered the story, not its title or author.

That story stayed with me for a long time--the poetry in its prose affected me deeply, and even if I couldn't remember the precise plot points, its mood and tone left an impression.

Years later, I became a fan of the novelist Mark Helprin. His novels Soldier of the Great War and Memoir from Antproof Case, as well as his novella Ellis Island, left me reeling from encountering such a talent. As a Christmas gift around that time, my son presented me with a signed copy of Helprin's short story collection The Pacific. I read it eagerly. When I came to the final eponymous story, I met an old friend--"The Pacific" was the story of the war bride I'd read years ago in The Atlantic Magazine! I revisited this treasure with great joy, marveling at its power to move me once again.

Stories such as "The Pacific" are hard to forget but also hard to find. At this stage of my life, I don't like to waste time. So I have to admit to passing over a lot of short fiction I encounter in the few magazines that still publish it. Their short fiction doesn't pull me in. It doesn't speak to me. It doesn't...tell a story. At least not ones I want to hear.

I'm not sure when this happened--when short stories stopped being a draw, not just for me, but for millions of others. Now, shorts live mostly in literary journals published by colleges and universities and are read by those who teach or study there (see my rant about "academic fiction" below). Yet there used to be a time when a writer like Fitzgerald made most of his money from writing and selling short stories. They were a commercial success, in other words, as well as an artistic one.

It bothers me that short stories have "evolved' to a point where they are not well-read or well-appreciated now. Their inclusion in magazines mostly devoted to nonfiction allowed those nonfiction readers to sample fiction, something many of them might not do outside the short story milieu. I believe in the transformative power of fiction, in its ability to challenge readers, to open minds to new ideas and viewpoints. It's distressing to think other readers might have given up on short fiction, too.

This is one of the reasons that Istoria Books is dedicating its resources to a series of shorts. Called Lunch Reads, this collection will feature two stories in each volume for 99 cents . E-publishing is the perfect platform for shorts. There are no word-count restrictions--no short is too long or too brief for inclusion.

We kicked off the series with mysteries. First, there is a suspense tale by Jenny Milchman paired with a "cozy" mystery by yours truly in Volume I.

In Volume 2, Gary Alexander (Istoria has published his literary novel, Dragon Lady) provides two humorous pieces that I like to think of as O. Henry meets The Twilight Zone--ironic twists abound, as well as loopy characters. Gary's roots are in mystery writing, so he's a natural at weaving such tales.

And in Volume 3, it's humor again with Ellen Holzman's clever longish short, a murder mystery told entirely in letters to the editor of a small town newspaper, coupled with a short short by Edmund de Jesus. Anyone who's lived in a small town will recognize the characters in Holzman's witty story and admire her storytelling talent as she eventually reveals the murderer to the reader through artful characterization and precicse plotting. De Jesus' short is the cherry on top--a well-written tale taking place within a grocery story, with a surprise ending that colors the rest of the piece.

These stories are meant to be light entertainments, something you can read on your lunch hour. But we hope they become addictive. We hope that readers will find in them the same sense of pleasure and joy that readers of short stories used to find when encountering good stories, well-told, in magazines of yesteryear.

Although we're starting with mystery, we will branch out into other areas in the near future. That includes "literary" fiction, as well.

With Lunch Reads, we want to lure skeptical readers back to embracing the short story once again. And we hope to become the place for talented writers crafting these tales to place their works.

Give Lunch Reads a try--for 99 cents, can you really go wrong?

Justin Morrill, Land Grant Colleges, and, Oh Yes, Writing: A Rant

2011-04-10T11:14:00.000-07:00

Justin Morrill

by Libby Sternberg

When I lived in Vermont, I provided occasional commentary for Vermont Public Radio. As part of that gig, I ended up delivering a three-minute piece on Justin Morrill during a series about Vermont contributions to the country and the world.

Morrill was a Vermont Representative and Senator who introduced legislation in the mid-1800s establishing and funding colleges that combined "liberal and practical" education. "Land grant" colleges wouldn't just be devoted to studying theory. They'd combine classic liberal education with practical instruction in agriculture and "the mechanic arts."

Today, all states have institutions that originated as land-grant colleges. They range from Rutgers in New Jersey to the University of California and include anything with an "A&M" after the name. Most are public, but two elite private institutions got their starts as recipients of land-grants -- Cornell and MIT.

Okay, what does this have to do with writing? I'm getting there.

Morrill might not have realized it, but he was starting a quiet revolution with his land-grant idea. Land grant colleges eventually became the model for virtually all American colleges and universities, combining practical with theoretical, shaking off a stuffy, elitist approach to higher learning and opening it up to people who wanted to do as well as think. What a quintessential American idea!

This doing-and-thinking approach plays out across the curriculum of most colleges, with students availing themselves of highly practical majors--everything from hotel management to engineering--while still studying the humanities. Even majors that might not be considered practical (well, to parents, at least) often include some useful component -- internships and research projects that push students to think about how to use their humanities background to earn a living.

And then there's writing...

You knew I'd get to it eventually.

I wasn't an English or writing major myself. No, I studied the highly practical field of voice performance at a music conservatory. But I've had numerous occasions to encounter writing students and programs over the past several years. And here's what my window on that world has led me to believe:

While the history professor might be helping her students learn history and learn how to apply that knowledge to future aspirations (whether they lead to becoming a historian or a lawyer), writing programs--their fiction components, at least--seem to focus almost entirely on what I will call Academic Fiction. That is, prose and poetry that is celebrated, talked about, discussed and enjoyed almost exclusively by other academics.

That's fine. There's a place for that. Huzzah for those who are successful in that field!

Literary fiction that is also commercial

But there's a world of fiction beyond the edge of the campus, and most of it is found in bookstores and on e-shelves. It's called commercial fiction. Yes, it can include literary fiction. But it also includes genre fiction--romance, mystery, sci-fi, horror, young adult, historical.

I've come across outright disdain for some of these genres among some academics. (Uh, like the professor who sneered that writing historicals was cheating because the sepia tones that permeate the work make it too easy to....well, whatever. I don't even remember the rest of it.)

But generally, there's a sort of cluelessness about commercial fiction. How many college writing workshops and series don't feature a single commercial artist?

Let me pause here to celebrate two local colleges where writing profs did see the value of introducing their students to commercial fiction. Millersville University and Elizabethtown College professors both invited yours truly to talk to writing students on their campuses, and I wasn't talking about Academic Fiction.

Those two colleges and their writing professors, sadly, are often the exception and not the rule.

So, while today's music major might graduate with an understanding of music theory and some practical knowledge of the music world--how to audition, what the market is, how to get gigs--many writing/literature students graduate appreciating and admiring Academic Fiction but with no clue as to how to get an agent, what a book contract should look like, what editors in New York are looking for, what small presses are respected and which ones don't show up on anyone's radar screen, how to get reviewed, how to promote your books (which, yes, often falls to the author).

It bugs me that commercial fiction has somehow been excluded from the gated community we know as the Ivory Tower. As I've pointed out on these pages before, it bugs people like Stephen King, too, who said (it bears repeating) in his acceptance of the National Book Award:

"I have (no) patience with or use for those who make a point of pride in saying they've never read anything by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark or any other popular writer.

"What do you think? You get social or academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with your own culture? Never in life, as Capt. Lucky Jack Aubrey would say. And if your only point of reference for Jack Aubrey is the Australian actor, Russell Crowe, shame on you..."

As I said before, bravo to those who succeed in the world of Academic Fiction. But even if that's the world of letters that lights the fire in the belly of writing instructors, they shouldn't cut their students off from the rest of the writing world. Those students might not be interested in feeding their writer's soul by penning tomes they read aloud to college students as part of a writing series. They might be more interested in making enough money at writing to literally feed themselves and their families. They might want to take the theoretical and combine it with the practical, just as Senator Morrill envisioned with his land-grant college idea a century and a half ago.

-----
Libby Sternberg is an Edgar-nominated author of a bunch of books ranging from young adult to historical to humorous women's fiction. She also writes under the name Libby Malin. She is Editor-in-Chief of Istoria Books.

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An Interview with "An Irreverent Goldbrick"-- Gary Alexander, author of the Vietnam novel DRAGON LADY

2011-03-20T04:13:00.000-07:00

Dragon Lady, Gary Alexander's evocative and absurdist tale of the early days of the Vietnam War is a page-turning read that will make you laugh and cry. Told from several vantage points in the protagonist's life, Dragon Lady seamlessly shifts from Saigon in 1965 through to the present day...and beyond... as the narrator tells the story of his obsession with a Vietnamese girl named Mai, his increasing unease with the U.S's involvement in Vietnam, and his reflections on his own life since his tour in Saigon. (For a brief synopsis, see the end of this post.)

DRAGON LADY IS AVAILABLE NOW -- ! Click here to go to Amazon or here to buy at Smashwords. (Get on the Istoria Books mailing list to learn of discounts, if you missed the preview discount on this book.)

A Q and A with Gary Alexander:

IB: You served in Vietnam. Could you tell us a little about that experience?
Gary: Most of my Army career was spent in clerical duties. Like Private Joe in the book, I preferred a roof over my head, and a big, clunky typewriter was my weapon of choice. Even in 1964-65, many of us had doubts about the Domino Theory. Not that we had extensive knowledge of that region and its history. It was because we learned early to doubt the wisdom of those above us. As the saying went, "There's the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way."

IB: Did you get a chance to come home on leave during your Vietnam tour?
Gary: I returned home to Bremerton, WA on leave from Vietnam in mid-1965, expecting some buzz on the rapidly-escalating struggle. The big story in the papers was Namu the Killer Whale. GIs were dying at an exponential rate, and the big deal was this critter caught in a fisherman's net. I had to hunt past the society page and the sports to find a column or two on Vietnam.

IB: Because you served before the big troop buildups, did you experience any of the fighting?
Gary: Like Private Joe, I still have a piece of shrapnel in my arm and a Purple Heart. But I'm no war hero. I was minding my own business, sound asleep on 2/7/65 when the VC mortared our compound. I was damn lucky. Two guys on the other end of our hootch were killed and a mortar that didn't explode landed two feet from my head. They were aiming for the guard tent, where troops not on guard duty sleep. It was across the sidewalk from us. The absurdity of Dragon Lady was partly "inspired" by the fact that our M-14 rifles were chained and locked under our bunks. The powers that be felt we were more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy was. Victor Charles could've walked in and slaughtered us. That attack was kind of Vietnam's Pearl Harbor; it snapped everybody out of their complacency.


Gary Alexander

IB: Could you tell us about some of the men and women with whom you served -- do you stay in touch with any of them?

Gary: This was not an all-volunteer Army, so we had plenty of folks like myself who were civilians at heart. My best buddy throughout the Army and I kept in contact for years afterward. We lost touch about 20 years ago. I regret that.

IB: Have you visited the Vietnam Memorial?
Gary: I did. I saw the name of a kid I'd known before Vietnam, but hadn't known he'd died there. I broke down.

IB: Have you ever gone back to Vietnam? Again, if so, could you share some of that experience?

Gary: I haven't gone back, but I bought a travel guide while working on Dragon Lady. It was very strange reading about train travel from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi and guided tours at the tunnels of Cu Chi.

IB: What elements of your protagonist do you think you share, if any?
Gary: Plenty. We were both irreverent goldbricks. I didn't have the stones to do some of the things he did, though.

IB: Were you a big fan of the Terry and the Pirates cartoon, as your protagonist is? If so, tell us a bit about that fascination.

Gary: I'd outgrown the comics, but Pvt. Joe wasn't the only GI who went to Vietnam with fantasies of the exotic Orient and Dragon Lady types. I hunted in vain for her.

IB: The quirky love story between Joe and Mai is at the center of Dragon Lady. Joe comes to have grave doubts about her, yet continues to pursue her. Was this typical of GIs who fell in love with Vietnamese girls?

Gary: That love story is pure fantasy, although many GIs (usually young virgins) fell hard for Vietnamese women, many of whom were prostitutes hoping for a ticket to the Land of the Big PX. The Army wisely created enough bureaucratic impediments to fizzle out the romance.

IB: You started writing Dragon Lady some time ago. Could you tell us about that process, when you started it, how many iterations it went through? What did you keep changing, trying to "get right"?

Gary: Dragon Lady took many forms over the years, so many that I can't remember the exact chronology and iterations.

IB: What inspired you to include an afterlife component to the story - what did you want the reader to think or feel during those sections?
Gary: That was the breakthrough that satisfied me, that told me I had the novel nailed. It happened when I had an MRI a few years ago. The technician asked if I had any metal in my body, saying that if I did I might feel a tug. Sure enough, I did. I was taking the test for something relatively minor, not Joe's problem. I made up the afterlife as I went. It was the most fun I had while writing Dragon Lady.

IB: Have you read any Vietnam literature yourself? If so, what and what was your reaction? What movie or book about the Vietnam war captures it most accurately for you?

Gary: A couple of movies. Don't recall the names, but remember them as Hollywood dreck. On the other hand, the books, Fire in the Lake by Frances Fitzgerald and The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam and Robert Stones's Dog Soldiers are incredible. I've reread them so much, I have them held together with rubber bands. Graham Greene's The Quiet American should be required reading at West Point.

IB: Before Dragon Lady, you wrote mostly mystery. Is mystery your reading preference? Tell us a bit about your favorite books.

Gary: My reading tastes are eclectic. I'll read most anything except romance and lawyer novels. I love Elmore Leonard. Don DeLillo too.

IB: You mention the American fabulist and satirist Ambrose Bierce in Dragon Lady. I take it you're a fan.

Gary: I picked up one of his books full of quotations and couldn't put it down. As a fellow absurdist, I felt he deserved some space in DL.

IB: Overall, what do you hope people take away from Dragon Lady?

Gary: Novelists are no different than tap dancers and opera singers and the guy they shoot out of a cannon at the circus --- we're entertainers. I want people to enjoy Dragon Lady. I've long since given up the notion that it'll change anybody's views on tilting the wrong windmills.

_________

Istoria Books Presents...
Dragon Lady
by Gary Alexander
April 2011

In 1965 Saigon, Joe, a young draftee, becomes obsessed with a Vietnam girl named Mai, his own "Dragon Lady" from his beloved Terry and the Pirates cartoon strips that his mother still sends him. As he pursues a relationship with her, Saigon churns with intrigue and rumors--will the U.S. become more involved with the Vietnamese struggle? What's going on with a special unit that's bringing in all sorts of (for the time) high tech equipment? Will the U.S. make Vietnam the 51st state and bomb aggressors to oblivion? But for Joe, the big question is--does Mai love him or will she betray more than just his heart? Gary Alexander’s intelligent voice, filled with dry wit, and his own experiences give this story a sharp sense of truth, recounting the horror and absurdity of war. Reminiscent of books such as Catch-22, Dragon Lady serves up equal measures of outrageous humor and poignant remembrance. Gary Alexander was one of 17,000 US soldiers in Vietnam that spring. When he left in the fall, there were 75,000 troops in-country.

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THE MANY FACES OF JANE

2011-03-12T05:30:00.000-08:00

Editor's Note: Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre regularly ranks among the most popular books of all time. It is often retold (Istoria Books offers a Jane-inspired novel, Sloane Hall, by Libby Sternberg) and frequently adapted to the screen. This past weekend, the latest film iteration of Jane appeared in movie theaters. What of the other versions? Read on to discover the many faces of Jane on the silver screen -- this entertaining essay by Istoria editor Hannah Sternberg is a great reflection on some great filmmaking, so sit back and enjoy!

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“MY LIVING JANE?”

by Hannah E. Sternberg

“And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you. Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for months past? Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in day...and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at times, a very delirium of desire to behold my Jane again.”

These are Edward Rochester’s words to Jane Eyre when she returns to him after a year’s unexplained absence, during much of which he was afflicted with blindness. Readers can echo his sentiments; Rochester’s longing for and rediscovery of Jane is a stormier version of a common longing among book lovers: to experience their beloved stories and characters beyond the realm of mental reflection, and to actually participate in the world created by a beloved book. This is externalized in Jasper Fforde’s 2001 novel, The Eyre Affair, in which an oddball invention enables detective Thursday Next to jump into the pages of Jane Eyre, in an effort to prevent archvillain Acheron Hades from kidnapping Jane and ruining the enduring story.

Film adaptation is the closest that readers in the real world can come to Thursday Next’s adventure inside Jane Eyre, and films like 2008’s Bronte biopic are another proof that, by using history to mimic fiction, readers continue to seek to plunge into the world those authors have created. The success of The Eyre Affair is one of many testaments to the enduring popularity of Charlotte Bronte’s original novel. While Jane Eyre is a major work critically and thematically, it also remains a popular favorite due to the escapist quality of its gothic romance, making it equally captivating on the intellectual and emotional levels.

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre renders a different impression on every reader, and a new sensation on each successive reading; therefore there can be no definitive adaptation. However, the book’s popularity and sheer entertainment value have prompted a staggering volume of attempts. At least one eponymous English-language film or television adaptation of Jane Eyre has appeared every ten years since 1910.

Added to those are dozens of spin-offs, retellings, foreign language productions, and moments of genre-mixing genius, like the 1943 horror film based on the story, I Walked with a Zombie, in which characters will explain to you their romantic/gothic roots, in case you didn’t notice the frying pan hitting you on the face the first time: “Ah yes, our Paul, strong and silent and very sad – quite the Byronic character,” one supporting character says of the romantic lead. Also among the more unusual, there’s a Hindu twist in the 1954 Bollywood retelling, Sangdil, and the recent second film adaptation of Jean Rhyse’s 1966 prequel to the story, Wide Sargasso Sea.

Jane’s many incarnations have represented shifting values in film and television production, social expectations, and even fashion. It has been sexed up and toned down, condensed and sometimes so completely altered that it’s almost unrecognizable. And despite the contributions of some of the best creative talents of the last century (Orson Welles, John Williams, and Franco Zeffirelli, to name a few), each attempt to crack the barrier between film and fiction has only succeeded at realizing a small handful of the many aspects of this moving and complex story, inviting further directors, writers and actors to try endless new approaches.

For those who've never read it, here's a snapshot of the story -- the orphaned Jane Eyre has a childhood made to inspire years of consecutive Lifetime movies. Alternately abused and neglected, she is reared in her Aunt Reed’s unloving home, Gateshead, and then sent to the brutal Lowood Institution at the age of ten to be educated, where her only childhood friend, Helen Burns, dies of untreated consumption.

After eight years at Lowood, Jane becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall, tutoring Adele Varens, ward of her Byronic master, Edward Rochester. Naturally drawn together by their passionate natures and unpretentious habits, Rochester and Jane fall in love. Meanwhile, sinister things at Thornfield go bump in the night, the work of Rochester’s mad wife Bertha Mason, whom he keeps hidden in the attic under the care of a servant. Jane learns of Bertha when she and Rochester are at the wedding altar; heartbroken, Jane then flees across the moors, is taken in by long-lost relatives, and nearly accepts an offer of marriage from one of them. However, following her instinct and a mysterious voice that calls to her across the moors, she returns to Thornfield to discover Bertha Mason has burned it to the ground before committing suicide, leaving Rochester a chastened (and crippled) widower. Jane marries him legitimately this time, and somehow they manage to live happily ever after without the aid of a therapist.

Jane Eyre is a Gothic fairytale with proto-feminist undertones and enticing escapist qualities. (Though its political forwardness is lessened, in the eyes of some feminists, by the prominence of marriage in Jane’s happy ending.) It offers a wealth of genre possibilities: castles, moors, agonizing love, and violent crazies. But to this stew Bronte adds piercing emotional clarity and strength; and what screenwriters and directors choose to include or leave out reflects not only the story’s capacity for romantic fun, but its emotional resonance for different personalities and generations. Are these filmmakers trying to capture the perfect Jane for their time, or for all time? And is it possible for anyone to kidnap her, complete, from the pages of her book?

Silent Picture Shows and FrankenEyre

Jane Eyre was published in 1847, when female protagonists rarely supported themselves economically or cultivated their own morals without male guidance. While it was shocking in its own time, it’s hard to believe that later, more jaded and less sheltered generations would find the same discomfort with its less compromising details. Nonetheless, the earliest sound film attempts replaced darker emotional contention with escapist romantic fantasy, and presented an unsexed Jane and Rochester, making their attraction more sentimental than passionate. The previous silent adaptations, limited by lack of dialog, presumably also greatly simplified the tale, if the only surviving one of these eight films is representative.

The story went through eight silent picture iterations and its first talkie adaptation (in 1934, starring Virginia Bruce and Colin “Dr. Frankenstein” Clive) before a team of writers took the risk of intimating that Rochester’s ward Adele Varens was the product of an illicit affair, a detail made clear in Bronte’s original novel. In these first nine film adaptations, Adele is sometimes portrayed as Rochester’s niece, sometimes his legitimate daughter by his first marriage, or sometimes simply his legal ward of unexplained origins. Bronte’s original (and unflattering) tale of Rochester’s wild days with Adele’s mother, Celine, a French dancer, is carefully passed over.

Likewise, in many of the early versions, Rochester’s desperate attempt at bigamy – his aborted wedding to Jane – is “fixed” to present a more heroic image. In a 1918 silent version, Woman and Wife, Rochester actually believes his first wife to be dead, and it is her brother who has been caring for her in secret; the brother attempts to blackmail Rochester before his second wedding, and it is this scheme which reveals the truth to Jane, who flees. Too bad they didn’t reuse this plot for the ’34 version; it would have been the perfect opportunity for Clive to resurrect the most memorable line of his career: “IT’S ALIVE!”

In the 1934 Bruce/Clive talkie, Rochester is in the process of obtaining an annulment when he falls in love with Jane, though he continues to hide Bertha from Jane anyway. Jane discovers the secret when Bertha drifts into the parlor where wedding preparations are underway, and announces herself with a vapid grin, addressing Rochester and the audience: “Edward, my husband, I’ve come such a long way! I’ve been searching for you everywhere. Oh, are we going to be married again?”

Jane runs despite Rochester’s explanations, but since she’s already in possession of her inheritance in this adaptation, she has enough cash for a safe ride and a nice place to stay for the night. At least one must assume this is what carried her to the next scene, where she is calmly and happily dishing out soup in a local mission. Why then did she seek employment as a governess in the first place? Probably because she’d heard it was a good way to meet people.

A quagmire of sartorial and narrative confusion, 1934’s Jane Eyre is a typically anachronistic and sugarcoated costume drama. One year earlier, in 1933, The Private Life of Henry VIII had brought the period drama back to the cinema, where it had been mostly absent since the advent of sound. The genre’s popularity at this time depended in large part on glamorization, so it’s no surprise that Virginia Bruce is a far cry from the “poor, obscure, plain and little” Jane of Bronte’s novel, or that Colin Clive is neither “stern” nor “past youth.”

This adaptation also enters the fine tradition of an opening shot on a portion of the “first page” of the novel, without actually reproducing the original’s first lines. The motif of the book’s pages returns again to complete the transition between Jane’s childhood and adulthood, rather than a first-person voice over. The transition is a welcome one, since Jean Darling painfully struggles to get her mouth around young Jane’s lines, though adult Virginia Bruce’s ever-present smile decimates the illusion of character equally well.

Thornfield is a merry place indeed, where the inhabitants are uniformly playful and attractive and content, and the occasional sourceless shriek won’t spoil their antics – it’s probably just the house settling anyway. Rochester’s “niece” Adele sets about filling her role as comic relief with all the frenetic aimlessness of a crack addict, getting stuck in trees and vases at the most convenient moments to provide everyone with a laugh and allow a tender, confidential glance between the hero and heroine.

After viewing the 1934 Jane Eyre, it is possible to conclude that the wealth of subsequent adaptations have all been part of a collective effort to forget that this one had ever happened. Fortunately, its successor was a more flattering testament to the standards of its own time.

Citizen Jane

The first artistically accomplished sound film of the story appeared in 1944, when Robert Stevenson directed a feature adaptation starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles, and boasting a screenplay by John Houseman and novelist Aldous Huxley under the story editorship of Val Lewton.

Bernard Herrmann, composer for Welles’s most acclaimed films, Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, and creator of the iconic music for Psycho, contributes a classically sweeping score. The product is an atmospheric and sophisticated Gothic fantasy reminiscent of the 1940 romantic literary thriller Rebecca, a comparison encouraged by producers with the employment of the two films’ common star, Fontaine.

Both adaptations also capitalize on the narrative shock value of their sources while painting the emotional conflicts that result with comfortingly broad strokes – these stories are meant ultimately to confirm the viewer’s fantasies about stormy passion, rather than to challenge them. Another film that inevitably draws comparison is 1939’s Oscar-winning Wuthering Heights, starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, in which Heathcliff joins Cathy in death before his status as a romantic hero is degraded by his antagonistic treatment of the second generation of their twisted family tree, as witnessed in the original novel.

Relatively still one of the earlier adaptations (as only the second sound film), 1944’s Jane Eyre remains today one of the most accomplished, narratively and artistically. Black and white photography is used expressively, with instances of the dramatic camera angles, deep focus and pervasive chiaroscuro characteristic of Welles’s work – Welles admitted to Peter Bogdanovich, “Oh, I invented some of the shots.”[1] Shots such as that of Lowood’s gate and sign, in which a canted camera peers up at the strong vertical bars of the fence in seething fog, are strongly reminiscent of compositions in Welles’s most well-known works, and capture the foreboding, Gothic atmosphere of the novel.

Welles was, in fact, the producer of the film, but explained, “I don’t think an actor should be a producer unless he directs, so I didn’t use the credit…And I don’t want to take credit away from [director Robert Stevenson], all of which he deserves.”[2]

Welles certainly took control of his own role, filling it with the moodiness, cynical pride and physical power required of Rochester – but for some reason he failed to feign a convincing British accent, instead affecting a privileged drawl that nearly obliterates some of his lines. Corsets and dieting also played a part in facilitating Welles in his only role as a classic Hollywood romantic leading man. His blazing, dark eyes, however, are the most captivating participants in his performance, and with them he created an undeniably brooding and gravitational presence. This was the role he had intended to launch his Hollywood acting career, upon which he would depend to fund his many ill-fated independent projects.

The early segments covering Jane’s childhood are surprisingly moving and well-played, featuring Peggy Ann Garner as young Jane and Elizabeth Taylor in the uncredited role of Helen Burns. Garner has sufficient power on the screen for an actor her age, but it’s Taylor’s already mesmerizing presence that drives their scenes together. This era of Jane’s life is the portion of the book most often passed over in film, along with her long sojourn at Moor House (the home of her long-lost cousins), as dead weights on either end of the main plot involving Rochester. Condensation and insubstantial child acting sometimes rob these segments of their emotional strength, but Stevenson (who went on to direct Mary Poppins) eases a solid performance out of even his youngest thespians.

Jane’s adult life, however, gears down into classic ’40s Hollywood melodrama, with Joan Fontaine’s radiance once again conflicting with the book’s requirements of a small and plain girl, and her portrayal of suppressed passion reduced to shining puppy eyes. In the book, Jane’s modesty isn’t to be confused with meekness, but Fontaine’s heroine more frequently looks up to Rochester with awe than observant intelligence. The film’s tagline sums up its attitude toward translating the original’s thematic depth into popular appeal: it’s “a love story every woman would die a thousand deaths to live!”

Huxley and Houseman’s adaptation is intelligent and elegant, however. Unlike 1934’s illogical mess, Huxley and Houseman’s telescoping of events has a clever symmetry: for example, eliminating Moor House in favor of a second return to Gateshead after Jane’s escape. This adaptation repeats the device of highlighting “excerpts” from the novel onscreen to broach time transitions; this time, accompanied by Joan Fontaine’s first-person voice-over.

This adaptation maintains a strong and straightforward melodramatic tone that is a delight for those willing to escape into it, and represents an immense leap forward for visual and narrative style. Its foggy soundstages and painted castles are among some of the best of its time, and remain thoroughly entertaining today. However, with Orson Welles’s commanding presence in front of and behind the camera, ultimately this film is more Rochester’s story than Jane’s.

General Rochester, Sir

After 1944’s benchmark production, there were several relatively short made-for-TV stagings of the story in the ’50s and ’60s. The next widely recognized (and watchable) adaptation stars George C. Scott and Susannah York, and aired on NBC on March 24, 1971. It was shot on 35mm at 1.33:1 aspect ratio (television full screen) and screened theatrically in Europe and Asia, though it aired only as a television movie in the States. In 1972, it won an Emmy for Best Achievement in Music Composition with a score by the upcoming composer John Williams. Both stars were also nominated that year for their leading roles.

Despite the deterioration of age on many current copies available on DVD, this film’s beautiful sun-drenched landscapes and sweeping, melancholy shots across the moors bring the novel’s setting and imagery to life in a way rarely seen in the adaptations that were to follow it on TV in the next couple decades.

The late ’60s/early ’70s flavor of some details in costume and hair design are jarring, but don’t exceed by much the usual superimposition of current fashion onto historical dress apparent in many period films, made more noticeable by its removal from current style. Lapses in period detail are unfortunately hobbling to this otherwise carefully styled adaptation, though moderate enough to be ignored with some effort – Susannah York may be haunted by the ghost of blue eyeshadow, but “Low Rider” doesn’t haunt the soundtrack.

Filmed at Ripley Castle in Yorkshire and in London’s Pinewood Studios, the movie displays a coherent use of space that provides context for the story. Not only are the sets decorated to period satisfaction, but the editing and cinematography combine to create a sense of the castle’s layout that is consistent and realistic. The interplay of setting and editing allow the viewer to follow Jane through a realistic manor home, discovering its hidden secrets. The use of location shooting in this film is also a sign of that rising trend in filmmaking, a departure from 1944’s soundstage production.

Both Scott and York are old for their roles. In the book, Jane is 18 and Rochester is recently in his 40s, but York is 30 and Scott is a very weathered 44 – by his looks he could have easily been in his mid 50s. Instead of playing young, they use their not-unreasonable ages to their advantage, creating a much quieter and more mature dynamic between Rochester and Jane that reconciles the stormy passion of their courtship with their eventual peaceful end.

Scott’s accent is sometimes a little stretched, which is at least better than being grotesque, and his brusqueness only highlights a masculine tenderness: in one of the most moving scenes, after Jane slips away from Rochester and his mad wife in disgust, he slides down the wall and talks to Bertha in eerily calm tones: “What shall we do tonight? Shall I play for you, and sing? Will you sit with me and tell me the story of your day? Shall you hold my head on your breast whilst I sleep?”

This is an entirely fabricated piece of dialog, but it supplies the same emotional justification for Rochester’s crime that later omitted portions of their parting scene would have made clear, and it does so in an original and chilling way. In the parting dialog as it exists in this adaptation, when Scott roars, “Everything that’s mine is yours!” the sentiment is vulnerable, but the delivery is powerful, again filling verbal gaps with emotional intensity and meaning, which York’s silent acting complements just as potently.

The deliberate, quiet tone sets this adaptation up for the most natural and understated movie ending of the story. Other adaptations, like the 1944 film, maintain a tone just as passionate and thundery as the rest of the story for the final reunion, usually accompanied by a voice-over describing the couple’s happy marriage, a summary of the book’s final chapter. Rochester grasps Jane passionately into his arms, and cries out in angst-laden tones; the music swells; metaphorical language is deployed mercilessly.

Like the rest of the 1971 film, this ending is without voice-over, but the soothing unity of Rochester and Jane’s embrace says everything the viewer needs to know about their future. There is no storm of tears, though Jane quietly lets a few drops roll, and instead of a roaring, tempestuous confirmation of love there is a gently humorous exchange as Rochester attempts to discover whether Jane will still marry him, without bluntly asking her the question. This does in fact resemble facets of the book’s final chapters, but its interpretation on the screen is gentler and subtler, a refreshing way to end this adaptation – by remaining faithful to the established tone of the retelling rather than single-mindedly pursuing precision to the book.

Attack of the Clones

In the same decade, the BBC made its first miniseries adaptation of the novel, followed ten years later by its second attempt, both of which have inspired the lasting devotion of raging book fanatics. That’s their problem. The BBC Eyre attempts of the ’70s and ’80s prove why bringing the book, word-for-word, to the screen can be the least successful way to adapt a classic novel.

Victorian and other pre-film literature have a distinctly different flavor from modern writing trends, not just in the language and moral themes, but in the pacing and structure of the story. Even films of modern literature require alteration to ease the transition between mediums. Lifting a book’s plot and characters into a two-hour feature or a six-hour miniseries is often a thematically reductive process, and it takes courage to ruthlessly hack apart what fans for decades have known and loved. The confidence to do this springs from a thorough understanding of what made the original captivating, a dissection of the dramatically necessary, the currently relevant, and the visually promising elements from the verbal tissue that holds it together.

Just as a feature-length adaptation can crash by trimming too close, a miniseries adaptation can fail at capturing a book’s spirit by becoming mired in a scrupulous recreation of every detail of the original’s plot. This technique appeals to Brontephiles who only want to reread the book on the screen rather than see it sullied by another writer’s interpretation, but the resulting mimicry of “real” Victorian speech and etiquette is about as twee as the local Renaissance Faire, and bears as much resemblance to historical truth. This disturbing trend is evident in the book-fan-popular 1983 BBC Jane Eyre starring Timothy Dalton (for those who like their Rochester shaken, not stirred) and Zelah Clarke.

The 1983 adaptation (I use the term loosely here) is one of probably hundreds of ripped-from-the-book dramatizations produced by the BBC; those of the ’70s and ’80s are notable for their scrupulous faithfulness. “Faithfulness” might not be a strong enough word. These DVDs are SparkNotes desperate ninth graders can watch.

In this Jane Eyre, entire dialogs are lifted nearly word-for-word from the text, while the story’s progression is left so rigidly intact that episodes frequently end at awkward moments with neither a clearly suspenseful cliffhanger nor a fulfilling closure marking the end of an act. This method is surprisingly insensitive both to the subtlety of the original novel’s longer and more methodical story structure, and to the requirements of episodic television storytelling.

Another defining quality of the BBC-produced historical dramas of the ’70s and ’80s is their blissful freedom from any kind of redeeming production value. Mysterious thumps and creaks abound even at Gateshead scenes, where there is no crazy attic-dweller to provide an excuse for poor sound engineering. Outdoor shots have colder, paler color balance which appears to be the unintentional result of mixing light sources. Sets and costumes are designed with a theatrical sumptuousness which may hold up well from a distance but appear clumsy and artificial when presented in the more intimate window of the small screen.

The camera itself is more passive than a proscenium. Shots are regularly anchored by safely symmetrical framing, following characters with short pans or spastic zooms to maintain the centrality of the subject. Depth is collapsed by consistently eye-level, horizontal camera angles, and the result is almost entirely two-dimensional, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere which obliterates any sense of scale, and for all the audience knows could be hiding an actor’s lack of pants.

The occasional use of extreme upward or downward angles, such as in the first interview between young Jane and Brocklehurst, results only in appearing cartoonish by contrast, and the angle is not maintained consistently in subsequent shots, creating a stranded, confused feeling of spatial relation between the characters. This confusion is increased by an agonizing monotony of shot-reverse-shot close-ups that strand characters with no sense of relative location.

To make composition an invisible part of the cinematography can be as acceptable an artistic choice as any other when well-executed, but in this case, rather than deliberate invisibility, the careless clumsiness of the composition appears only to be an the result of carelessness and lack of skill. It’s as if these adaptors tried to ignore cinematography as an intellectual tool for storytelling, as if trying to write wholly without adjectives because they distract from the verbs and nouns.

This, in my mind, is its most fatal flaw. The 1983 BBC Jane Eyre is not a deliberately cinematic work; it’s a life-sized puppet act caught on tape. Fans of its faithfulness tend to brush off its “dated” or “theatrical” feel as a minor drawback, as if the sole determinants for any quality adaptation must be the writing and acting. But the form (cinematography) becomes a part of the content in the same way that an author’s specific use of language contributes the distinctive tone of a book. Claiming that bad production technique is irrelevant in a miniseries like Jane Eyre is like saying a translator’s bad grammar is excusable if the material he’s working from is already a classic.

This miniseries is comfort food for the Cultivated Mind – not too artistically refined or that healthy in large doses, but a fun entertainment treat akin to reading a romance novel. Its fatal flaw is also its redeeming quality: it’s a treat for those who simply want to see their favorite scenes enacted, any way and any how. The 1983 miniseries features scenes nearly every other adaptation leaves out, such as the gypsy fortune-teller scene, and contains the most complete enactment of Jane and Rochester’s parting dialog that I’ve seen in an adaptation yet. Though like every other adaptation, it carefully leaves out Rochester’s account of the abandonment of his previous mistresses before Adele’s mother. No one’s that perfect.

In 1983, the BBC produced a Jane Eyre the viewer can sit back and absorb with little effort – every development is dropped in the viewer’s lap with a thorough explanation. This means, oddly, that one of the most accurate adaptations of this novel is possibly also one of the most dumbed-down (though it’s hard to beat 1934 for sheer, brain-imploding vapidity). But somehow, Bronte’s Jane eludes this scrupulous attempt at re-creation.

Jane in the Land of the Midnight Sun

On the other end of the artistic spectrum is Italian director Franco Zeffirelli and his meticulously photographed 1996 feature Jane Eyre, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt, and supported by a sparkling cast: Anna Paquin as young Jane, Joan Plowright as Mrs. Fairfax, Fiona Shaw as Aunt “Petunia” Reed, Geraldine Chaplin as Mrs. Scatcherd, and British period drama regulars Amanda Root and Samuel West as Miss Temple and St. John Rivers. And then there’s Australian supermodel Elle Macpherson as Blanche Ingram: she doesn’t really need Rochester’s money, she can just launch her own line of Victorian lingerie.

Unlike the five-and-a-half-hour-long 1983 mini that took the viewer by the hand and walked her through the story, Zeffirelli’s version unfolds quietly, with the expectation that the viewer will follow tacitly down dark and sometimes unexplained corridors – the film opens with Jane being propelled forcefully into the Red Room, though the reasons for the punishment or her fear of it are not revealed.

Subtlety and quietness guide the script; that is, until the delicacy is shattered by an unexpectedly contrived moment – as when Jane reminds Adele at her sketchpad that “the shadows are as important as the light,” just as she chases after a conversation with Rochester. At other moments, the simplicity of the dialog is spot-on in establishing both mystery and eventual double-meaning, as when Fairfax (the housekeeper) pointedly chides Grace Poole (Bertha’s caretaker), “Remember instructions” – the uninitiated viewer, and Jane, interpret this as a warning to the servant to keep quiet, when in fact Fairfax alludes to Rochester’s edict to keep the maniac in the attic hidden.

While the earliest adaptations sought melodrama and omitted Rochester’s unappealing moral confusion, Zeffirelli’s film trims out coincidence, religion and the supernatural. The result is a story that is physically believable, and possibly more appealing to the crowd that easily tires of romantic stretches of the imagination. Instead of wandering the moors for three days, lost and hungry, Jane returns to Gateshead when she escapes Thornfield, and she takes the coach. The structure is similar to the circular construction generated in the 1944 adaptation, telescoping several scattered plot events into a short but logical sequence. The melodramatic flair is still echoed in her fainting spell and fever once she arrives, in this case apparently caused by her failure to pack snacks for the trip.

The acting, too, is understated – there are few passionate rages and even fewer rains of tears. Gainsbourg is a plain, inexperienced, intelligent-looking Jane, who expresses much in silence. But while her inquisitive face promises internal intricacy, her external restraint renders her aloof not only from other characters, but from the audience itself. Likewise, Hurt’s Rochester is bitter and depressed, but he lacks the spark and charisma that animates that passionate character. If every individual actor must select a handful of features to represent his character, Hurt seems to have chosen the supporting rather than the defining moods of Rochester.

Child Oscar-winner Anna Paquin is far more passionate and engaging as young Jane. Her fiery temper and acts of rebellion raise her above the level of the pity-grabbing abused child, and her affection for Helen Burns, her only friend, is sincere and tender. Unfortunately, Paquin’s portrayal has little reflection in the mature Jane played by Gainsbourg – though Lowood has supposedly tamed the rebellion out of her, it’s hard to believe that the strict school would have obliterated her personality so completely.

The lighting and cinematography in this film are brilliantly, chillingly beautiful – light often has a cold, hard quality that complements the crisp details of Jane’s least happy settings: the mathematical rigidity of doors and staircases at Gateshead, which seem to actively exclude and repel her, and the harsh, unforgiving bareness of Lowood. Like the 1971 film version, this feature also excels at establishing a sense of place, successfully connecting spaces within a single building, and giving them a convincing scale.

Because the shots are so carefully composed and lighted, it’s a surprise that one of the most noticeable flaws is the banishment of darkness. While each shot within itself is painstakingly executed, the continuity between them regarding the time of day and quality of light is spastic. Many night scenes are flooded with light that is far too pervasive and bright to represent the moon or a grated fire. But worse still are scenes that alternate between the appropriate darkness of night and this eerie brightness, like the sequence in which Jane and Rochester tend to the wounded Mr. Mason.

Mason arrives with dusk and is shown to his room – then a shot showing the pitch darkness outside is followed by the drunken Grace Poole stumbling away from the attic and down a hall across which the windows cast cold, clear and bright squares of light. Then there’s an exterior shot showing Thornfield Hall from a distance, indicating evening. This cuts to Jane, dozing at her dressing table and still in her daily clothes; in story-time, it is deep in the night, after all the guests have finally gone to bed. Jane hears a scream and runs first to Adele’s room, which is bathed in piercing light. Rochester rushes to find Jane in the corridor, and they hustle past barely dimmed windows to the attic, where it is bright enough for Mason’s blood to appear a vibrant orange-red. However, outside where the carriage is being readied, the courtyard is cloaked in thick darkness, highlighted by the bright circle cast by a lantern. Mason is ushered from his morning-bright room into the nighttime courtyard and rides away to seek a land where time makes sense.

Incongruity such as this may break the temporary suspension of reality that viewers expect from a costume romance, but it doesn’t entirely disqualify the film from merit. Like a difficult book, Zeffirelli’s Jane Eyre takes a couple readings and some thought to become clear, but the visual satisfaction and uniquely non-melodramatic approach to the story are worth the effort, focusing on the story’s aspects of quiet melancholy and nuance of character.

Hunk a’ Hunk a’ Burning Bed

Jane made a return to the small screen in the BBC’s 2006 Jane Eyre, featuring a script, penned by Sandy Welch, that is highly evolved from that network’s previous example 23 years earlier.

Sandy Welch is essentially God’s gift to Brit-actor fangirls, the breed that appreciates waistcoats and thinks tights can be manly. Welch already has a reputation with the army of squealers for actor Richard Armitage, star of the 2004 miniseries North and South (an industrial revolution-inspired romance, not to be confused with the American mini about the Civil War). In her adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1854 novel of the same name, Welch displayed an ability to fearlessly undo what an era famous for prudishness had left as its legacy. This distinction doesn’t necessarily rank highest on the list of many reasons that qualify Welch to take on Jane Eyre, but it’s the most memorable.

Joining screenwriter Welch in her Jane Eyre adaptation is BAFTA-winning director of Bleak House, Susanna White. This 2006 Jane Eyre marks the third attempt on the story by the BBC, and displays an interesting contrast in attitude from the previous two. Director Susanna White takes Welch’s already vivid and fast-paced script (blink and you’ll miss Jane’s childhood) and enhances it with cinematic technique and photography designed for the small screen, always with an eye for what makes historical drama click: intimacy, escapism, intensity, and sympathy. This increased attention to technical and artistic detail can be seen in other historical TV miniseries in the last ten years, including Granada/ITV’s 2002 The Forsyte Saga, A&E/United Television’s 1999 Horatio Hornblower series, and, as mentioned, BBC’s 2004 North and South. At last, British television period drama is no longer exclusively the realm of visibly meager budgets and photographic carelessness (though, like an annoying cousin, they do still tend to pop up, especially around holidays).

The new cast is packed with Masterpiece Theater vets in the many crucial minor roles, giving the parts of servants, nobility and provincial churchgoers realism and personality without verging too far down the chasm of Twee. In a Bronte reunion, three members of the cast of Anne Bronte’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1996) appear again in Eyre: Tara Fitzgerald, the reserved heroine of Tenant, is the aunt-of-reserved-heroine, Mrs. Reed, character actress extraordinaire Pam Ferris, Markham’s fussy mother in Tenant, is the slightly more frightening Grace Poole; and Toby Stephens, who played the kind and love-struck Gilbert Markham in Tenant takes on the stern (and lovestruck) Rochester here.

Stephens is no James Bond, but he was his nemesis in Die Another Day, which was close enough for this time around. On the Aspects of Rochester continuum, Stephens checks in at charming with extra points for tortured and abrupt. He’s a little easier for a modern audience to admire than his book counterpart – his deep frown and dismissive brusqueness in his first formal interview with Jane hint at a proud temper, but he never verges on the less appealing, more manipulative side of Rochester’s need to control.

At the same time, Stephens makes it believable that, even when Rochester plays cruel games on Jane, she will forgive and continue to love him. It’s less believable when he calls himself ugly or old, as the fangirls will be the first to admit – in real life Stephens is, in fact, nearly Rochester’s age, but he doesn’t look it. After his second close encounter with fire, he’s hardly more “ghastly” than Gerard Butler’s Phantom of the Opera, another film in which a pretty guy is cast in a role supposedly defined by a certain amount of unforgiving unattractiveness. Stephens plays an excellent Rochester, he just isn’t allowed to look like one.

Most impressive is newcomer Ruth Wilson as the mature Jane Eyre, who, with courageously ordinary looks and expressive, thoughtful eyes, manages to combine the book’s conflicting descriptions of ethereal charm and unfashionable plainness. At moments, her pale face and dark, sad eyes do seem fairylike; but she also suffers from blushes that dye her face a fierce red, and when she cries, her face twitches and distends in a distinctly unHollywood way. If the 1944 version was Rochester’s story, this adaptation most definitely belongs to Ruth Wilson’s movingly real Jane.

There is no first-person voice-over that allows Jane to describe her complex inner states – it all shines through Wilson’s eyes, the awkward clasping of her hands, the occasional and brief mischievous smile. She is believably Rochester’s intellectual and spiritual equal; and she’s also believably in love with him without the frozen closetedness of Charlotte Gainsbourg or the oozy puppy eyes of Joan Fontaine.

Wilson and Stephens have the natural, comfortable chemistry that makes the book’s knotty, endless dialogs feel like witty banter rather than enacted speeches. Welch reorders, slims down, and rewrites much of these famous interviews without losing a sense of their original interplay of power and vulnerability, swerving from teasing to confession. Verbal exposition (especially Rochester’s) is replaced with visual storytelling cleverly woven in by White’s direction.

The best example of this is when Rochester describes Adele’s origins. The story begins with his description to Jane of his sumptuous Parisian lifestyle, and while he speaks to her the camera cuts to a lushly decorated hotel room, wandering over its features like the actor of Jane’s imagination. Then, as the narrative becomes more intense, Rochester’s voice suddenly asks, “Are you still with me, Jane?” and without cutting away from the image of the flashback, Jane’s voice answers, “I’m here, sir.” Rochester continues to narrate, but the images complement rather than repeat what he says, so that only in combination does the full story become apparent. Rochester vaguely relates that jealousy had gripped him, and as he speaks his mistress enters with her other lover. Rochester stops narrating and the viewer overhears, as he did, their scornful discussion of him. Then the image and sound cut back to Rochester and Jane at Thornfield, as Rochester dryly sums up the pair’s fate and his acquisition of Adele.

In other moments, however, there are visual blunders just as bad as Zeffirelli’s midnight sunshine. When Jane and Rochester approach each other unknowingly for the first time on a foggy road, shots of each are intercut with gentle, innocent music on Jane and thundering music on Rochester, with a result more like Jaws than a Gothic fairy tale. Similarly overdone is the scene near the end, where Jane hears Rochester’s voice supernaturally broadcast across the moors. The sound quality is beautifully real, but in an original flourish (there’s no imagery to this effect in the book) Jane’s rising passion and purpose is illustrated through quick cuts on shots of a rushing brook. I understand the metaphor, but the presentation is just as bad as any of 1983’s expository speeches – the only way to make it more painfully obvious would be to have Charlotte Bronte walk onscreen and start riffing, ala her sister in 1992’s Wuthering Heights.

These moments, and other small sell-outs – the attractiveness of Rochester, the softening of the story and characters’ harsher edges – aren’t as disappointing when considered in context. That’s because the 2006 Jane Eyre isn’t pretending to be anything more or less than it really is: corset-busting escapism. Its complexity is in emotion and not intellectual theme; it conforms to the current demands of its intelligent but melodrama-hungry audience, and in this way it’s the most tightly and purposefully constructed adaptation since 1944.

In fact, its exploitation of the sexual tension undercurrent in the original material resulted in a sometimes-hilarious conflict between new viewers and book-huggers when the series first aired. On one hand, outraged Bronteites ranted against the making out, hand-holding and embracing, as if Jane had never been “kissed repeatedly” or otherwise handled by Rochester in the original; but their opponents, a newly-founded league of Toby Stephens devotees, supported the embellished PDA a little too…hotly.

The truth is, Welch does take it a little too far. Just as her North and South, though elegantly adapted, probably owed its place in many fangirls’ hearts in part for Richard Armitage’s non-Victorian kissing demonstration, her Jane Eyre occasionally drops the façade of tasteful allusion and goes straight for sexual appeal. The unwritten caresses that generations of heated imaginations have placed at crucial moments are not forgotten here, although sometimes the rest of the crucial moment is.

Jane and Rochester’s spectacularly complex parting scene is reduced to heavy macking on Jane’s bed in this version. She doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere, but maybe that’s why Rochester is so surprised the next morning. This takes the dramatic rise and fall out of their dialog, but it also allows the scene to be broken up and seeded as flashbacks during Jane’s sojourn at Moor House, keeping the drama alive in that otherwise dry stretch of the story – the third episode ends with Jane removing her wedding gown, and the fourth opens with her wandering the moors, interjections of memory unraveling the mystery of what happened in between. In this case, clever presentation is cheapened by the over-simplified, obviously anachronistic material it contains, making this adaptation a good example of both what is satisfying and disappointing in the latest trends in bringing literature to film.

“Enchantment in the Very Hour”

“And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I cannot see, but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst. Whatever, whoever you are, be perceptible to the touch, or I cannot live!”

He groped; I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine.

“Her very fingers!” he cried; “her small, slight fingers! If so, there must be more of her.”

The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my shoulder, neck, waist – I was entwined and gathered to him.

“Is it Jane? What is it? This is her shape – this is her size –”

“And this is her voice,” I added. “She is all here.”

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Avid readers see with their minds. The sensory experience of a novel is purely imaginative, the reader’s blind groping for perception answered by the author’s careful guidance. Film is also largely dependent on the viewer’s imagination, although the physical reality of visual and aural stimulation may lead some to believe it replaces the role of individual imagination in the experience of a story. That belief is intensely incorrect.

If film is the most physical way for devoted readers to plunge into Jane Eyre, they will be disappointed if they expect to find her “all here.” Film, like literature, is not just a medium for telling stories, but for inviting the viewer to experience those stories individually and imaginatively. It’s up to the viewer whether, like Rochester, he prefers the presence of Jane to the return of complete physical sensation.

I’ve been asked, while I conducted research on this article, whether I got sick of watching the same story over and over again. I never have, because none of these films creates the same experience. They aren’t copies of the same entity, but its offspring. This also means that none of them are capable of re-creating the exact tone of the original. Since the world of the novel exists slightly differently in the mind of each reader, film adaptation instead strives to communicate one such a world to a crowd of fresh minds, an enchanted few hours in which one person’s dreams blend slightly with reality to cross into the viewer’s imagination.

It’s just as easy to pick and choose which improvements would make Zelah Clarke, Joan Fontaine or Ruth Wilson into the ultimate Jane Eyre as it is to look in the mirror and rattle off the alterations one would make upon oneself to achieve physical perfection. The effectiveness of the exercise is about the same.

Jane Eyre, so firmly established in the imaginations of readers long before the invention of cinema, refuses to part from her original medium complete, revealing herself only piece by piece as she does to blind Rochester. And, like the best book, a good film will simultaneously lift a viewer out of herself, and plunge her more deeply into the world of imagination, the only place where Jane can be found complete.

[1] p. 175, Orson Welles & Peter Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles, revised and with a new introduction, 1998 Da Capo Press, New York

[2] Ibid.

In addition to being an editor at Istoria Books, Hannah Sternberg is an author, whose debut novel, Queens of All the Earth, a retelling of A Room with a View, will be released this June.

___________

Stop back for thoughts on the latest Jane Eyre film! And in the meantime, take advantage of Istoria Books' limited-time-offer of the Eyre-inspired Sloane Hall by Libby Sternberg for only 99 cents!

An Open Letter to Book Review Editors

2011-02-23T03:45:00.000-08:00

Dear Book Review Editor:

As an author myself, and now as a publisher, I'm a big fan of book blogs that review books and allow authors to interact with readers.

However, authors and publishers alike know that print reviews are crucial, as well. If you work for one of the big print reviewers--at Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, national magazines or city newspapers --you already know you have a great deal of influence on what books will sell well.

In fact, a small print publisher I know, who--like all small presses--struggles to get attention for his quality offerings, told me he can count on a several-thousand-copies sales jump if one of his books manages to snag a review in one of your publications. Several thousand is often a small press's full print run for an offering.

Through tradition and quality reviewing, your publications have built reputations that readers rely on.

Time marches on, though, and now you have to confront the reality of e-books. While many book blogs have embraced digital books and review them on an equal footing with print books, many of you print reviewers are still wrestling with your e-book review policy. A quick email survey of print pubication reviewers revealed to me that most of you aren't reviewing e-books yet and many of you haven't thought about how you'll handle them if you do decide to review them.

The questions you probably face are:

Should we only review e-book editions of print books we previously failed to review?
Should we only review e-books by print-published authors, especially well-known authors?
Should we only review e-books offered by the e-book arms of the big print publishing companies?
Should we review e-books by independent, unknown authors and from e-publishers not affiliated with big print publishing houses?

I would suggest that if you answer yes to the first three questions, thus restricting your e-book reviews to well-knowns, your reviews will have limited value. Readers of e-books don't need guidance on authors they already know or have heard of, so much as they need counsel on and exposure to digital authors they don't know or haven't heard of.

Because e-publishing allows authors to go directly to reading consumers -- bypassing print publishing and bookstore "gatekeepers" -- readers confront a vast array of offerings, many of them only available digitally. Some of these books are definitely worthy of attention.

And yes, some of them are not good at all--poorly written, marginally edited, and maybe even incorrectly formatted for digital platforms.

Right now, readers of e-books rely on book blogs, recommendations from friends, email groups devoted to e-book news, and the sampling feature of e-book publishing (where readers can download free samples of books before purchasing) in order to make purchase decisions.

Your reviewers could be providing a tremendous service to these readers by joining the growing conversation.

But here's a change you'll face as you approach this new field. Currently, your reviewers can afford to be reactive. They can sit and wait for publishers to send them ARCs and press releases months before a publishing date. They choose--or you direct them to choose-- from these offerings, delivered to their very cubicle, and decide what to review, with a fairly long lead time to read the book and write the review.

However, many, many e-book authors won't know how to reach you or won't be able to grab your attention (even small publishers such as ours might find this a challenge, as well!).

And, because e-publishing is faster than print publishing, with only a few months between signing of a contract and "publication," long lead times between receipt of an e-ARC and the release of the actual e-book disappear.

Therefore, your e-book reviewers will have to be more proactive if they're going to identify worthy offerings for their readers.

And they're either going to have to be faster or rethink the "rules" about posting reviews immediately before publication of a book.

In the e-book world, after all, books won't vanish from shelves before you have a chance to review them. In other words, if an e-book comes out in March, and you don't write your review until April or May or even later, the review still matters.

It may seem counterintuitive to suggest you expand your book review coverage to include e-books when many of you are facing shrinking column inches for book reviews at all. But the e-book market is rapidly expanding. You've read the stories yourself, I'm sure. A larger and larger percentage of publishers' revenues are coming from e-book sales.

You ignore that growing market at your peril. Start the conversation now about how you'll handle e-book reviews, keeping in mind that this is a whole new world. The e-book market is different--it's faster, it's more varied, it contains fewer guideposts, and it requires nimble and proactive review policies.

Thanks for listening.

Sincerely,
Libby Sternberg
Editor-in-Chief
Istoria Books
eBooks You Want to Read at Prices You Want to Pay
www.IstoriaBooks.com

MiniReads

2011-02-15T16:15:00.000-08:00

by Hannah Sternberg

I've recently been in the habit of reading poetry on the Metro. My commute is about twenty minutes of training bracketed by ten-minute walks. The first walk jogs my brain awake; the second walk I usually spend running into things while furiously scanning my BlackBerry to discover what I'm already missing at work; and the Metro ride in between is a brief moment of every day when I cannot walk, and am cut off from all cell signals--I have no choice but to read. Not that I would choose anything else for that moment.

At work, I'm immured in policy papers and current affairs books. At home in the evening, I play a desperate game of catch-up among piles of history books ("I always wanted to know more about that..."). But the Metro ride, I've turned into a moment of reflection, a brief pause on information-gathering just as it's a brief pause on walking and telecommunication. It started with the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters; I determined to read it through, as I'd promised I'd lend it to a friend when I was done. Now Walt Whitman soothes my longing for lilacs. Maybe this spring will bring the antidote to my frequent complaint, "I wish I'd read more Keats..."

It also made me realize that ePublishing is a unique opportunity to bring out new works in shorter formats, whether they're poems, short stories or novellas. The little guys often get short shrift in the publishing world. Poetry has been consigned to the university presses and back corners of bookstores, and short stories are often anthologized generically, with successful single-author collections only issuing from previously well-known writers of full-length novels. Novellas are rare; I secretly suspect publishers think people will feel ripped off if they pay trade paperback prices for a tiny book.

Short works are among my major inspirations as a writer. The poetry of E E Cummings floated me through the first draft of my first novel. More recently, the short stories of John Cheever and the novellas of J. D. Salinger electrify my imagination and my intellect. There's nothing small about the content of these small works. But would they have been published today, outside of the most academically pretentious presses, those that see the value of a work in its uniqueness of form, rather than its beauty, power or insight? Would today's publishers have turned them away on the basis of length alone? There's no way of knowing, but when's the last time you saw a new novella on the table at the front of the bookstore?

At Istoria, I hope to seek out new examples of the beauty, storytelling and insight possible in short forms, especially the novella, the prose poem and the story collection. If you're querying a work of this kind, be sure to follow our submission guidelines, but feel free to put "Attn Hannah" in the subject line if you think it's a work I'd be particularly interested in. I look forward to exploring your short fiction offerings!

Articles, Links

2011-02-15T05:41:00.000-08:00

by Libby Sternberg

Just some links today to interesting articles and posts about ePublishing --

I'm over at Thoughts in Progress talking about Istoria Books today. Stop on by and leave a comment!
Bookmark this site for "Great Books Under $5" (and check out the terrific review of Lost to the World, an Istoria offering).
Here's another site devoted to books for your Kindle under five dollars -- Daily Cheap Reads.
Speaking of eBook pricing, here's an article about the "optimum price" for eBooks, over at Book Bee.
And finally, here's the link to our website, where you can get some of these great reads for low prices. Sign up for our mailing list--subscribers will be first to get special discounts from us, some of which won't be offered to the general public!

The Truth Within the Lie

2011-02-10T00:01:00.000-08:00

by Libby Sternberg

Earlier this week, I mentioned Stephen King's acceptance speech when the National Book Foundation presented him with the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters award in 2003. He talked a lot about genre fiction vs. literary fiction in that speech, passionately arguing for taking popular, or "commercial," fiction seriously.

Here are some more ruminations about his talk. In particular, about his desire to be an "honest writer."

King said:

"Frank Norris, the author of McTeague, said something like this: 'What should I care if they, i.e., the critics, single me out for sneers and laughter? I never truckled, I never lied. I told the truth.' And that's always been the bottom line for me. The story and the people in it may be make believe but I need to ask myself over and over if I've told the truth about the way real people would behave in a similar situation....

"To ignore the truth inside the lie is to sin against the craft, in general, and one's own work in particular. "

The truth within the lie--that sums up what good fiction should be. Fiction is a writer's exploration of what truth is--how real people react, what those reactions say about them and about humanity, how they deal with boredom, fun, giddy happiness or Job-like grief.

And transcendent writing--the kind of writing that transports the reader to a deeper understanding of the world and themselves--is at the heart of that "truth within the lie."

Last week, Hannah talked about the importance of including fiction along with nonfiction in one's reading diet. Nonfiction purports to lay out the truth through reporting facts. Fiction lays out the truth through canny observation and character analysis.

I myself love nonfiction. Oddly enough, I often reach for nonfiction, rather than fiction, when I'm tired. Maybe because fiction actually challenges me more--to think and to feel. When I remember all the books I've read, novels stand out as those that have influenced me the most. Novels prod me to see myself and others in different ways.

What novels have influenced you and how?

____

A reminder: today is the last day to redeem coupon codes for a free copy of the mystery Death Is the Cool Night at Smashwords.com. Sign up here or at our website to get one!

Literary vs. Genre

2011-02-08T05:16:00.000-08:00

In 2003, the National Book Foundation presented Stephen King its Medal for "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters." This scandalized some in the publishing world. King, after all, is--egads!--a genre writer.

But in his acceptance speech, King made a blunt and passionate plea to those in the literary world who turn their noses up at genre fiction and at popular culture in particular:

"Tokenism is not allowed. You can't sit back, give a self satisfied sigh and say, 'Ah, that takes care of the troublesome pop lit question. In another twenty years or perhaps thirty, we'll give this award to another writer who sells enough books to make the best seller lists.' It's not good enough. Nor do I have any patience with or use for those who make a point of pride in saying they've never read anything by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark or any other popular writer.

"What do you think? You get social or academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with your own culture? Never in life, as Capt. Lucky Jack Aubrey would say. And if your only point of reference for Jack Aubrey is the Australian actor, Russell Crowe, shame on you..."

I don't think King is arguing that all writing is equal or that all writers are equally good. His point, with which I agree, is that transcendent writing and excellent storytelling can be found in many different kinds of books.

If you limit yourself to reading only so-called literary fiction, you're no better than someone who refuses to read anything but pulp mysteries or romance or...whatever. You can't claim to be better than those readers, in other words.

I've been thinking about King's speech lately (you can read it in its entirety here) for several reasons as we launch Istoria Books.

Soon, I'll be sharing news of a terrific upmarket/literary novel Istoria will release in a few short months. This book is written by a genre writer, a man who's had several mysteries published--as novels and short stories in mystery magazines. But this book represents a departure for him, a beautiful story set in Saigon in 1965 that explores lost love and callow youth.

The author doesn't have an MFA, never went to the big writing workshops, didn't participate in any of the publishing events that might have helped others in the book world to see him as a man of letters, and not just a man of genre fiction. But he's written a bittersweet, moving book that deserves an audience. Epublishing will, we hope, help him find it, and will help him find those bridges between literary fiction and popular fiction that King talked about so fervently in his speech eight years ago.
_________

Special note: Don't forget to sign up for our mailing list. If you do so by Friday, you'll get a coupon code for a free copy of the mystery Death Is the Cool Night from Smashwords.com.

Still Time for Free Books

2011-02-03T00:01:00.000-08:00

As part of its launch phase, Istoria Books is offering free e-books to people who sign up on our mailing list.

If you use the sign-up form on this blog or on our website, you'll automatically get a Smashwords.com coupon for 100 percent off the mystery novella Death Is the Cool Night.

If you email Istoria directly, you can tell us which book you'd like:

Death Is the Cool Night, a mystery novella set in 1941, on the eve of the U.S.'s entry into WWII
Lost to the World, a mystery set in 1954 on the eve of the first polio vaccine trials
Kit Austen's Journey, an inspirational romance set in 1851 on the Oregon Trail.

So...here are your three ways to sign up:

Use the sign-up form on this blog, up there on the left!
Use the sign-up form on our website--www.IstoriaBooks.com -- again, in the upper left.
Send an email to IstoriaBks@gmail.com with "mailing list - free (and title of the book you'd like)" in the subject line.

Hurry -- these freebies won't be free much longer! And soon, we'll be featuring new authors' works, some with discounts and limited-time free offers. You'll hear about them first if you're on the mailing list.

Friends of Fiction

2011-01-31T16:44:00.000-08:00

by Hannah Sternberg

"I never read fiction anymore. The last time I read a novel, I was in school."

I hear that from a lot of my friends. I'm sure you do too. We're all busy, and with the internet enabling many of us to work from home, work increasingly encroaches on precious reading time. On top of that, many of us spend our free time reading to improve our professional position, keep up with current events, or pursue an interest in that topic we wish we'd taken a class on when we'd had the chance. I work in media and public policy, and I confess that I've devoted large amounts of my supposedly-free time to catching up on the latest news analysis on the day's hot story, or hunkering down with weighty history or philosophy books to fill in the context of situations I'm less familiar with.

Don't get me wrong. I love to learn--my heart goes pitter patter when my eyes scan Amazon's history recommendations. I have a bad habit of collecting foreign language dictionaries (so far, my most unusual is a lexicon of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics). And with the complete works of Aristotle available, free of charge and instantaneously on my Kindle--don't get me started.

But I've noticed another current in some of my friends' remarks. "I don't have time for fiction. There's too much to learn." "I just don't find fiction as interesting as stuff that actually happened." "My class discussions just ruined fiction-reading for me."

I'd counter them by saying, You just aren't reading the right fiction.

I find a lot of people get fed up with the tired offerings of so many of the major publishers that are just trying to piggyback on someone else's trendy concept. Others find too much pretension and too little insight in the current "upmarket" or literary fiction offerings. Still others were so weary of their professors' over-analysis that they forgot how simply moving a good story can be.

To these, I'd say: reading nothing but nonfiction is like reading only the news reports without touching the analysis or opinion. You'll learn a lot, but you'll be missing a critical element: the debate, the contextualization, the connections. Fiction is like an editorial on the human condition. And, like a good editorial, good fiction combines top-of-the-line reporting (observation of the world) with thought-provoking insight. Just as much can be learned from reading good fiction as can be learned from reading history, philosophy, and a truckload of self-help books combined.

Giving my Kindle a click-through now, I find, in various states of partial completion: Thomas Paine; George Eliot; Alexis de Tocqueville; Jane Austen; the Old Testament; Aristotle; a short story collection by David Foster Wallace; J. R. R. Tolkein; my mom, Libby Sternberg's mysery novel, Death is the Cool Night; and a practical guide to daily life with Asperger's Syndrome (research for a novel).

I can say earnestly that I've learned from all of these books, not just the nonfiction ones. Sure, plenty of fiction is mindless escapism. But a good yarn can--and should--be both entertaining and (brace yourself for an over-used word) enlightening. Excitement and insight don't have to be mutually exclusive.

I suppose this is part of the philosophy that inspired me and my parents to start up Istoria--to show readers once again that there's more to fiction than tired genre-mongering or pretentious wheezing. If you long for our kind of fiction too, keep your eyes on Istoria Books. And if you're just as passionate as we are about writing that kind of fiction, don't leave without taking a look at our submission guidelines.

Okay...Not This

2011-01-27T00:01:00.000-08:00

by Libby Sternberg

One of my favorite YouTube videos, this captures so comically the sometimes confusing signals writers get from editors and agents. As an author myself, I once had an agent who, after taking on my mystery which she claimed to love, suggested that I might want to consider...changing who the murderer was.

Changing the murderer in a murder mystery is writing an entirely new book.

At Istoria Books, we won't tell you, authors, "Okay...not this...." if we take on your book....

Waiting for Paul Revere

2011-01-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

by Libby Sternberg

Okay, I'm no longer embarrassed to admit it. When I was a kid, I didn't fall in love with the Beatles. I wasn't a Rolling Stones fan. I didn't even care for Elvis that much. I liked really silly bands. Like, uh, The Monkees. And, well, Paul Revere and the Raiders.

Before you dissolve into disdainful laughter, let me tell readers who don't know me that I was trained as a classical singer, and in that area I'm not at all attracted to cheap imitations. Subtle Faure and Debussy songs call out to me in that field, and song cycles by Mahler and Schubert speak to my heart.

No, it's just popular music that brings out my inner lowbrow.

So, when I was a mere lass, I developed crushes not on John, Paul, George or Ringo, but on those guys in silly satin breeches and tights. Don't ask me which one in particular. I can't remember.

I used to have this girlish dream. It went like this--the band would be playing in my hometown, Baltimore, see? And they'd be driving around the city and its environs looking for their hotel or their venue or whatever, right? And whaddya know, they end up on my suburban street, and I happen to be out and about, and...

Pretty lame, huh?

That daydream brightened many a boring class, though. And it didn't seem outlandish to me, to believe that my favorite band would just happen to drive down my street. Crazier things have happened, right?

As I grew older, I let go of that dream, thank goodness, but I also came to realize that waiting-for-Paul-Revere could be a syndrome of sorts with no good end. That is, waiting for something to just fall into one's lap instead of setting a goal and pursuing it with vigor leads only to frustration and bitterness.

Setting appropriate goals (uh, meeting a popular band is not one of mine any longer) and working with all one's might to achieve them, however, leads to fulfillment and success.

In publishing, it's easy to live variations of the waiting-for-Paul-Revere syndrome. You wait for the right agent to say yes, the right editor to offer a contract, the right marketing plan to make you a bestseller. You wait and wait and wait. Years pass while you wait, always thinking that Paul (the contract, the breakout novel, the perfect marketing plan) is just around the corner.

In the world of ePublishing, however, a lot of that waiting can disappear. You can offer your books directly to the public yourself, or you can work with an e-publisher such as ours, Istoria Books, to make it happen.

But you don't need to sit there anymore, waiting for your dream to come true.

Istoria Books is now open to submissions -- read our guidelines below or find them on our website at www.IstoriaBooks.com. We only publish fiction (most genres) and want to see good stories, well-told.

Stop waiting...start submitting! We want to hear from you!

AUTHORS: SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

2011-01-20T00:01:00.000-08:00

Istoria Books is now open for author submissions. We are an ePublisher looking for good fiction, and we're open to unpublished as well as published authors, agented or unagented. Authors whose print rights have reverted to them and who are looking for an ePress to handle the challenges of selling in the digital book world will find a welcoming home in Istoria. Here's what you need to know:

WHAT WE PUBLISH
We only publish fiction - no nonfiction at the present time - in the following categories:

literary/upmarket
romance (but not erotica)
women's fiction
inspirational
mystery/thriller
sci-fi/fantasy
young adult

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR IN MANUSCRIPTS
Istoria Books is looking for good stories, well-told. We want stories that give readers a reason to turn the pages, to keep reading. Whether it's because the yarn itself is so compelling, or the characters so fascinating or the writing so transcendent--our readers will come to expect a reading experience that propels them through a book.

We're very open to creativity that isn't bound by normal genre limitations. If your romance is told from the hero's POV, we'll still look at it. If your young adult novel features a college-age protagonist, we'll consider it. If your women's fiction book puts romance way on the back burner, we're open to it. If your inspirational involves a sinning protagonist, we'll still take a look.

Our main questions when looking over submissions will be these: Is it a story I want to keep reading? Is it a story I want to hear this author tell? Good stories, well-told--that's what we're looking for.

HOW TO QUERY

Send your queries to: IstoriaBks@gmail.com. We will accept queries from unagented authors. Authors should only query about completed manuscripts. In the subject line of the email, write: "Query" and the genre your story fits into. In the body of the email tell us the following:

category of story (see list above)
brief summary of the book (one paragaraph, if possible) including a rough word count
your writing credentials, including any that are relevant to the subject of the book
contact information

ISTORIA CONTRACTS

Istoria Books does not pay advances but splits royalties with authors. Istoria Books edits and formats manuscripts for the various digital platforms, and provides cover art, as well as distribution to major book etailers. In addition, Istoria Books provides marketing support.

Check out our website at www.IstoriaBooks.com

Kindle Peering

2011-01-17T11:03:00.000-08:00

I confess.

I'm a book spy.

What avid reader isn't? When I'm on the Metro, though I may be squashed so tightly I can't free a hand to fish out my book and hold it in front of me (or, at least, not without elbowing a few little old ladies in the face, a price other riders have found worth paying), I can still take pleasure looking down the car at those privileged to sit, and peer over their shoulders to see what they're reading. I can invent games, awarding points for the number of Stieg Larssons in attendance. My heart always jumps a little when I see one of my abiding loves, like Jane Eyre. Some people read their morning prayers on the Metro, in English, Arabic or Hebrew. In my non-Istoria job, I work in media and public relations--and in Washington, DC, it's always interesting to see what paper or magazine someone chooses to read.

Once, when I was a teenager and my family took a trip to the beach together, my mom (Istoria co-founder Libby Sternberg) beckoned to me conspiratorially. She whispered to me, "I really want to find out what that woman over there is reading. Just walk by and see if you can see the cover." For us, book-spying was a fun beach activity, like volleyball or boogie-boarding. I mean, all those people, all those books! Think of all the quirky things people decide to read on the beach when they finally cut loose from the work world and get down to what really entertains them. Book-watching is just a subset of people-watching. That day, after making several unsuccessful, nonchalant circuits around the other family, I finally walked up to the woman my mom had pointed out and asked, "What are you reading? My mom and I are dying to know." She answered with an enormous smile.

Book-spying can bring people together. If the mp3-player revolution isolated people in public places, encapsulating them in the bubble of their earbuds, book-spying gives us the chance to learn something about each other again. In the movie 500 Days of Summer, Zoe Dechanel's character talks about the seredipity of meeting the man she fell in love with: "What if I hadn't gone to that coffee shop that day? What if I hadn't been reading Dorian Gray, or he hadn't noticed?"

Kindle-bashers and other critics of eReaders claim that eReaders will do to book-spying what mp3 players did to music-listeners in public places: isolate us further, deny the opportunity for that glimpse into someone else's tastes before meeting them. These critics clearly have little dexterity. eReaders may not display a cover on the outside of the device to show the world what you're reading, but a surreptitious glance can often reveal the title on the screen's header. I have happily been both the agent and subject of Kindle-peering. I've even struck up Metro conversations as a result of Kindle-peering. In fact, Kindle-peering adds an extra layer of challenge that many veteran book-spies will find intriguing. After all, any amateur bookspy can snatch a glance at a paperback cover held up for the world to see. Finding out what that cute girl in the coffee shop is reading on her Kindle might involve actually buying her a drink and talking to her.

Post a comment here and tell your favorite book-spying or Kindle-peering story. Be sure to leave your email address, and you'll get a free coupon for one download from Istoria Books!

Mysteries and Historical Fiction

2010-11-04T04:59:00.000-07:00

Now available from Istoria Books, three offerings from Editor-in-Chief Libby Sternberg, an Edgar-nominated author of mystery and women's fiction with eight print-published books to her name. (Note: Istoria Books will soon be open to submissions from all authors!)

MYSTERY

Death Is the Cool Night by Libby Sternberg ($1.99 Click here to buy.)

The brooding story of a classical pianist-turned-conductor who cannot remember the night his nemesis was murdered. Did he commit the crime—or did an enchanting soprano do it, a woman with whom he is falling in love? In the fall of 1941, as war creeps ever closer, his freedom and happiness depend on his ability to either identify the murderer or recall his own actions that night. With parallels to well-known operas, Death Is the Cool Night takes readers behind the scenes of a music conservatory and into the heart of some of the most beautiful compositions ever written for voice.

Lost to the World by Libby Sternberg ($2.99 Click here to buy.)

In 1954 Baltimore, Sean Reilly, the detective from Death Is the Cool Night, investigates the murder of a Johns Hopkins researcher, a quiet, well-liked man whose true identity turns out to be just as much a mystery as that of his killer. The victim's death appears linked to the polio vaccine trials about to begin across the country. A widower now, Detective Reilly struggles to stay focused on the case while being pulled in different directions--by his young sons' fears and needs, by his own desire for love and stability, and by his inability to get beyond his grief for his beloved wife. When a Hopkins secretary, herself a polio victim, feeds him information on the case, he begins to fall for her...as he also wonders if she played a part in the murder.

HISTORICAL FICTION

Sloane Hall by Libby Sternberg ($3.99 Click here to buy.)

In 1920s Hollywood, young John Doyle learns the craft of cinematography when a stupid mistake costs him his job. On a tip, he heads to Sloane Hall, the estate of a famous silent screen actress, Pauline Sloane, where he lands a position as chauffeur. Sloane Hall first offers him peace as he enjoys the bounty of the luxurious home, then unrest as its beautiful namesake returns and starts preparing for her first talking picture. Despite his best efforts to resist, John falls hopelessly in love with his employer. His future brightens, however, when she appears to return his affection, leading to plans for a secret wedding—until other awful secrets intrude, leading to heartbreak and separation. A story of obsession and forgiveness, Libby Sternberg’s Sloane Hall was inspired by Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Originally published in hardcover, this Kindle edition includes a Q and A with the author.

ISTORIA BOOKS

Books You Want to Read. Prices You're Willing to Pay

www.IstoriaBooks.com

Welcome!

2010-10-25T11:49:00.000-07:00

Thanks for stopping by this blog, which is sponsored by the new ePress, Istoria Books. We will be open for submissions soon and will be posting interesting tidbits about writing, storytelling, books, publishing and more in the near future.

Stay tuned!