Roy Miller's Blog, page 290
January 27, 2017
Dark at the Crossing | Literary Hub
The following is from Elliot Ackerman’s novel, Dark at the Crossing. Author of Green on Blue Ackerman's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and The Best American Short stories, among other publications. He is both a former White House Fellow and Marine, and served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart.
Haris Abadi awoke on the ground in the large tent. He sat up from the cheap-carpeted floor and hugged his knees to his chest. It took him a couple of breaths to remember where he was. It took him a few more to remember why he was there. Slowly he recognized his surroundings and reminded himself of his purpose—the border. The tent’s gray canvas roof flapped above him, pulling itself taut and loose with a snapping sound, a grubby aurora borealis moving in strange currents of air. The weather had remained bad, overcast and cold though it hadn’t rained again. Sitting in the dark, Haris listened for the rain.
The fighting in Azaz had ended the day before, but Haris hadn’t heard anything back from Saladin1984. With the border still closed, Athid had offered to smuggle Haris across. He’d told Haris he felt obligated, as a Syrian, to help anyone who intended to fight against the regime.
The crossing required rain. There was a tunnel system two miles away, some underground culverts the Turkish farmers used to drain their fields into Syria. Haris and Athid could climb through, but the farmers opened the culverts only when it rained.
Haris continued to listen, hoping for weather. Every corner of the tent stirred with sleeping refugees. A few of them had blankets. Most slept packed together, warming each other in a herd. Haris turned on his phone. After checking its charge, he slid it into his shirt pocket and laced up his boots. A full moon filtered its light through the tent’s open flap. Saied’s cot was next to the entrance because his wounds often forced him up in the night, or so he’d told Haris. Glancing toward the flap, Haris noticed Saied was gone.
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Haris walked past the empty cot as he left the tent. Outside the moonlight cast a jigsaw of shadows against the earth and the clouds hung low. The air was damp and heavy. He crossed the parking lot and sat in the café. He thought he would wait awhile, to see if the rain would come.
Down at the border crossing, Haris could make out the gendarmes who worked the night shift. Their booth was dim except for the television that played inside, flashing impressions against two silhouettes of equal height. Haris wondered about the gendarmes from before, the short one and his taller friend—where did they go when not on shift?
The coiled hose in the corner of the gravel lot caught Haris’s eye. He hoped nothing had happened to Saied—his flayed stomach, his missing index fingers. The idea that Saied had been rushed to some hospital while Haris slept formed slowly in his mind. Before Haris’s imagination got away from him, Athid’s long shadow arced across the ground like a searchlight as he stepped from behind the café.
He sat next to Haris, tilting back his head, raising his face toward the sky as if to feel the rain on his cheeks. “This is the night,” Athid said in a whisper.
Haris leaned his head back too. He felt no rain. The wind died down, bringing quiet. The moon still shone bright and wouldn’t set until the early morning.
“Where is Saied?” asked Haris.
“Watching Bashar,” answered Athid. “Get your things.”
Haris walked quickly back to the tent. He gathered his hiking pack. He put on his old camouflage rain jacket though there was no rain. Rushing to cross the border, he found himself thinking of Saied, and the little dog.
* * * *
It was a two-mile walk to the crosssing. A dirt path wound through a quilt of partitioned fields, each strewn with untilled soil. In some of the fields pistachio orchards grew, but the Turkish farmers had harvested these trees weeks ago. They looked ugly and mean, their low branches sharp and bare. They would remain this way through the winter, until the next crop’s yield.
Haris and Athid’s boots crunched against the brittle path. The noise of their steps unnerved Haris—they were too loud. The sky cleared and the moon seemed even brighter. The homes of the farmers speckled the fields. Antennae and satellite dishes sprouted from thatched roofs, pointing north, away from the border. In a window or a door, Haris saw an occasional light. He wondered whether they could take a longer route, one that avoided any home with a light, but he didn’t ask Athid. Haris’s shoulders ached beneath the weight of his pack. He looped his thumbs under the straps, but this made his thumbs ache. He thought he might ask Athid to slow down, but he didn’t do this either.
Athid walked at a brisk pace, but casually, his hands buried in the pockets of his olive-green jacket. He didn’t carry a heavy hiking pack like Haris’s but a book bag that couldn’t hold much more than a change of clothes. It swung like a metronome on his back, keeping time. Now and then, Athid looked over his right shoulder, a few hundred meters to the south, where the ground sloped down, leveling out along the border. A pair of chain-link fences paralleled the border’s length, topped with coiled razor wire. The space between the fences was a no-man’s-land, just wide enough for two cars to pass.
Athid didn’t look at the border for long, but instead searched the ground in front of him. Culverts had been dug into the upturned and resting soil, each sealed with a padlocked manhole cover. Athid and Haris passed nearly a dozen. All were shut. Haris grew nervous. The fields weren’t flooded, and when the sun rose they’d be discovered trespassing on some farmer’s property. Uncomfortable as this made Haris, what frayed his nerves to their ends was Athid’s certainty they’d find a way. It edged on recklessness.
An irrigation ditch appeared ahead of them, a boundary running between two farmers’ fields. Water and mud pooled in its dark bottom. It stank of decay. Athid took a step back and charged at it, jumping across. He landed heavily on the far bank. Mud sucked at his feet, but he picked them up easily enough.
Haris stood on the near bank. Athid glanced back, offering his hand. Haris waved it away, cinching down his shoulder straps. Athid offered his hand again. Haris ignored it, taking a few steps back. He too charged the bank, jumping with all his strength, throwing his body forward. His bulky hiking pack turned him in the air, spinning him sideways. He flailed his arms once, clutching toward dry ground. It didn’t help. He landed right in the middle of the irrigation ditch, his pack pulling him backward into the stagnant water.
Athid lunged after him, hooking Haris beneath his armpits, dragging him out from his shoulder straps and onto the far bank. Haris was soaked from the waist down, and he stank from the water. Athid leaned into the irrigation ditch and fished out Haris’s pack. He sat it next to Haris and stood over him, staring down his nose. Haris struggled to his feet. Water trickled along the backs of his legs, pooling in his boots. He reshouldered his pack, heavier now that it was wet, and stumbled forward. Lending a hand, Athid held the pack’s bottom so Haris could properly tighten the straps.
“You should’ve taken my help,” said Athid.
“I thought I could make it on my own.”
They continued down the dry path. To their right, in the southern sky, the moon dissolved, setting behind the low-slung hills of Aleppo Governorate. Without the moon, darkness fell through the fields while the first stars formed clear, hardened points above. Haris’s waterlogged pack slowed him. Out of breath and with aching shoulders, he wasn’t certain how much further he could go. All that he carried dripped a long trail of brackish water in the dust behind him.
* * * *
On the side of the path, Haris sat waiting. The sound of Athid’s steps grew faint and then disappeared entirely as he cut across a barren field to check if one of the culverts was unlocked.
Haris looked at his watch. Through the darkness, he couldn’t distinguish the hands on its face. He angled his wrist to the sky, hoping to catch some light. Nothing. Dark as it was, he knew enough night remained for the crossing. That wasn’t what bothered him. He wanted to know the time so he might imagine what was going on at home. Maybe if he knew it was five p.m. back in Dearborn—when he’d be finishing his job at the university as a custodian, a handyman who fixed small things—he’d know he had made the right choice quitting such work. Or, if it was seven p.m. back there—when he’d be eating alone, a reheated bowl of rice and spiced lamb baked in a dolma by Samia—he’d know all he had lost by giving up his old life was convenience.
He remembered three a.m., too, the hour when he had returned home after his drink at the hotel. That night, he had assumed Samia would be asleep but found her sitting on his sofa bed, her face in her hands. He hadn’t even slipped the door shut when she threw a pillow at him, then another, until a barricade of pillows stacked at his feet. Before he could devise a story of where he’d been, his sister demanded to know why he would sneak out, whether he planned to abandon her, whether he had brought her here for his new life instead of both of theirs.
To assuage his guilt about leaving Samia that night, or perhaps to assuage his homesickness, which itself felt like a form of unquenchable guilt, Haris walked his sister to the university every day that week, waiting outside her classroom in the Michigan winter. The faculty soon asked about the man loitering around campus in a thin camouflage rain jacket, and shortly thereafter offered Haris the charity of a job, which came with a discount in Samia’s tuition. His hours now began earlier than Samia’s and finished later, so they began to walk separately to the university. He noticed how she started to avoid him, how when he saw her, pushing his mop in the navy slacks and the powder blue shirt that were his new uniform, she would speak to him with her eyes downcast and explain that she was late to her next class.
The spring of Samia’s second year she began dating an Emirati boy whom Haris had no reason to disapprove of, whose passport came soused with oil money and stamped with a student visa, and who had a car of his own. Samia had told her brother it was a BMW. Haris made a point of often forgetting the Emirati’s name, of lecturing his sister about the poverty and indignity some Arabs—Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis—faced while others—Saudis, Kuwaitis, Emiratis—indulged in luxury. He also made a point of never being around to see the car.
He took another look at his watch. Sitting on the side of the path waiting for Athid to return across the field, Haris stared to the south, toward the border, and into the perfect blackness. All he could do was listen, and wait.
* * * *
The air cooled. Haris strained to hear over the wind. Then Athid surprised him, flopping down on the trailside. He brought his face close to Haris’s, speaking in a whisper: “It is unlocked.”
Sweat beaded on Athid’s forehead, running in rivulets over each temple. Haris felt afraid and nodded once.
Running in a crouch, they moved quickly across the broken field. Haris’s footing felt uncertain and mud caked to his boots, his feet becoming heavier with each step. He couldn’t see a thing, whereas Athid moved with total certainty, never slowing. Then Athid collapsed to his knees. Haris toppled into him in the darkness. After untangling himself, Haris also stood on his knees. Athid bent over the manhole cover that sealed the culvert. With a jerk from his legs and back, he lifted and tossed it aside.
A warm, decomposing smell belched up from the earth. Athid lowered himself underground. When he stood in the culvert’s bottom, its mouth came up to his chest. He glanced back, looking for some assurance Haris would follow. Haris took off his heavy pack and stood at the opening’s lip. Athid dipped below, and Haris trailed after him, ducking underground.
On their hands and knees, and at times on their stomachs, the two crept toward the border, dragging their packs behind them. The sloshing of stagnant water and the scampering of subterranean creatures were the only sounds. Athid cursed as the sharp smells became unbearable or as a rat or something else brushed by his leg or over his arm. Haris reached up and touched the sides of the culvert. They felt cool and hard, like cement. Beneath his palms it was all mud.
Haris crawled on his left side. Soaked from the waist down, he did his best to protect his right pocket, which carried his fold of cash, passport, and map. Miserable as the passage was, he felt glad for it. To cross into a war should be difficult, he thought. To fight in a war should be even more difficult. When he’d been in Ramadi, that most violent of cities, the war had felt easy. The American soldiers he had translated for would tape a half pound of explosives to a door, blow it in, find the person they were looking for, maybe kill that person, maybe capture him, and then return to their firebase at Hurricane Point, a peninsula jutting into the Euphrates River. They’d leave after dinner. They’d return before dawn and have breakfast, watching television and lounging on La-Z-Boy recliners flown in from the States, the sweat still on their uniforms. They would kill someone and in the morning they’d eat cornflakes together.
Traveling through filth and darkness, Haris thought he might find what he was looking for on the other side. And he was happy.
* * * *
Haris tugged his pack by the handle, grunting, becoming short of breath. Every few minutes, he’d tap Athid on the back, needing to rest a bit. Then they’d continue to plow through the water and filth. The culvert was several hundred meters long, and progress became difficult to measure. They moved in a straight line, but Haris wondered if it was possible to get lost on a straight line. Again he glanced at his watch, knowing he wouldn’t be able to see its face.
A hoop of light sliced into the culvert from a sealed manhole cover above. Had they been traveling for that long? Haris couldn’t believe morning had already broken. Athid stopped, his neck craning toward the light. He gazed back at Haris. Both their faces were layered in sweat and grime. Haris glanced upward. Athid had kept his word, taking him this far. Haris returned his look with clear, wide-open eyes. Athid’s eyes had become heavy-lidded with fatigue. Composting earth flecked the growth of his spongy beard, and it seemed as if a liquid filth might be wrung from it. He considered Haris for a moment further, then frowned. Coming to a squat, Athid bounced on his haunches and then exploded upward, lifting the manhole cover.
Light rushed in.
Not looking back, Athid vaulted from the culvert.
Before Haris could follow, a pair of blue-sleeved arms reached beneath the earth and grabbed him under the shoulders. Haris flailed against their grip, lunging belowground. He struggled to free himself and almost broke loose. Then another set of longer arms clutched after him, joining the first. Haris grabbed the drag handle on his pack, hoping its weight might anchor him inside the culvert. It didn’t work. As he was lifted up, light washed against his face, blinding him. But it wasn’t daytime. The glare didn’t come from above but from the side. Headlights.
The blue-sleeved arms pinned him down. Haris glimpsed the two chain-linked fences of no-man’s-land. He called out for Athid. No reply. Framed in the glare, two silhouettes moved swiftly against him—one short, the other tall. They cursed at him in Turkish. The headlights caught the stubbled faces of the gendarmes.
Haris offered his hands so they might cuff his wrists, but they didn’t. The taller gendarme knelt on his chest. Haris now faced the sky and the night above. The short gendarme groped at his pockets, grabbing after his valuables. Haris bucked wildly. “Don’t!”
“Stay still you damn fool!” the gendarme shouted in Arabic.
Haris got an arm free. He struck the taller gendarme across the face. It wasn’t enough to knock him from Haris’s chest. Instead the gendarme rolled his jaw and unholstered a strange-looking pistol. Haris glimpsed the plastic barrel. It fired with a click instead of a bang. A fanged bite sunk into Haris’s skin, just beneath the ear. He felt the puncture, then his whole body seized, the Taser’s ten thousand volts pulsing through him. His eyelids cramped shut. He smelled his burning flesh, felt his skin turning hotter than his blood.
Everything released.
Haris exhaled, his breath tasting like warm ash.
The taller gendarme dismounted him. He ripped the Taser wire’s teeth from Haris’s neck. The shorter gendarme finished rifling through Haris’s pockets, taking his cash, passport, and map. Haris tried to stand, to come after them, but he couldn’t. His body refused him, remaining limp on the soft ground.
The headlights shut off. Perfect darkness returned.
Only Haris’s eyes would obey him. He looked frantically for Athid, but found him nowhere. Lying on his back, Haris glimpsed the dome of stars above. Mixing with the stars was galaxy dust, the type which could only be seen far from a city. And Haris felt completely alone.
Standing somewhere above Haris, the two gendarmes argued in Turkish, presumably about what to do with him. Slowly Haris felt his senses recovering, but he didn’t move. He hoped the gendarmes would leave him. Soon their chatter stopped. Their footsteps fell into the distance. Haris shifted his eyes in that direction, but he couldn’t see through the night.
A car door opened where the gendarmes had disappeared. Haris managed to turn his head toward the sound. The overhead light flashed on inside the cab of a truck. Haris saw a black parka, a red Che T-shirt. Saied’s head was hunched down as he thumbed through a wad of cash handed to him by the shorter gendarme, and on the seat next to him sat Bashar the dog. Startled by the flash, Saied glanced up, staring into the darkness. Before Haris could read the expression on his face, the taller gendarme turned off the overhead light.
Haris rested his head in the mud, easing into the earth. He watched the galaxy dust and waited for his body to return to him.
From DARK AT THE CROSSING . Used with permission of Knopf. Copyright © 2017 by Elliot Ackerman.
The post Dark at the Crossing | Literary Hub appeared first on Art of Conversation.
January 26, 2017
The Challenges of Marketing a Genre-Bending Novel
A recent review on Amazon called my debut novel, Who Is Mr. Plutin?, Kafkaesque. Naturally I was thrilled to have my book compared to a world literature classic. Then I looked up my Amazon ranking, and also the ranking of various editions of Kafka’s works. My book’s Amazon numbers were nowhere near Kafka’s; I didn’t expect them to be, of course. But it made me think that, though a metamorphosis worked wonders for my book’s main character, Vika, it did nothing for my sales.
In the book, Vika wakes up transformed—much like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa. Without giving away details and spoiling it for the reader, I’ll just say that the success of her mission depends on how she navigates this new state. She doesn’t become a bug as a result of her transformation—in fact, she stays completely human—but everything has changed. Her thinking is different, her decisions surprise friends and family, and her questions make people around her wonder aloud if she’s fallen off the moon. Even her style has changed: her closet is now full of clothes that seem much different from those she usually wears.
The novel mirrors the predicament of its protagonist. Who Is Mr. Plutin? has a foothold in several genres, morphing from one to another, sometimes even within the span of a page, which created an enormous marketing conundrum.
Until the release of Who Is Mr. Plutin?, my publisher, Curiosity Quills, specialized in genres that are as far from my novel as Kafka’s Amazon rankings are from mine. Its list was populated with fantasy of all kinds: paranormal and supernatural, horror and science fiction, and mysteries that traverse time and space; its covers were for the most part dark and surrealistic; and its marketing strategy was clear, especially when it came to genre stratification.
I sent Curiosity Quills my manuscript at a time when it was developing plans for a new imprint: Curiosity Thrills was supposed to introduce romance and contemporary fiction to the publisher’s roster of speculative titles. After a few false starts with my cover, we settled on one that transmitted the mood of the novel.
In June 2015, Who Is Mr. Plutin? hit the shelves—under two primary categories selected by my publisher: Mystery/Crime and Romance. I began to visit my book’s Amazon page on a daily basis. Amazon soon caught on and began sending me marketing emails. “If you are interested in Who Is Mr. Plutin?,” they read, “we thought you might be interested in the following titles.” What followed were books in the Mystery/Crime and Romance categories.
The covers of the recommended books were either very dark or very romantic, and they didn’t look like the cover of my novel, which to me meant that people interested in those two genres wouldn’t buy my book, and, if they did, they’d be very disappointed.
Who Is Mr. Plutin? contains some mystery, but the kind that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It contains romance too, but very little of it. Overall the novel can probably be classed as a spy-fi: a Bridget (Jones) Identity, a Sex and the KGB, a Spy and the City, a Sophie Kinsella in Gary Shteyngart’s Russia, and all of the above at the same time. It’s a light, fun read with a bit of Austin Powers–type espionage and some social satire. Who Is Mr. Plutin? spans many genres and doesn’t fit completely in any one of them.
While I was writing this piece, another reviewer compared my novel to Kafka. The Metamorphosis ends with Samsa dying and his family relieved that he is gone. While the end of my own heroine’s journey couldn’t be more different, I admit that I am concerned about the fate of Who Is Mr. Plutin? I don’t want the book itself to suffer Samsa’s fate.
My book’s genre-morphing nature makes it a colossal marketing challenge—especially when it comes to categorizing it on Amazon and targeting the right audience. But a challenge can be a good thing, right? I certainly hope so.
Rebecca Strong is the pseudonym of a writer and artist living in Madrid. Her debut novel, Who Is Mr. Plutin?, was published by Curiosity Quills Press in June 2015.
A version of this article appeared in the 01/25/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: The Metamorphosis
The post The Challenges of Marketing a Genre-Bending Novel appeared first on Art of Conversation.
ABA Added 87 New Member Stores in 2016
The new members were spread across 32 states and the organization's growth is accelerating.
In 2016, 87 new independent bookstores opened and joined the American Booksellers Association. The new stores were spread across 32 states and the District of Columbia, and of the new openings, 21 were branches or satellites of existing businesses, according to the organization.
California had the highest number of new store openings, with nine; New York saw five new openings Also, in 2016, 15 established ABA member stores were bought by new owners.
Growth for the ABA is accelerating: in 2015, 61 new stores joined the ABA and as of May of last year, the last date from which official statistics are available, the ABA counted 1775 members.
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AWP Conference: Poetry Spotlight | WritersDigest.com
Last week, we examined the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. This week, let’s head to Washington, DC, to discuss the AWP Conference.
By the way, I appreciate the poetry spotlight ideas people have sent my way. Keep them coming at robert.brewer@fwmedia.com with the subject line: Poetry Spotlight Idea.
*****
The 2017 Poet’s Market, edited by Robert Lee Brewer, includes hundreds of poetry markets, including listings for poetry publications, publishers, contests, and more! With names, contact information, and submission tips, poets can find the right markets for their poetry and achieve more publication success than ever before.
In addition to the listings, there are articles on the craft, business, and promotion of poetry–so that poets can learn the ins and outs of writing poetry and seeking publication. Plus, it includes a one-year subscription to the poetry-related information on WritersMarket.com. All in all, it’s the best resource for poets looking to secure publication.
*****
My AWP Chicago Panel with Jane Friedman, Porter Anderson, and Christina Katz
The AWP Conference is the annual conference for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. So it’s an event for writers, sure, but also an event for those who instruct writers (often, but not always, writers themselves). The conference changes cities each year, and this year will be in Washington, DC, February 8-11; next year, it will be in Tampa, FL, in March.
I’ve personally only been to one of these conferences, and it was an eye opening experience. I spoke on a panel when AWP breezed through the windy city of Chicago. And this was probably the first conference in which the speaking portion was less stressful than the wandering portion.
There are so many booths and tables for exhibitors that it felt like a comic convention or BookExpo America (a large book publishing event). But I ran into several people I’d “met” online; most of them noticing me first, because I was shell shocked. So it’s a great event for meeting people you know and for making new friends.
Plus, there are several panels, discussions, off-site poetry readings, the latest in writing and writing instruction, and so much more. Despite being overwhelmed the first time I attended, I do hope to make it down to Tampa next year (hopefully I’ll be signing a new book).
*****
Robert Lee Brewer is the editor of Poet’s Market and author of Solving the World’s Problems. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
*****
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LitHub Daily: January 26, 2017
The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day
More Story
Dark at the Crossing
Haris Abadi awoke on the ground in the large tent. He sat up from the cheap-carpeted floor and hugged his knees to his chest….
The post LitHub Daily: January 26, 2017 appeared first on Art of Conversation.
The Debate over Freedom of Expression
Freedom of expression was a polarizing subject in 2015, sparking media stories and public debate all over the world, with some parties arguing for a universal legal standard and others calling for limits to freedom of expression, or at least claiming that an absolutist concept of free speech is impractical in today’s complicated world.
Salman Rushdie anticipated these concerns as early as 2012, saying that his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, might not get published now, because “there’s a lot of fear and nervousness around.” For Rushdie, the question is simple: can a book be published? And is there an immediate threat to its author or its supporters (publishers, critics, and translators)? In short, the challenges to freedom of expression now are not so much philosophical or religious but are more practical in nature.
Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was convicted and sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for his writing. Saudi writer Ashraf Fayadh was convicted in 2008 for his volume of poetry Instruction Within and sentenced to four years in prison and 800 lashes. Recently, Fayadh’s sentence was changed in the Saudi courts to death by decapitation.
Nevertheless, at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2015, the International Publishers Association voted to welcome as new members the publishers associations of Saudi Arabia and China—two countries with restricted freedom of speech. This means that the IPA’s prestigious Freedom to Publish Award will now be cosponsored by the publishers associations of these two countries, in addition to all the other members.
The IPA expressed its reasoning for admitting the two countries with this statement: “Commitment gives us a chance to support our colleagues, whereas nonengagement brings nothing”.
Admittedly, it is not a clear-cut case. The IPA is actively lobbying with Saudi authorities in support of both Badawi and Fayad, and the impact of this lobbying must not be underestimated, given the few channels for such interaction that remain open. And IPA’s president, Richard Charkin, of Bloomsbury UK, has recently protested loudly against the disappearance of some Hong Kong–based publishing professionals, in which Chinese authorities are suspected of being involved.
There are many good reasons why governments and international organizations should maintain open conversations. But there are also sound arguments for nongovernmental organizations to be selective about whom they choose to engage with. And there is always ground for scrutiny when governments intervene directly in cultural and artistic creation and expression.
The IPA, thus far, has no written guidelines in its statutes defining which countries can participate. The controversy surrounding the decision to accept both Saudi Arabia and China as new members in 2015 highlights the importance of having such a statute.
In Poland, the new government, just a month after gaining power, has chosen a theatrical performance as a battleground over the role of the state in determining freedom of expression. A theater in Wroclaw was rehearsing the play The Death and the Maiden by Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek when Adam A. Kwiatkowski, the new minister of culture and the deputy prime minister, called for the suspension of the production days before the opening, saying he suspects that the actors are “porn actors” and noting that the theater received government subsidies. For clarity, it must be noted that many theaters in continental Europe are dependent on such public money. Crucially, the intervention was not due to a breach of Polish law, but as Kwiatkowski explained, “for breaking commonly accepted rules of social coexistence.”
The point is that when informal “commonly accepted rules” gain the upper hand over law and independent justice, we have lost the protections of constitutional rule. The legal norms under attack have evolved over time, materializing in a broad consensus. Replacing them with vague “commonly accepted rules of social coexistence” is not an acceptable formula for today’s complex societies.
Ruediger Wischenbart is a consultant based in Vienna who specializes in international book market development. The full text of his essay can be found here.
A version of this article appeared in the 02/01/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: The Debate over Freedom of Expression
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Track Your Pitches and Queries With 6 Free Downloads
Everyone knows the real magic of writing comes from time spent in the chair, those sessions in which your fingertips flitting across the keyboard can barely keep pace with the electric current sparking through your brain.
Those in-between periods, full of administrative tasks—the querying, the tracking of payments, the day-to-day doldrums that occupy the interstitial moments of a writer’s life—become an afterthought. But when such responsibilities are given short shrift, the inevitable result is disorganization—which at best can impede creativity and at worst can have dire consequences. Missed payments, embarrassing gaffes (querying the same magazine or agent twice, or realizing you have no record of where your previous agent submitted your last novel), and incomplete records come tax time are entirely avoidable headaches.
Still, organized record-keeping takes work. Which is why in my feature in the February 2017 Writer’s Digest, “Rebuild Your Desktop,” I decided to do it for you.
This does not have to mean you’re about to start spending more time on these tasks—in fact, quite the opposite: Once you invest in a standard process upfront, each future action will require little more than filling out a few cells in a spreadsheet. (Learn to love them as I have for their clean, quadrilateral beauty.)
From tracking your freelance finances to tracing the trajectory of your submissions, you can download the following free Microsoft Excel spreadsheet organizers at writersdigest.com/online-exclusives/feb-17/free-writing-trackers:
• Freelance Pitch Tracker
• Literary Journal Submission Tracker
• Freelance Payment Tracker
• Agent Query Tracker
• Direct-to-Publisher Query Tracker
• Agent Submissions to Publishers Tracker
So prepare to submit smarter, follow up faster and make tax time a breeze with these six simple spreadsheets you can download for free to revolutionize your record-keeping—starting now.
For more details on how to make the most of these trackers, read the full article in the February 2017 Writer’s Digest, on sale now.
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LitHub Daily: January 25, 2017
TODAY: In 1885, tanka poet Hakushū Kitahara (Kitahara Ryūkichi) is born.
Paul Auster on activism, James Baldwin, and the horrors of Trump. | Literary Hub
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Rick Moody on how to write sober. | Literary Hub
How to celebrate Robbie Burns, the Bard of Ayrshire, on this, his day (hint: whisky and haggis and poetry). | Literary Hub
Joan London on Australia’s honorary Russian master, Elizabeth Harrower. | Literary Hub
“I care about articulating states or conditions that we don’t have easy language for. I care to find ways to articulate aspects of the inner life. I’m interested in writing as a form of introspection.” An interview with Anuk Arudpragasam. | Guernica
Nick Rougeux has diagrammed the iconic opening lines of famous books to create Literary Constellations. | WIRED
“Donald J. Trump could never be mistaken for Mark Antony—other, perhaps, than by the man himself—but the play is as current today as it ever was.” On the resonances between our current political climate and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Richard III. | Times Literary Supplement
“Books are especially useful because the depth of engagement that someone has with a book allows them to really stay with it and to spend some time with that different perspective.” An interview with Lisa Lucas, executive director of the National Book Foundation. | Chicago Review of Books
Newspeak, doublethink, and alternative facts: 1984 has become the 6th bestselling book on Amazon following Kellyanne Conway’s interview defending Sean Spicer’s statements. | The Guardian
“Nothing energizes me more as a human being or as a writer than writing about that untamed desire for someone else’s body.” An interview with André Aciman. | BOMB Magazine
An intellectually unique, often aesthetically sublime, experience: On the “bibliophilic bliss” of physical books. | The Millions
Also on Lit Hub: On her birthday, some famous puns about Virginia Woolf · Listen to Alia Shawkat read from Holiday Reinhorn’s story collection · From Jonathan Coe’s new novel Number 11.
The post LitHub Daily: January 25, 2017 appeared first on Art of Conversation.
January 25, 2017
Trying To Find a Literary Agent Is the Worst Thing Ever
Anyone who’s ever dated regularly, tried to score against LeBron James, or been a transplanted organ knows what it’s like to face rejection. But no one understands the pain of rejection better than a first-time novelist looking for an agent.
It all starts with writing a query letter asking for the thing you probably won’t get, like a toddler who wants a cookie before dinner. My own query pled my case as a TV writer and a frequent Web contributor, while attempting to distill the novel I’d worked on for years into a single paragraph that almost made sense. I included the first 10 pages of the novel and hit 22 agents in 30 days, like a budget tour of Europe during which you see nothing.
Which is exactly what I saw for the next month: nothing. Many agents simply don’t reply if they’re not interested; it’s the same reaction you’d get from shouting “Hey baby, hey baby, hey baby” at a woman on the street, although hopefully you wrote a stronger query letter than that. But even the deafening silence that seemed to shriek of my incompetence, not just as an author but as a writer of query letters, would soon seem preferable to the sting of the actual rejection.
The first thing I learned about rejection is that agents are very, very sorry—nearly every rejection contains an apology or some regret: “I am sorry, but we cannot take it on at this time”; “We regret to inform you...”
Some of them are frightened: “I’m afraid I have to pass”; “I’m afraid this isn’t right for me.” How can you get an agent if you keep scaring them like that? It seemed that my timing was terrible: many rejections concluded with phrases like “not right for us at this time,” with no indication of a better time in the future—or even the past, should I invent a time machine. They also wished me “all the best,” although not enough to want to represent me.
Obviously, these are mostly form rejections. Because when you say no as often as a literary agent, new puppy owner, or parole review board, it’s hard to personalize it. And of course, it isn’t personal: they just hate you and your writing, and, if you included an author photo, your face. But these anonymous rebuffs seemed positively morale boosting compared to the very personal rejections that followed: “I’ve read about 75 pages of this, but I’m having trouble with the flow of the narrative. I don’t feel it makes sense for me to continue reading.”
“I know you have a background in TV writing, so maybe those habits are playing a part here. Regardless, I’m so swamped with manuscripts that [I’m going to pass].” And this oddly specific one: “I also happen to represent one of the more famous amputees in media, and I think [your novel about a man whose arm is amputated] would present a bit too much overlap” (even though his books are memoirs).
As humiliations go, that kind of rejection is like a classic supervillain’s origin: “Refuse me, will they? I’ll show the fools! I’ll destroy them all!”
And then, just as I’d begun work on my global death ray, I received this email from Mitchell Waters at Curtis Brown: “Thank you for querying me about your novel. Your letter and your sample pages had me laughing out loud and thinking about many things. I would love to read the entire manuscript. Is there any chance that it’s available on an exclusive basis, even for a short period? By the way, you wouldn’t happen to be the Ken Pisani with whom I graduated from Bayside High School, would you?”
When I’d queried Mitchell, I had no idea that we had gone to high school together; it was only when he replied that the name suddenly rang a bell. And now I had in my hands a letter saying, “Your pages made me laugh, I’ll read the manuscript, can I have an exclusive?” That’s three cherries on a slot machine. Throw in the gobsmacking coincidence that we once knew each other as clumsy teens in Queens, and it was enough to make me forget all about the formal rejections that hated me, my writing, and my face.
A short time later, I was a first-time novelist with an agent. Dream-come-true stuff! But then it was time to wake up—and for Mitchell and me to face the serial rejections of publishers together.
Ken Pisani writes for film and television. His debut novel, Amp’d, will be published by St. Martin’s in May.
A version of this article appeared in the 02/08/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: So You Want an Agent
The post Trying To Find a Literary Agent Is the Worst Thing Ever appeared first on Art of Conversation.
The Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2017
Drawn from the 14,000+ titles in PW’s Spring Announcements issue (available in full here), we asked our reviews editors to pick the most notable books publishing in Spring 2017. Links to reviews are included when available.
Fiction
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Random House, Feb.) – A Dantesque tour through a Georgetown cemetery teeming with spirits, the book takes place on a February night in 1862, when Abraham Lincoln visits the grave of his recently interred 11-year-old son, Willie.
The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove, Feb.) – Pulitzer-winner Nguyen’s story collection features a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, and a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover.
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti (Dial, Mar.) – A young girl moves back to the New England fishing village where her father, Hawley, finds work on the docks. But lurking over this family are mysteries, including the mother who died and the ghosts of Hawley’s past.
Ill Will by Dan Chaon (Ballantine, Mar.) – A psychologist in suburban Cleveland, Dustin is drifting through his 40s when he hears the news: his adopted brother, Rusty, is being released from prison. Thanks in part to Dustin’s testimony, 30 years ago, Rusty received a life sentence for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt, and uncle.
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer (MCD, Apr.) – In a future strewn with the cast-off experiments of an industrial laboratory known only as the Company, a scavenger named Rachel survives alongside her lover, Wick, a dealer of memory-altering beetles with whom she takes shelter from the periodic ravages of a giant mutant bear named Mord. One day, caught in Mord’s fur, Rachel finds the bizarre, shape-shifting creature “like a hybrid of sea anemone and squid” she calls Borne.
Mystery/Thriller/Crime
Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles (Morrow, Mar.) – Iles concludes his crime trilogy that began with 2014’s Natchez Burning, a Thriller Award finalist for best novel.
The Child by Fiona Barton (Berkley, June) – British author Barton follows her bestselling debut, The Widow, with a psychological thriller that examines the impact of a secret on three women who have never met.
The Force by Don Winslow (Morrow, June) – “Ever since I started writing, I’ve wanted to write a big, New York City cop book,” says Edgar Award-finalist Winslow. This is it.
Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror
Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly (Tor, Feb.) – Donnelly’s debut, a fast-moving tale of desperate love and intrigue in a created world that recalls Europe on the brink of WWII, is emotionally wrenching and shockingly timely.
The Devil Crept In by Ania Ahlborn (Gallery, Feb.) – Ahlborn is at the top of her game with this intimate horror novel, which focuses on the relationship between overwhelmed mothers and the sons they can’t save.
The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley (Saga, Feb.) – Hurley, who’s earned increasing acclaim for both her fiction and her essays, sets this intricate and morally complex novel in a universe of warring world ships populated entirely by women.
Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames (Orbit, Feb.) – In this brilliant debut novel, Eames combines rock band culture with high-energy epic fantasy adventure in a tale of retired mercenaries literally getting the band back together for a desperate attempt to save their frontman’s besieged daughter.
The Voices of Martyrs by Maurice Broaddus (Rosarium, Feb.) – This evocative and moving collection from Broaddus (the Knights of Breton Court series) spans the extremes of African and diasporic experiences, from hunting villages and slaver ships to interstellar religious warfare in the near future.
Romance/Erotica
Unstrung by Laura Spinella (Montlake Romance, Feb.) – In Spinella’s gripping contemporary, a symphony violinist and her financier husband must find a way to repair their marriage after he uses her mother’s home as collateral in a business deal.
Perfect for You by Candis Terry (Avon, Feb.) – Endearing, outspoken, quick-witted characters are the highlights of Terry’s sweet, seductive second Sunshine Creek Vineyard novel, in which a longtime smoldering attraction between a CEO and his assistant bursts into flames.
The Undateable by Sarah Title (Zebra Shout, Feb.) – Title opens her Librarians in Love contemporary series with a funny, engrossing, and delightfully witty tale of a snarky librarian and a reporter desperate for the story that will make his career.
Hard Rhythm by Cecilia Tan (Forever, Jan.) – Tan’s third Secrets of a Rock Star novel, a wildly creative, enthusiastic, immersive, and incredibly hot romance between experienced kinksters, does double duty as a public service announcement that clearly illustrates the difference between BSDM and domestic abuse.
Souljacker by Yasmine Galenorn (Diversion, Mar.) – Galenorn (the Otherworld series) launches the Lily Bound paranormal romance series with a crackling murder mystery and a sizzling connection between a succubus and a chaos demon.
Poetry
Afterland by Mai Der Vang (Graywolf, Apr.) – Vang, the 2016 Walt Whitman Award winner, tells the story of Hmong diaspora forced out of Laos and into exile as a result of the U.S.’s secret war. Vang’s unflinching poems address the status of refugees, including her family, and Hmong resilience in exile.
Nature Poem by Tommy Pico (Tin House, May) – Pico’s complementary follow-up to his stellar debut turns from a young, queer, American Indian’s considerations of his urban life to a confrontation with white, colonial, assimilationist ideas that conflate NDN people with nature.
Simulacra by Airea Matthews (Yale Univ., Mar.) – Matthews, winner of the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, contemplates want and rebellion in her imaginative, shape-shifting debut. She employs an array of personas and forms—including texts and tweets—to meet her needs in addressing these concepts.
Comics/Graphic Novels
Boundless by Jillian Tamaki (Drawn & Quarterly, June) – Tamaki’s last two books–This One Summer and Super Mutant Magic Academy–showed she is one of the world’s best cartoonists, and this collection of her evocative short stories will just cement her reputation.
Sunburning by Keiler Roberts (Koyama Press, May) – A wry but honest look at life as an artist, wife, and mother while dealing with bipolar disorder, Roberts pulls no punches with a disarming directness.
Roughneck by Jeff Lemire (Gallery, Apr.) – Lemire has been red hot with his mainstream work (Black Hammer, Plutona) but he returns to Essex County territory with this standalone graphic novel about violence, family, and hockey.
Memoir
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay (Harper, June) – In her popular essays and Tumblr blog, Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body. She takes readers along on her journey to understand herself in a memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.
The Secrets of My Life by Caitlyn Jenner (Grand Central, Apr.) – The anticipated story of the most famous transgender woman in the world, from her childhood as Bruce and Olympian Gold to her transition and her life today.
This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression by Daphne Merkin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Feb.) – A personal account of a life afflicted with depression, from an affluent but neglected childhood to the present day.
Literary Essays/Criticism/Biographies
More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers by Jonathan Lethem, edited by Christopher Boucher (Melville House, Mar.) – Lethem embraces both cult and canon in this collection of his writing on writers, including Chester Brown, Herman Melville, and Lorrie Moore.
The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables by David Bellos (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Mar.) – Bellos (Is That a Fish in Your Ear?), a translator of French literature, proves that the story of how Victor Hugo’s classic novel came to life is a complex and engrossing epic all its own.
Somebody with a Little Hammer by Mary Gaitskill (Pantheon, Apr.) – PW gave a starred review to Gaitskill’s new collection of essays written over the past two decades, praising her “surprising, nimble prose” and “candid, unflinching self-assessment.”
South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion (Knopf, Mar.) – A diligent notebook keeper throughout her career, Didion shares her entries from a 1970 road trip through the South and a 1976 stint covering the Patty Hearst trial for Rolling Stone.
Sunshine State by Sarah Gerard (Harper Perennial, Apr.) – Brave, keenly observational, and compassionate, Gerard’s (Binary Star) collection of essays illuminates the stark realities of Florida’s Gulf Coast.
History
The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny by Michael Wallis (Liveright, Apr.) – The author of Route 66 provides a cautionary tale of America’s westward expansion with this account of the infamous saga of the Donner party.
City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris by Holly Tucker (Norton, Mar.) – Tucker vividly brings to life a slice of Parisian history in this rigorously researched true-crime epic, set during the reign of Louis XIV.
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (Doubleday, Apr.) – The author of The Lost City of Z burnishes his reputation as a brilliant storyteller in this gripping account of a spree of murders in Oklahoma during the 1920s.
October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Miéville (Verso, May) – To commemorate the centenary of the Russian Revolution, acclaimed fantasy author Miéville chronicles the events leading up to Red October.
The Water Kingdom: A Secret History of China by Philip Ball (Univ. of Chicago, Mar.) – Drawing on stories from travelers and explorers, poets and painters, bureaucrats and activists, Ball explores how the relationship of the Chinese people to water has made it an enduring metaphor for philosophical thought and artistic expression.
Politics/Current Events
Democracy: The Long Road to Freedom by Condoleezza Rice (Twelve, May) – The former secretary of state shares insights from her experiences as a policymaker, scholar, and citizen to put democracy’s challenges into perspective.
Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power by Howard W. French (Knopf, Mar.) The New York Times’s former Asia correspondent tracks China’s ideological development as it becomes an ever more aggressive player in regional and global diplomacy.
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Apr.) – Former public defender Forman offers a complex look at the part played by African-Americans in shaping criminal justice policy.
Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus by Laura Kipnis (Harper, Apr.) – The feminist cultural critic argues that the growing sense of sexual danger sweeping American campuses doesn’t empower women, but impedes the fight for gender equality.
Music
The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince by Mayte Garcia (Hachette, Apr.) – The first wife of the popular musician takes a candid, intimate, and revelatory look at his personal and professional life.
Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life by Jonathan Gould (Crown Archetype, May) – A definitive biography, timed to the 50th anniversary of Redding’s memorable performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, of Redding’s short life, it explores race and music in America in the 1960s.
Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell by David Yaffe (FSG/Crichton, June) – A biography, with dozens of in-person interviews with Mitchell, reveals the backstory behind the famous songs—from her youth on the Canadian prairie, the child she gave up for adoption, through her albums and love affairs, to the present.
Science
Inferno: A Doctor’s Ebola Story by Steven Hatch (St. Martin’s, Mar.) – Immunologist Hatch chronicles his work in Liberia during the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014–2015, delivering a story of courageous medical care amid devastating human tragedy. It’s a tale of great loss that is tempered by optimism that such epidemics can be handled with compassion.
The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing by Damion Searls (Crown, Feb.) – Writer and translator Searles delivers the story of the Swiss psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who, despite his short life, transformed psychology with his visual test. Searles traces the ebb and flow of the test’s popularity, and examines its synthesis of art and science.
Mercies in Disguise: A Story of Hope, a Family’s Genetic Destiny, and the Science That Rescued Them by Gina Kolata (St. Martin’s, Apr.) – New York Times science reporter Kolata follows a South Carolina family through their reckoning with genetic illness and one courageous daughter’s determination to disrupt her destiny. Kolata surveys a host of intractable ethical issues and offers insight into the experiences of doctors and patients alike.
Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw (Da Capo, Apr.) – Celebrating the scientific process and the wonders of the universe, Cox and Forshaw introduce readers to cutting-edge astrophysics and cosmology. They use basic questions to dig into increasingly complex topics, yet manage to keep the material fun and accessible.
Religion
Martin: Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper (Random House, Feb.) – Timed to coincide with the anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Five Theses, Roper’s book is a tightly focused look at Luther’s intellectual work over the course of his life.
Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem by George Prochnik (Other Press, Mar.) – Prochnik effectively, and movingly, combines a nuanced biography of Scholem, who nearly single-handedly created academic study of the Kabbalah, with a warts-and-all autobiography that recounts Prochnik’s search for meaning in his own life.
Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy by Anne Lamott (Riverhead, Apr.) – Casting a fresh eye on well-known biblical stories such as Jonah, the Good Samaritan, and Lazarus, Lamott drolly attests to the subversive, yet sustaining power of simple acts of kindness in the face of life’s inevitable devastations.
Taking My Life Back: My Story of Faith, Determination, and Surviving the Boston Marathon Bombing by Rebekah Gregory with Anthony Flacco (Revell, Apr.) – Gregory’s memoir is her unflinching account of surviving the Boston Bombing, including the self-reflection and path to grace she found following the devastating event.
The post The Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2017 appeared first on Art of Conversation.
