Monday, December 28, 2015

No Direct Translation

There are a lot of foreign words with no direct English translation. You can find several lists of them on Google. A year or so ago someone posted a link to one of these sites online and I checked it out. Most of the examples they gave I would probably never use unless I was trying to show off and even then only a few were marginally useful. There was one, though.

Sobremesa

Sobremesa is Spanish and literally means "over the table" but it's used as a name for that time spent after a meal, hanging out with family or friends, chatting, and enjoying each other's company.

Sobremesa. Not only a useful word but a concept we should all keep in mind.

Susan and I saw it in action while we were in Europe, not just in Spain but in France and England as well, especially when were were eating out. We never felt we were being rushed because they wanted to turn the table for the next people. The bill never came until you asked for it. In people's houses sobremesa could go long into the night, at least until someone decided they had to leave and that would release the rest of us.

It was an easy, relaxing time.

You can't sobremesa standing up or watching a clock.




Sunday, December 20, 2015

The Blog Name

I owned a house in Brattleboro, Vermont, for almost 36 years. It was an old house - really old. One reference I found suggested it was built around 1788. It had been part of the Herrick Farm, a house built for the help, which explained a lot of things. The beams, for instance. Some were hewn, some were sawn with parallel marks from a pit saw, and some had mortises cut into them for no apparent reason, at least in this building. It was an assemblage of parts salvaged from other buildings.

There had been some attempts at cheap remodeling. the back half of the house had a "new" floor but it all but sat on the ground. The front half, over a shallow cellar with a laid up stone foundation, still had log joists. The rafters were logs, too. Very little in the house was level or plumb. In fact the back of the house was about six inches lower than the front which was quite handy if you spilled something. All you had to do is run to the back of the house and let whatever was spilled come to you. I got it for $7,600 in 1964. A house, a barn, a sugar house, and 8 acres. You could do that in those days.

It was a 36 year project. I fixed a lot of stuff and added a room and a garage. In the end it was quite comfortable.

One day in the late 1970s I happened to come across an old map of Brattleboro. As was the custom years ago, some residences had names like Meadowlawn or The Maples. And some sections of town had names, too, like Esteyville, Centerville, and Fort Dummer. The intersection of Guilford and Maple Streets where my house sat was called Elm Corners. The elms are long gone now, but that was too good to ignore. I made a sign to stand at the end of the driveway to restore the name and attach it to my place.

When Susan and I sold everything and moved to California I decided to take Elm Corners with me. Elm Corners, like Lake Wobegon or Grants Ferry, is a real place for me. I've long had my closure with the physical Elm Corners in Brattleboro, but the personal one is as strong as ever.

So that's what Elm Corners is about.

A few years ago I saw Gregory Peck tell a story about a time when he and James Mason were in Ireland filming a movie. Neither were young men, but Mason was older and had had a long career. One evening Mason had gone out for a walk in the village where they were staying. He heard footsteps behind him for some time before he finally stopped and turned around to see it was a woman from the village.

"Begging your pardon," she said. "but would you be James Mason in his later years?"

...his later years...

People have been after me for some time to start a blog but I never had a hook or a place to come from. The blog I created while we were in England was always about telling folks back here what we were up to and the interesting things we found there. My column in the Brattleboro Reformer and later in the Keene Sunday Sentinel always came from a local guy writing about his life. So I had been looking for that hook, the thing that would be non-specific but somehow tied to everything I might write.

Elm Corners - The Later Years

It's where I am now, probably a bit of where I've been, and maybe even some suggestions about what lies ahead.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Literary Fiction

Literary Fiction always had a bit of a snooty sound to me, like the music that is good for you one hears on public radio or that the writing is on such a high plain that one might need several college degrees and an extra set of brains to read and understand it, dense, plodding prose that promises more work than enjoyment, not unlike this sentence. Not my style at all. So imagine my surprise when my friend Ernie Hebert, noted author and professor at Dartmouth, told me that my own novel Grants Ferry could be literary fiction.

Literary? Moi?

I had no idea. I just tried to write a story.

So I looked up Literary Fiction to see why Grants Ferry might fit. The simplest explanation is that literary fiction (also known as "serious fiction") is not genre fiction. It's not mystery or romance or sci-fi or horror. It's also not apt to be plot driven. It needs a plot, of course, a destination, but literary fiction will take its own sweet time getting there and there can be lots of detours and opportunities to become familiar with and close to the characters. It's not necessarily a triumph of Good over Evil but can be a casual stroll to a general resolution of things and driven by the characters, not some outside influence like a ticking bomb.

According the the source I found, there are four main characteristics of Literary Fiction. I've simplified them here.

  • Characters and their personal stories generally get more attention than plot. People who enjoy literary fiction don't need to get to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. Simply watching the lives of the characters and the events that surround them unfold are more important than saving the world in 300 pages.

  • Literary novels are often more philosophical, searching for some larger meaning or truth than one might find in a detective story or an espionage novel. Digging into the thoughts of the characters and what drives them is probably more important than overcoming the next plot point.

  • The writing has to be good. The writer needs a way with words that can be either simple or flowery but it must first be an enjoyable read.
  • In Literary Fiction just about anything goes - as long as it works.

Finally, Serious or Literary Fiction generally sell in smaller quantities than genre or mainstream novels.

Damn.

Monday, December 14, 2015

Self Publishing and What I've Learned

Self publishing wasn't my first choice. After all, I'd spent 9 years or so writing and editing and rewriting Grants Ferry. It would be a great relief to hand it to an agent who would find an enthusiastic publisher to support and push it to success. I'm not greedy, but a whiff of celebrity and monetary reward would be nice. And to have it handled by someone with a budget and a stake in the game would be even better.

So I shopped it to various agents for about a year and a half with no luck. A couple asked for the full manuscript after I'd sent them a sample and appeared to have actually read it but in the end decided it wasn't the sort of book they were good at selling. And they were right about that. If agents are not excited about my book they won't be excited when they try to sell it.

Now around this time I had turned 70 and I was suddenly aware that my window of opportunity was growing smaller every day. This is not something I considered much in my 40s or even my 50s, but the Big Seven Oh brings a new perspective. I wanted to see a finished book while I was still alive. Self publishing would see to it.

I decided to use Create Space. I did all the work - the layout, the proofing, the final edits, and even painted the image for the cover because I couldn't find a photo I liked. I kept it simple, partly by necessity, partly by design. Common font, not too small, and no frills. By doing it all, it cost me nothing but the tedium of the final tweaking and edits. And the book was born. I, of course, think it's pretty good. Better than some of the industry published books I've brought home from the library. Way better than some of the self published ebooks I've downloaded onto my Kindle. 

The challenge now is to get it in front of people, people who like a good story and for whom $15 is a small price to pay for it. It's only $4.99 on Kindle but in both cases people have to find it first.

One would suspect bookstores would be the perfect outlet for a book and it is if people are looking for it in the first place. But bookstores have no obligation to give me shelf space. Some will take books on consignment and it will be up to me to follow up if I ever want to get paid for them. Not worth it. Nor is it worth it to drive around to bookstores on the chance they'll take a couple copies. I might make $3 a copy if they buy them at all and that doesn't pay for the gas I used to get them there.

A bookstore in northern Vermont schooled me on their side. Bookstores get a 40% discount off the cover price when they buy books. At the end of the year, if they have finally sold them, they might make 10% after expenses of running the store. When they order industry published books through their suppliers they have a return option. This means that all the books in most bookstores are virtually there on spec. They don't sell, back they go. Grants Ferry, ordered through the normal supply chain and published via Create Space, only gives a 25% discount and once ordered the books can't be returned. From the bookstore perspective, it's a no-brainer. Why would they bother? So I understand. If they can't expect to make money, even a little, there's no reason to expect them to take the books. I don't blame them. One day they'll wish they had, of course, but I'll have moved on.

On the plus side, from my self-publishing perspective, Create Space is a print on demand outfit and I can order one book or a thousand. If someone wants a bunch of them, I can order them up and send them direct. I don't need to have 40 cartons of them sitting in a shed somewhere.

As with so many things these days, the book industry is changing. Even book sellers have trouble keeping up. I understand why book sellers have a dislike, if not a hatred, for Amazon but there's nothing I can do about that. People who write books and can't get mainstream publishers to take them on are going to find work-arounds and at the moment the work-around is the Internet and social networking. The traditional Publisher/Bookseller relationship will probably always be with us but it's going to look a lot different in a few years. They may even develop a system for winnowing out the chaff of the self published books and find a way to order and stock the best.

And this doesn't even address the stigma of being a self-published book. But that's another whole issue.

Until then...


Friday, December 11, 2015

The Story Continues

Ah, yes. The later years.

I was going to title this first piece The Story Winds Down but realized that might sound as if I had a lingering, terminal condition and planned to give long and detailed descriptions of my decline.

In fact, except for this dodgy knee, I'm fine. Susan and I celebrated our 20th anniversary this year and we both wonder at how quickly it went by. This is not a complaint, and we didn't waste 20 years, but looking at it now, it's been no time at all. The good news is we're still friends. We laugh a lot, enjoy each other's company, eat good food, and this is where I want to be.

Which is not to say that's the end of it. The past few years, since I've published my novel "Grants Ferry"...

Himself, the Award, and the Book
(Shameless commercial:
http://www.amazon.com/Grants-Ferry-David-Chase/dp/1477538313/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370166826&sr=1-1&keywords=grants+ferry+by+david+chase)

...I've been having to be nearly as creative thinking of ways to get it in front of people as I was when I wrote it in the first place. And with no money to hire publicity, it's all about opportunity.

Sometimes, after considering it for a while, I decide I'll take a chance and spend a bit of money. The most recent was this past summer when I entered the novel in a competition run by the Independent Publishers of New England.(IPNE). And it hit. I was a Finalist in the Literary Fiction category. Now the award certainly can't hurt but to be honest there has yet to be a huge spike in sales. Give it time.

But like I said, opportunities come up all the time. Lately I've been getting a lot of "personal" emails from Barack and Michelle. I think it's nice we're all on a first name basis now, but these friendly, chatty emails always end with a request for money. I've got nothing against the Obamas. I voted for him both times. But it does rankle me a bit when someone with a cushy salary, living rent free in a house full of servants, wants me to send him a few dollars.

So I decided to write back. I don't have the email handy but basically I thanked them for the note but I did wonder why the only time they write is when they want money. So I explained that Susan and I are living on Social Security and a $10/hr part time job and that our discretionary income, what there is of it, is too dear to be sending it off to a bunch of people with big salaries who will probably spend it in ways generally unacceptable to me. On the other hand, I have this novel, "Grants Ferry". And I include the link to the Amazon page, just like I did further up on this page, and suggest they might consider buying a copy and sending the Amazon link to all their friends. After all, a nice royalty check from Amazon might encourage me to offer some meager financial support to noble causes.

Nothing yet.

When they start paying attention to me I'll start paying attention to them.