By Kathy Crowley

Although it can be hard to remember mid-tantrum (or mid-eyeroll depending where you are in the parenting adventure), there are an awful lot of great things about having kids.  There’s the big deep heavy stuff (e.g. realizing what your own parents did for you, feeling more responsible for the state of the world because it’s being passed along to people you actually know), the driving biological piece (can you hear those selfish genes screaming between chest bumps, “YES. We are STILL in the game!”), and then… the little stuff.  Like peanut butter.  What ever came between us? Maybe it was that falling out in college over grams of sugar and saturated fat.  Or books.  Books I loved and love to read to my kids, books I somehow missed, and new books that I would never have even tried if I didn’t have children.

For example, A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck.  If you haven’t read it, don’t wait for your kids to turn you onto it.  Just get thee to a library (or your local  bookstore) now.  Set in the depression, A Long Way from Chicago tells the story of two children sent to spend the summer with their grandmother in rural Illinois.  Grandma Dowdel, as she is known, is one of the greatest literary creations I’ve ever come across – fierce, cantankerous, large in every sense of the word. At first she seems to be a scary force of nature, but as the book — and its sequel, A Year Down Yonder — move along, it becomes clear that she is also a force of compassion and justice.

And The Hunger Games!  Would I have ever read a book about a dark all-too-possible world of reality TV gone wild? Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games is a postmodern take on Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”.  Every year two contestants are selected from each district of a fictional nation state, placed in an artificial wilderness and left to fight until only one of them survives.  All this while the rest of the country watches on television. I picked it up only because my daughter and her friends loved it. Once I started reading, though, I couldn’t put it down.  Actually, I devoured it (no pun intended), and then tore through the next book, Catching Fire. I plan to be waiting in line with all the teenagers this August (when the final book, Mockingjay, comes out) to learn the fate of Katniss, the tough but sympathetic heroine.

Just last week the Mother-Son book club my 10-year old son and I belong to got together to discuss Kashmira Sheth’s Boys Without Names, the story of Gopal, an 11-year old Indian boy whose family is driven from their village to the chaos of Mombai by desperate financial circumstances.  Days after they arrive, Gopal is drugged and abducted, then imprisoned with other boys and forced to make beaded picture frames, hour after hour, night and day.  Gopal slowly wins the trust of the other boys and brings a sense of hope, all the while looking for his moment to escape. It was a great book to read with my son.  And to hear six 10 and 11-year old American boys discuss this glimpse into child labor through the eyes of another 11-year old boy half a world away: well, that’s priceless.

Here’s a book that was around when I was growing up, but I somehow missed: The Wheel on The School by Meindert DeJong, published in the mid-1950s.  I read it with my older children when they were seven and five.  A group of school kids in Holland bond while trying to lure the storks back to their village by creating the perfect nesting spot on top of their schoolhouse. Doesn’t sound like much of a plot, does it?  But the three of us became happily lost in this book. Or Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays, another great read that I somehow missed as a kid.  We listened to all the books in this series on long drives in our car a few years ago, and the miles flew by.

Then there are all the books I loved as a kid and have had the chance to reread – Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh! Harriet the Spy! The Phantom Tollbooth! The list goes on and on… But that’s a subject for another post on another day.

Have your kids (grandkids, nieces, nephews, younger siblings, students) gotten you to read books you wouldn’t have picked up otherwise?

Shades of Glenn Beck: There was a frightening (as it should be) review in the NYT about a book setting off the immigration debate in Germany.  According to reviewer Michael Slackman, Germany Does Away With Itself “laments the growing number of Muslim immigrants, contending that they are “dumbing down” society, was released Monday and is already in its fourth printing, with sales expected to exceed 150,000 copies, according to his publisher.”

Author Thilo Sarrazin “a German banker and former government official spoke publicly about a unique “Jewish gene,” when he attacked Islam as a source of violence and stunted development and when he espoused genetic theories that evoked the fright of the Nazi past.”

More frightening than Sarrazin saying these hateful words, are the many listening to them.

Yes folks, once again, if we do not learn from the past, we are condemned to repeat it.

And then, there is a review by Dwight Garner of the biography: Simon Wiesenthal The Life and Legends by Tom Segev, translated by Ronnie Hope that sounds fascinating: “Simon Wiesenthal, the legendary Nazi hunter, was in many ways a smaller-than-life character. Balding, mustached, the wearer of frumpy suits and neckties, possessed of an old-world Yiddish accent and a distracted air, he often seemed to be stooped, one observer said, “as if permanently looking for a mislaid piece of paper.

I am entranced by ‘on the campaign trail’ books and after reading The Washington Post review by Steven Livingston of Meghan McCain’s Dirty Sexy Politics, I’ll be reading the book. Hands across the divide.

Along with my love of campaign trail books, I am an armchair mountain climber and Rob Merrill’s AP review of The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2 by Jennifer Jordan is certain to make me add to the mountain climbing pile.

After reading Chuck Leddy’s Boston Globe review of Shaking The Family Tree by Buzzy Jackson, it seems that genealogy could be a new interest for me.

Not sure how I missed The Girl Who Fell From The Sky by Heidi W. Durrow (2008 Winner of the Bellwether Prize,) but after reading this review, it’s on my nightstand.

An excellent visual post on the crazy injustice of shelving books by color (and I don’t mean book jacket) by Lauren Leto.

If you’ve not seen any of the video book reviews by Ron Charles of the Washington Post, you can start with this review of Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.

And in the Denver Post you can read Christian Toto’s  review of Jennifer Weiner’s Fly Away Home which “focuses on the family caught in the klieg lights, a group already suffused in pain before the adultery hit the 2 4/7 news cycle.”

AS King’s post on how not correct downloading ‘free’ books is, should, at the very least, convince parents to watch out for their children’s web habits.

The evolving role of literary agents is discussed at Jungle Red in this interview between Hallie Ephron and Jane Friedman.

I tried to resist writing this—especially after my plea against categorizing authors.  Plus, so many of us hide our age in this world of never-get-old, unearthing this information, even in our Googlized world, was difficult.

But, recently, along with the plethora of lists of writers under 40, I was faced with the declaration that, as headlined in a Guardian UK article about writers, ‘Let’s Face It, After 40 You’re Past It.”

Then I read Sam Tanenhaus opine in the New York Times that there was “an essential truth about fiction writers: They often compose their best and most lasting work when they are young. “There’s something very misleading about the literary culture that looks at writers in their 30s and calls them ‘budding’ or ‘promising,’ when in fact they’re peaking.”

Thus, in the interest not of division, but of keeping up the flagging spirits of those who don’t want to be pushed out on the ice floe until after publishing all those words jangling in their head, I present 40 0ver 40:

Paul Harding, author of Tinkers, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize with his debut novel, published when he was 42. Robin Black, author of If I Loved You I Would Tell you this, was 48 when she debuted this year. Holly LeCraw published her debut novel The Swimming Pool at 43. Julia Glass was in her early 40s when she published Three Junes. Charles Bukowski’s first novel, Post Office, was published at 49.  James Michner’s first book, Tales of the South Pacific was published when he was forty—he went on to publish over 40 titles. Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio published his first novel at the age of 40. Amy Mackinnon debuted Tethered in her 4o’s.

Henry Miller’s first published book, Tropic of Capricorn, was released when he was over forty. Tillie Olsen published Tell Me A Riddle just shy of 50. Edward P Jones was 41 when his first book Lost In The City came out. Claire Cook published her first novel at age 45. Chris Abouzied published his first novel Anatopsis at 46. Kyle Ladd was 41 when her debut, After The Fall, was published.

Lynne Griffin published her first novel, Life Without Summer at 49. Elizabeth Strout’s first novel Amy & Isabel debuted when she was 42.  MJ Rose first novel came out when she was in her mid forties. Melanie Benjamin was 42 when she debuted. Therese Fowler was forty exactly when Souvenir debuted.

Margaret Walker wrote Jubilee, her only novel at 51. Raymond Chandler debuted at 51 with The Big Sleep. Belva Plain published her first novel, Evergreen, at 50. Alex Haley published his debut novel Roots when he was 55. (His first book, the nonfiction The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published when he was in his mid-forties.) Jon Clinch debuted with Finn at age 52. In 2010 his wife Wendy Clinch published Double Black.

Also in 2010 Iris Gomez published Try To Remember in her fifties, as did Joseph Wallace with Diamond Ruby, and I published The Murderer’s Daughters at 57. Sue Monk Kidd was 54 when she debuted The Secret Life of Bees. Annie Proulx’s first novel, Postcards, was published when she was 57. Jeanne Ray published debut, Julie and Romeo in her fifties.

George Elliot’s first novel, Adam Bede, debuted when Elliot turned 50.  Isak Dineson’s first, Seven Gothic Tales came out when she turned 50.  Hallie Ephron author of Never Tell A Lie began publishing fiction after fifty. Jackie Mitchard was past 50 when The Deep End of the Ocean debuted. Richard Adams debuted with Watership Down at 52.

Laura Ingalls Wilder published her first novel (beginning the Little House series) at 65. Harriet Doerr won the National Book Award, for Stones for Ibarra, written when she was 74. Katherine Anne Porter published her only novel, Ship of Fools, at age 72. EJ Knapp just debuted Stealing The Marbles, saying “I’m so far past forty I can’t remember it anymore.” Norman McLean wrote A River Runs Through It at age 74.

When compiling this list, Ellen Meeropol asked: “Do I count? My first novel, House Arrest, will come out in February, two months before my 65th birthday.” Karen LaFreya Simpson will be 55 when her first novel Act of Grace debuts next year and Nichole Bernier will be over 44 when The Unfinished Live of Elizabeth D is published in 2012. Yes, that’s my answer, Ellen. We all count.

This is only a list of first novels. Compiling lists of bestselling, Pulitzer Prize winning, Orange Prize winning, etc. books written after the age of 40—that will take several essays.

I loved this Huffpo piece written by Julia Cheiffetz about Betty White. She articulates the uneasiness I’ve felt watching her recently, my sadness—sadness at the making cutesy of this talented actor and comedian. She is better than the material being written for her.

You know about ‘show, don’t tell,’ right? Nathan Bransford shows writer maladies in a particularly hard-hitting funny way.

You’ll never look at medical notes the same after reading writer/doctor Kathy Crowley’s post on the poetry in medical language.

Pimp My Novel explains and takes on the aged construct of book returns, remaindering, pulping, etc.

The Intern faces book promotion, including the advice that it helps to be bad at math, so you can never figure out what you’re earning vis a vis a cost per hour basis.

Facebook vs Facebook Fan Pages? Writers, etc, are confused about this—interesting post on Writer Unboxed by Meryl Evans.

Agent Rachel Gardner posts about the stickiness of agreeing or not agreeing to blurb a book . . . and I am for sure loving Ms. Gardner this week, because I’m also recommending her post on how to write online book reviews, which includes good tips for writers who are also reviewing.

Ah, the education of the Emmys! Before watching, I hadn’t heard of Temple Grandin, author of Animals Make us Human. Now I want to read the book and see the movie about her. Thank goodness for the Christian Science Monitor, which gives me the information I need, including a book review.

Folks will be paying to operate a blog in Philly? So says the Washington Examiner

About when I turned ten I began crafting my library checkouts, hoping I’d look smart. I’d balance my Nancy Drew with a biography of Abraham Lincoln so the librarian thought well of me. (It seems my self-esteem problem enacted early.)

Jodi Picoult, following the NYT doubled coverage of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, recently weighed in on the Times overwhelming coverage of white male authors. Men telling domestic stories are writing art, while women covering similar ground are crafting women’s fiction. Jennifer Weiner agreed and twitterized the issue with the hashtag #franzenfreude.

Weiner’s directness started a new frenzy, and the issue veered from Picoult’s premise to the age-old battle of literary fiction being weighed against commercial fiction, often with writers feeding on their own.

Many writers and reviewers deny the claim that newspapers ignore women and non-white writers and unfairly categorize mainstream novels (a topic well examined by Roxanne MtJoy and Michelle Dean) asserting that they’re simply reviewing superior fiction, which quickly devolves into a fight of literary fiction versus commercial work, and becomes a construct of healthy peas and carrots books versus sinful bad-for-you ice cream reads.

Michelle Dean writes far better than I could on the danger of, as eloquently put by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s, “The Danger of A Single Story,” noting, “the silencing and devaluing of those voices has consequences, particularly when it tends to happen disproportionately to certain populations.

Some responded to #franzenfreude by trashing Weiner and Picoult’s writing and their success and lauding Franzen as though the issue was Franzen’s writing. (Neither Weiner nor Picoult wrote negative words about Franzen’s work.) Facebook friends, commenting on articles I’d put up regarding the issue, used it as an opportunity to denigrate Picoult and Weiner, and, by implication, commercial writers—to the point that I deleted my posts. I have little courage for online fights.

I have no dog in the #Franzenfreude fight. I subscribe to the NYT, Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe. Sean, my overworked mail carrier, delivers Newsweek, People, Time, Entertainment, and Oprah, along with Poets & Writers, Glimmer Street, Nimrod and more to my house

The Boston Globe reviewed my book twice, the New York Times provided a terrific mention, and other papers including the Miami Herald, Denver Post and LA Times were kind. The media have treated me well. I’ve been categorized as everything from commercial to women’s, to literary fiction.

I’ve read Franzen, Picoult, and Weiner. Authors on my TBR pile include Gail Caldwell, Lori L. Tharp, Lola Shoneyin, Michelle Hoover, Julie Klam, Jonathan Papernick, Susanna Daniel, Karen Palmer, Melissa Senate, Sarah Pekkenan, Bernice L. McFadden, Chuck Hogan, Abraham Verghese, Carleen Brice, Freddie Wilkinson, Nick Reding, Brady Udall, and Fredrick Riken. (They’re getting along on my nightstand quite well.)

It saddens me seeing writers buy into a class war. Lit looks down on commercial, who look down on genre, who eschew whatever’s lower on the literary food chain.

Some argue that commercial books find their audience, only literature needs reviewing—but how does that answer the male/white tipping of review scales? It seems a specious and power-retaining argument. Independent films survive even as reviewers include commercial films in their wheelhouse.

In a time when black writers are shunted to an African-American section, when men are deemed artists and women crafters, when science fiction and thrillers are better covered than woman-identified historical fiction, and romance is relegated to the deepest closet of shame reads, then the commercial-lit divide becomes nastily entwined within a gender and racial writing divide. Coloring this is the character versus plot battle, well described by author Chris Abouzied in his post, “The Decomposition of Language.”

Since I started reading at age four I’ve never been without books and I pray to have a TBR stack until the moment I die. On that heap I want it all: pounding plots, the wow of discovery, the comfort of recognition, and astounding characters. If I’m lucky, some will have all of the above. Whichever one I’m holding, I don’t want to be judged or lauded for it and I don’t want to shelve my books by race, class, or gender.

Tayari Jones, writing to fellow authors about the stratification of literature, said it very well: ‘other writers do not deserve your scorn.’ In the spirit of writer/reader heal thyself; I’m going to work on remembering those words. There’s room for all in the big tent of reading.

Back in the days of the crazy housing boom in Boston, when prices went insane, jumping by hundreds of thousands in a few short years, the Mission Hill triple-decker where I rented an apartment for my daughters and myself was sold to a gonna-get-rich-condo guy who quadrupled our rent to an impossible sum.

We moved to farthest reaches of our beloved neighborhood, so far only our zip code kept us there. I was better off not looking in the corners of that scabby apartment. One closet I barely opened, terrified of the ancient unmovable dirt hosting God knows what. Moreover, this apartment wasn’t even secure; an absentee landlord bided his time waiting for the right price.

I lived on the precipice of hating the place and being terrified that that I’d lose it.

Then a housing lottery rescued me. Now I could buy a home where no one could throw me out. Not rent. Buy! Affordably buy a beautiful brand-new townhouse. It was part of a mixed-income, owner-occupied, townhouse community being built in Mission Hill. The homes were engendered by the hard work of (and I know I’ll forget someone precious, so forgive me) the Bricklayers Union, led by Thomas J. McIntyre, Governor Dukakis, Mayor Ray Flynn, Mission Hill activists (always the best!) the instrumental and always wonderful State Representative Kevin Fitzgerald (rest in peace, Kevin,) and Senator Ted Kennedy.

When the time came to celebrate publicly, a team of politicians and their staff came to my house for a press conference. I cleaned, put out food, and worried that my shiny new carpet would get dirty as everyone clomped through my home. Most of the politicians and their aides were friendly. Some I already knew. However, in the midst of political men who turned their faces to the camera like flowers to the sun, a few truly noticed that I was more than a single mother who’d been given a leg up and took me out of the role of stereotype. Kindness spilled from Governor Dukakis. Kevin Fitz was, as always, a supportive and loving man.

Senator Ted Kennedy behaved like an absolute favorite uncle in the world. He leaned against the windowsill, ate the fruit and cookies I’d put out, and asked about my life. Where did my children go to school? What sort of work did I do? How did I like the neighborhood? How was I doing? He spoke to me as though he had all the time in the world—not ever looking for the cameras roaming the house.

Senator Kennedy helped me get a house, a home.

Now another young woman and her children live there. I hope they feels the presence of the Senator—larger than life, yes, but also life-size. Able not only to help build homes—but to become a neighbor.

Rest in peace, Senator.

Writers talk much and write much (including me) about the difficulty of finding that perfect first line. Sometimes I want to create entire books because a great first line popped into my head. Tougher, can be that last line. Tougher because it’s culminating an entire world.

The last line is a writer’s goodbye to her characters and her readers. It must wrap up all a writer’s thoughts, without staying too long at the party, and it must leave the reader with a lingering taste of the characters—enough to let the reader feel that the men, women, and children with whom they’ve just spent hours, will continue on their journey.

And we want to believe that. When we love a book, we need to think that we may someday meet the characters again.

Last lines should have impact—but not shout. Are any of these below familiar to you? Can you guess which book they came from? And then there’s another question, do these lines ring to the first line of the book?

Below, lines from some of my favorite books. See which last lines seem to go with which first lines, and which you can identify. (All answers at end)

Last Lines:

1) “Goodbye, Francie,” she whispered. She closed the window.

2) No matter how often or how vociferously writers are attacked, no matter how many hearts are broken in pursuit of publication or how many authors discourages in their lonely work, there will always be a brilliant conspiracy between author and reader.

3) The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves.

4) “The woman,” Dillard answered. “The woman. They say he missed that whore.”

5) But that is the beginning of a new story—the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.

6) For a second I thought I was somewhere familiar and she was a girl I already knew. I began to lift my hand, but stopped, remembering where I was and what I had already found. Then the bus lurched forward, and the face was gone with it, just a blur of yellow and black in motion.

First Lines:

1 No matter where I went, my compass pointed west. I always knew what time it was in California.

2) A long time ago I disappeared. One day I was here, the next I was gone.

3) I never dreamed of becoming an editor.

4) When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one. It has probably been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs.

5) Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912.

6) On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K Bridge.

Answers:

1&5) A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN by Betty Smith

2&3) THE FOREST FOR THE TREES by Betsy Lerner

3& 1) WHITE OLEANDER by Janet Fitch

4&4) LONESOME DOVE by Larry McMurty

5&6) CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Fyodor Dostoevsky

3&2) CAUCASIA by Danzy Senna

And then, since this is my post, I looked at my own last and first, to see how they did.

Last Line in THE MURDERER’S DAUGHTERS:

“The rest is all a surprise,” I said. “I told Aunt Cilla we wanted everything of Mama’s, that I was taking her things home. For you and for me. I think we’re ready and I think it’s time.”

First Line:

I wasn’t surprised when Mama asked me to save her life. By my first week in kindergarten, I knew she was no macaroni-necklace-wearing kind of mother. Essentially, Mama regarded me as a miniature hand servant.

The funny thing about looking back, to one’s own work, is you always want to make it better—even after it’s published.

Looking back at some favorites, I see the connective tissue in all of them (even my own) and I wonder how many authors did this consciously, and how many worked this circle in a sub-conscious manner—like myself.

Writing so often feels like the most delicate balance of hard work and catching the alchemy.

Writing is waving the wand.

Reading is catching the magic.

If you, like me, can get on reading kicks, you may want to look at the Christian Science Monitors’ article on the best books about obscure presidents

Love the book, the subject and the author. . . and now love the review of Let’s Take The Long Way Home in the NYT

Ten best paid authors in the world as chosen by the Christian Science Monitor.

Another reading kick to consider: Chicago Times offers “Five Books on Women’s Suffrage,” marking August 18^th 1920, which is the anniversary of women getting the right to vote.

In The Guardian UK Jodi Picoult dares to take on the NYT and their favoritism of “white male literary darlings” (especially those living in Brooklyn) and is, of course, accused of sour grapes. (Writers and readers who have seen the balance of white male authors being reviewed vs. the rest of the world may be disinclines to agree with the sour grapes label.)

The WSJ reveals how television writers get back at actors, suits, and their childhood nemesis. Very creative.

Regan Arthur writes about passing on good books (which are then successful with another house.)

Mark Charan Newton on a new (to me) frontier—ads in novels. Hmm… what products would work in your favorite books?

I’ve been accused of harping on domestic violence, and after working in the field (with batterers) for many years, I admit my abuse-radar may be higher than some. There were times my daughters dreaded my meeting their boyfriends, anticipating my narrowed eyes as I looked for signs of danger.

Recently I took a hard look at this, after the woman editing an article I was writing warned me not to throw ‘exciting’ men in the same pot with ‘dangerous’ ones. Was I being too hard in my judgments? How does one know the difference between edgy and over-the edge? You may think you have Hans Solo, when in truth you’re harboring Hannibal Lector. Are you always overlooking Jack—the savior of Lost—in favor of Sawyer?

What’s your usual type?

The Thug:

Example: Tony Soprano. Will sweet-talk you while trying to get some. Smack you away when done. Unless you’re his wife. In which case, he’ll buy you a fur coat after giving someone else the big O.

Upside: Frenzied excitement.

Downside: Black eyes and heartbreak.

The Romantic Lead:

Example: Rhett Butler. Heart of gold hiding inside a scallywag. Has tons of money or none. Disappears for months then shows up to rescue you. Lots of roses and/or jewelry. May sweep you away to a fully staffed mansion and the best big O you’ve ever had—but don’t ever count on couples counseling.

Upside:  Smooth-talking excitement.

Downside: Low, low, low, on the trust factor.

The Grown Up:

Example: Atticus Finch. Won’t lie, cheat, or steal. You’ll never starve and there will always be gas in your car. The one you want holding your hand while waiting for scary news and at your side during the tough times. Known for dry sense of humor. You’ll be the only one getting the O from him.

Upside: Broad shoulders to lean on.

Downside: Furrowed brows.

Which guy do you have?

1) When you speculate about whether he’ll ever cheat on you, your instinct tells you:

a. Of course. He cheated with me before we got married.

b. Um . . . I guess it’s possible.

c. Are you kidding? Before or after he finishes sorting out receipts for the taxes?

2) During an argument, he is most likely to:

a. Swear, call you names, pin all the blame on you.

b. Yell until you back down.

c. Walk away until he calms down.

3) For Christmas, he’ll:

a. Have his mistress or secretary pick something out for you.

b. Run into Macy’s on Christmas Eve and buy the most expensive thing he sees.

c. Agonize so much that whatever he buys, you feel the effort and love.

4) When you’re sick, you expect:

a. Nothing.

b. He’ll move the remote to your side of the bed.

c. He’ll ask if you need him to stay home.

5) When your mother becomes ill, he might:

a) Yell because you’re not home to make supper.

b) Ask how long this is going to go on.

c) Offer to let her come live with the two of you

If your man is an ‘a’ – get yourself to a therapist, if you’re not yet married, and to a lawyer if you are.

If he’s a ‘b’—do you have lots of girlfriends to mop up your tears? Thank goodness!

You have a ‘c?’ Congratulations, you’ll have someone to watch the Emmys with at the end of the month.

Book promotion  is hard: how does one move from furrowed brow-sweat pants-butt-in-chair to gracious and engaging?

Writing a book takes a certain set of skills: intense concentration, imagination, the ability to read the same 400 + pages time after time, and the fortitude to take criticism (excuse me, ahem, critique) without weeping.  You must learn to shut out all noise at a given moment and you must love solitude.

Getting your book in reader’s hands requires the opposite: Writing in 140 character sound bites, talking about oneself while sounding modest, balancing online Me! Me! Me! without having REGO (readers eyes glaze over) or worse, RSOY (readers sick of you.) All that, and having great outfits for public appearances. (Note to self: re-learn make-up skills.)

Anyone who had read the hysterical, but frighteningly close to the truth, New Yorker piece on promotion knows how much falls on the writer these days. (Surprisingly few readers know this; at a recent book club, members were shocked to learn writers did their own promotion.) Even if one has great and supportive publicists, unless one is already a household name, eventually it’s on the writer to get that book read.

“You have to sell it one book at a time,” I was warned.

How the heck was I supposed to do that? In terror, I read every book on promotion I could find (buying their books), listened to experienced writers, attended forums on promotion, jumped from one online site to another, lurked in online forums, came out of the closet and wrote sad plaintive pleas on same forums: in short, I gave myself a cheap fast SMB (masters in selling my book)

The problem is this: except for the most ego-driven or ego-protected among us, it’s an unnatural position for most writers. We like working in pajamas. We like watching sentences unfold as ideas unfurl. We don’t like shaking our booties.

But we must.

This is the uncomfortable truth. If you want to follow your fantasy of writing and publishing, then you gotta shake that booty. You must learn how to sell without appearing crazed because nobody likes the snake oil man. You must swallow your pride and put it out there—Guess what, I wrote a book!—without coming across as greedy or crazy—Damn it, Aunt Polly, buy my ‘effin book.

None of us succeed all the time. After I’d sent out a group email inviting members of an online summer camp alumni group to a NYC reading, I received this squirm-inducing scold from the moderator: “Usually I try not to use the XYZ Group for personal promotion. Please refrain in the future.”

Shame overcame me as my self-image went from energetic-information-sharer to self-promoting-hussy. I imagined all the whispers in the online hallways: Who does she think she is? God, enough, already. Will she ever shut up about that damn book?

“But they said I have to,” I whine.

Yeah. It’s hard out there for a pimp.

But, I remind myself: this was my dream. Suck it up, self.

Here’s my advice for writer-friends and my pleas to reader-friends:

Readers: Forgive us each day our daily shilling. It’s the only game in town these days. And if you have it in your hearts, and you like our books, please pass the word along. If you love it, an Amazon, Powells, or B&N review is lovely! A word to your librarian helps!

Writers: Find BFF launch buddies. Sisters and brothers with whom you can be as whiny and self-pitying as you need, someone who won’t judge you for it. Make sure they’re writers you can truly root for and who will totally root for you. Know that sometimes s/he’ll be ahead of you. That’s okay–keep rooting for them. That’s what brothers and sisters do for each other.

Remember three rules:

1) Offer readers a damn good reason to spend money and hours with you.

2) When you get out there, talk and write about more than yourself, your book, and where you are reviewed/reading/signing. Remember, we all want those clicks—moments of learning and self-recognition—which writers can offer by talking and writing about other people’s books, issues that matter to them, and insights on subjects they know well.

3) Remember manners! Be generous, say thank you, and be kind.