Carol Newman Cronin's Blog, page 32

Why Book Pre-Orders Matter

A peek behind the book distribution curtain, with help from some publishing industry experts.

One of my favorite “joke” questions is “how long is a piece of string?” It’s usually my snarky reply to any question that requires more information before any reply more definite than “it depends” can be made. An example I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is: “When should I start promoting pre-orders for my book?”

What’s a Pre-order?

Now that retailers make it so easy to order books well ahead of their publication date, it has become an incredibly powerful marketing tool. First, strong pre-orders may influence a publisher’s print run size. They can also bump up a book’s rankings, which in turn determine bestseller lists. Algorithms then give those bestsellers more visibility, rewarding success with more success (and sales) even before the book is out in the world.

Pre-orders get that party started, which is why they are such a hot topic. But knowing that doesn’t answer the original question: when to start promoting the pre-order option to readers. The only answer I’ve been able to dig up is: “it depends.”

What experts say

Publisher Brooke Warner suggests beginning requests for pre-orders “at most” four to five months ahead of pub date, and then “start really pushing about three months in advance. It feels a little too far away to be asking people to buy something that has an on-sale date of eight months from now.” This matches advice I’ve seen from other publishers and authors.

At the other end of the spectrum is my publicist, Sharon Bially. “I do believe it’s never too early to start letting people know the book is coming out,” Sharon writes. “It’s that simple. I would not advise hitting them over the head with it time and again this far out, but I see absolutely nothing wrong with priming your community with an occasional message about the book so they get it on their radar screen. It often takes many, many reminders for people to hit ‘purchase.’” 

Publishing expert Jane Friedman falls somewhere in between. After a reminder that there are no hard and fast rules about what timing works best, she adds, “Off the top of my head, I can’t see why offering a pre-order further in advance would be a problem, unless the product description were bare – e.g., no cover or description. That said, readers may forget they ordered your book if it’s too far in advance of pub date, and you could lose the momentum of their enthusiasm.”

Since it seems silly to hire a publicist and then not take her advice, I let my readers know as soon as Ferry to Cooperation Island was available for pre-order back in October (and offered the first chapter as a temptation). I will continue to send occasional reminders to you about the book (and pre-ordering), though obviously my goal is to excite rather than annoy.

Amazon vs. Independents

Another related topic is whether it’s “better” to pre-order via Amazon or your local independent bookstore. This also “depends.” Amazon does make it stupidly easy, but indies provide jobs to our neighbors—as well as excellent advice about what book our aunt/niece/mother-in-law might enjoy. Ferry to Cooperation Island is available at both locations, so you can vote with your wallet by ordering from Indiebound (where you can choose your local bookstore by zip code) or Amazon. Whichever you choose, thank you!

Have you pre-ordered books before? Do you think it’s way too early to hear about a book coming out next June, or do you appreciate the reminder? Or… is this yet another question like “how long is a piece of string”—where the only possible answer is “It depends”? Let me know in the comments below, or email me. I read every note you send, so thanks.

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Holiday Book List 2019

Holy Night Night, Batman, it’s only 6 days until Christmas! Here, belatedly, is your annual appeal to gift books (again) this year—but first, a few thoughts about where to buy them.

Support your local indie

There are many ways to support your local independent bookstore without leaving your couch—which may be why such stores are enjoying a resurgence. If (like me) you’re a convert to audiobooks, sign up for libro.fm and a portion of your monthly fee (as well as any additional purchases) will go to the bookstore of your choice. You can also order books online (though probably not in time for a Christmas delivery) through Indiebound.

And if you’re lucky enough to have a bookstore within driving range, give yourself the gift of a friendly conversation about books, as well as free gift wrapping.

Now, onto the books I’m recommending to close out this teenaged decade.

Suspicion

A mystery writer moves from Manhattan to a haunted house on Long Island. What could possibly go wrong? Suspicion was published back in 1999, and it’s a nostalgia-free reminder of how the world worked back in the late 1900s. It’s also what inspired me to interview #coastalfiction author Barbara Rogan.

Little Fires Everywhere

Celeste Ng’s best-seller appeared on many must-read lists in 2017, when it first came out, because it captures the contrasts between a well-planned community and the lives that unspool within it when ingrained assumptions are tested by reality. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys well-written family sagas and stories that make us reconsider our pre-conceived notions about family. 

Come With Me

Come With Me digs into the shadows of Silicon Valley culture and the way tech has infiltrated our homes—by showing the chaos of everyday family life. Helen Schulman chooses words that do the heavy lifting without ever bogging down the narrative.

Where the Crawdads Sing

Some aspects that made this perhaps my most satisfying read of the decade are: Setting, Structure, Trust, Characters, and Deep Twists. I listened to the audiobook, and it was all-consuming. Don’t let all the hype deter you: Delia Owens delivers.

The Islanders

I came across this book while searching for #coastalfiction, and it’s a perfect example of the books I like to read that don’t usually rise too far up the bestseller lists. Set on Block Island, Meg Mitchell Moore plots the intersecting dramas and secrets of three people—one local, one summer visitor, and one not yet sure about his intentions.

BoatSense

The only non-fiction on this year’s list taught me a new life philosophy. Part storybook, part pithy advice on boat-repair issues, and part psychological hand-holding for the boat-afflicted, Doug Logan has packed a career’s worth of advice, tales, and knowledge into writing that never preaches—and always entertains. You probably won’t find this one at your local indie, but order it anyway for the boater on your list.

One more thing

Next week, I’ll have an end-of-decade gift as a thank you to subscribers. Meanwhile, you can revisit last year’s gift, read about 5 more books I recommend on LinkedIn, or view my previous Holiday Book Lists. Merry merry to all!

Women In Sailing: Upwind Battle to Parity

Last week, I went to Nassau to write about first-timers sailing the 2019 Star Sailors League Finals. This was the fifth edition of what’s become a must-watch regatta for me; elegant Stars and sailing heroes, filmed well enough to actually follow the racing from my desk. This year I was onboard the press boat, heart in throat, when the three podium finishers crossed the finish line—so tightly overlapped, we had to wait for the race committee to tell us who’d won. The racing was intense, and the competitors were respectful of both each other and the press. It was a great experience—and a nice four days of sunshine.

Moments after an incredibly close finish, Shirley Robertson climbed onboard the winning Star to interview Iain Percy and Anders Ekstrom, cheered on by a boatful of young sailors.

Between interviews with regatta “newbies,” I found myself considering a totally different question: how do we achieve parity between men and women in our sport? It was the first time I’d ever attended a “men’s-only” regatta; women were invited this year, but none accepted. While scheduling conflicts were cited, I find it difficult to believe that any of our female sailing heroes would see this regatta as a likely boost for their CVs. Instead, the current setup might reinforce assumptions that women can’t compete equally with men, because the Star requires more size and strength than most women have. (On the windiest day last week, even winner Iain Percy admitted to trouble trimming that enormous—and gorgeous—mainsail.)

I certainly wasn’t the only one thinking about the best way to include the top sailors in the world who happen to be female; it was a much-discussed topic. One guy casually asked if I really thought there were enough women interested in Olympic campaigns to ever make equal numbers at the Games realistic! (Beyond a shocked “yes of course,” I struggled to answer a question that contained so many basic assumptions different from my own.)

Out of 30,000 sailors in the SSL Global Rankings, there are currently two women in the top ten and six in the top twenty (though all of those numbers may have changed by the time you read this). A Finals that determines the best sailors in the world should give everyone at the top of its own rankings a fair shot, regardless of size and strength (and gender). So what’s the best way to make this regatta a true showdown between the biggest heroes of our sport, not just the largest men? 

The most talked-about option is to lower the total crew weight limit (which doesn’t solve the Star mainsail trimming challenge). Another much-discussed idea is adding a separate all-female final, possibly in the Snipe. I’d rather see a combination of the two: a separate class, but differentiated by weight rather than gender. One of the many advantages of the Snipe is that teams can set up their boats to match their size and strength, returning the focus to where it should be: the fascinating (and gender-neutral) chess match of spectacular sailing.

Two weight classes would help downplay innate assumptions about which of the two Finals is “better” or more important. It would also help promote mixed teams and competition, which has proved a successful recent addition to both the Pan Am Games and the Olympics. And if we succeed in growing the sport, there could even be a third class created.

As the aft half of a small Snipe team, I already have a decade of data about the challenges of competing against taller, stronger, heavier teams. Righting moment (a combination of height, weight, and fitness) becomes more valuable as wind and waves increase. Gender doesn’t matter, but size and strength do. And after ten years of racing around the world, Kim and I are now treated like fellow sailors by our (mostly male) competition. Which makes it all too easy for me to forget that at many regattas, “sailors” still means “men.”

The Star Sailors League has quickly become a leader in our sport, so their choices will be carefully watched—and maybe copied—by other regattas. Solving the parity problem will not happen overnight, but the longer it takes us the more generations will grow up thinking that sailing heroes are male. And the easier it will be to assume that there aren’t enough women who want to play the game, when all they need to start showing up is a level playing field.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this, so please share them in the comments below. I read and appreciate every single reply, thanks.

Author Conversation #2: Wendy Mitman Clarke

There are only a few names that I stumble onto through both sailing and writing, and I’ve enjoyed Wendy Mitman Clarke’s journalism for several decades. But it wasn’t until I re-read her only novel, Still Water Bending, and then tried to nail down what books I like, that I decided to reach out for an interview.

Though I consider Wendy a fellow author of #coastalfiction, she doesn’t think there’s a second novel in her future (too bad) and prefers to spend her writing time on poetry and journaling… but I’ll let her take it from here.

Warning: This is a longer post than usual, but worth it!

What inspired Still Water Bending?

I grew up sailing on the Chesapeake, and even when I moved back to Annapolis in 1989, I could see the changes underway. Towns like Annapolis, which still had an active waterfront seafood plant, where watermen could bring their catch and people could buy it fresh off the boat, were already losing that working waterfront to residential and non-maritime commercial interests. Within a generation, communities were shifting from being working waterfronts to recreational waterfronts. This comes with a cultural price. So that is part of what I wanted to talk about in the book.

I was inspired initially by meeting a waterman named Walter Coles Burroughs who lived in Mathews County, Virginia. I interviewed him for a story I was writing and spent the day on the water with him, pound-netting, and then we came in and he wanted me to stay and visit a while longer, and he started telling me about his late wife and how much he missed her. He just seemed so sad, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

The story I wrote won several awards and was published in River Teeth, a journal of creative nonfiction. I began thinking about building a character inspired by Walter Coles, who could be emblematic of this changing waterfront culture. I think of it as my love letter to the Bay. There’s a lot of imagery of the natural beauty and wonder that I have always felt when I’m on the Bay.

And, I have always wanted to write a novel.

Why do you find the coast such an inspiring topic/theme?

Because it’s eternally interesting and eternally unknowable and mysterious. It’s a weird thing; when I am sailing, or even hanging out on a beach, I rarely read a book or listen to a podcast. I am nearly always looking out over the water. For hours. I have thought about why this is, and I think it’s because there’s so much there I can’t see and I can’t know, but I know it’s there and so I wonder about it all, and then something happens—a whale blows, or a seal pops up, or a dolphin pod comes to play, or a flying fish comes spearing out of a wave, or the water just moves in a funny way suddenly—and then I think, what happens when I’m not looking? Maybe it’s trying to know the answer to that question that makes it so compelling.

How has journalism helped you write fiction?

I’m already hard-wired to pay attention to detail and to describe those details with strong visual imagery. It was also really helpful in Still Water Bending for the boatbuilding scenes, since I spent many weekends with George Butler, a master builder in Reedville, Virginia, watching him build a traditional skiff and asking him a million questions. Those sections of the book deeply drew on the skills I need as a journalist—knowing how to interview someone, paying attention to details no matter how minute, clearly conveying a scene.

As a columnist for Soundings, Chesapeake Bay Magazine, and Cruising World, I found a voice through writing those short essays that did come into play in writing the novel. Much of what I saw and learned and felt as a writer for those publications, and being able to write first-person, observational pieces, came into play in the writing of the novel.

What did you have to do differently?

When the time came to write the novel, it was immediately clear to me that I needed entirely different writing muscles for it (if it were easy, everyone would do it, right?!). I twice attended the Bread Loaf Writers Conference studying fiction. I met monthly with a group of three other writers and could not have finished the novel without their insights and support.

The main things I had to learn writing fiction, which I never have to do as a journalist, were maintaining consistent voice in each character, maintaining consistent point of view, learning to understand what each character would see, what details would they be hearing, seeing, feeling, because obviously we all see, hear, feel something different. And then writing those details for those characters.

I’m also a published poet, and now I’m the senior editor of Good Old Boat magazine. Which gets to the meat of writing as a skill across multiple genres, and how to learn how to use different writing muscles.

Biggest change in 30-plus years of publishing/writing?

The shift from print to digital. The evolution from in-depth stories as the norm to short-form, social media-driven content, and the rise of social content and videography as a story-telling medium. Publications that in the past were willing to pay a writer pretty well for the hard-earned skill of good reporting and writing can opt for someone willing to do it for free, just to get it out there. Being a journalist isn’t enough anymore; you need to provide great images and preferably video and social content as well. It can be a lot to juggle, and it can be difficult to do everything really well.

Writing really good, effective social media content is an entirely different set of writing skills and not as easy as it looks. Most editors understand that expecting a writer to multitask on assignment means that something will probably suffer in quality, and if they had their druthers, they’d always send a photographer/videographer along so that the writer can focus on the reporting and the writing. But a lot of times, the publishers don’t see it that way, and the purse strings don’t allow it. On the plus side, digital photography has made it so much easier to shoot images and edit them on your laptop that taking photos now is really fun. And I find videography a really wonderful way to think about telling a story, and a challenging skill to master well.

You call yourself a generalist, but almost all of your topics are waterfront-related. Is that a conscious choice?

This is an interesting question and one I mull over quite a lot. My first two jobs were straight-on journalism. Even there, I tended toward waterfront stories whenever I could get them. But I was really worried that I would become a niche writer, so I have worked hard over my whole career to always keep a hand in publications outside of the maritime world.

Writing about environmental issues is really important to me, but I almost always head for the water, even in that. It’s just so deeply embedded in who I am that it will always be where I feel most curious and most inspired. And now, with climate change, it is one of the most important topics we have to talk about. People need to learn and understand that without a clean ocean, without its complex ecosystems, we won’t have a planet. It’s that simple.

If you could spend your writing time on anything, what would it be?

I would travel as much as possible and spend hours journaling about everything I am seeing, hearing, smelling, doing. When we were sailing full-time on Osprey, I would keep a personal log. Sometimes it was a place to vent, but mostly it was a place to record the details of that life. I loved having something new to inspire me every day and the time to write about it.

I also would like to spend more of my writing time on poetry.

How about reading time?

Polar exploration fascinates me, so I like reading anything related to that. I also tend to read non-fiction maritime books, and weather-related books. I am a major weather nut. But the sad thing is that I don’t get nearly as much time to read as I would like right now.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Wendy! For more information and to order Still Water Bending, visit Wendy’s website.

Read Author Conversation #1: Barbara Rogan

Got a #coastalfiction author you’d like me to interview? Add a comment below, or send me an email. Thanks!

Grateful for Friends

Happy Thanksgiving! In reviewing last year’s Top 5 Gratitude list, not much has changed (and I still believe Gratitude is where attitude matches latitude). This year, I want to call out to some of the unsung “people around me”: my Snipe friends.

This is how many friends it took to load 9 Snipes and all their equipment back into the container, after the Worlds in Ilhabela, Brazil.

It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to write such a specific a thank you post if something hadn’t happened last week; my Snipe, along with eight others, got unloaded in Miami from a container that had recently returned from Brazil. (Writers, note the passive voice; it’s not a coincidence.)

You may remember the gold-medal loading of this very same container, way back in August. Folks following along on Facebook might also have seen the photo above, shortly after it was taken in mid-October (the morning after a Brazilian dance party). When we closed the doors, we each were wondering when we’d see our boats again—and whether they’d need any repairs after a 3000 mile journey that would begin with a steep climb up a winding mountain road.

The container was shipped back to Miami, but until it cleared US customs it was impossible to predict when it would be available for unloading. Despite the uncertain timing I planned to be there, to make sure my boat had survived the journey and to help load it back onto the Frankentrailer; my schedule is usually flexible enough to allow for a quick hop to Miami.

But when the email arrived saying the container would be unloaded a few days later, I wasn’t able to drop everything here in Rhode Island. In addition to the usual constraints—promises already made to clients, the expense of last minute plane tickets—I was playing nurse to Paul, who’d had a complete knee replacement on Veteran’s Day. He’s doing great and getting stronger every day, but for once my husband needed my help more than my boat did.

Enter: friends. There were, after all, other sailors who were equally invested, and a group of locals rallied for the dirty, sweaty work of unstrapping and untying and loading each boat onto its more usual road transportation. That afternoon, the report came in: Container unloaded, all is well. I can’t even tell you exactly who got the job done, but you know who you are: THANK YOU! The closing chapter of the 2019 Worlds adventure has finally been written—without me.

It takes a village to go to an international Snipe regatta, and when I’m reunited with my boat next year I’m sure everything will be fine. What I’m not sure of is how to best repay the kindness of having the right people cover for me just when I needed it most. From each according to ability… to each according to need. My gratitude list is even longer than usual this year.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Olympic Memories: Audio-documentary

My nephew Sam Newman is a Cinema and Television Arts major at Elon University, class of 2020. Recently he interviewed me about the 2004 Olympics for the school’s documentary production program, and the experience was special for a number of reasons.

I always love the chance to reminisce about my experience at the 2004 Games. Some of my friends still wax on about college as if they just graduated a few years ago; that’s how the Games are for me. Fifteen years later, there’s a shining string of memories that have inspired both fiction (Game of Sails) and fact (Olympic Broach: The No-Good Very Bad Windiest Day). 



Talking with Sam reminded me that this personal highlight took place before his own memory banks really started recording anything outside his own experience. That makes me realize how both personal and irreplaceable memories are, and also how differently he sees history and the world.



(Last but not least, it made me feel like a rockstar to have a nephew curious about my personal achievements.)

Sam says he didn’t get a grade on the project, but he did get peer feedback that was “nearly all” positive. “People were impressed with your speaking presence,” he added. “The only slightly negative feedback I received was that everyone might not know some of the sailing terms you used like ‘regatta’, but I really didn’t think that was a problem. Other feedback on the first cut was to remove the nitty-gritty stuff about qualifying, Olympic Village food, etc and focus on the actual experience of sailing.” Which sounds quite similar to the reactions I’ve received when talking or writing about the Games!

The interview is less than five minutes long. Take a trip with me down memory lane, and then let me know what you think—either by commenting below or sending me an email. Thanks!

Escape to WUnderland

Why spend four days in Salem, Massachusetts, just when Halloween witches are being run out of town by November drear? The 2019 Writer’s UnConference, of course! This “Escape to WUnderland” was organized by Writer Unboxed, an online community that—I thought—existed primarily to pump out daily advice. (Read my first guest post, Power to the Pantsers)

The week’s theme was “WUnder,” which in hindsight was a perfect description. How else to explain the luxury of improving my writing skills, surrounded by authors from around the world who shared both challenges and laughter? Each day, workshops and seminars dug deep into a specific building block of story: character, plot, pacing, point of view, voice.

I never expected any of it to inspire a dramatic end-of-week Breakup.

Calm and Comfortable

What was noticeably (and intentionally) absent was any public focus on the business of selling books. There were no lectures on finding an agent, no Powerpoints graphing which keywords sell the most books on Amazon. Though I overheard plenty of informal lobby conversations about 21st century book marketing, workshops were led by another author, armed only with notes, sharing their wisdom about what might help each of us tell our stories even better.

This craft-only approach—and the homey comfort of the Hawthorne Hotel—eliminated much of the frenzy I’ve seen at other conferences. Our common goal was to write a better story, because that’s the only thing we really have within our control. Even for those (lucky?) authors who pump out several books each year, it was a great reminder: craft matters. (And also a reminder that, when done really well, that craft becomes invisible to our readers.)

Between sessions, lunch and dinner groups formed spontaneously. Even on day four—long after cliques would’ve formed at other, larger, gatherings—I felt like I could join any table that had an open seat. Though I didn’t meet every single one of the 120 participants, I did manage to share most meals with at least one new person—and made several new friends.

Writers in 3D

I read Writer Unboxed posts every day, so meeting the regular contributors felt, on the first day anyway, like wandering onto the set of Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood. People I knew only through their online persona—a vague hodgepodge of identity built on author bio, blog topic, and word choice—turned out to be shorter or taller (or sassier) than expected. Several had more gray hair than their headshots indicated (this is an “experienced” group, after all). All were genuinely enthusiastic, even on the last day, when fatigue would’ve long since overwhelmed superficial politeness.

The Breakup

One author who quickly morphed from cardboard to three dimensional was Keith Cronin, “the funniest guy on Writer Unboxed.” Each day, at least one participant would ask if he was actually my husband. So on Thursday evening, putting our mutual appreciation for sarcasm to work, the two of us staged a “breakup” in the hotel lobby. (An example, I realize only in hindsight, of an “unreliable narrator.”) Every human interaction outside the conference rooms seemed to tie back to something we’d learned inside; as you can see from the distracted spectator, in real life, too, we are drawn to “story.”

The biggest surprise was meeting so many writers who found out about the Writer Unboxed blog only by going to this four-day conference… the exact reverse of my own experience. But no matter where we began, we all left Salem with fresh ideas, new friendships, and a renewed commitment to tell our best stories.

Every writer’s conference has its own vibe. This “Escape to WUnderland” definitely achieved its promised objectives: just-enough-structure, approachable instructors, and plenty of group interaction. I’m already looking forward to the next one—in 2021, organizer Therese Walsh promises. With the amount of energy that she and her husband Sean (photographer of The Breakup) put into the organization, this could never become an annual event. After all, we each need time to absorb everything we learned—and read all those blog posts this year’s gathering has already inspired.

Have a thought about writer’s conferences, or story, or The Breakup? Share it in the comments below, or send me an email. I read and enjoy every one, thanks!

Vince Brun Profile in Seahorse

It’s hard to explain the repeatable thrill of opening a magazine and seeing a story I wrote spread across several pages in living color. By the time the October issue of Seahorse Magazine arrived, I’d already received a few complimentary emails on my profile of Vince Brun, so I knew it would be lurking somewhere inside. What I didn’t know was that the headline would perfectly capture one unique aspect of our sport: that sailing’s heroes are so approachable.

At my very first J/24 Midwinter Championship back in 1991, I found myself sitting at the same breakfast table with this guy whose name I knew from the sailing magazines—and over that week, Vince and I became friends. Competing on the same race courses binds us all together, the tall and the small, no matter how thick our accents. (Even as the sport becomes ever more professional, I hope that unique aspect remains true.)

Through the years, Vince and I sometimes had differences of opinion, as strong-minded people are likely to do, but I always had the greatest respect for his ability to make any sailboat just a little bit faster. So when Seahorse editor Andrew Hurst asked if I’d like to write a profile of Vince, I jumped at the opportunity to learn more about his early years and what made him into such speed champion. “Vince stories” are notorious, and some of them are even true, so that became the theme.

Vince’s first sailboat (with brother Gaståo) had a rig too tall for this post.



Read the Article

Seahorse has given me permission to share Friendship plus talent with my readers, but the only way to read Sam Davies’ thoughts about foiling (the very next article in the October issue) is to subscribe. I appreciate the printed version enough to wait for its arrival toward the end of each month; if you’re not that patient, I’d recommend the (cheaper) digital subscription.

Previous Seahorse articles include Only One Jud (Smith), and ongoing updates about the US Olympic program (there will be another in November’s issue). Read Seahorse Byline: Sign of Success or visit the Seahorse website.

PS: I found out after publication that Vince’s wife’s name is spelled “Marsha.” Apologies to all for the error.

Got a Vince story? Share it in the comments below, or send me an email. Meanwhile, thanks for reading!

Book Review: BoatSense

Every once in awhile, a book comes along that reminds us all how much can be fit into the pages of a slim volume. BoatSense, by Doug Logan (a friend and former colleague), is just such a tome. Part storybook, part pithy advice about how-to repair anything boat-related, and part psychological hand-holding for the boat-afflicted, Doug has packed a career’s worth of advice, tales, and knowledge into writing that never preaches—and always entertains.

You had me at “story”

I’d already read a few of the tales in this book during my former life as a managing editor, and when I sat down to read BoatSense I expected it would simply be a collection of previously written, witty but somewhat curmudgeonly, flashbacks to the “good old days.” That’s even what the introduction seemed to promise; Doug first explains his yen for simplicity on boats, as well as a professed lack of shipwright skills. (“I avoid fiberglassing if I can, because I usually glue myself together.”) I was completely unsurprised by his much-espoused theory that DIY is “good for you,” even if not always pleasant. And once he wrapped up the intro with a summary of specific language choices (rope, dead reckoning, helms-MAN), and his reasons for those choices, I got ready to settle in for a bunch of waterfront yarns.

Instead, I turned the page to chapter one and discovered a new life philosophy. Since paraphrasing won’t do his words justice, I’ll offer the first two paragraphs in full:

“Here’s a theory of existence: When you go Aloft, they check you for stories. They want to know what you’ve tried, noticed, and learned on the old planet. They find out whether you’ve whiled away your years in a lounger with a game console in your hands or challenged yourself in the actual world instead. You get credit not just for achievement, but for effort, and for the degree of difficulty of things attempted, and for knowing the difference between adventures (which are calculated risks) and hare-brained schemes.

“You notice, as you’re standing there waiting for the ethereal being with the clipboard, that the old saying was absolutely correct—you didn’t bring a single thing with you. Your car is behind you. Your clothes and your dishes are behind you. Your new widescreen TV, your smartphone, and even your beloved boat are back there. All those things that seemed important are not with you. All you have is the stories you can tell. In your case and mine these will include some seas stories. If we’re lucky, our interlocutor will be a sailor, too: ‘Well, now, bucko, spin us a yarn of your voyage.’”

But wait, there’s more

All you have is the stories you can tell. And Doug’s got some great yarns, though they are somewhat difficult to categorize. What other book would include such wide-ranging chapter headings as The Tao, The Hsü, Whatever and Embrace the Hacksaw? Or such casually personal (but still bitingly observant) comments like this one: “I, for one, am not interested in sailing too near ice unless it’s surrounded by bourbon in a mug.”

As I dug in, though, I realized there was way more tucked between the two shiny covers than just stories and the occasional photo. Doug has also managed to distill a lifetime of paying attention into lessons we can all use in our regular lives, both on and off the water—once again, as varied as his own experience: A clear explanation of electricity. Lists of the necessary tools and galley items. A checklist for stepping onto an unfamiliar boat. And last but certainly not least, “A Few Good Reference Books,” for those who want to continue reading.

My one small complaint is the typos; several instances of repeated words, which should’ve been caught before going to press. But none of them kept this book from achieving its goal of entertaining while educating. We learn best when we’re laughing, and Doug Logan’s kindly-uncle voice keeps his lessons light enough to be easily absorbed.

Who should read this book

Recommended for boat-nerds of all sizes and ages (as well as those who aspire to boat-nerd-dom), BoatSense is also a reminder to this author that straying outside the box of predictability can lead to a very special, very personal, creation. It might be a hard one to categorize, but this book will make an easy gift for anyone who thinks deeply about the world—especially if they like stories that center down on boats.

PS: For RI readers, Doug will be speaking about BoatSense (and maybe sharing a few additional yarns) at the Jamestown Philomenian Library on November 21 at 6:15pm. Leave a comment below or email me for more info. Meanwhile, thanks for reading!