Mark Willen's Blog, page 6

Publishing Through the Eyes of a Small, Independent Press

Change seems to be the only constant in the world of publishing these days. In just the last few years, the big traditional publishers have consolidated, entered the digital competition, and gone to war with Amazon. We’ve seen exponential growth in e-book sales, and thousands of authors have chosen to publish their own work, taking advantage of the Internet to reach their target audience.

Almost unnoticed in the turmoil has been a huge opportunity for small, independent presses. They appeal to authors who don’t want to self-publish and can’t attract the interest of the big guys.

I’m one of those authors. My first novel, Hawke’s Point, was released in July by Pen-L Publishing of Fayetteville, Arkansas. I asked Duke and Kimberly Pennell, the husband and wife team that created Pen-L in 2011, to give us a small press view of the world of publishing.

MW: Amidst all the turmoil in publishing, you hopped into the fray and started your own company. What were you thinking?

Pen-L: We were thinking “What a great opportunity for wonderful new books to come from publishers outside New York and its ancient institutions that controlled the books we saw for so many decades.” With the new technology, huge amounts of money are not necessary to bring books to the public. New authors have a chance to compete with the known names. It’s really leveled the playing field.

MW: Tell us a little about Pen-L: How many books are you publishing this year, how big is your staff, where do you find your authors?

Pen-L: We are on track to bring 32 new titles out this year. We started out with a staff of just the two of us, and now have added cover and interior designers, a “literary analyst ” (aka slush pile reader), and two editors. Some days we could use a few more people to answer email, sort through submissions, focus on social media, etc. Oh, and cook meals.

MW: What big surprises have you encountered? What do you know today that you wished you knew before you started publishing other people’s work?

Pen-L: We knew several published authors when we started and had become familiar with the process, so no big surprises. If we could turn back time, I’d say we’d clarify expectations with authors. In fact, we now present a workshop at writers’ conferences entitled “What Comes After ‘I Do!’ How the Author/Publisher Relationship Is Like a Marriage.” (We'll be in Lake Charles, LA on November 8th at the Bridge to Publication conference, sponsored by the Bayou Writers Group.) After nearly three years in publishing and thirty in our marriage, we’ve noticed similarities, primarily that when people are open about their expectations, much conflict is avoided.

MW: Most small publishers seem to look for a niche in the market—romance, fantasy, mystery—but your books are all over the place, even including nonfiction. Was that the original plan or did it just happen that way? Is it a disadvantage not to focus on one kind of book so that you become an expert in that field?

Pen-L: We knew going in that we'd be a multi-genre publisher. We're omnivorous readers, and if something is written well and can hook one of us, then we're game. That's both a blessing and a curse. It's easier if you concentrate on one genre but not nearly as rewarding. There are lots of really fabulous stories out there, and we'd hate to miss them. That choice means more work for us making connections with the right folks for each genre but that gets easier as we go. The alternative would be turning down great manuscripts because they don’t fit in our little niche.

MW: What do you look for when you’re considering submissions?

Pen-L: 1) A story that is gripping or non-fiction that is unique and helpful, 2) an author who has given serious thought to promotion and has begun building a platform, 3) one who aspires to be a career author, 4) one who has a professional approach to the business.

MW: Many authors are deciding these days they'd rather self-publish and maintain control of the process than go with a small publishing house. What can you offer authors that they can’t do on their own?

Pen-L: We find that most authors want a very professional-looking presentation for their book, in paper and ebook, and online. While it’s possible to hire all that done, it can be costly and time-consuming, and the final result may be less than hoped for. There are also reviewers, contests, etc. that will only accept submissions from publishers. A publisher tells a potential reader that the book has met standards for writing and production quality that qualify it to bear the publisher’s name. Also, we’ve learned a lot about the business and made many contacts over the years that an author would also need time to develop. We’ve learned from our mistakes and going down blind alleys so they don’t have to.

MW: What’s the most satisfying part of being a publisher?

Pen-L: Just like a midwife is gratified by helping parents bring a new life to the world, we love being able to help authors bring their creations to readers around the world. Like pregnancy, the progression from the first words written to seeing a finished work for sale is full of emotional ups and downs. We aim to make the publishing and promoting work easier and better so the book will have the best chance of reaching many people. We enjoy helping authors find and pursue methods they will use to promote, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. We don't promise fabulous wealth and fame, but we know that those who commit to a writing career will grow their skills and their fan base and move toward success.

MW: What’s the most frustrating part?

Pen-L: That there are only 24 hours in a day!

MW: Where do you see the publishing industry going in the next ten years?

Pen-L: Give me a minute to check with my astrologer . . . just kidding. Honestly, if someone gives an answer to that, I’d recommend you bet against it. The industry is changing so fast that I would not even try to predict ten years out. But I am confident that even more people will be creating and absorbing stories.

MW: Where would you like Pen-L to be in ten years?

Pen-L: In whatever manner people are reading, we hope to be helping great new works find their way into hungry eyeballs (and ears).

No, You Can't Have Her Number

I should have seen it coming. There were hints, but I made light of them, and took just a few tentative steps to deflect them. It wasn’t enough, and my problem persists: Readers of my recently published novel, Hawke’s Point, want to know a lot more about Mary Louise. Or more specifically, they want to know how I know so much about Mary Louise. The men even want her phone number, as though I have it on speed dial.

Mary Louise is a part-time, high-priced call girl who plays a key role in my novel. In the first draft she was a minor character, with just a meant-to-be-funny cameo appearance early in the book. But when I presented those chapters to a writing class, all the questions were about her. They wanted—no, they needed—to know more: Why does she do it? What’s it like? How can she think of it as just a job? How can she possibly stand being in the same room with her customers, let alone being intimate with them?

I took the bait. I gave her a bigger role and a more complex personality. If people wanted to read about her, I’d try to give them someone worth reading about. I even became attached to her. This meant learning as much as I could about the life of a woman in her shoes. That wasn’t a problem. I’ve been a journalist for over 40 years; I knew how to find information even before there was an Internet. There were some hiccups along the way. My wife was none too pleased when my copy of Callgirl: Confessions of an Ivy League Lady of Pleasure came to the front door in a clear plastic wrap.

There were plenty of other warning signs I ignored on the road to publication. When I asked other writers (who really should know better) for critiques, the conversations would focus on elements of plot, point of view, style, dialogue, whatever—and then inevitably they would get around to Mary Louise and how I did my “research,” the word often spoken as though it had skeptical quotation marks around it.

I figured there was an easy if incomplete way to defect questions. I went out of my way in the acknowledgments for the novel to cite a couple of the books I used as references, but that hasn’t had much effect. The questions keep coming. Usually, they begin by asking whether the book is autobiographical. It’s not, and anyone who knows me should know that. But then they ask where the characters came from. Are they based on people I know? Telling them that they are partially composites and mostly imagined will get a polite nod and awkward silence, as though they’re waiting for me to fess up.

A few reviewers have also focused on Mary Louise. Two said she was their favorite character, which surprised me, but one accused me of glorifying prostitution and gave me a firm, very personal lecture.

As the questions continue, I’ve stopped trying to explain in any detail. It doesn’t do any good, and the last thing I want to do is sound defensive. So I just pause a few seconds as though I’m taken aback by the question. “Research,” I finally answer with my best inscrutable smile. Let them think what they want.

A New Fan of Louise Penny

When I told my wife and some friends that I was finally going to take their advice and read one of Louise Penny’s Inspector Armand Gamache novels, they all told me the same thing: You must read them in order! So of course I started with No 2, A Fatal Grace, and then turned to The Beautiful Mystery, which is No. 8. Well, I’m here to tell you that despite what everyone tells you, you can read Penny’s novels out of order and still live to sing their praises.

But unless you’re also the ornery type like me, why would you? You’ll be doing yourself a favor to follow directions and start at the beginning with Still Life.

Penny is too good a writer to make any one novel an absolute prerequisite for the next. They each stand on their own. But the recurring cast of characters—an entire town, not just a lone police inspector—grow and develop as time lapses, and presumably as the writer got to know and cultivate them. Reading the books out of order means you won’t fully appreciate the growth that makes this series unique. So many authors latch on to a great main character (Jack Reacher or Spenser come to mind) and allow only minor changes from one book to the next. Penny lets her characters live and change, much as we all do, and this is a major element of her success. It may even be the most important element.

A Fatal Grace distinguishes itself with the very first sentence: “Had CC de Poitiers known she was going to be murdered she might have bought her husband, Richard, a Christmas gift.” That’s a terrific hook that allows Penny to create suspense without adhering to the tired requirement that a mystery writer put a body on the first page. It also allows her to spend the first sixty pages of the novel introducing you to the victim—and any number of people who have a motive to kill her.

CC is, in fact, a marvelous character, full of mischief and meanness and evil, even unable to be kind to her daughter —in fact, the kind of character you love to hate and would be happy to murder yourself. Forutnately, someone does it for you.

That brings Inspector Gamache to Three Pines, a tiny town in Quebec that serves as the setting for most of the Gamache novels. Though the population is small, it has its share of odd people, including an “elderly, wizened, bitter poet” who also heads the volunteer fire department (intensely rude but somehow still lovable), the gay couple that own the Bed and Breakfast, a retired psychologist who bought the local bookstore, and a large supporting cast of minor but very original characters.

CC’s murder is a true mystery. How do you manage to electrocute someone on an ice pond in the middle of a curling match with dozens of spectators and escape unnoticed? But Gamache and his team are more than up to the task, figuring out not only who killed CC but also solving a related murder and untying several other mysteries in the process.

Penny uses the history of Canada and the individual personalities of its inhabitants to illuminate her stories, taking on huge themes—love, friendship, and guilt—while keeping the crime central and staying true to the cozy mystery genre.

Penny’s plots are complicated, too complicated in my view. There were times when I lost track of important elements or just stopped following the intricacies. And I found the tendency to leave one piece of the mystery unsolved so that you’re encouraged to read the next book in the series more than a bit annoying. In Fatal Grace, for example, we know that Agent Yvette Nichol is not being honest with Gamache and doing some kind of subversive work for the inspectors’ superiors, but we’re not told what it is. Penny doesn’t need even that kind of small cliffhanger to get readers to pick up the next book. Her writing is more than enough to do that.

The newest installment in the series, No. 10–The Long Way Home, will be published Aug. 26. That doesn’t give new fans much time to start at the beginning, so best get cracking!

Book Review: Dislocation by Margaret Meyers

With more than a million books published each year in the United States alone, it’s all too easy to overlook a wonderful author. Don’t do that to Margaret Meyers, whose new story collection, Dislocation, has just been published by Entasis Press.

Meyers’s multilayered stories are charming, insightful, and significant, with writing that's filled with wit and humor. There’s no better way to capture the power of her prose than to quote it. Consider the opening of Doing Good:

"As the young black woman climbs into the front passenger seat of the VW Bug, Delia, crosslegged in the back, notes that her mother’s ears are still ripe-tomato red. Her mother speaks to the young woman in her calm, warm, Sunday-morning voice but those ears, generally very pale with tiny gold freckles, tell Delia that her mother is very far from calm."

The story unfolds from Delia’s perch in the back seat. Her twelve-year-old eyes are focused on what’s happening in front of her, but her own, very personal concerns keep intruding, especially after noticing the “nice bosom” of her mother’s passenger.

"Delia touches her right nipple, which is about the size of a match head — only without, it seems to her, the potential for transformation inherent in a match head. She doesn’t know why she thinks of such an explosive comparison — fire, danger, heat — but she does."

Delia’s mother is the wife of a missionary and she has offered the ride to show support for a bus boycott in Johannesburg similar to the one that forced authorities to back down in 1957. The offer of a ride soon turns into something more complicated, and through Delia’s eyes and Meyers’s deft hand, we experience the chasm between meaning well and “doing good.”

That proves to be one of several recurring themes in Dislocation, a volume of stories largely about people who’ve been lifted out of their natural surroundings and plopped down in unfamiliar places and circumstances. Some have moved by choice, but most have been dislocated by circumstances or the decision of a parent or spouse. However it happened, Meyers’s characters find themselves struggling to understand and cope, usually with mixed results.

Meyers’s first collection, the critically acclaimed Swimming in the Congo, was a series of interlocking stories narrated by the seven-year-old daughter of missionaries in the Congo. That book was rooted in Meyers’s own childhood and described the challenges and frustrations of missionary work with charming insight. She has also published stories in several literary journals and teaches writing at Johns Hopkins University. (Disclosure: I was lucky enough to be a student of hers several years ago.)

The twelve gems in Dislocation examine some of the same themes as the first book, with even greater effect. Religion plays a central role, with fundamental questions raised in original and disconcerting ways. Many of the central characters are missionaries, ministers, or children and spouses of clergymen, and the predicaments they find themselves in give Meyers considerable opportunity to dig deeply into the relationship between a belief in God and how that influences—or doesn’t influence—the way we live our lives. Meyers is relatively gentle in her treatment of her characters, who often come off as sincere if misguided or even foolish, but she is unstinting in questioning their beliefs and their application to the real world.

Africa serves as the setting for five of the stories, while the others hop around the globe, from Renaissance Florence to the American Midwest to a World War II battlefield. One is set at a divinity school in a New Jersey town that bears a close resemblance to Princeton. Another takes readers to Chicago where a minister and his wife argue over his plans to perform an exorcism neither of them believes in. One of the most enchanting tales is set in 16th century England and is told in the voice of Ann More, the wife of poet John Donne, a woman who bore him twelve children in sixteen years. Another delight, Eau de Paradis, takes place in the perfume department at Saks.

The prose is original and elegant, with characters who stay with you. Whether the protagonist is a soldier lost and alone on a World War II battlefield, a woman coming to grips with a complicated marriage, a child trying to find her place in the world, or an adult hoping to reconcile an exotic past with the person she’s become, the voice and pitch are perfect, with plenty of wit and wisdom.

There’s also plenty of humor. Here’s an excerpt from Sousaphone, a story in which a preteen at a school for missionary children in the Congo seeks permission to become the marching band’s first female sousaphone player:

"Birgit asks how it went.

I tell her that Reverend Palmquist is quite sure that the Lord does not approve of girls playing the sousaphone, but he’ll ask Him just to be sure. He’ll get back to me as soon as the Lord gets back to him. Because the Lord moves in mysterious ways, it could end up taking a while.

What a lot of getting back to people over playing the sousaphone, she says. But then I don’t suppose those American churches that donated the instruments to us ever thought a girl would want to play a sousaphone. I’d give up if I were you.

But I really want to play, I say. And soon. The Rapture could happen any day now."

If one tale impresses more than others, it’s The Deluge, which tells the story of two young orphans who find themselves perched precariously atop a leg of the Trinita Bridge after a flood destroys a wide swath of Florence. As night falls, the youngsters are left waiting for the waters to recede so they can be rescued:

"Across the darkly churning Arno, Piero could see the faint here-and-there glow of candles and lanterns. Families were eating their evening meal just as they had before the Deluge. He could almost hear the laughter, the squabbles, the admonitions to eat, to sit still, to not kick one’s sister. How he and his grandmother used to roll their eyes and grimace at the noisy meals that went on in the household upstairs: the father shouting one order after another, the mother scolding, the son complaining, the daughters giggling, the baby babbling. How carefully he and his grandmother had supported one another in the belief that they were fortunate in their mealtime calm and order….Piero never ever considered saying what he really did wish for every single day of his life: his mother, his father, and the palpable third presence that was the love they had created between them."

The mood and tone of The Deluge reminded me of The Earthquake in Chile, Heinrich von Kleist’s classic 1807 tale, which also focuses on a natural disaster that leaves survivors struggling to explain and understand God’s wrath. In von Kleist’s tale, a couple who bore a child out of wedlock become scapegoats. Meyers handles it this way:

"It occurred to Piero that his grandmother’s piety had been in vain. Judgment had been visited upon her even though she did not commit those sins she most despised, the sins of greed, of disbelief, of wantonness and lechery. Perhaps it was impossible to obey God enough; perhaps God simply enjoyed judging more than forgiving."

Though certain themes run through the stories, there’s never a sense that you’re visiting ground already tread. The characters and situations are so unusual and varied that each feels like an entirely new experience.

Like any good collection, the stories in Dislocation stand on their own, each having the depth, breadth, and story arc of a full literary experience. But at the same time they build on one another, growing more powerful as you progress through the volume, leaving an impression that stays with you long after you turn the last page.

Stoner: It's Time You Read This Book

A few months ago, the New Yorker reviewed Stoner under the headline, “The Greatest American Novel You’ve Never Heard Of.” It was a clever line, but after Britain’s Waterstones named it the Book of the Year for 2013—and with U.S. sales finally topping 100,000—it may no longer be true. Admittedly, it’s taken 48 years to get to this point and the novel is still far from a popular favorite, but it’s clearly beginning to get the attention it deserves.

stoner2John Williams wrote Stoner in 1965, and it fell out of print the following year after sales topped out at a couple thousand. But in 2006, the New York Review of Books gave it a second chance, reissuing it as part of its classic series. Positive reviews and word of mouth led to a quiet revival here and in Spain, Italy, Britain, France, Israel, and the Netherlands.

It’s not hard to see why the novel didn’t catch on immediately. It’s the quiet story of an ordinary man living a sad and painful life at a time when working hard and slogging through were considered virtues and ends in themselves. Stoner suffers through a loveless marriage and an unsuccessful career, and the novel hits so close you can’t help but feel Stoner’s despair.

But if Stoner’s life is ordinary and depressing, its telling is quite the opposite. Williams’ prose is elegant, restrained, and precise, with a timeless quality and beautifully crafted sentences that overwhelm with understated intensity. Its themes of failure and love transcend time and culture.

The book begins with a two-paragraph prologue that no market-driven publisher would allow today. In it, Williams warns his readers of what’s to come with brutal honesty. All that’s left of Stoner, he tells us, is a manuscript his colleagues contributed in his name to the school’s rare books collection.

“He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a medieval manuscript to the University library…. An occasional student who comes upon the [inscription] may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual question. Stoner’s colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound that evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers.”

Stoner is the son of poor farmers who bequeath him a quiet stoicism, reticence, and hard-working ethic. He goes to college to study agriculture, only to fall in love with literature, a realization that hits him when he studies Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73, a poem of love and loss that hints at the fate awaiting Stoner. Asked to explain the sonnet, Stoner can’t speak. A teacher who will later become his mentor recognizes it for what it is. “You are in love, it’s as simple as that.”

In a touching scene with his parents he tries to explain that this love for literature means he won’t be coming back to the farm. “I didn’t figure it would turn out this way,” his father says, but when Stoner asks if they’ll be all right without him, his father concludes: “If you think you ought to stay here and study your books, then that’s what you ought to do.”

Stoner’s academic career is modest at best. His devotion to ancient theories of grammar and rhetoric lead him into feuds with colleagues more practiced in academic politics, and Stoner is reduced to teaching low-level courses. He compensates by immersing himself in books, feeling a compulsion to absorb as much as he can.

“Having come to his studies late, he felt the urgency of study. Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know."

His love life is even more dismal. He recognizes his marriage as a mistake within days, if not hours, of the ceremony, but his stoicism and resignation prevent him from ending it, even when his mean-spirited wife turns the daughter he loves against him. His only happiness comes when he enters into an affair with a much younger colleague. When his enemies find out, they use it against him.

As much I admire Stoner, when I heard this 48-year-old novel had been named book of the year for 2013, I thought it was more than a little bit odd. But James Daunt, Waterstones' managing director, said the year of publication had no impact on the decision. “This is the book everyone has been talking about in 2013. The very least we can do is name it our Book of the Year.”

John Williams, of course, can’t share in the excitement of his novel’s second life. He died in 1994. He wrote three other novels, including Augustus, which shared the National Book Award in 1972.

It’s fascinating news when an overlooked gem like Stoner becomes a classic decades after its publication, but undoubtedly there are many others still waiting to be discovered. Have you stumbled upon any that deserve a lot more attention? I’d love to hear from you if you have.

On Rereading Tolstoy

I have a confession to make. I don’t read long books—not even after e-books eliminated two of my complaints (hard to hold in bed and painful if dropped on a toe). The problem is that too many long books just aren’t worth the investment of time, often because of authors who don’t know what to leave out or editors too submissive to cut. I did try to read The Goldfinch to see what the fuss was about, but the laborious writing and the abuse of the semicolon (my favorite mark of punctuation) led me to give up after five pages.

Of course there are exceptions to my big book phobia—beginning with almost everything Tolstoy and Dickens wrote. And it’s one of those exceptions that I want to talk about today. I want to urge you to re-read Anna Karenina at least once a decade. And if you’re a writer, make that a requirement, not a suggestion.

One reason I love reading the classics is that they tend to break all of the “rules” that modern writers are taught. In Anna Karenina, for example, the point of view is omniscient (mostly out of style today), and Tolstoy slips in and out of the heads of dozens of characters (even a dog), often switching within scenes (a complete no-no, one editor told me). Tolstoy fills his 900 pages with “telling” as well as “showing,” and he summarizes whole conversations instead of providing the dialogue that so many think is essential today. There are long scenes of seeming boredom that most editors would insist on cutting, such as when Levin works the fields with the peasants or enters a long discourse on agricultural policy. And the writing is plain and straightforward, with almost no similes or metaphors to try to impress a reader.

Tolstoy is of course wildly successful not despite all of this but, in part, because of it. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He doesn’t need a slew of similes and metaphors because his prose is so precise you don’t need a comparison to picture what he is talking about. Consider the breathtaking race scene, one of the most exciting and horrifying in all of literature, in which Vronsky breaks the back of his mare running an obstacle course. Tolstoy, using strong verbs and nouns and hardly any adjectives, puts the reader in the saddle with Vronsky, letting us hear, smell, and feel every stride.

Similarly, Tolstoy gets away with telling because he does it so well and because he uses it to make his “showing” so much more effective. In the scene where Dolly tells Levin he shouldn’t let his pride stop him from giving Kitty another chance, Tolstoy tells you what Levin’s feeling even as he’s showing him acting on it, mixing it all seamlessly:

“Please, please, don’t let us talk of this,” he said, sitting down, and at the same time feeling a hope he had thought buried rising and stirring in his heart.

“If I didn’t love you,” said Darya Alexandrovna, and tears welled up in her eyes; “if I didn’t know you as I do…”

The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rising up and taking possession of Levin’s heart.

Of course the real lesson Tolstoy offers is in his characters, each marvelous and multi-faceted in ways that make readers love them without overlooking the flaws that make them real. The characters you admire still have moments of evil behavior, and the more odious characters have scenes that make you feel sympathy for them. And while Tolstoy prefers the long form to give his central characters their depth, he has a marvelous ability to capture the essence of a minor character in a single sentence. In a brief scene in which Countess Lydia pumps Anna for gossip, he writes:

“But Countess Lydia Ivanovna, who was interested in everything that did not concern her, had the habit of never listening to what interested her. She interrupted Anna.”

What more do you need to know to about Countess Lydia to feel you’ve met her in person?

I know that thousands of words have been written to explain why Anna Karenina is one of the greatest novels ever written, and the last thing anyone needs is a blog from me praising it. But I was so overcome with awe when I read it last month (reading it now as a writer as well as a reader) that I had to share at least a little of what I saw that I’d never seen before.

Many of my writing friends admit to being a bit jealous because I’ve retired from the 9-5 rat race and can now write as much as I want. In fact, it doesn’t really work that way, but they do have reason to be jealous. Now I have many more hours to do what really helps a writer. I can read a lot more.

A Chat With Teen Author Melanie Batchelor

There’s something special about discovering a young author who’s really good. You can savor that first book while looking forward to the next, knowing that chances are, each succeeding work will be even better than the last.

So imagine the kick of discovering an impressive author who’s only sixteen. Remember Me, a young adult coming of age novel written in verse, was published last month by Bold Stroke Books. The author, Melanie Batchelor, is a high school junior, who actually penned the novel when she was fourteen.

I first met Melanie two years ago, at a teen writing workshop I was leading. It didn’t take long to recognize her unusual talent, and I was privileged to read an early version of Remember Me. My biggest contribution was helping her sort through competing contract offers for the book.

Since its publication, Melanie has gotten a lot of attention and press, with most of it highlighting her age. But it’s not Melanie’s age that makes this a stunning achievement, it’s the quality of the work. This book isn’t notable because it was written by teenager; it’s notable because it’s very good.

I asked Melanie about Remember Me, her writing process, and her long-term plans. Here’s our interview:

Q: When and how did your interest in writing develop?
A: It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when I became interested in writing. When I was really young I would make “books” that I taped together—most of them unfinished. I think my interest developed from my love for books, which came from my Mom, who first encouraged me to read.

Q: When did you realize you were really into it, that it would become a passion and a major part of your life?
A: I didn’t become seriously interested in writing until middle school, when I wrote my first story that I actually finished. I started joining writing groups during that time, which allowed my love for writing to grow.

Q: When you started writing, did it ever occur to you that you’d get a novel published when you were only sixteen?
A: It had definitely been a dream of mine to get something published early on, but I never thought that it would actually happen. It seemed like a fantasy. I was very surprised (and pleased) when I got an email from a publishing company that was interested in my story.

Q: Did you always want to be a writer? If you had to guess, do you think you’ll make that your career choice?
A: I’ve always wanted to be a writer (excluding that one awkward year in middle school when I wanted to be a fashion designer). I definitely want to make it my career. I’m thinking of majoring in creative writing when I go to college in just a little over a year.

Q: If someone asks you what Remember Me is about, how do you answer that question?
A: I assumed it would be easy to summarize a book that I actually wrote, until people actually started asking me what Remember Me was about. It turns out “what’s it about?” is a really hard question to answer! If someone asked me now, I’d probably say that Remember Me is about a girl who is forced to revaluate the manipulative relationship she has with the girl she supposedly loves after a tragic event occurs. It took me way too long to come up with a brief description, but I gave it my best shot!

Q: Where did the idea for Remember Me come from?
A: It was late at night and I couldn’t fall asleep. I was lying on my bed, looking out my window and thinking of the big tree in my backyard, when I envisioned two girls up in a tree; two girls who would later be known as Erica and Jamie. I started writing a little bit about them, but after a few pages I decided to scratch that story but keep the two main characters. After that, the plot just came to me over time.

Q: Did you know from the beginning that it would be a novel in verse or did you start writing in a different form?
A: I started writing Remember Me in verse. Even the first story involving Erica and Jamie, which only spanned a few pages, was written in verse.

Q: Do you have a routine for writing – a certain time of day, a certain room, a favorite prompt?
A: I don’t, but I really should! I think having a plan would help me focus and be more productive. Over the summer I plan on creating a routine; however for now I just write whenever and wherever.

Q: What’s the biggest surprise you’ve had so far about the world of publishing?
A: People in the publishing world are actually really nice. The company I worked with, Bold Strokes Books, was really warm and welcoming. Everyone I worked with was very friendly and available to answer questions or give advice.

Q: What are your favorite genres to read? What are some of your favorite authors and titles?
A: I love realistic fiction as well as nonfiction. Some of my favorite books are Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk, White Oleander and Paint it Black by Janet Fitch, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, The Kite Runner by Khalaed Hosseini, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and Nothing by Janne Teller (just to name a few  ).

Q: What do you most love about writing?
A: I love seeing through the eyes of characters and exploring who they are and how they relate to the people and environment around them. Writing characters is like meeting new people—slowly you find out every fascinating detail about them. They may even surprise you.

Q: What do you most hate?
A: I hate how a certain scene can sound so much better in your head than on paper! Trying to convey exactly what I mean can be a challenge.

Q: What’s the hardest part of the process for you?
A: The hardest part was editing the book, partly because it was so time consuming but mostly because it’s when I saw all the flaws that I needed to fix. It’s never fun to reread your work and discover a million things that need to be fixed. Of course, the final product is totally worth it.

Q: Now that you have a published novel, is it hard focusing on school and friends and all the things you like to do other than writing?
A: I think my grades and social life were more at risk when I was writing the book rather than after, when it was published. I spent so much time writing and rewriting, trying to finish the story and then trying to find a publisher. Even though it’s a little crazy right now with my book just being released, I think I have a lot more time to focus on friends, school, and other actives other than writing. Right now, everything is balanced.

Interview With Washington Post Book Editor Ron Charles

Next time you feel overwhelmed by the number of books on your to-read list, think of Ron Charles, the fiction editor at the Washington Post. Charles and his colleagues at the newspaper get 150 books a day to choose from, with a lot careers depending on their decisions. I chatted with Ron recently about his job and how he approaches it. Here is the transcript of our phone conversation, edited and condensed.

MW: With all those books coming in, how do you decide what to review?

RC: It’s a triage process. Our office manager removes a huge percentage of the books that we don’t review—self-published books, textbooks, and others. After he’s organized them according to publication dates, the editors and I start pulling books we think might be interesting. Obviously we start with authors we recognize, best-selling, reliable authors we’ve reviewed before. There are certain presses we trust so we look at their books with particular interest. And then beyond that we’re getting pitched books by publicists all the time, which is particularly helpful with a debut novelist whose name we wouldn’t recognize. I’ve been at this for fifteen years now. I know a lot of the publicists and I know what they like and they know what I like, and some of them I actually trust.

MW: You review a lot of debut novelists. Would you say that your job, in part, is to discover new talent?

RC: They interest me a lot. I think it’s fun and exciting to discover new writers. And it’s great to think that we might have a part in launching somebody’s career. So that is a goal of mine.

MW: Who are some of the debut authors of the last year or so that you would recommend?

RC: One of the greatest pleasures of this job is seeing just how many fine new authors appear each year. Really, I’m amazed at the talent. Just a few months ago, this young man named Anthony Marra published a spectacularly moving novel about Chechnya called A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. Recently, I reviewed a witty social satire by Adelle Waldman called The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P—, one of my daughter’s favorites, too. And of course, there was Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, which won the National Book Award. But honestly, I feel like I run across new writers all the time. It just goes to show you that, despite the griping you sometimes hear, new voices still can break in.

MW: You mentioned your review of The Love Affairs of Nathanial P—, a book that was also reviewed by The New York Times, NPR, the Los Angeles Times—just about everybody reviewed that book. How does that happen for a debut writer? Is it buzz that the industry’s created?

RC: Yeah. It was a really, really clever marketing campaign behind the scenes. It’s also pretty remarkable that all the reviews appeared within thirty-six hours of each other. Think how hard it is for a publishing house to pull that off. Her publicist, James Meader, did a really good job of convincing a lot of us that this was a clever, hip, timely book. Also once a book is creating a lot of buzz, we don’t want our readers to be the only readers who don’t know about it. I don’t want them to be the ones at the cocktail party who are out of the loop.

MW: Do you hear a lot from authors? Do they complain about bad reviews?

RC: They don’t complain. That’s very, very rare. The last time I heard from an author was maybe two years ago—a debut author who didn’t know better. I’m sure that authors complain to one another, but their publicists, I’m sure tell them, “Do not complain to the book section editor.”

MW: We hear so much about the changes in the publishing industry—the big mergers, the growing popularity of ebooks, the implosion of self published books—has that changed your role as a reviewer?

RC: No. I honestly don’t think it has except in a couple of strange situations. One is, it’s getting harder to find reviewers who are not connected to the book because as the number of publishing houses shrinks, I so often find that I have a book and I need to have it reviewed and the first three people I call tell me, “Oh, I can’t, I’m published by that house, too.” The other issue is I don’t know how long we can hold out against reviewing self-published books or ebooks. As more big authors start to bring books out exclusively on the ebook platform, I think it’ll start to seem weird that we’re ignoring them categorically.

MW: Why do you ignore ebooks?

RC: It’s a practicality. We just could not deal with the flood of books. With the published books, we know and rely on the fact that those books have gone through a certain amount of winnowing, imperfect as it is, by the action of having to get an agent and having to get a publisher and an editor. If we had to open ourselves up to ebooks, it would be several hundred thousand more a year, possibly per month. The numbers are just staggering. I have no idea how we would deal with that.

MW: Is that the reason for not reviewing self-published books or have you determined that the quality is not as good?

RC: It honestly is not a quality issue. It’s just a practical issue. We don’t know how we would deal with such a huge ocean of titles.

MW: There’s also been a proliferation of online book reviews—Amazon, Goodreads, blogs—how has that affected what you do? Or hasn’t it?

RC: It really hasn’t. I think it’s exciting that so many more people are involved and are able to express their opinions about books, and they’re able to form online communities and groups on Goodreads. That’s all really fun and part of the positive impact of the Internet on our culture.

MW: You’ve been reviewing books for about fifteen years—first at the Christian Science Monitor and now at the Post. Before that you were a teacher. Can you talk a little about the transition and why you made it?

RC: I thought that if I graded one more paper I would go out of my friggin’ mind.

MW: But you’re still grading papers in a way.

RC: Yeah, in a sense. A friend of mine said I ought to try book reviewing, which I’d never even thought of, but you know it was kind of a related field because I did critique books for a living in front of a very small, bored audience—

MW: So you taught English?

RC: Yes, I did. So I went to Barnes and Noble—I was in St. Louis then—and I went to the new fiction table, and I picked up a book by Richard Russo called Straight Man, which was about an English teacher, which I was, and I read it and I wrote probably several hundred words and sent it off to the features editor of the Christian Science Monitor, and they bought it and asked for more. So every few weeks I would go to the bookstore. I’d just pick books that I thought were interesting and write them up and then send them off, and they bought a majority of those reviews. And then, in six months or so, the book editor moved to another position and I asked if I could apply, and they flew me out there and I was offered the job. So we all moved to Boston.

MW: You also blog a lot.

RC: I do. I tried to learn how to do that, and I’ve found that with all these new platforms, there is no substitute for actually doing it. Not only do you not know how to do it but you don’t even understand what it can do until you’ve thrown yourself in and used it. That’s also been true for Twitter. You know I just wanted to figure out how does one blog, what’s the appropriate tone to take, what are people interested in. Many posts just fall into memory holes, of course, but some do okay.

MW: And you let your humor come through in your blogs. Some are very funny.

RC: Thank you. I enjoy that.

MW: There was one blog you did recently that was on a more serious subject—the anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act—and you mentioned your daughter who has cerebral palsy, so you’re also using your blogs to let your readers learn about you as a person.

RC: Right. And sometimes, cringe-inducing as that can be, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the fact that lots of readers do want some sort of personal connection with the people that they read regularly in the newspaper. Obviously that can be obnoxious, but it can also be handled sensitively and in a warm-hearted way, and that’s sort of what we’re all aiming for when we blog. A blog like that, I don’t mention my family and my personal life much, but I think when it’s appropriate, it does kind of round out your voice in a way. That post, for instance, was one of the most popular I’ve ever written. Not because of the personal connection but because it was a list and people cannot resist lists. I think someday the book section will just be lists.

MW: That blog, though, in naming books that dealt in a realistic way with people who have disabilities, was very central to what you do as a book reviewer because it highlighted another purpose that books serve in people’s lives.

RC: Yes, that it introduced them to other ways of living, to give them a sense of what other people experience, to humanize people they may not have any experience with. Yes, that’s the real, deep, ultimate purpose of reading fiction.

MW: What do you think is the most important function of a book reviewer?

RC: Well one of the functions is to help people find books that they’ll enjoy reading. I don’t have any problem with that consumer-assistance role that book critics play. I don’t think that degrades what I do as a newspaper book reviewer. Another function is to help people understand how books work, to try and help them develop their own critical tastes, ultimately to help them make better choices of what they want to read.

MW: I would add one other. I use book reviews to create a to-read list, but often after I read the book, I go back to reread the review, and it often helps me understand how the book worked and it helps crystallize in my mind why I appreciated the book.

RC: That’s nice. I hope that happens.

MW: Have you ever wanted to write fiction yourself?

RC: I have and I have actually tried. I just am terrible at it. I tried it specifically to get more sympathy for novelists. I thought it was a bit cowardly to be subjecting people to my opinions all the time without actually giving it a try myself. And so I have tried. And let me tell you, it’s really, really hard. I found it very difficult to get the characters to do anything, to move around, to express any kind of a plot. I thought I was okay with just dialogue and setting scenes and stuff, but as far as plot, I just thought it was tremendously difficult.