When the News is Bad, Writing is Sometimes Good

One of Denise’s family members recently got hit with a terrible medical diagnosis, which has thrown our lives into turmoil only weeks into the new year, and has ensured that Denise and I will be acting as caregivers in the coming weeks or months. I don’t mean to be coy but I hope to be able to share more soon. I can, however, share with you an interesting book-related thing that happened to me that is tied to this family news.

I had been struggling for weeks to finish Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, and not really loving it. I had enjoyed The Secret History, which I’d read years ago in paperback. Since Goldfinch was on so many peoples’ Best Of lists for 2013, I figured I had to bite the bullet and dig into this 775-page monster. But I was disappointed. I like a lot of books I read, probably because I’m so selective. But there’s a certain subspecies of bestseller—the big book everyone’s talking about—that always disappoints me. I liked some of Tartt’s new book. I admired her obvious research and the finely drawn characters, but it was not the life-changer so many people claimed it to be.

And then one Monday a few weeks ago, I was sitting in a hospital waiting room after just hearing the bad news from the doctor. Denise and I were waiting for our loved one to wake after surgery so we could go in and break the news to her. To clear my head, I thought I’d finish the last few pages of Tartt’s book. And I hit this passage, which spoke to me. That’s the cool thing about fiction. It helps you grapple with the real world. I still don’t love Goldfinch, but I’m never going to forget the day I hit this passage, spoken by Tartt’s first-person narrator:

And I feel that I have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel that I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you. That life—whatever else it is—is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.

Look for my short story "Nighthawks" in Hitchcock’s Mystery Mag!

Look for my short story in Hitchcock’s Mystery Mag!

Almost forgot. One of those short stories I was telling you about appears in the April 2014 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (AHMM), on newsstands now.

The story is called “Nighthawks,” after Edward Hopper’s famous 1942 painting of the same name. It’s probably the most parodied painting on the planet after the Mona Lisa. Four people sit in an oddly shaped diner in the middle of the night. What’s going on there? Well, my story offers just one scenario.

The artist Hopper said the painting was inspired by a diner on Greenwich Avenue in New York, but no one has ever located the original site. Some years ago, blogger Jeremiah Moss investigated the mystery, and has written about his search in the New York Times, the Financial Times, and on his blog. Great reading, if you’re fascinated by the painting.

You can find a hard-copy version of AHMM wherever magazines are sold. (My local B&N tends to carry it.) Failing that, in a few days you can download a single digital issue via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Zinio, Magzter, Sony, and Google Play. Just make sure you are downloading the April 2014 issue shown above.

What I did in 2013

Every year at this time I take a look back at my productivity and try to make sense of it. I’ve done this for two years running (see 2012 & 2011). Typically I flip through my daily calendar to capture some of the highlights but I’m on the road for a few days and don’t have that book with me. Kind of don’t need it.

NOVELS: This year was all about writing TIMoNY, a historical fantasy that’s been in my head for a while. It’s a big book, clocking in at 120K+ words, involving a lot of research. In hindsight, this was not the right year for me to tackle such a thing, but when do we ever get to choose what life slings at us? The first draft took only two months, but those weren’t consecutive days. I lost a lot of time accompanying Denise, my wife, on her book tour in spring and summer. I’m tweaking and polishing the book this month, and intend to share with my agent first. If she thinks it’s worth submitting to publishers, I’ll go that route before self-pubbing. I completed another novel, The Marshal of the Borgo, in January 2013, but didn’t do much with it all year because I was too consumed by TIMoNY to do anything about Borgo. I hope to do those edits and have Borgo proofed and pubbed by spring. I also started a second book in the Mesmerist series. This year I hope to write two novellas featuring those characters. If nothing else, TIMoNY convinced me I should be writing shorter books.

PRINT EDITIONS: In 2013 I taught myself how to do interior book design, and hope to issue paperbacks of all my current self-pub books by spring. I should be issuing paperbacks when I pub the ebooks to eliminate the hassle, but for a long time I feared the learning curve associated with doing print books.

SHORT STORIES: Check me. Last year I said I would not devote so much time to short stories, but I broke that rule in 2013. Granted, the four stories which appeared this year—one in Plots With Guns, and three in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine—were all submitted in 2012. In 2013 AHMM bought two more of my shorts as well; they’ll be pubbed in 2014. Writing shorts is a great break from travel, writing big books, and family responsibilities. But if I’m honest with myself I have to admit that I’m flattered to be paid something for my fiction. And right now, when so little of my self-pubbed fiction is selling, I crave that validation as a sign that I’m doing something right. So if yeah, there will be more shorts this year, if only to serve as an ego-boost. I plan to release the AHMM shorts as ebooks when the terms of their contract expire.

SELF-PUB: Speaking of which, this year I earned a little less from my self-pubbed books than I did last year. About $315 total, as compared with $330 last year. Most of that was from sales of my nonfiction book, The Scientist and the Sociopath. That means I still have not broken even on this three-years-running experiment, but I don’t care. I know the market has changed substantially but I remain optimistic about self-pubbing. In 2013 I continued to resist the idea of serious marketing, and I think I’m justified in holding back. My feeling is that I should have at least two or three books in a series up before I make a move to promote beyond announcing my releases here and in my Twitter feed. If only I could figure out why I keep writing the first books of various new series over and over again.

GHOSTWRITING: This is how I really earn my living, so I can’t walk away from this. (Yet.) Two of my ghosted books came out in 2013: Blind Spot, a nonfiction science book written with Dr. Gordon Rugg, and another deep-ghost title written for a guy in the sports-entertainment field. The sports figure dude’s fans are not traditional book buyers. They don’t walk into bookstores often, if ever. They don’t shop on Amazon either. But they do buy his hardcover at full price at sporting events because they perceive it as a collectible. Dr. Rugg’s book is doing well among academic libraries and ebook buyers who snag anything dealing with the realm of computer science. A book Denise ghosted for a veteran actress also pubbed in 2013. I’ve already lined up one paying project for 2014. Won’t know if I can talk about it until I see the contract.

ATOMIC: The big story in our household in 2013 was the success of Denise’s book, The Girls of Atomic City. It hit the NYT Bestseller list multiple times. Denise is gearing up for another tour in March when the ebook and audiobook pub. I won’t be going on as many trips with her this time around, and thus hope to maintain a fairly steady workflow.

FRIENDS & FAMILY: When Denise’s book hit the bestseller list, some friends here in town threw her a party. “It feels good to know that it can happen to someone you know,” one of them said. I feel the same way, and 2013 saw two friends hit lists. Robert Swartwood became a USA Today bestseller with his book The Serial-Killer’s Wife. Susan Kushner Resnick, a friend from my college days, hit the New York Times Bestseller list for her nonfiction book, You Saved Me, Too.

In 2013 my parents sold their home in New Jersey and moved west to California, leaving me a Jersey orphan. I no longer have a place to crash when I’m in the New York City area, but they will be happier living among their grandkids in warmer climes.

In 2013, we lost more friends. One was Bill Wilcox, a nonagenarian historian Denise befriended during the writing of Atomic. He was a good man with a fine mind, and I’ll miss him.

So yeah, 2013: good things, sad things. Like every year that ever was. As I said earlier: When do we ever get to choose what life slings at us?

Two I'll Miss

Two more authors we lost in 2013 that meant something to me.

Elmore Leonard (1925-2013)

I discovered his books when I was just out of college, broke, living with my parents, and working at a crappy magazine company. I picked up a paperback of Glitz, his breakout bestseller, and it was a revelation. I had never “heard” characters talk this way. They seemed familiar, yet wholly original. I would later read an article by Gregg Sutter, Leonard’s researcher, whose job it was to track down and interview people like the ones Leonard wanted to feature in his next book. Leonard insisted that Sutter type up interview transcripts word for word so Leonard could ape the speaking style of his subjects. That’s one aspect the year-end tributes to Leonard rarely mentioned: the almost journalistic, nonfiction reportage that went into his thrillers. Looking back, I realize that Leonard was the first author who taught me the meaning of third-person limited voice. I can’t believe I graduated as an English/journalism major, took a slew of creative writing classes in college, and didn’t know this terminology. In j-school we just said we were “writing from inside the subject’s head or POV.” I loved a lot of Leonard’s books, though I never did get around to reading them all. I was sad to hear of his passing. 

Barbara Mertz (1927-2013)

She wrote mysteries under a number of pseudonyms, the most famous being Elizabeth Peters, but I first discovered Mertz’s nonfiction writing when I was researching an aspect of ancient Egypt for a book I did this year. Professionally she was an Egyptologist, and she wrote with casual confidence of scientific findings in such a way that you felt as if you were on an archaeological dig with a fascinating, elderly aunt of yours. I picked up a number of nonfiction titles about ancient Egypt in the course of my research, but none of them made those long-dead citizens of the Nile come to life as Mertz did. I’m glad I discovered her books. I don’t know that I could have written those few critical chapters of my character’s backstory without the vision of that world which she brought to life for me. Oddly, I remember thinking, “Geez, this writer’s really good. Who is she?” I looked her up online, and checked out her website. A few weeks later I learned that she had died.

#AdventGhosts2013

Today I’m participating in the 100-word #adventghosts2013 flash fiction event run by writer Loren Eaton. Here’s my piece. Links to all of this year’s stories are here.

Winter in Amsterdam

Peerenboom’s eyes opened to find his partner looming over his deathbed. “Oh, Jan! My sons want to change my will. They say our business is corrupted by weird doings.”

“I loved you as a father, Albers! Why shouldn’t I inherit?”

“That pact was made fifty years ago. I’ve grown old…but you! You look as young as ever. How—?”

“I got sloppy,” said the other Dutchman. 

Skin pale as Venetian milk glass, he grasped his crony’s hand.

“Sleep, friend, sleep.”

“So cold,” Peerenboom thrashed. “So cold!”

“Ja, like the grave.”

So ended the partnership of Peerenboom & deWinter, purveyors of ice.

Copyright 2013 Joseph D’Agnese

Congratulations, Susan Kushner Resnick!

Congratulations, Kush!

I just learned this morning that my friend Susan Kushner Resnick's book, You Saved Me, Too, hit the New York Times Best-seller list for nonfiction ebooks. It’s freaking awesome.

The book tells the true story of Resnick’s relationship with a Holocaust survivor whom she befriends, becoming his caregiver and sole champion.

I interviewed Resnick on the blog when the book came out last fall. You can read that interview here.

It’s wonderful news, and I’m very proud of her! Way to go, Kush.

Why I Love "From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler"

E.L. Konigsburg (1930-2013)

I’ve been meaning to write something about the authors we lost this year who’ve meant something to me. Before the year winds up, I thought I’d better get that done.

This picture shows the cover of one of my favorite books from childhood: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. This is the actual book. I’ve kept it all these years. I was saddened to hear that that author, E.L. Konigsburg, died earlier this year, in April, at age 83. The funny thing is, I’ve never read any other books by her except this one. Mixed-Up Files was enough to carry with me all these years. Only recently have I realized the debt my writing owes to this book.

The story of the book doesn’t sound terribly remarkable. Feeling unappreciated in her white-bread Connecticut household, a young girl named Claudia decides to run away from home. She knows herself well enough to know that she requires money and comfort to pull off this caper. So she enlists the help of her brother Jamie, a master card cheat, who has the princely sum of $24 to his name. The two run away to New York City and move into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By day, they educate themselves by tagging along with school groups. By night, they swipe pocket change out of the fountain and sleep in Marie Antoinette’s bed.

While living in their magnificent digs, Claudia becomes obsessed with nailing down the provenance of a mysterious statue of an angel, which the museum has recently acquired. Rumors identify the statue as the work of Michelangelo, but the experts beg to differ. Claudia and Jamie spend the remainder of their money to travel to the home of the statue’s last known owner of record, Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who just might know the truth. Frankweiler offers the children a challenge: The truth is hidden somewhere inside her Mixed-Up Files. If they are clever enough, they can find the answer. The children accept, and what they discover in their search makes me want to cry forty years later.

I like two things about this book. It just took me until adulthood to figure them out.

One is that the book is supposedly written in the first person by Frankweiler herself, who doesn’t appear until the last quarter of the tale. Despite the fact that she won’t be present for most of the book, she tells us early on that since she’s interviewed the children extensively, she feels qualified to present this unbiased account. This narrative framework seems dodgy, but I’m currently using it with a book I’m writing. It seems to be working.

I think you should read Mixed-Up Files if you haven’t already, so I won’t give any spoilers. Suffice to say that the children solve the mystery, and Frankweiler—who by now you’ve realized is a proxy for Konigsburg herself—manages to save one last secret for the book’s final pages.

The second reason the book charmed me is that it’s remarkably wise. The author understands that all children—young and old—want to feel special, and solving a mystery is one of the best ways to arrive at that specialness.

Here’s the quote that sells it. Frankweiler, in a conversation with Jamie, says:

Claudia doesn’t want ad­ven­ture. She likes baths and feeling comfortable too much for that kind of thing. Secrets are the kind of adventure she needs. Secrets are safe, and they do much to make you different. On the inside, where it counts.

Yes. Yes. Absolutely true. Konigsburg, throughout her long career, became known for spouting similarly profound gems in her writing. I sometimes like reading quotes people have pulled from her books. She was that good. Here’s another:

Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you.

When I was still working at Scholastic, one of my office mates was lucky enough to interview Konigsburg about one of her new books. Like me, my friend loved Mixed-Up Files and so she asked one too many questions about that book. Konigsburg bristled at this, saying Mixed-Up Files was one of her first books, it was old, and puh-leeze, she was trying to promote the new book.

These days I know in my heart how she must have felt. But Mixed-Up Files won the Newbery Award in 1967 and has touched millions of readers since. E.L. Konigsburg wrote a lot of great books, and I’m sure that in time I’ll read them all. But if I never do, all I need is this one.

The Voynich Manuscript: A soundtrack

The Voynich Manuscript: A soundtrack

Earlier this year, HarperOne published Blind Spot: Why We Fail to See the Solution Right in Front of Us, a book about I co-authored with Gordon Rugg, a British scientist who works in the field of human error. For lack of a better term, Rugg is an expert on human expertise, particularly what happens when those experts screw up.

I have planned a couple of posts with Rugg that I think you’ll enjoy. The first was about an event that occurred during the Second Punic Wars. This one’s about the sort of music a scientist listens to when he’s immersed in his work. The only time I ever visited Rugg’s office in Keele, England, I noticed tons of music CDs on his desk. This prompted me to ask what music, if any, does he listen to  when he does science. (Above, some images of the Voynich Manuscript, which plays a role in the book, and a shot of Rugg working with quill and ink to replicate low-tech technologies that might have been used to create the book.)

Dr. Rugg?

* * *

Music for Doing Science:

Research is a roller coaster — the high of a promising discovery, and the low that you get when your beautiful theory is killed by an ugly fact. Some of my music is good for handling those extremes.

When I hit a high, a good way of keeping my feet on the ground is listening to It’s hard to be humble by Mac Davis. It’s about an incredibly handsome, successful, intelligent, wonderful man trying his best to be humble in spite of his amazing wonderfulness. Very amusing, and a good grounding experience. 

For some reason, there are a lot more tracks in my collection that are good for dealing with the lows. For immediate gung-ho motivation, it’s hard to beat the Cantonese version of YMCA by George Lam. For sustained gung-ho motivation, there’s the 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band, on the grounds that if massed bagpipes can’t motivate you nothing can. I favour their album Live in Canada – the Megantic Outlaw. The only downside is that it’s a bit antisocial, even on headphones; it takes a lot to confine bagpipe music.

When you’re grappling with a research problem, or writing an article, concentration is essential. A lot of my collection is rich, intricate music, either instrumental, or in a language that I don’t speak, so I can blot out the outside world without distraction. I have a fair amount of desert blues music – Tamikrest, Tinariwen, Toumast, and compilations – and of Warsaw Village Band albums, plus Philip Glass and Lisa Gerrard. 

For the sort of work I do, it’s important to keep thinking differently. That’s a recurrent theme in the music I listen to; bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Miranda Sex Garden and Fever Ray. The “concentration” music also fits into this category. 

It’s always a joy to discover a new band or a new type of music; one of my projects involves developing better ways of finding music that will really hit the spot.

Playlist for the Voynich Manuscript:

I always think of the story as entering history with [Queen Elizabeth I’s court astrologer, mathematician, and all-around genius] John Dee, [conman] Edward Kelley, and the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph; before that, there’s no record of the book. So, in terms of music, I’d go for a selection mirroring the events in the records.

First, calm, ordered lute music, for the world that Dee was living in when he met Kelley. I have Paul O’Dette’s album of lute music by Kapsberger – that’s a little post-Elizabethan, but it captures the mood well.

Then, music by the Warsaw Village Band, for the alien-ness of Europe to Dee’s family when they set out to visit Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor.

[Later, during a bizarre scrying session, Kelley claims to hear voice of an angel suggest that he and Dee wife-swap.] In particular, [I’d suggest] Woman in Hell from their Uprooting album, for what Dee’s wife would have felt, and Grey Horse, from the same album, for Kelley’s feelings for Dee’s wife; that’s one of the most sultry songs ever. 

After that, an abrupt change to blues and jazz when the manuscript re-appears, shifting gradually through to songs of the Second World War, when the American military codebreakers were trying and failing to crack the manuscript. 

To end, Siouxsie and the Banshees, particularly Juju, for when I was tackling the manuscript, blotting out distractions with their music.

Indies First: The Freaking Upshot

Indies First: The Freaking Upshot

The freaking upshot is that just because Joe D’Agnese worked in your bookstore on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, that doesn’t mean his presence resulted in the sale of actual books.

Denise and I enjoyed ourselves immensely participating in the Indies First event over Thanksgiving weekend, which I described briefly here. I met some local authors whom I hadn’t met before, like children’s book author Alan Gratz and Terry Roberts, whose work of historical fiction greatly impressed the booksellers at our local shop.

Early on, I spent some time behind the gift wrap station, where I wrapped exactly one gift. Then, later, feeling that I HAD to hand-sell the shit out of some books, I wandered the aisles of the store, foisting myself and my expertise on people. In a matter of seconds I discovered:

1. I don’t do well speaking to the public.

2. I have no expertise that would allow me to intelligently sell the vast majority of books. I can hold my own in fiction, children’s, and some genre categories, but don’t asking me what book you should get if you’re planning to can tomatoes or build a chicken coop.

3. People in bookstores want to be left alone. I don’t blame them. I hate when salespeople come up to me in stores, too.

In the end, I spent a good deal of time talking to the booksellers, to friends who happened to be shopping that day, and to the authors I happened to meet. I bought a bunch of books for my nieces and nephews, so it was a profitable day on the Christmas to-do list front.

But I don’t think many retailers will be clamoring for my services anytime soon, and they’d be wise not to. I will say that the bookstore, Malaprop’s, was excited to be participating in the Indies First event. Next year they hope to be organized early enough to persuade our city’s biggest-name authors—Ron Rash, Sara Gruen, Elizabeth Kostova, Charles Frazier—to participate. A lot of authors said they wanted to participate but had made out-of-town-plans for the holiday weekend. The store plans to hit everyone on its list with a save-the-date email early in the New Year.

As for Denise’s Black Friday signing in Oak Ridge, it went incredibly well. Half of the store’s stock of her title were sold by the time we arrived, and people returned to the store after shopping elsewhere to get their books signed. According to Bookscan, this region of the country is in the Top 10 for sales of her book, which should surprise no one.

When the Puritans Banned Christmas, 1659

“PUBLICK NOTICE
The Obfervation of Christmas having been deemed A Sacrilege, the exchanging of Gifts and Greetings, Dreffing in Fine Clothing, Feafting and similar Satanical Practices are hereby FORBIDDEN With the Offender liable to a fine of Five Shillings.”

—

Pursuant to my proposal yesterday, here’s a public notice from 1659 Boston, when the Puritans banned the holiday.

Source:

http://whofortedblog.com/2011/12/16/history-repeating-war-christmas/