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     |  Don’t try to capture lightening in a bottle—just promote your authors instead. Don’t publish “the next” anything. Don’t look for “the sure thing.” Don’t overpay debut authors—nine times out of ten, you’re ruining at least one career. Don’t publish debuts in HC—TPO is the way to go! Don’t pretend that Bookscan is in any way prescriptive in negotiating author advances. Don’t send royalty statements six weeks late. Continue reading 50 Things Publishers Shouldn’t Do  You’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to pull one over on the characters in the story Cake Walk, the fourth short story in Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steven Amsterdam. This book is coming to book stores in February of 2009, but if you’ve been following things around here, I’ve been giving a little taste of the each story. It’s important to look at the collection as a whole and each of the individual stories as chiseled pieces of stone, each their own work of art. Continue reading Things We Didn’t See Coming IV – Steven Amsterdam  For most of the first draft, I didn’t know how they were connected. I was just writing forward with each of the three narratives, nervously feeling my way into blank space. A lot of the time during the first draft I was anxious because I thought I might have to throw the book away, and when it started to come together toward the end, I was surprised to discover that a number of the characters weren’t who I thought they were. It’s cool when you can manage to fool yourself. Continue reading JE and JC Tag-Team Dan Chaon  Yiylun Li does a slow-onion-peel reveal of Suchen’s life, her marriage, it’s meaning as a failed attempt to run away from the trauma of her childhood. Don’t worry, this story reveals all the background in detail. You can decide if you find that background plausible and convincing. I’m not sure about that. But the technique of revelation, the writing skill, is masterful. Continue reading Alone by Yiyun Li The same tone in the first two stories continues here, with the narrator well worn, but still surging forward towards some unseen promise of redemption. Will he manage to get people out of their houses and to safety? It’s not possible, but plausible. We meet a mother and daughter who seem more desperate than they look, and mom decides that our hero needs a little love. It’s a chiseled interior at this point, and we’re really only seeing what we need to see, it’s tight story that shows incredible discipline. Continue reading Things We Didn’t See Coming III, Steven Amsterdam We deal mostly in the currency of literary fiction, which is a market overwhelmingly dominated by middle-aged, college educated women. Why is this? Why is it most of my dude friends stopped reading fiction in college? In the past year-and-a-half, I’ve made over thirty (you count ‘em, thirty!) personal appearances at book groups for “All About Lulu.” On average these groups are attended by anywhere from eight to twenty-five women, and they’re almost invariably gracious. But I’ve yet to see a single guy–once or twice, a nervous husband in the foyer with two leashed dogs, trying effect his escape before the wine and cheese hits the table, but other than that zilch. Continue reading Where Have All The Guys Gone?  We’ve mentioned Brad Listi’s The Nervous Breakdown a number of times here on the blog, and JR and I have been posting stuff at said kick-ass online-turned-real-life writers collective for a long while. TNB is a perfect place for debut and established writers to build their readerships, and maintain their profile. The array of writers who gather at TNB is dizzying, and every one of them has the same golden opportunity to sort out their demand the old-fashioned way: by writing great stuff, and interfacing with readers. Continue reading The Nervous Breakdown  There is a fantastic section where Grandma convinces the border guard at the blockade to let them drive out to the country. It’s one of those moments where you don’t know if she will talk herself out of getting past the guard or she will actually make it. Through a young man’s eyes we see the world that doesn’t give a shit about anyone. That’s a very rare gift to give the reader. There is a ripple of the surroundings, just a taste, meaning we are going to get more, and it will get worse before it gets better. Continue reading Things We Didn’t See Coming, II – Steve Amsterdam  During one of our recent conversations, I made the audacious generalization that: “good storytelling is more about the distribution of pertinent information, rather than the manufacture of said information–how and when and in what manner the writer distributes it.” “Await Your Reply” is a perfect example of this. Chaon exhibits astonishing finesse in distributing the necessary information within this puzzle of a novel. Continue reading Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon I’m stunned at the amount of collections that make their way out into the world, especially interconnected collections. Every agent and editor worth their salt has told me that collections don’t sell. Funny, I see a half dozen from every major publisher three times a year, so something ain’t right. Sure, collections are always followed by a novel, and when the writer was signed on, he or she handed in that novel too, but what writer working today doesn’t have at least two or three novels in a drawer? Continue reading Things We Didn’t See Coming – Steven Amsterdam 
Continue reading Stephen King apes Raymond Carver, like we need that. DH: A list recently published in The New York Times by a noted restaurateur gave 100 rules for what service staff should not do. I thought a list of 50 things that writers shouldn’t do would give us all a chance to vent. I’m contributing 10 items. Some of these pet peeves have pissed me off for years:
 We spend a lot of time around here trying to develop schemes and strategies to save the book biz. The best way I can think of to keep the book industry healthy in the short-term, anyway, is to go out and fork out some cash at your local indie bookstore. Tomorrow is National Bookstore Day. Yes, I know e-books are the wave of the future, but we all love brick and mortar! Spend some cash, people! Continue reading Tomorrow is National Bookstore Day  Joshua Mohr’s debut, “Some Things That Meant the World to Me,” is a gritty debut worth getting excited about. You may have seen the coverage of this in Poets & Writers this spring—and BTW, thanks P&W for always including an indie when you do your seasonal coverage! STTMTWTM (okay, this is not a book which lends itself well to acronyms) is the story of a man named Rhonda suffering from depersonalization as a result of childhood trauma. Continue reading Some Things That Meant The World to Me |  | ||
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Stephen King’s hardcover adaptation of the Simpson’s movie arrives; I mean lands in stores all over the country this week. He’s also got a story in the New Yorker, arriving in your laps this week. Ray and Mary are driving along, going out for smokes, on the way to Wal-Mart, and King is trying hard to be Raymond Carver, he even sits in the car like Carver used to, or Richard Ford for that matter, (see Rock Springs, the first story in the collection) and tells the reader exactly what’s on the minds of his characters, and then has them speak it aloud. Its minimalist, this King story, and Mary and Ray are all
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