Roy Miller's Blog, page 194
May 10, 2017
Hugh Thomas, Prodigious Author of Spanish History, Dies at 85
This content was originally published by ALAN COWELL on 10 May 2017 | 8:07 pm.
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Mr. Thomas produced a series of definitive works, including the huge “Cuba: Or the Pursuit of Freedom” (1971), which ran to more than 1,700 pages.
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Later, he seemed to strike a wistful or even angry tone about developments in Cuba. Writing in The New York Times in 1980 as tens of thousands of Cubans fled the island, he said their status as refugees “must be the most vivid condemnation of a Communist system since the Hungarian revolt in 1956.”
It was, he said “fitting, if infinitely sad, to consider how this system came to be established in Cuba.”
In 2011, Mr. Thomas published “The Golden Empire,” the second of three volumes chronicling the era from the first voyage of Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492 to the reign of King Philip II in the late 16th century. The American historian Charles C. Mann described the book as belonging to “the genre of Nobody Does This Anymore.”
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“For better or for worse,” Mr. Mann wrote in The New York Times Book Review, the 646-page volume was “history of the type critics dismiss as ‘old-fashioned’: a story in which the narrative engines are human character and action rather than the impersonal forces of economics, culture and the environment.”
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“This is a history of the conquerors, rather than the conquered,” Mr. Mann wrote. “A great majority of the protagonists are white, European and male.”
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Mr. Thomas completed his trilogy in 2014 with “World Without End.” (The first volume, “Rivers of Gold,” almost 700 pages long, was published in 2004.) This final volume illuminated the breadth and reach of Spain’s global ambition, borne across the earth by its navigators and conquistadors. At one point, the empire spanned Iberia; much of Italy; the Low Countries; the Americas as far north as California; the Caribbean; and the Philippines.
Reviewing “World Without End” in the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, the author and critic Jeremy Treglown wrote, “Thomas doesn’t disguise the brutality of Spanish imperialism, though he doesn’t, either, question imperial ambitions of themselves.”
Mr. Thomas had earlier encompassed global history in a single 700-page volume, published in the United States in 1979 as “A History of the World” but in Britain as “An Unfinished History of the World.”
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David Gress, a Danish historian, described it as “a fascinating catalog of inventions, ideas, developments, habits and forms of organization, the massive paraphernalia of human social existence which make up what one might call the framework of history, the tools that make things work.”
Hugh Swynnerton Thomas was born on Oct. 21, 1931, in Windsor, just west of London, the son of Hugh Whitelegge Thomas, a senior colonial official, and the former Margery Swynnerton. Mr. Thomas was made a life peer in 1981 as Baron Thomas of Swynnerton, taking his mother’s maiden name as his title.
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In 1962, he married Vanessa Jebb, a painter. They had three children, Inigo, Isambard and Isabella. All survive him.
Mr. Thomas was educated at the fee-paying, boys-only Sherborne School in southern England and went on to study history at Cambridge University in the early 1950s. After graduation, he worked at the British Foreign Office and was secretary to the British delegation at major disarmament talks. At the time, he also wrote two novels, “The World’s Game” (1957) and “The Oxygen Age” (1958). He published a third work of fiction, “Klara,” in 1988.
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Alongside his early writing, Mr. Thomas lectured at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, Britain’s premier officer training establishment, and sought unsuccessfully to win election to Parliament as a Labour Party candidate before espousing a more conservative political outlook in the 1970s.
“Hugh Thomas has been something of a cuckoo in the Tory nest for two decades,” the critic Richard Gott wrote in the British paper The Independent in 1997. “His writings suggest he is one of the surviving romantic historians of an earlier, liberal school.”
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In 1979, Mr. Thomas became chairman of the Center for Policy Studies, a right-wing policy institute whose supporters included Margaret Thatcher before and after she was elected prime minister, serving from 1979 to 1990. It was she who elevated Mr. Thomas to the peerage, and he, in turn, played a behind-the-scenes role in her administration.
In 1982, according to newspaper reports, he acted as her adviser during the Falklands war against Argentina, enlisted because of his deep knowledge of South America.
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That same year, Mr. Thomas and his wife, who lived in London, hosted a private dinner to enable Mrs. Thatcher to meet literary figures of the day, Nigel Farndale wrote in The Guardian in 2013.
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“The guest list read like a who’s who of literary London,” including the poets Philip Larkin, Stephen Spender and A. Alvarez, the novelist Anthony Powell and the playwright Tom Stoppard, Mr. Farndale wrote, adding, “Thomas was seen as a bridge between their world and the world of Tory politics.”
The gathering was supposed to be secret and remained so for several years, according to Mr. Farndale. Mrs. Thatcher’s intention, he said, was to promote her political views among the group as a counterweight to her literary foes, including the playwright Harold Pinter.
Several of the guests were impressed by Mrs. Thatcher, Mr. Farndale wrote, but Mr. Thomas’s effort to broker a following for her in the world of letters and learning yielded ambivalent results.
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“As it turned out, the attempt was futile,” Mr. Farndale said. “Three years later, Oxford dons snubbed her by refusing to award her the honorary doctorate that they traditionally bestowed upon prime ministers.”
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The post Hugh Thomas, Prodigious Author of Spanish History, Dies at 85 appeared first on Art of Conversation.
Magazine Query Letter: What Should You Include
This content was originally published by Brian on 10 May 2017 | 4:00 pm.
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Q: Every time I start to write a magazine query letter, I seem to write an entire synopsis of a work. How do I know where to stop? — Adora Mitchell Bayles
A: This is an extremely common question. Most writers (myself included) can babble on about their brilliant ideas (which we all have many) and just don’t know where to stop, particularly in query letters. But there are a few rules you can follow to keep it brief and to the point.
Query letters should be no more than one page. Typically, shorter is better. You’ll need room for your qualifications and your details (how many words you believe the piece will be, how long it’ll take you to finish, where the editor can find your clips, etc.). This leaves, at most, one-half page for your intro (lead) and brief synopsis.
Both the intro and synopsis should be no more than 3-4 sentences each. That’s all an editor really needs to know whether or not the idea is a fit for his publication. If you can’t slice it down to that, you don’t have a strong focus to your piece and need to hone your idea.
Because of email, editors receive queries at an unprecedented rate and have little time to rummage through them. To give yourself the best chance at catching their attention and getting a fair shake, follow the rules above. It shows that you’re a professional and have done your homework.
Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.
Brian A. Klems is the editor of this blog, online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.
Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter
Listen to Brian on: The Writer’s Market Podcast
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Richard Russo’s Latest Cast Includes Average Men and One Big Star
This content was originally published by JENNIFER SENIOR on 10 May 2017 | 9:40 pm.
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The egos of all the main characters in “Trajectory” fall on the invisible ends of the electromagnetic spectrum. At some point, each of these characters collides with another whose self-regard is of a far more vivid hue.
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Credit
James Nieves/The New York Times
In “Voice,” Nate has to endure the mockery of his slick older brother, who repeatedly describes Nate’s fragile state with an adjective that’s as vulgar as it is emasculating. In “Horseman,” a smug frat boy tells his professor, “Don’t hold back,” as she contemplates how to punish him for plagiarism. (“How brash men are, she told herself. How controlled, even in defeat.”) In “Intervention,” a real estate agent in Maine listens, somewhat incredulously, as a client tells him that she always believed it when her father told her that she was special. (Only recently has she concluded otherwise.) The idea is foreign to the agent, who, even after receiving a cancer diagnosis, never got angry or succumbed to self-pity. “He’d simply concluded,” Russo writes, “that he wasn’t special.”
But the real revelation in “Trajectory” is “Milton and Marcus,” the story of a down-on-his-luck novelist and sometime screenwriter who’s summoned to the home of a legendary actor named William Nolan.
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To be clear: Richard Russo is not down on his luck. And I hope — pray — that his wife is not, and has never been, as ill as the narrator’s is here. But Russo has written and doctored a number of screenplays before, including an adaptation of Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods.” One of the two stars of that film was Robert Redford.
There’s really no question that Russo’s William Nolan character is based on Redford.
Nolan insists on being called “Regular Bill.” (People call Redford “Ordinary Bob,” a holdover from his “Ordinary People” days.) Nolan’s place is in Jackson Hole, Wyo. (Sundance, Jackson Hole; tomayto, tomahto.) Nolan is 15 years older than the author. (Redford is 13 years older than Russo; close enough). Nolan made a series of buddy movies with another actor, now dead, “the first and best about two Depression-era con artists.”
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The guy is about as well disguised as Inspector Clouseau.
“Milton and Marcus” also features a brief and affectionate cameo of a character who is clearly Paul Newman, with whom Russo collaborated three times. Nolan is not imbued with nearly the same affection. He comes across as a secret cheapskate and overt narcissist, a man who’s shrewdly selective about dialing up his sincerity, which itself is a mask for ruthlessness.
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Don’t let the wickedness of “Milton and Marcus” fool you. It happens to be the most beautiful story in the book. And how much of it is true is beside the point. What matters is how it reflects the larger themes of Russo’s work. Jackson Hole is the ultimate foil to the decaying mill towns of Russo’s novels, and actors the ultimate foils to the low-esteem schlubs Russo writes about so well.
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“More than their beauty, wealth and talent,” the narrator observes, “we envied their moral freedom, their ability to trade up and up again, while avoiding the consequences of doing so.”
Boy, do these people believe they are special.
Russo’s insight into the differences between Redford’s and Newman’s styles is also one of the best snippets of film criticism you’ll read this year. Newman — here referred to as “Wendy” — was a risk-taker and emotional anarchist, playing characters who either screwed up or “got sucker punched by circumstance and had to take a standing eight count.” Whereas Redford — “Regular Bill” — is an emotional conservative, “the reliable, competent American Everyman, the Nick Carraway who would never understand or accept or like himself half as much as Gatsby did.”
Now reconsider all the Newman and Redford films you’ve watched with this in mind. Reconsider Russo’s novels, while you’re at it. The author may as well be describing the two male archetypes that dominate his fiction.
Unfortunately, Nolan could be an Everyman only onscreen. “Ironically, it was in real life that being ‘regular’ had become unattainable,” the narrator concludes. Regular Bill disappears into the sunset by the story’s end, presumably to continue with his charmed, bespoke life. But the narrator — a genuine Everyman and substitute for so many of us — will go on to face a reality far more brutal and complicated. It will abruptly break your heart. That’s what Richard Russo does, without pretension or fuss, time and time again.
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Hillary Clinton Comes to BookExpo
This content was originally published by on 9 May 2017 | 4:00 am.
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Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is the latest public figure and author to join the ranks of speakers at the forthcoming BookExpo.
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Book spills origin tidbits, recipes from land of Shake Shack
This content was originally published by Associated Press on 10 May 2017 | 8:44 pm.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Harken back to when Shake Shack was not a burger-flipping force in more than 130 locations around the globe.
Then, in 2001, it was a hot dog cart in Madison Square Park, where it opened as part of an art installation. It operated for three summers, losing money each year.
So says its creator, restaurateur Danny Meyer, in a new book full of origin tidbits and recipes from the land of the longest lines. Published this month by Clarkson Potter, “Shake Shack” was co-written by company CEO Randy Garutti and culinary director Mark Rosati.
If you’re looking for culinary secrets, forget about it. The recipe for ShackSauce, for instance? Rosati, in an interview with The Associated Press, wasn’t giving it up, but the book gets Shack fanatics close with another recipe that can be made at home. It’s a fun read, part Shack kitsch and part, if you must have crinkle fries, here’s how to make some.
Rosati started as a line cook at Meyer’s Gramercy Tavern before heading for the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park that replaced the cart.
“I didn’t want to go. I thought it would destroy my career,” he said. “I was going from fine dining, cooking with white truffles and foie gras, to flipping burgers? Then I saw all the same ingredients we were using at Gramercy. The same beef, the same produce and the same hospitality our company is known for. So I thought, I’ll do this for a year. Fast forward 10 years.”
Our conversation with Mark Rosati:
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[image error] —Penguin Random House via AP
AP: Tell us how to think like a burger maker? Does kale ever belong on a burger? Why can’t you get a burger rare at Shake Shack?
Rosati: It comes down to you need to find the finest ingredients possible if you’re going to make a really stellar burger.
And kale, yeah, it can work in the right context. Maybe if it’s in the summertime and you throw the kale on the griddle and it gets a little smoky and crispy, toss in some olive oil, maybe some garlic, maybe a little Parmesan cheese and put that on top of a burger. That’s going to be pretty good.
We feel the best experience is in the burgers cooked medium. We want those juices to be a little runny and drippy. That’s where the pleasure factor is. You need to use the whole muscle, or the steak, because that’s where all the flavor is. If you take the trimmings, which most butchers do, they don’t have the flavor. That’s the real secret.
AP: What’s your favorite burger?
Rosati: It’s probably our SmokeShack burger. It’s very personal why I love that burger. It was the first burger we ever added to the menu since the inception of Shake Shack. We wanted to add a bacon burger and we knew it would be too easy just to add bacon. We wanted to do a burger based around the flavors and textures of bacon. I thought about chopped and pickled cherry peppers. I grew up in an Italian household. My parents would cook a pork chop and put cherry peppers in the pan. The cherry peppers brought acidity and heat, which cut through the richness of an otherwise rich meat.
So it’s a cheeseburger with ShackSauce, which is a mayo-based sauce, with bacon on a buttered bun. That’s a lot rich flavors and textures, so I thought about the cherry peppers.
AP: The book mentions how Shake Shack comes out of the fine dining tradition. Are you suggesting that Shake Shack is fine dining?
Rosati: It’s us going out and trying to source the absolute finest food, for not only our core menu, our ShackBurger, our fries, but also when we open a new city, it’s the same thing. We look at going to a city like Los Angeles and we reach out to a lot of our fine dining friends, be it chocolate makers, be it bakers, that we admire and we bring in that talent.
When we opened in LA, I’ve always loved this jam maker called Sqirl. We blend their jam into our frozen custard for one shack in one city. It’s one of our frozen Concretes called the Rainbow Connection with the strawberry jam from that chef, Jessica Koslow. And another friend who I consider one of the best bakers in all of Los Angeles makes us an old fashioned spice doughnut, then we add sprinkles to it. You can only get it at our West Hollywood location.
AP: What can you do about the lines? They’re crazy.
Rosati: It’s funny because I used to wait in that line in Madison Square Park. It’s only three blocks from Gramercy Tavern and that’s where I was working. I would go there early, wait in line for about an hour on a hot summer day, get my food and run back to the kitchen at Gramercy. My colleagues would come in and ask me to share and I was like hey man, I’m the one who put the time in there. You go and put your own time in and get your own burgers.
At the end of the day, the line is the line. We can’t do anything to stop people from wanting to wait in line. The time you wait between ordering and when you pick up your food, that’s on us.
We know couples who started in that line, started chatting, exchanged numbers, went out on dates. The next thing you know they’re married and asked us to cater their weddings. It’s just so surreal.
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Sales, Earnings Up in Q3 at HarperCollins
This content was originally published by on 10 May 2017 | 4:00 am.
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Revenue at the publisher rose 4% in the third quarter of fiscal 2017, to $374 million. Earnings increased 3%, to $37 million.
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‘My Soul Looks Back’ Warmly Recalls New York’s Black Elite in the 1970s
This content was originally published by DWIGHT GARNER on 9 May 2017 | 9:22 pm.
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She left college at the peak of the political and social unrest of the 1960s. Out in the real world, in Manhattan, she was sometimes made to feel bourgeois and out of touch, she writes, as if her “ability to speak fluent French made me somehow less than an authentic Black person.” (The critic Margo Jefferson, who had a similar childhood, wrote about this unexpected form of alienation in her 2015 memoir, “Negroland.”)
“My Soul Looks Back” is, in large part, about how Harris made a place for herself among New York City’s black intelligentsia in the early 1970s. She was a journalist before she was a food writer, working as the book review editor for Essence magazine and the theater critic for New York Amsterdam News, the oldest black newspaper in the United States.
She had a stroke of social luck when she fell in love with a peacock of a man named Sam Floyd, an early black writer for Newsweek and James Baldwin’s best friend and “master of revels.”
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Jessica B. Harris
Credit
William Widmer for The New York Times
Floyd was 15 years older than Harris and knew everyone; he grabbed her by the wrist and took her everywhere. Among the personalities who flicker through this memoir (and often through Floyd’s apartment) are Maya Angelou, Nina Simone, Richie Havens, Paule Marshall, Hugh Masekela, Toni Morrison and Max Roach.
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Because Harris is Harris, many of her memories are filtered through her recollections of recipes and meals. She’s long had a gift for evoking bygone restaurants and chefs.
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Her most recent book, “High on the Hog” (2011), for example, had a fond remembrance of Patrick Clark, the black chef who made his name at Manhattan restaurants like Odeon and Café Luxembourg before his death, at only 42, in 1998.
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In “My Soul Looks Back,” Harris and Floyd each had apartments in the West Village, and their primary hangout was El Faro, the venerable Spanish restaurant (now defunct). El Faro was on the fringes of the West Village, she writes, and “seemed to be the end of the known world.”
The restaurant’s “stygian décor of dark wood and stained glass” only intensified the action that took place within. Harris was a devotee of El Faro’s caldo gallego, a Galician white bean soup, and she prints a recipe for it here.
Floyd taught Harris how to entertain. Good conversation mattered most. But after that, the primary rule, then as now, was generosity, never to skimp when it came to feeding others.
She details her low-key professional rivalry with Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, the author of the influential cookbook “Vibration Cooking” (1970). They overlapped as young journalists at Essence, and Grosvenor wasn’t ecstatic when Harris began writing a food and travel column for the magazine.
“Verta and I both traveled in the world of the African diaspora, and we were two Black women in a field that some felt could hold only one,” Harris writes. “It was not supposed to be me.”
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Harris’s relationship with Floyd builds to a surprising and rather sad ending, one not worth spoiling here. Her gratitude to him remains enormous.
When they met, “I was a conundrum, a pile of insecurities about not being Black enough or pretty enough or anything enough: too light to be dark and too dark to be light,” she writes. “In those days, color counted, and I had my thick but fine hair whipped up into an Afro and wore aviator glasses in the style of Angela Davis. Inside, I still had the little ‘bourgie’ girl from Queens.”
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“My Soul Looks Back” was never, to this reader, uninteresting. It does suffer at times from a softness of focus. This is one of those volumes in which “rooms rang with laughter” and “rapier-fast wit” is prized, but it never makes you laugh.
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Harris doesn’t recall the best lines and jokes, and the result is a book that can seem more summary than scene. Clichés arrive often and frequently in pairs (“She’d arrived dressed to impress and pulled out all the stops”), like lovers holding hands.
“My Soul Looks Back” has a simmering warmth, however. Harris slowly gets over her shyness. She knows she’s arrived in New York City when, at a party, she hears Nina Simone call out, “Who’s the bitch in the red dress?”
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“I don’t remember whose home it was or what the occasion was,” Harris writes. “I do remember that I was wearing a slinky red dress made by my friend Kai Lofton that flowed liquidly over my dancer-lithe body. After looking around, I realized with a start that ‘the bitch in the red dress’ was me.”
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WD Poetic Form Challenge: Diminishing Verse Winner
This content was originally published by Robert Lee Brewer on 10 May 2017 | 3:19 am.
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Here are the results of the Writer’s Digest Poetic Form Challenge for diminishing verse. There were a lot of great poems, but only 10 can be finalists and just one can win.
Read all the diminishing verse here.
Here is the winner:
A Clearing in the Woods, by William Preston
Here, chickadees attired in dress as smart
as tuxedos from an upscale mart
display their peripatetic art
amidst the terse chromatic spray
of autumn leaves that seem to pray
for succor from each glancing ray
of sunlight in its fading trend
as winter comes apace to rend
the leaves, and bring the season’s end.
How blessed is this wild place, where
nature has made a statement here,
and all this is a gift to all, ere
the light fades, and brings the prowls
of raccoons and shrews bats and owls.
*****
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Poets will learn the basic definition of a platform (and why it’s important), tools for cultivating a readership, how to define goals and set priorities, how to find readers without distracting from your writing, and more!
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Congratulations again, William! I enjoyed the subject matter of the poem, but also the fact that the poem works both as diminishing verse and as a sonnet.
Here’s a complete look at my Top 10 list:
A Clearing in the Woods, by William Preston
Autumn, by Jane Shlensky
Break-up, by Tracy Davidson
Suffocation, by Nancy Posey
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, by Brent Collar
Mister Malaman, by William Preston
Baldness, by Jane Shlensky
Too Much Fun, by Daniel Ari
Spin for an In, by GPR Crane
My Elf on the Shelf, by Ruth Crowell Shevock
Congratulations to everyone in the Top 10! And to everyone who wrote diminishing verse!
*****
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community, which means he maintains this blog, edits a couple Market Books (Poet’s Market and Writer’s Market), writes a poetry column for Writer’s Digest magazine, leads online education, speaks around the country on publishing and poetry, and a lot of other fun writing-related stuff.
He loves learning new (to him) poetic forms and trying out new poetic challenges. He is also the author of Solving the World’s Problems.
Follow him on Twitter @RobertLeeBrewer.
*****
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In Conversation With Neil deGrasse Tyson
This content was originally published by AMY HARMON on 9 May 2017 | 10:29 pm.
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Vladimir Weinstein/BFA.com
The famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has dedicated his slim new book, “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry,” to those who are “too busy to read fat books, yet nonetheless seek a conduit to the cosmos.” In it he explores the mysteries science has unraveled about the universe, as well as the many that it (so far) has not.
In a TimesTalk conversation on Friday, I spoke with Dr. Tyson about why we should trust science when it seems so often to be wrong; what he’s learned about how to make science accessible; and at the behest of several tweens in the audience, what it would be like to die in a black hole.
Video of the interview is below:
TimesTalks: Neil deGrasse Tyson Video by TimesTalks
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Switching from Querying Agents to Querying Publishers
This content was originally published by Guest Column on 9 May 2017 | 1:13 pm.
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After completing a final polish on Is That The Shirt You’re Wearing? my collection of humorous essays, I diligently researched and targeted literary agents, and sent personalized query letters. And I eagerly waited for their replies.
Then I waited some more . . . and waited some more after that. I even sent myself test emails to make sure my email program was working—the writer equivalent of a stand-up comedian asking, “Is this thing on?”
This guest post is by Kristen Hansen Brakeman. Brakeman’s comedic essays have appeared in the New York Times Motherlode, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, Working Mother Magazine, Scary Mommy, and Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop, where she is currently the Humor Writer of the Month. She has appeared on Huff Post Live to endlessly debate the use of the word “Ma’am,” and is a reviewer for the New York Journal of Books. Real humans have compared her writing style to both Erma Bombeck and Nora Ephron, but possibly they were intoxicated at the time. Brakeman works behind-the-scenes on television variety shows and lives in the suburbs of Los Angeles with her husband, and three daughters. Her first book, a collection of humorous essays titled IS THAT THE SHIRT YOU’RE WEARING?, was published by Tidal Press in May 2017.
Undeterred, I continued submitting about ten queries at a time every few months or so, for three years. Though each rejection left me in the doldrums, I was encouraged to continue because of the many compliments I received about my writing, helpful advice on how to strengthen my platform, and the suggestion from one agent that my manuscript was a tad on the short side.
With the false hope that it was the quantity of my words to blame, I re-wrote and restructured, and then submitted again, this time with my slightly longer, yet apparently still unsellable book. As the months passed and my number of queries topped the 150 mark, I was, as the queen of humorous essays would say, “at wits’ end.”
Finally, in my last batch of rejections, came frank words from two different agents saying the same thing: Essay collections are simply too tough of a sell, even for well-known writers or comedians. One offered that if I were to become super famous, like say, Tina Fey, to contact her again. Become super famous? Why didn’t I think of that in the first place?
Yet I still believed strongly in my manuscript, and felt that readers would enjoy not just the humor, but also relate to my real-life struggles and appreciate the positive tone. And the fact that so many beta readers and literary agents said they loved it, made me not want to give up.
[New Agent Alerts: Click here to find agents who are currently seeking writers]
Lots of friends suggested that I self-publish, but I didn’t want to do that either. It’s probably a great option for prescriptive nonfiction authors who write weight loss guides or get-rich quick tips, but let’s face it, people aren’t Googling “humor essays” for help with their troubled lives.
Also, according to Publishers Weekly, the average nonfiction book sells only about 250 copies a year, and 2,000 over a lifetime. My profit margin would be higher if I self-published, but either way the amount I’d earn would still be minimal. So I decided to keep trying to to have my book published traditionally, if for no other reason, than to serve as a legitimate credit when peddling book two.
If big publishing houses weren’t interested in essay collections, maybe medium and small publishing houses were worth a try. I found listings for independent presses on Writers’ Digest, Poets & Writers, and AgentQuery, with descriptions of the type of books each publisher was interested in and their submission policies.
Whereas most agents asked for only a query letter and a writing sample, I discovered that publishers universally required a book proposal, replete with a market analysis, marketing plan, and a description of the target audience (in my case … um … humans who like to read and laugh?). With the help of online guides, I somehow faked my way through completing a proposal.
As I searched for places to submit, it dawned on me that my book was in a bit of a literary no-man’s land. I was too unknown to land a contract at a large trade, but my writing seemed too mainstream for the majority of these independent presses, who clearly preferred “literary” writing—serious novels or short story collection, poetry collections, or chapbooks. Frankly, I didn’t even know what a chapbook was, so I was fairly confident I had not written one.
Whenever I’d find an independent press that actually wanted essay collections I’d get excited, but most were after essayists of a different sort: deep thinkers who pondered man’s place in the universe, not someone ranting about the horrors of collagen lip plumping. And I bet not one of their essayists spoke in the voice of their dog … or cat.
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Conventional wisdom says not to judge a book by its cover, but I had to do just that to guess at which independent presses might want me. If the book covers on their website looked particularly heady or dour, I moved on. If a publisher expressed interest in humor, yet their nonfiction humor book covers had old-fashioned comic drawings, I clicked away, knowing we wouldn’t be a good match.
After a few months of submitting, I heard back from one of the medium-sized publishers from my first round of queries. The acquisitions editor requested my manuscript, and then later wrote back to say that she loved it. She asked for a few changes to my proposal, including securing advanced blurbs and adding links to my published columns, in hopes that her company’s marketing department would agree with her desire to buy the book.
A month later, and after numerous emails back and forth, unfortunately she wrote that they would have to pass. My platform was deemed to be, “Not dazzling enough to make a dent in the crowded marketplace.”
I was devastated. I felt like I was so close, only to have the rug pulled out from under me. My husband had to work hard to talk me off the ledge, emphasizing that if this editor wanted to publish my book then surely someone else would too.
As much as it pains me to admit it, it turned out that my husband was right. Over the next few months I actually had three more independent publishers express varying levels of interest.
I had submitted to one of them, Tidal Press, because on their website it said they were interested in books that “explore the life of the underdog, the outsider … and that make you feel less alone … and sometimes they’re funny.”
[How to Resurrect a Forgotten Manuscript]
The outsider—too much of a “nobody” for the big trades, but not “literary” enough for the smalls—that sounded like me! So when the publisher wrote back to say that she liked my voice and thought that I nailed the void in publishing that she wanted to fill, it was music to my ears.
Within a few months I had a signed contract in my hand and the knowledge that my book was actually going to be published. What’s more, the publisher wisely decided to market it as a memoir—a more popular genre than humor.
My only experience in publishing has been with an independent press, but I’m guessing that one of the biggest benefits is that the writer gets to talk directly to the publisher. Likewise, probably the biggest drawback for a small publisher is that they have to talk directly to the writer. Because first-time writers have questions … so many questions, and because they’re so gosh darn excited about their first book being published!
While being published traditionally meant I didn’t have to worry about the nuts and bolts that I would have had to deal with had I self-published, I will be doing the lion’s share of the marketing. So once again I’ve turned to online advice to help me navigate my campaign, which has included asking (okay, begging) for reviews, offering interviews to book bloggers, and endless requests for blurbs in everything from alumni newsletters to local book clubs.
We’ve all read the amazing stories of writers who found an agent on the first try or landed a fabulous publishing contract within a couple months, but for the majority of us, our books are only published because of our own perseverance.
Five and a half years, more than 150 agent queries, and a few dozen small press submissions later, my goal of having my book published will finally be realized. Of course I’m aware of the sales stats for books like mine, but I won’t let that discourage me. After all, I’ve come this far!
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If you’re an agent looking to update your information or an author interested in contributing to the GLA blog or the next edition of the book, contact Writer’s Digest Books Managing Editor Cris Freese at cris.freese@fwmedia.com.
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