DeAnna Knippling's Blog, page 91

Indypub: From blog posts to ebooks (aka story virginity)

Trivia for the day:  A codex isn't a prophecy – which, for some reason, was what I had been thinking it was – but a bound manuscript book, as in ancient annals, scriptures, etc.  I think if you took a bunch of computer paper with you to a conference to take notes, then had them bound at Kinko's, that would be a codex.  The digital equivalent is probably publishing your blog as an ebook.

Which leads right into my blog post, although I didn't plan it that way…

Okay.  Let's say you publish fiction on your blog.

You'll hear it all day long, if you care to listen:  don't publish fiction on your blog, don't publish fiction on your blog, it's the writerly equivalent of jumping the shark, don't publish fiction on your blog, na na na.

Because, of course, you are "giving away" your first publication rights.

When is this important? If you intend to sell the story to a market that doesn't take reprints, or that doesn't take unsolicited reprints.

When is this not important?  If you intend to sell the story to a market that takes reprints.

Now, I'm assuming that if you're epublishing your own work, you are your own publisher and you don't have mental issues about reprints per se.  However, if you've published the work on your blog (for free), is it ethical to publish the work as an ebook (not for free)?

My thought is that:

This is not a legal issue; stories are reprinted in different pay formats all the time.
People do loss leaders on ebooks:  should a free ebook not also have a free print version?  Uh, no, that doesn't logically follow; if a story is free in one format, it doesn't necessarily have to be free in other formats.
Converting a blog post to an ebook adds value to the story (convenience for ebook readers).  I, myself, have purchased ebooks that I could read for free on people's websites (for example, see Kris Rusch's Freelancer's Survival Guide.  You can still read it as a series of blog posts; I recommend the book, as she did updates for the book, and reading it on your ereader leaves a lot less crick in your neck).  It ensures the reader has an archival copy, with a pretty cover, that has been re-edited (blog posts can be touch and go).  Value.  You added it.
If they read it off your blog or wherever it was originally posted–more power to them.  In fact, I recommend stating where any reprint was originally published, at the beginning of the ebook.  Be honest and upfront about it.  (Hm…I should check a couple of things that were on other people's blog posts.) I have maybe five copies of "For the Blood is the Life" by F. Marion Crawford scattered through horror anthologies in the house.  Am I angry about having paid for all of them?  Heck no.
The real issue is thinking, "In what cases are my stories worth money?"  Ethics isn't just about treating your customers fairly; it's also about how you treat yourself, to ensure long-term viability.  In the long term, your stories are worth money.  They are worth paying for.  Provide the options to let the readers decide how they want the story.  Stories put up on blogs are there to attract attention–a long-term investment.  You didn't post that story for free; it just didn't cost the readers money.  It was a valuable story all along, doing valuable work.

In short, stories aren't like virgins; they still have value after their "first publication rights" have popped.

So publish those blog stories, using the same care you do for editing, cover art, formatting, etc., and let your readers decide.

Also, keep an eye out for reprint markets.

Indypub: When to epublish vs. when to submit to markets?

All right.  How do I know when to epublish vs. when to keep submitting a short story to a market?

(Novels are a discussion for another day, especially because I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it at the moment.)

First, you have to do what makes you comfortable.  This is my process, one that I'm comfortable with, and one that fits my requirements.

My requirements:

I write a story a week and epublish a story a week (not necessarily the same story).
I am attempting to become a professional-level writer who makes a living from my writing.
I write in several genres, including some that don't really have a big market for short stories, like middle grade.

My sorting process:

Did I write the story specifically for an epublishing project?  Yes – epublish.
Did I write the story specifically for a market (like a themed anthology)?  Yes – send to that market.
Is the story in a genre that I normally market to?  Yes – send to professional-level markets in that genre.  No – epublish, or if I'm feeling very adventurous, send to a pro market in that genre.
Has the story been rejected by all the pro markets? Yes – send to semi-pro markets that I like or would be proud to be published in or that I think sound cool.
Has the story been rejected by all the paying markets I want to submit to in my genre? Yes – epublish.  No, but I'm tired of sending it out – epublish.
Have the initial publication rights on a published story expired?  Yes – epublish.
Do I desperately need a story to epublish this week but nothing meets the criteria?  Pick something that's been to all the pro markets that I like, and epublish.

There you have it

Update:

I just thought of something I should add.  Notice how this process doesn't require you to say, "Is this story any good?" anywhere in that process? You don't get to decide who likes your story and who doesn't; your readers do.  I've had stories published that I was like, "Well, THIS will never see the light of day if I don't put it up," and other stories that I think are the BOMB that no editor seems to want.  Let the people paying you money decide what they like.

Indypub: Publishing Speed

As an indie publisher, how fast should you publish books?

For some reason, this has been a big hangup for me, mostly subconscious.  I have eight books that are written (plus two short story collections) and can be published.  They still need to be edited, have covers built, etc., but they're there, and I'm behind on getting them out.

It isn't just that I don't have time.  The second someone says, "I don't have time," don't look at their time.  Look at their priorities.

I started going to karate with Ray, and I just started playing MMOs with my husband again (we got bored of the last one and drifted away from it, especially when Dead Island came out, but that's another story).  Those are good things.  But I had time.

I dug down into the problem and came out with this:

I thought Chance Damnation would do better than it has.
I thought the short stories would be doing better than they are; they're staying at a constant level, even though I have more stories up.
I feel like people will think poorly of me for publishing quickly, like I'm writing sloppily and poorly.
I feel like the people who actually give a crap about my stuff will feel overwhelmed.
I feel like I must be screwing something major up, all the time.
I think I'm a terrible writer because I got a bad review, because I'm not hitting sales, etc.
I feel like I put my foot in my mouth in public too much, and that turns people off.
I feel like people have read things they didn't like and will never read anything by me again.
I think that people are cheap and don't want to pay for things.
I think that people are freakin' attention cheap and would rather watch TV shows that bore them, because it's easier.
I think the publicity system built around publishers is unfair; on the one hand, self-publishers aren't supposed to mind when their stuff is grouped in with big-publisher stuff (like on Amazon), but we can't get through the normal channels the way a big publisher would (I just had to give up a signing at B&N, because they won't take books that won't do returns.  @#$%^!!!).  So it ends up that nobody pays attention to indies, unless they just do.
I question daily whether this is all worth it.  "Nobody said it was easy/No one ever said it would be this hard."

It's just this panic attack that really isn't rational.  But there's a big mess in the way of me getting out books as fast and as well as I could be, is the point.

This is the beginning of month 6 of the great publishing experiment.  Rationally, I can't judge whether the whole project has been a success or failure; I can only judge whether the doing of it makes me happy, and it does, except for when I go, "Where's the external reward?"

I went back through my kids' stories this week to get them ready for a POD collection and kept thinking, "Hot @#$%, woman.  You are good at this."  The fact that I, who have a terrible time saying anything nice about myself, could say that was really something.  I sent the cover out, and people have said nice things about that, too.

Here's the cover draft:

I am holding back out of self-doubt.

I am not holding back out of any rational reason that will make things better for me in the long run.

Okay, if I were editing and got to the point where I was like, "I just don't think this book is ready to see the world," then that might be something, a reason to stop and think about what I was doing, but I'm not doing that.

So I should probably make more of a conscious effort to jump into the unknown, in this respect.  What have I got to lose?  Big publishers are not interested in most of this stuff, and if they change their minds, they can always give me a call.  If I were doing this for the money, I never would have quit my job.  If I were doing this for other people's respect, I'd write more literature and less pulp.  I'm doing this because it's what I'm built for, dammit.  I was just tickled over what I wrote this morning, although part of my brain reserves the right to dislike it later.  I am so much better at this than I was when I quit my job, than I was a year ago, than I was in July.

I just have to accept that publishing is a learning curve, too, and I want to move along that curve instead of turning everything over to someone else to make it magically all better, and that means surviving the sucky part.

How fast should I publish books?  As fast as I reasonably can.  I know how amazing it feels when I have an empty inbox.  I can only imagine what it would like if I had all my current stuff out, too.

 

 

Indypub: How to get your stories to go free on Amazon

I recently experimented with putting up my first free story to Amazon, and am working on my second.

A caveat: I wouldn't put stories up for free if they weren't there to do more for you than just spread your name around.  I think they should be there to lead people to specific stories–if you like this, then chances are you will like that, specifically.  The story should be a short story; the thing you're leading to should be a novel or novella.  IMO.

Results to date:  over 2000 copies of Miracle, Texas have been downloaded on Amazon US and over 100 on Amazon UK (which I did later but seems to be slower anyhow).  (Not sure about B&N or other sites yet; they haven't reported back to Smashwords).  Additional sales at this point:  THBBBBT.  It's been almost two weeks.  I curse the need for patience, yet there it is.

The next story going up is Bunny Attack! (currently free on Smashwords) to advertise for the kids' story collection.  I sell way more stories for kids than I do for adults, so this might be interesting.

Steps:

Publish the story for free at Smashwords.
Push the story from Smashwords to B&N, even if you would normally post through PubIt.
Publish the story for .99 or whatever at Amazon.com (you cannot set the price to free from Amazon.com).
Wait for the story to show up as free on B&N (you cannot set the price to free from PubIt).
Go to Amazon.com and report that the story is free at B&N:  click the "tell us about a lower price" link under the sales rankings (they don't seem to care about Smashwords rates).
Enter the B&N web address (for the story, now free) and report the price as $0 with $0 shipping.
Get 7-8 other people to do the same.
Wait about 2 weeks for the story to go free on Smashwords.

You can also do this for Amazon.co.uk.

Don't use the US (B&N) link to report on your free story; it doesn't seem to have any effect.
When you publish the story on Smashwords (for free), be sure to push it through to Apple/iBooks.
When the story flips free at Apple UK, then report on the link to Amazon UK.
Get the Apple UK link here: http://www.russellphillipsbooks.co.uk/pages/tools.php

I think you can do the same thing for Amazon Germany, but I haven't tried it yet.

The important thing here is to get a group of people to help you out and report, and to have patience.

@#$%^& patience.

Indypub: How do you find indie books?

Writers, publishers, readers (mostly readers) – where do you get recommendations for your favorite independent books?

Because good grief, I'm having problems finding out anything beyond:

Book reviewers that have reviewed my books
Book reviewers that I meet online via Twitter/FB
Kindle boards
Nook boards

Goodreads has LOTS of indy books listed, but if you're specifically trying to find indy books, it doesn't help.  Well, unless I'm doing it wrong.  The Nook/Kindle boards seem good for weeding out indy books, but bad for quick and easy finding of something good to read, in a specific genre, with pretty pictures and back-cover blurbs.  You know, like there are for big-publisher books.

I have two purposes here:

1) I want to read at least one superior-quality indy book a month that ISN'T written by someone I know via Twitter directly (although I won't stop reading those), and I want to spend less than 10 minutes finding it.

2) If I find a good place to find said books, I want to list mine there (of course).

Book review sites are good, but they're limited by the number of people working there.  I want an aggregate or a list-builder or something.  Most recommendation sites give you…big-publisher books.

So help me out:  what am I missing?  How do you find your indie books?  If you have a book review site, let me know; I'm going to start a personal link list of good review sites, especially the ones that I use to find books to read.

Fiction: Basement Noir

On sale at Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and Smashwords.

Basement Noir

by DeAnna Knippling

If you didn't want me to find out, you shouldn't have made me a detective.

Private Investigator Spade comes up from the basement to investigate the death of Gramps in an old hotel run by a monkey and populated by lunatics. But sometimes the person who hires you insn't the one in charge. And sometimes the crime you're investigating isn't the one that needs to be solved.

I was born in an instant. It didn't feel like being born. It didn't feel like jumping, fully formed, out of a god's head like Athena did, either. But that's what it was.

As far as I can tell, I was reading a newspaper when the phone rang. It was more like a dream of reading a newspaper than actually reading the newspaper, if you know what that's like. At the time you're doing it, you know you're "reading" it, but if you try to think about what the words are on the page, you're screwed; you can't make out a bit of it. Anyway, I picked up the phone, which was black and had a long ridge all down the back where the sides of the plastic had been stuck together. The ridge was filled with grime, and the plastic was tacky from being touched and never cleaned. The mouthpiece was full of brown grime, too. I put the phone to my ear, where it bent the small hairs, and saw that the headline of the newspaper now readMURDER in 144-point font. My five o'clock shadow scratched across the mouthpiece.

Before the phone rang, I hadn't noticed anything. So that was what it was like being born.

"Hello?" I said. My voice was unfamiliar to me. A man's voice when I'd been expecting a woman's.

"We need you." It was a woman's voice, husky, like she couldn't help being a sexpot over the phone. I wondered if she'd sound the same in person. As it were.

I tried to remember who I was, but it was just beyond me. "Yeah? Who is 'we'? For that matter, who am I?"

"Nevermind. Just come to the main entrance, stat." She hung up.

Stat…stat…a doctor word.

I stood up and looked myself over as best I could. The dame might say "stat," but the hell if I wasn't going to get my bearings first. I was dressed in pants and a jacket. The pants were dark brown and had a small split in the seam near the crotch and were frayed at the hem, but they were clean and pressed. I made a mental note to fix them seam later. I knew I had a sewing kit around somewhere. Jacket, same, getting worn around the elbows and across the forearms. I was a leaner. I probably ate with my arms on the table, too. The tie was scarlet with tan stripes. Polyester. I smelled like I hadn't bathed in the last few hours, but I wasn't too bad. A light cologne. The white cotton shirt underneath the jacket was rumpled from wear but not wrinkled. Brown belt, brown shoes, brown socks.

I felt my face. I needed a shave and my hairline was receding. I looked around the room: black file cabinet, desk with peeling veneer on top and a heavy black manual typewriter shoved to one corner, worn phone book sitting under the phone. An open tin can with pens and pencils stuffed in it. A stack of legal pads in a top drawer.

The front door was marked with my name, but I couldn't read it.

I grabbed a tan trench coat and a fedora off a cheap wooden coat rack near the door. The coat rack threatened to fall on me, and I set it right and turned it so if it fell, it'd fall on the plaster of the wall, which was pale green with dingy white trim near the floor and ceiling.

I stuck my hands in my pockets and came up with unreadable driver's and private investigator's licenses in a brown wallet, some keys, some change, and a small hole in my right pants pocket. I moved everything into my left. I had a revolver, but it seemed unresolved as to whether it actually existed or not; I could see through it. I put it back in my shoulder holster under my left. I don't think I was sure about using it.

I opened the door with my right, turned out the lights with my left, closed the door, and locked it. I used the right key on the first try.

Indypub: Stopping Weekly Free Stories

I've decided to stop posting weekly free stories.

I'm still going to post a story every week; I'm just not going to put them up for free for all, every week.  I'll have exceptions.

The reason is this:  very few people are taking me up on them.  For example, last week, I had one person do it.  For free.

I'm still sending personal friends and family stories, if they've asked me to be on the list.  Nevertheless, I'm telling about 3000 people every week.  I'm pretty sure I'm not that bad at covers or descriptions, and I keep getting published, so I'm not that bad at writing, either.  I'm just puzzled.  I'm going to call it, after almost six months, a failed experiment (even though I don't know why it's failed) and let it go.

On the other hand, while it look a long time to get "Miracle, Texas" to go free on Amazon, now that it has, I've given away the better part of 2000 copies.  It's been up for a week now.

C'est la vie.

I Dream of Guinea Pig

Last night I dreamed of Guinea pigs.

Lee, Ray, and I were on our way back from a store in another dream, just walking along a road, when I saw a flowerpot on the side of the road with Cheese Nibs crushed in it.  And the back end of some critter, its little feet kicking away.

I gently pulled the critter out of the packed crackers.  It was a Guinea pig!  I love Guinea pigs.  If cats represent a kind of reasonable cuteness and affection (they may not always like you, but your cats always love you), Guinea pigs are unconditional love to me.  Not dogs, which have weird ideas about territory, but Guinea pigs.  They don't care who you are.  They love you.  They don't care what you give them to eat.  They eat it.  They poop and pee on things unconditionally, too, because that's how they roll (they're very round, you know).

There were other Guinea pigs around, too, and together we ended up saving four Guinea pigs.  I had two on each arm.  The top two snuggled up to my neck, trying to get under my hair, the peegs do.  We went from door to door, asking people if these were their peegs.  I was really hoping I could keep those peegs, but I knew that if someone had thrown out their peegs with the cheese nibs by mistake, they would be really grieving.

"No, no, not our peegs."

"No, those aren't my pets."

But the third door.  A man who was very short and fat and had legs that were (now that I think about it) proportionately the same size as those of a Guinea pig's to its body answered the door.  "Yes!  Yes!  Those are my peegs."  He had tears in his eyes, so I had to give his peegs back.  Whatever mistakes he had made, he didn't deserve to have his peegs taken from him.

I woke up.

Yesterday was our anniversary, our thirteenth.

We had completely forgotten about it until my sister-in-law Connie emailed me about it.  I had to laugh and send an email to Lee.  He promised me chocolate; I promised him other things but, proverbially, had a headache.   (Don't worry.  I always keep my promises.)  I really hope it wasn't all that chocolate that gave me a headache.  We played WOW last night with a friend of Lee's and ate decked-out hot dogs for supper.  It wasn't a terribly romantic night, but it was very sweet.

The last few years have been like Guinea pigs.  "Oh, well," you say sometimes, and that's about as bad as it gets.

For example, on Friday, Lee took his ring off while working out (he's always taking it off) and left it on top of one of the machines.  "Oh, well," I said.  He'd busted up the ring he'd had when we got married years ago, and I'd bought him another one with Celtic knots on it–but hadn't spent too much on it, figuring it would be shredded in a year or two.  He's had it for about a decade now, if I remember right, but it's all misshapen and lumpy, if he rolls it on a flat surface.  "Oh, well."  He found it that morning and sent me an email about it:  I'd forgotten that he'd lost it.

Every day is better or worse, but they are all filled with sweetness.  I get spoiled every day, so getting extra-spoiled is kind of embarrassing.

This morning was another Guinea pig moment.

Ray and I were walking to school, and a tiny, tiny dog escaped from her owner and went fearlessly yapping toward us.  I mean, this dog makes Chihuahuas look massive:  she was the size of a 6-week Guinea pig, but with longer legs and pointier ears.

Ray had been grumpy all morning and got even grumpier when I made her clean up her mess before she could get on the computer.  It wasn't much, but there was all kinds of sighing and dragging of feet, so it took a while.  By the time she got done, it was time for school.  I told her she had to eat breakfast there rather than here.

Then I looked out the door:  the bug across the street was in the driveway.  It belongs to the daughter of the people who live there (or an adult but generationally younger woman, anyway), and only shows up occasionally.  We had to declare my bug off-limits because it was getting too hard to get out of the house in the morning, but this one's fair game.  I slugged Rachael.  Very gently.

"I don't care, mom.  I'm just grumpy this morning."

I pretended I wasn't disappointed, but I was.

We walked to school, and she just took off ahead of me and wouldn't slow down.  I teased her about it, so she slowed down and waited for me, then rolled her eyes at me.  I gave her a hug.

"Good job on your first transformations into becoming a teenager," I said.

She laughed.  Then the dog escaped, her mom caught her, and we got to pet the world's teeniest dog.  I let Ray take most of the petting time, then hustled her off to school.  On the way she slugged me one.  When we got there, a girl who is the president of the local manga club was waiting to walk with her the last bit into school.  Ray had been supposed to bring in the first One Piece, but she'd forgotten.  How you can be president of the local manga club without knowing One Piece, I don't know, but there you go.  I hugged Ray and let her go, because that's my job right now.

If you love Guinea pigs, you have to let them be Guinea pigs.  Or something like that.

Ten Best Banned Books for BB Week!

This week is banned books week. While I do not (yet) have a book that has had the privilege of being banned, I have read many, many banned books and have enjoyed most of them.

Here is a list of the most commonly banned/challenged books in the U.S.  How many have you read?

Italics = I've read it.

Bold = My personal top 10!

Nineteen Eighty-four (1984) – George Orwell

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby – Dav Pilkey A

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain

Alice series – Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

All the King's Men – Robert Penn Warren

Always Running – Luis J. Rodriguez

American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis

An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser

The Anarchist Cookbook – William Powell

Anastasia Again! – Lois Lowry

And Tango Makes Three – Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging – Louise Rennison

Annie on My Mind – Nancy Garden

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret – Judy Blume

Arming America – Michael Bellasiles

Arizona Kid – Ron Koertge

As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner

Asking About Sex and Growing Up – Joanna Cole

Athletic Shorts – Chris Crutcher

Beloved – Toni Morrison

Black Boy – Richard Wright

Bless Me, Ultima – Rudolfo A. Anaya

Blood and Chocolate – Annette Curtis Klause

Blubber – Judy Blume

The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison

The Boy Who Lost His Face – Louis Sachar

Boys and Sex – Wardell Pomeroy

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Bridge to Terabithia – Katherine Paterson

Bumps in the Night – Harry Allard

The Call of the Wild – Jack London

Captain Underpants – Dav Pilkey

Carrie – Stephen King

The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

Cat's Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut

The Chocolate War – Robert Cormier

Christine – Stephen King

A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess

The Color Purple – Alice Walker

Crazy Lady! – Jane Conly

Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat – Alvin Schwartz

Cujo – Stephen King

Curses, Hexes and Spells – Daniel Cohen

Cut – Patricia McCormick

Daddy's Roommate – Michael Willhoite

A Day No Pigs Would Die – Robert Newton Peck

The Dead Zone – Stephen King

Deenie – Judy Blume

Detour for Emmy – Marilyn Reynolds

The Drowning of Stephan Jones – Bette Greene

Earth's Children (series) – Jean M. Auel

The Exorcist – William Peter Blatty

The Face on the Milk Carton – Caroline B. Cooney

Fade – Robert Cormier

Fallen Angels – Walter Dean Myers

Family Secrets – Norma Klein

A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway

Final Exit – Derek Humphry

Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes

For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

Forever - Judy Blume

Girls and Sex – Wardell Pomeroy

The Giver – Lois Lowry

Go Ask Alice – Anonymous

Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin

The Goats – Brock Cole

Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell

Goosebumps (series) – R. L. Stine

The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gilly Hopkins – Katherine Paterson

Guess What? – Mem Fox

Halloween ABC – Eve Merriam

The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood

Harry Potter (series) – J. K. Rowling

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Heather Has Two Mommies – Lesléa Newman

The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende

How to Eat Fried Worms – Thomas Rockwell

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou

In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

In the Night Kitchen – Maurice Sendak

Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison

It's Perfectly Normal – Robie Harris

It's So Amazing – Robie Harris

Jack – A. M. Homes

James and the Giant Peach – Roald Dahl

Jay's Journal – Anonymous

Julie of the Wolves – Jean Craighead George

Jump Ship to Freedom – James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

Jumper – Steven Gould

The Jungle – Upton Sinclair

Kaffir Boy – Mark Mathabane

Killing Mr. Griffin – Lois Duncan

Lady Chatterley's Lover – D. H. Lawrence

A Light in the Attic – Shel Silverstein

Little Black Sambo – Helen Bannerman

Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

Lord of the Flies – William Golding

Mommy Laid An Egg – Babette Cole

My Brother Sam Is Dead – James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer

Naked Lunch – William S. Burroughs

Native Son – Richard Wright

The New Joy of Gay Sex – Charles Silverstein and Felice Picano

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

On My Honor – Marion Dane Bauer

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest – Ken Kesey

Ordinary People – Judith Guest

The Outsiders – S. E. Hinton

The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky

The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett

The Pigman – Paul Zindel

Private Parts – Howard Stern

Rabbit, Run – John Updike

The Rabbit's Wedding – Garth Williams

Rainbow Boys – Alex Sanchez

Running Loose – Chris Crutcher

The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie

Scary Stories (series) – Alvin Schwartz

A Separate Peace – John Knowles

Sex – Madonna

Sex Education – Jenny Davis

Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut

The Sledding Hill – Chris Crutcher

Sleeping Beauty Trilogy – A. N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)

Song of Solomon (novel) – Toni Morrison

Sons and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence

The Stupids (series) – Harry Allard

Summer of My German Soldier – Bette Greene

The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

That Was Then, This Is Now – S. E. Hinton A

Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

Tiger Eyes – Judy Blume

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller

Ulysses – James Joyce

View from the Cherry Tree – Willo Davis Roberts

We All Fall Down – Robert Cormier

Whale Talk – Chris Crutcher

What My Mother Doesn't Know – Sonya Sones

What's Happening to My Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons – Lynda Madaras

What's Happening to My Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents &Daughters – Lynda Madaras

Where Did I Come From? – Peter Mayle

The Wish Giver – Bill Brittain

The Witches – Roald Dahl

Women in Love – D. H. Lawrence

Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women's Sexual Fantasies – Nancy Friday

A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L'Engle

And, even though it's not on this list, I recommend The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson, which was challenged in 2007.

The Last Voyage of the Mermaid

Now at Smashwords, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and OmniLit.

Sail away with a free copy of this story, this weekend only, at Smashwords.  Use coupon code NF29C.

The Last Voyage of the Mermaid

by De Kenyon

Steal pirate ship.  Hire crew.  Decide:  wooden leg, hook, or eye patch?

Obtain parrot.

Arnold had always imagined himself as Captain Hook–only he would never have chased around that little dolt Peter.  He wanted better treasures, ones that Peter had taken for granted until it was too late.

When Arnold was a boy, he wondered about two things: what would it be like to be dead, and what would it be like to be a pirate. Being the kind of boy who first asked his mother about things, he received a lecture saying that a) being dead was something that would happen in its own time, and he was forbidden to try to find out early and b) being a pirate was not at all as nice as it seemed in Peter Pan, there being no such things as mermaids, pixies, or alligators with clocks in their stomachs. Whether he should have listened to his mother or not remains to be seen.

And so Arnold grew up, got a job, got married, and had kids. For the longest time, as a boy, he wondered whether he would do these ordinary things, as he was convinced that girls would always have a terrible antipathy (which is the opposite of understanding) of him, and that he would have to adopt children if he wanted to have them. As it turned out, a number of girls fell in love with him, although there was only one he truly loved back. And although her name was something else entirely, he always thought of her as his Wendy.

He did not think of himself as Peter Pan.

Instead, he secretly thought of himself as Captain Hook.

In Arnold's version of the story, he had given up trying to cut down that annoying little boy, courted the beautiful girl, and won her away from Peter, who had no idea what kind of treasure he'd given up until it was too late. And for as long as his wife lived, he imagined that the alligator who contained both a clock (symbolizing time) and his hand (symbolizing ouch!) swam in other waters, looking for easier prey.

But then they both got old, and his wife died of a number of very serious thing going wrong all at the same time. She was a whole year younger than he, so this was entirely unfair. He'd been counting on having her protect him from the alligator while he slipped away with death, to find out what it was like to be dead. For the alligator did not symbolize death, only violence and fear and being attacked and eaten and pulled down into the dark.

At any rate, there he was, an old man, and he had never found out what it was like being a pirate.

His wife, who had encouraged him to follow his other, more ordinary dreams, would have encouraged him to find out what it was like to be a pirate, if only she had known of his secret wish.  However, he had never told her:  being a pirate would have meant that he had to leave her, for pirates did not have wives, or if they did, they certainly did not take them to sea. He wasn't entirely sure why. But he had waited. And now she was gone, and their children were grown and had children of their own, so clearly they could take care of themselves and didn't need him around anymore.

And so he put his affairs in order and went to Florida to become a pirate.

He made a list:

- Get a pirate ship, preferably by theft.

- Learn how to sail it, OR hire a crew.

- Parrot.

- Wooden leg, hook, and/or eye patch?!?

- Fountain of youth.

In Florida, the sand was white and the sea was a color of green that his children had always called mermaid tail green but was now called Caribbean Green. The palm trees had astonishingly patterned trunks, and the sky was so wide he often fell asleep on his beach chair trying to look from one side to the other, it took so long.

After a time, he realized that if he was going to get any pirating done, he was going to have to prioritize his list so the Fountain of Youth was on top. He was so old. It was like being sick all the time, forced to stay inside and take it easy, lest he make things worse.  And he had long since tired of skipping school (having graduated decades ago) and daytime TV.

And so one day he got out of his beach chair and stretched, determined not to fall asleep again. He set out at a slow pace, because the sun was very hot and made the top of his head sweat through his thin, white hair.

He walked and he walked until he found a thin stream that fed into the ocean from the beach. The stream had worn away at the sand dunes on the shore, making a deep ditch. He couldn't climb down on his own, so he followed along the thick grass at the top, getting all kinds of burrs stuck in his leg hair (for he was wearing shorts; he didn't feel that he could dress in his pirate outfit until after he'd found his ship) and sand in his sandals.

He followed the stream for miles and miles and miles, through thick woods and swamps that started out as thin puddles and turned into kiddie pools, then regular swimming pools. The insects became so thick they were like a fog, and birds screamed under the thick trees. From time to time he would hear the sucking roar of an alligator or the chitter of monkeys who had escaped from their long-ago pirate owners to populate the high canopy of trees. Once, he heard drums.

He walked on, following what seemed to him to be the true trail of the stream, hoping that it would lead him to the Fountain of Youth, or at least to one of the other items on his list. As he walked, he noticed that he had something in his hand that he had not had before: a machete, a thick blade of metal that didn't so much cut through the thick branches as chop them like an axe. With one strong hand, he pulled back branches, and with the other, he whacked them off in a steady rhythm, until he had made quite some progress into the swamp, standing on a small islet of floating logs and grass.

As he stepped up onto the islet or hummock, he noticed that he was wearing black leather boots, from which the water beaded up and ran as though they were made out of rubber. The leather had been oiled, he realized, unlike the boots of his pirate costume, hidden in his suitcase at the hotel room.

He patted all around himself and found that he was wearing long boots whose tops could fold over at the top or rise up to help protect his legs from water, as they did now; thick cotton pants with no zipper; a leather belt that kept his pants from falling off as well as holding a leather sheath for his machete; leather straps across his chest that held leather purses, a handgun, powder and shot (rather than regular bullets), and a number of other useful-looking things. He held his hands in front of him and was relieved to see that he still had both of them (he thought for a moment that he saw a hook out of the corner of his eye), and, further, that they were the hands of a young man.