It’s more than suffering an untimely death at the brink of your creative peak and posthumous recognition like Van Gogh- the effect of having these works be successful but needing some tweaking. Rentheads, don’t be offended but I would rather light my own candle then listen to that song again…!
“The Larsson Effect” thus far involves two different writing Larsons:
a) Jonathan Larson creator of Broadway sensation “Rent” who died after being misdignosed at 2 hospitals, just several hours after giving an interview to The New York Times about “Rent” moving to Broadway. Rentheads are probably familiar with Anthony Rapp, the originator and still sometimes performing role of “Mark”, writing about the earlier days of “Rent” and the death of both his mother and Larson in his autobiography Without You. Good news: Rapp is workshopping Without You into a musical and it is a serious tear jerker just like the book. Oh @albinokid I still cry thinking about this.
b) Stieg Larsson who was a journalist, activist and writer of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Trilogy. According to his bio his heart attack was a heart attack which may or may not have been suspect. Hmm. In any event, he died shortly after turning in the 3 manuscripts. According to the NY Times there is a 4th book he was merely 100 pages from finishing which his long time lover, Eva Gabrielsson has in her possession. Since they never married to avoid Sweden’s law of married couples having to disclose their addresses (what!?) due to numerous death threats for Larsson’s political work, Eva received nothing when Stieg passed. Ouch.
As for Stieg’s triology… the writing style is like being hit with a blunt object. He goes ad nauseum into hawking Apple computer equipment his heroine Salander uses, the food everyone eats, but fails to including distances between places. Suggestion: add a map of Sweden in future additions kindly and a reference section at the back for those of us not familiar with Maundy Thursday, etc.) and perhaps some names changes since there are 5 (maybe more) characters in The Girl Who Played With Fire that begin with the letter B. Really.
I say check out the movies instead. I only got ‘involved’ in the story 500 pages into The Girl Who Played With Fire and have not bothered to open the final finished installement even though the ending was a decent cliffhanger, unlike the first book which tied everything up in a neat bow.
There you have it. This is a case when the movies smooth over some of the things I
Knock me down with a mere feather...not!
don’t like about the books i.e. ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ (please refrain from sending me any work by this author.) It is odd to me so much fuss was made over the casting of Salander yet, director David Fincher cast Daniel Craig as Blomkvist? He gets the crap beaten out of him in both the first and second books.
What I love about the Internet is the way it instantly connects you to people you may have never met without it living in other places. @BookSparksPR is one of those great people I’ve online when I inquired about writing for SheKnows.com. Crystal comes up with great digital campaigns for a diverse and talented group of female authors and really makes use of social media to bring books into every day conversation.
She's got a spark to her!
Location: Phoenix, AZ – but I service clients all over the US (and one in Canada!)
Vocation: BookSparksPR (book publicity)
Sign: Virgo
1. What is the benefit of having your own business over being with a larger firm?
For years I worked in corporate and agency PR, and I loved it. The creative people, the atmosphere, the water cooler and lunches with co-workers, the client meetings, the benefits package. There’s a lot to be said about that. However, nothing beats the flexibility and freedom of having your own business, setting your own hours, your own pace. Enjoying a mental health Monday or a Friday afternoon at the movies. It’s liberating!
2. How did you transition from corporate clients to representing authors and books?
I still have some corporate clients and do business PR (through BizSparksPR, the other division of my agency), but at the moment I have a lovely roster of authors that I am really enjoying working with. I’m passionate about books and stories and always have been - and so I’m thrilled to work with so many different authors. It sort of fell into my lap really… I took some out-of-the box approaches to book publicity – particularly online – and people responded and suddenly I was representing several authors.
3. What has been your favorite campaign you came up with this year?
This is so very hard to say – like picking your favorite child! I really loved working with debut author Sarah Pekkanen on her novel, The Opposite of Me. I was thrilled to be part of launching that book (along with Sarah and several very talented people!). I’m so happy that Sarah is in like her 5th printing now and signed another two book deal. I also am very proud of my clients Liz and Lisa (behind the popular ChickLitisnot Dead blog) because they’ve completed a second manuscript which is fabulous and are searching for an agent. They have come so far with their blog and writing in the last year – they are all over the place and I love seeing that! And I’d be remiss not to mention Allison Winn Scotch who I adore and who is so generous to readers and writers. And then, of course, there’s Christine Lemmon who is so inspiring! Her book was an Indie Excellence Award finalist and she is a lovely person. For Mother’s Day, I worked on a fun promotion of Irene Zutell’s Pieces of Happily Ever After with the help of the lovely Emily Giffin. Can I just say all of them? I could go on and on!
4. Do you think it is essential for authors to have an online social profile?
No, I don’t. There are several authors who do not and who do just fine. I think it’s a great way to reach readers and promote your book and build your readership - and also support other writers and readers. It’s exciting and effective – but not essential. Well, maybe a little essential. It’s certainly a lot of fun connecting with the book community – readers, writers, reviewers, book bloggers, and other authors.
5. How do you manage to juggle so many amazing projects and write too?
Oh my… well, I have a great team of people who help make it all happen. A wonderful co-worker who I met online and adore, a couple of fabulous, very beautiful, smart and savvy interns from Arizona State University (Go Devils!). So many authors who are so very supportive of my work and of each other. My lovely babysitter who my kids adore! A supportive family. My writing definitely takes the back-burner – as I’m too busy promoting other people’s writing. But I’ll get there… and when I do, I know a network of women authors who will be cheering me on!
I won a copy of “The Little Giant of Aberdeen Country” from Getglue.com for being a Guru of some subject. It took a little time for it to actually show up so I’d completely forgotten about it but was delighted to read it.
Tiffany Baker’s debut novel is a charming and dark twist of medicine, magic and the power of love over size, circumstance and society’s norms. Written from the point of view of Truly, the ‘giantess’ who has a pituitary gland issue, it’s a powerful and poised novel that I felt would’ve been a person I know. Truly is somewhat naive and at the same time so smart about seeing people for who they truly are it’s a long time in coming before she fits her own skin.
I found Truly’s train of thought when comparing her stunning older sister, that in order for pretty to exist, ugly has to, an idea that probably Naomi Wolf (author of The Beauty Myth, a standard feminist reading) would applaud.
It led me back to ponder why many of the intelligent and riveting men I’ve come across in the business world (tech, record, media, etc.) seem to pick a righthand who is almost the exact opposite – basically a ‘yes’ person who goes around collecting gossip and leaving a wake of trash talking and taking credit for other people’s ideas with a talent for doing a two-step side shuffle when it comes to taking the onus for any missteps.
Truly was right about opposites needing to exist. There is no pretty without ugly, no highs without lows, no way for some to show off their intelligence without the security of stupidity next to them, no way to pull oneself right from going off the deep end unless you take responsibility and grab the reigns in your life.
A very generous friend of mine sent me a Kindle after we had a long discussions about books. Ok, he listened to me and said he never reads books just newspapers and magazines so he was going to send me a brand new Kindle he had sitting in his office. Thank you Corporate America!
Prior to getting my Kindle I didn’t really see the need for it for the average person. It wasn’t like an iPod I had to have or perish. People I knew who had them were frequent business travellers who often don’t have a lot of time to peruse but then find themselves with downtime in airport lounges, planes and hotels. It made sense. I could also see how that would translate to someone like a soccer mom in a book club who can pre-order and download through the Whisper system for their book club. It’s on one device, they can cross off bookstore or library off their schedule and still participate.
Once the Kindle arrived it made me more giddy than any of the guys I’ve gone out with in the last two years. Geek response to this thought: “Well, the Kindle is so cool.” Thanks Hot Brit Geeks.
Hey people the publishing industry, this is not an industry killer, it expands your audience to the business traveller, doesn’t take as much room up physically as several books and if someone tells you about a book that sounds great, you can buy it instantly and be reading it on the subway home. Old school traditional iPods do not have the wireless feature to purchase on-the-go. In an instant world, I’m an instant girl.
Now that I have my Kindle you bet I brought it to the beach. I love that I can make annotations about passages I really like for later on & don’t have to actually go back to the book, Kindle will save it for me collectively. Yeah Kindle. For people who have said ‘hmm, that doesn’t really appeal to me’ I have to ask if you’ve ever tried one? I had a lot of thoughts about it before I received it and now it’s a daily companion which helps to satiate my voracious reading appetite. As Stephen King advises in his book on writing to budding authors you should be reading constantly everywhere. I’ve seen people at the gym with DVD players, you’ll spot me with my Kindle.
What about the font you wonder. Well my friend you can adjust the size and no need for a bookmark, you slide that thing off and Kindle keeps the page for you. Thanks Kindle, I love you!
As for Mr. Ipad (with that name..ugh!) coming on Saturday morning at 9 A.M. thanks Apple for the constant emails. Who would buy anything first generation from you after you’ve already announced you will have more features in the next model in the not-very-far-off-future? Hmm, oh no. I’m happy with my Kindle without haven’t to wonder about buffering getting in the way or getting distracted from a story and using my imagination to envision what the writer is telling me instead of having an interactive photo or video right at the second the author mentions it. I do think those features will be cool in the future but the power of words and imagination can get stunted by visual overload.
I once met an actor (hint he is prone to go shirtless) at an MTV party and somehow ended up in a debate over whether the movie version of the book it was based on was easier to take/more entertaining then reading the book. The book had a lot of violence and involved a rape of a young girl. Reading about the rape was so upsetting as my mind’s eye went to dark, dark places which ultimately made me put down the book and stop reading it. In the movie, the rape was indicated with movie magic but did not show the specifics the way the book outlined them. In the case of Harry Potter (and most other movie adaptions of books to film) I’ll take the books and wait for the movies to be on cable.
Mr. iPad I applaud you adding a new dimension to reading and to see if this increases sales for books, movies, magazine subs, but for now, while you work out the kinks, the buffering, etc. I’m delighted with my Kindle which I finally got to test out on the beach, sealing my love with an azul ocean background. Hurrah!
I love that @kortizzle is using social media to spread her Query Contest. That is the power of social media working with a prize that completely benefits the winner on a professional writing level. Wooga, great idea!
I was at the library (they still exist, try one you may like it) last year in search of a good read when I saw a very intriguing title Seeing Me Naked by @lizapalmer. It’s about a pastry chef from a literary family who must stop being so critical and start accepting the world has other plans to make her happy if only she can let down her guard and let go of the past. I was ‘sucked in’ from page one.
I wanted more from this author, Liza Palmer, who had created such believeable characters I felt like I was with them at brunch in LA and driving up the 101. Fortunately for me there is a bookstore a few blocks from my apartment which is open past 6 P.M. when it the urgent need to read anything Liza had written hit me. Fortunately, her debut novel, Conversations with the Fat Girl, was available and incidently is currently optioned by HBO for a series development.
As fate would have it, one day @lizapalmer tweeted about the relaunch of her website. Thus a retweeting & comment of that lead me to connecting with Liza herself. When her new book A Field Guide To Burying Your Parents was released, the pleasure extended past to reviewing it for SheKnows.com and most delightfully getting to interview Liza.
There are so many rules to everything we do. Liza’s characters break out of the way society sees them, push forward through their issues and face who they were meant to be instead of who people expect them to be. Palmer’s characters resonate as real people because she is such a spark plug herself.
Location: Los Angeles Vocation: Writer Sign: Leo website: www.lizapalmer.com
1) You’ve mentioned in interviews your creative process starts with questions. What have the questions and challenges you’ve asked your characters to face that have taught you something about yourself?
I think it’s all about this puppet theater of self-discovery. I ask the same questions we all ask. Conversations with the Fat Girl was me asking questions about who I was – who I really was. Seeing Me Naked was me asking questions about who I was in the reflection of my parents. And A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents is me asking the question of who I am without my parents. It’s just this ongoing conversation about these giant set pieces in our lives. The next book (White Picket Fences: And Other Crimes Against Humanity) is me questioning what it means to be a woman. BUT! And there’s a big but – writing novels shouldn’t be therapy. It can’t be. Oh my lord, no one – NO ONE – wants to see that. Like a friend of mine says, everybody like a hot dog, but no one wants to know how its made.
2) Your third book, A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents brings up the deep subject of what happens when the roles reverse between parent and child as the caretaker. Which Hawke character reflects how you would deal with those situations?
I think it’s in my nature to question (as evidence by the screed above) so Grace is my natural doppleganger. I have Huston tendencies – which is understandable as those two characters are really two sides of the same coin. But, I think each sibling is another path – which was the idea. Grief makes us do really crazy, beautiful, amazing, bizarre, unexplainable things. Which is why WE NEED A FIELD GUIDE.
3) Some writing courses advise staying away from writing flashbacks yet Field Guide completely does this seemlessly. What was the most difficult part of writing flashbacks and tips you would give other writers for attempting it?
Ugh, the flashbacks. That was BY FAR the hardest part of the structure of the novel. We thought we were going to do trading chapters – one in the present, one in the past – but that didn’t work for obvious reasons. It was an amazing writing exercise as I had to build this whole past life for the Hawkes – even more detailed than usual. It helped me immeasurably. I guess it’s about just diving into the world you’ve created.
Do you dare dive into the pensieve?
Like a pensieve. You know? If your character is experiencing something – what baggage are they carrying around that might make a cameo in that scenario? Because the truth of the matter is that we’re all just Jacob Marleys – clanging around with chains from our past. And the Hawkes really needed that illustrated in 3D – shit, I should have set this whole thing on Pandora. I COULD HAVE MADE BILLIONS.
4) You’ve spoken about the notion of “Kill Your Darlings” when it comes to the edit process. Could you elaborate on what that entails?
It’s about getting out of the way. Taking your ego and all your “craft” and this and that and ‘I was trying to do this can’t you see’ and ‘the genius of that line lies in the….’ and letting the narrative breathe a little. It can’t be about you. There’s no place for it. If you think a line or scene is hilllllarious, but it doesn’t move the story forward or build a character or work really at all (and who hasn’t thought that?!?!?!) put it on a t-shirt, but don’t weight down your prose with it.
5) Music seems to play a big role in your life including getting inspired for the title of Field Guide from Death Cab For Cutie. What are you listening to now & do you listen to music while you are writing?
I’m pretty much obsessed. It’s kind of a problem. What am I listening to RIGHT NOW???? Kids by MGMT. I made a mix for a friend and I’m testing it out for flow. THAT’S RIGHT. For flow. It has to not only contain amazing songs, but it has to build a mooooooood. Man oh man.
I just downloaded the new David Gray album – and it’s breathtaking. The song, Kathleen?? Yeah, it’s pretty much on repeat.
I love anything Timbaland does – I think he’s a genius. I’ve been on a whole Pearl Jam kick – Crazy Mary and Wishlist being the top of the pops for me. I love the alt-country: Drive by Truckers, Kings of Leon, Son Volt…and then going back to the OG: The Band, Lynryd Skynyrd, Bad Company, Marshall Tucker Band – I love it all. I know…no method to the madness. And there’s nothing like a Joni Mitchell song while driving over Laurel Canyon. Court and Spark???? Perfection.
While I’m writing I have a tendency to repeat songs over and over again. I lean on movie soundtracks during writing – they have that swooning emotionalism I need. I love Finale by Danny Elfman from The Kingdom soundtrack. Anything from the Narnia movies. The Transformers soundtrack is bananas. Anything by Harry Gregson Wagner and Thomas Newman will do – they’re brilliant. I thanked James Newton Howard in my acknowledgments because I must have played The Healing off the Lady in the Water soundtrack non-stop for months during the final edits of Field Guide. Just beautiful.
I like to make playlists for the books, characters and really anything that will get me out of writing. So, Field Guide had like 7 playlists: Grace, Grace 2.0, The Grace Project, The Hawkes, Majesty (I imagine it was particularly majestic)…and on and on. I think Grace and John had their own playlist. It’s pretty tortured. Sidebar: Someone made this heartbreak mix and I snagged a copy of it – um…no Tori Amos. WTF???? I mean, is that even a heartbreak mix???? HOW CAN YOU HAVE A HEARTBREAK MIX WITHOUT PRECIOUS THINGS???? Well, you can’t. So…
I could seriously talk about music all day. Ahhh, Kathleen just came on. Must swoon.
The New York Times let us know publishing giant Macmillian had it’s content pulled from the Amazon Kindle store. Why? Money of course. Already the iPad tablet has been stirring up changes in the marketplace and it won’t even hit shelves for months. In case you haven’t heard the jokes, this one from MadTV is my favorite:
Popular literary agent, author, blogger and all-around smart guy, Nathan Bransford explains the “Kindle Missle Crisis” is about Amazon selling e-books at $9.99 and Macmillian wanting to have pricing up to $14.99. For this, the publisher is willing to take LESS!!! of a prophet so their content doesn’t get stuck at $9.99.
Amazon temporarily pulled Macmillian content down. I’ve been at several companies where we did this– all to the detriment of the consumer. Do you really go searching for your favorite band and when you don’t find the video you think “oh I wonder if this website is having a war with the record label over payment?” No, you say too bad I’m heading over to YouTube or downloading illegally somewhere. And you probably don’t go back to the site that didn’t have the content so even if it goes back 6 months later, c’est la vie, you’ve moved on to something that does work for you all the time.
Amazon is will to take a loss on e-books so it can sell Kindles. That’s what Apple did with music and the iPod. They are not concerned about the music as much as those nice ads would make you think, they want to sell devices. A $2.50 price loss on books to sell a $259 Kindle is the price of business.
As for the iPad (seriously you didn’t have one woman on your branding team? Not 1???) the price tag of $499 is grotesque. You can buy yourself a Dell netbook for less than that. If you are going to go that route for something with 8 gigs why not just upgrade to a laptop? As an iPhone user, just because I can use my fingers to slide something isn’t going to make me shell out a couple hundred more. I’m also annoyed at Apple for announcing this a month after Christmas when consumers are falling in love with their new Kindles and Nooks, etc. Apple’s iPad takes a little bit of the shine from that.
I must concede even though I’m a bit miffed at Apple for their timing, in the end I think having several products out there for e-books is very exciting. It means mainstream consumers are seeing a need for this and excited to READ! Imagine that. Recently many of my male friends have said they don’t read books and prefer short form magazines or comic books (yes that man is European to boot and over 40!) Although I explained you can buy that content on the Kindle already (hello Global WiFi you rock) it was my passionately speaking about books that lead one of my male friends to send me a Kindle. I’m more giddy about my Kindle than I am about any of the fellows I went on dates with last year.
What is it about the allure of bookstores? It’s like Target where you go in for one thing and walk out with a stack of ‘essentials’ and down easily $100. Of course, being a recession, I don’t go into bookstores as often as in the past and I have limited myself as I’m the Highlander and there can be only one!
I was tearing myself from table to table reading book jackets and skimming first pages to decide. As my stack grew, the books battled each other until I came across Janice Y. K. Lee’s The Piano Teacher. Game. Set. Match. Highlander decimates the rest in one swing of a sword (aka the word Eurasian.) I had meant to read this book for a year.
When Will Truesdale first appears in the small social circle of Hong Kong, Trudy Liang an effervescent socialite claims him. Trudy is half Portuguese and half Chinese. Trudy is so vividly described she swept me under her spell as she did Will. She reminded me so much of my dear friend Jamie I thought Ms. Lee must know her and taken notes. It added another layer to the story that is already glamorous, captivating and riveting on its own.
The Piano Teacher set in Hong Kong in two eras with the Japanese invasion and then a decade later its reprecussions and how they have effected those who survived it. As the ‘how’ the characters survived the war unfolds, there is a cinematic feel as each intrigue takes place. Although I’ve never been to Hong Kong in my extensive travels, I could see the color of the ocean the prison faced.
It was fascinating to read the opinions of those who were friends with that outlandish, colorful Eurasian femme fatal when it was fashionable and then showed their true feelings in the war. Unfortunate that Eurasians never fit into one world or another. I have sometimes felt that way– not Asian enough for the Chinese, not white enough for the Irish side.
Ten years after the war we meet Claire Pendleton, a yet-to-bloom English rose, hired as a Piano Teacher for a prominent Chinese family The Chens. Will is their driver. There are mysteries to unlock and all the while you are falling in love with the jet set and wondering how fast you can book your ticket to Hong Kong but unable to put this book down late into the night just to know what happens next.
It will take a lot to knock my Highlander choice from the spot it now holds in my head and heart. If you like historical novels The Piano Teacher is a must read.
p.s. just for fun a little Corey Hart ‘Eurasian Eyes’ – audio isn’t the greatest on the video. Watch the second one for better audio, but not the original video.
b) Stieg Larsson who was a journalist, activist and writer of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Trilogy. According to his bio his heart attack was a heart attack which may or may not have been suspect. Hmm. In any event, he died shortly after turning in the 3 manuscripts. According to the NY Times there is a 4th book he was merely 100 pages from finishing which his long time lover, Eva Gabrielsson has in her possession. Since they never married to avoid Sweden’s law of married couples having to disclose their addresses (what!?) due to numerous death threats for Larsson’s political work, Eva received nothing when Stieg passed. Ouch.
