Oates was disappointed to have been discovered–”I wanted to

escape from my own identity,” she was quoted as saying–and publishers weren’t happy, either. They generally have a one-book-per-author-per-year preference, and, it turns out, they had no idea Oates’ book was submitted under a pseudonym. Still, Smith’s Lives of the Twins (Simon & Schuster) and Oates’ You Must Remember This (Dutton) both published in 1987.

Carmela Ciuraru (“not a pseudonym,” she clarifies in her bio), in a 2011 Salon excerpt of her book Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms (HarperCollins), writes, “At its most basic level, a pseudonym is a prank.” But a prank is deliberate trickery, an act that by design creates a butt of the joke, a fool. However, the majority of writers who adopt pen names aren’t interested in tricking readers; rather, they want to protect, change, or free themselves.

Zoe Winters – pen name – is a paranormal romance author. Kitty Thomas, same woman, different pen name, writes erotica. Winters/Thomas recently revealed her two names to her readers. Asked why, Winters/Thomas says, “The bigger question isn’t why I came out of the pen name closet, but why I kept it secret in the first place. There were two main reasons: 1. My family is VERY religious and I didn’t want to start drama for them. (They supported me coming out of the pen name closet because trying to keep it under wraps was too much unnecessary stress). 2. I didn’t want to alienate the Zoe readers because my Zoe fiction is a lot more mainstream.”

Ciuraru explains that “the motives that lead writers to assume an alias are infinitely complex.” One possible motive is to write honestly without revealing anything personal about the self, and another, according to Ciuraru, is to have the freedom to create a “guilty pleasure” – both of which seemed to motivate Winters/Thomas. And Oates, in her 1987 New York Times essay Success and the Pseudonymous Writer: Turning Over a New Self, writes, “There is the possibility, however quixotic, of making a fresh start – in [Romain] Gary’s words, ‘renewing’ oneself – and not being held to severe account for it.”

I’d been publishing literary fiction under my real name for several years when I hit a fiction wall and wanted to do something different, but I didn’t feel like I could do it successfully unless I found a way to start fresh. I also didn’t want to compromise whatever brand I might have created for myself. Additionally, what I wanted to write about had a lot to do with my personal life, something I prefer to keep private. What better way to address all of those concerns at once than to write under a new name?

What I discovered after creating a pseudonym, however, is that in these days of authors being encouraged (or wanting) to use social media as a promotional tool and/or as a way to engage with readers, having a pseudonym is more than putting the-name-you-always-wished-your-parents-had-given-you on a book cover and title page. It means creating a whole new identity.

Many authors I know have (at least) 1. a website; 2. a blog; 3. a Twitter page; and 4. a Facebook page.

An author with more than one identity will very likely have two websites, two blogs, two Twitter pages, and two Facebook pages.

Winters/Thomas manages websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, newsletters, “and there was something else but it just jumped out of my head,” she says.

The initial creation of the alter-ego is exhilarating. Who do I want to be? What will I name myself? Will I be male or female? It’s easy, at first. A comment on a blog here, a comment in a forum there, each comment made by the “new” you on a new website you never spent time on before. (Not because you didn’t deign to go there, but because before adopting this New Self, you were busy being Online You in an entirely different world as your Original Self. But now that you’ve become New Self, whose writing will appeal to a different kind of audience, you find yourself wanting – and needing – to spend time in the world inhabited by the people you would have chosen for your peer group if you had always been this Other Self instead of your Original Self.)

It’s like switching cliques in high school – except, you could never actually get away with that shit in high school.

Too, a full switch is one thing – time is simply shifted from one place to another. But managing a Self and a Pseudo-Self (or, if you’re Winters/Thomas – who’s about to introduce yet another pseudonym – three Pseudo-Selves) is a delicate balancing act.

“It does take time,” Winters/Thomas says, “but once you get them going, it doesn’t have to take an unnecessarily large amount of time. Though I do tend to Facebook a lot more as Zoe. Twitter is about an even split between my names. And I tend to blog more under whichever pen name I’m currently writing as. I do several releases for one name then switch to the other when I get burnt out.”

There’s more to burnout that getting tired of one (or another) personality. It can be exhausting to spend too much time as a mere facet of a larger, more complex personality. In order to not reveal yourself, you find yourself trying not to be “you” when being the Pseudo. You start to wonder whether you’ve revealed something others will recognize as *you*, whether you should talk about this topic or that topic that you – as You – feel strongly about, but that Pseudo-You should be less concerned with because her/his focus is something else entirely.

As fun as it is to be someone else for a time, the Real Self wants to break through, and the Pseudo-Self becomes threatened.

Winters/Thomas finally revealed herself because, she says, it was “too much stress and pressure trying to keep it a secret.”

“I was getting a LOT of crossover fans between Zoe and Kitty and eventually people were going to figure it out, anyway,” she says. “Kitty writes dark literary erotica and I didn’t want people to feel I was ‘ashamed’ of that. I’m not. I’m quite proud of my Kitty work. I didn’t want people out there who have sexual hang-ups or weirdness about discussing or writing about kinky sex to project that onto me.”

Back when Oates was Smith, King was Bachman, and Evans was Eliot, adopting a pseudonym was comparatively simple. And maybe it still is for writers who have a successful publicity machine or a book that catches and spreads on its own. But for those writers – for we writers – living in the internet age and who either want or need to engage as a way to generate a wider reader base, it’s just a little bit more complicated.

.

But I’m already worried about enough things of my own, such as

finding work after being laid off last week from a sweet senior editor position, how to maintain this ridiculously landscaped lawn left by the previous owner of my house, whether I can continue to avoid the dentist and for how long, what that red spot is on my arm, and how far inside my uterus conservative politicians will succeed in climbing.

I don’t want something else to worry about. Instead, I’d like to be excited, because Pretty Much True…, previously titled Homefront (when it was self-published), has finally found its place with a press!

________________________________________________________

“Good luck! Don’t you know about the state of the publishing indust–”

LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!

________________________________________________________

To be honest, I thought finding a publisher would be easier. Agents had nice things to say when I was sending out queries (although, because it was literary fiction from an unknown and therefore hard to market, any nice things they said/wrote were followed by “Sorry”), and once I self-published, it received some decent attention (Army Wife Network, Enlisted Spouse Radio, Huffington Post, Stars and Stripes, NPR, NBC [local, but still!], Pop Culture Zoo, and others).

But even after all that, it still wasn’t happening.

Why seek a publisher if it was getting some exposure already? Because too many doors were still closed. I understand why certain reviewers/publications/contests don’t accept self-published work (even if I do firmly believe they should give consideration to work that’s been vetted), but it doesn’t mean I don’t find it frustrating. I wanted to enter those contests closed to self-published manuscripts. I wanted to be considered for review in certain magazines. I wanted it to be easier to get into bookstores for readings or signings. In short, I wanted to be taken seriously, and rarely is a self-published novel(ist) taken seriously. Oh, sure, they’re taken very seriously when they achieve a certain number of sales, but sales blow-ups are like viral videos. Yes, it usually means you still have to put out something good (that is, something that resonates), but it has to be the right kind of good at just the right time. I do not have my finger on the pulse of the virtual virus.

Anyway – after a number of “we love it!” rejections, I released it myself in 2007.

In 2008, I found an agent.

In 2009, that relationship ended amicably. Moving on.

By mid-2010, I’d (hallelujah!) found a small publisher, so I removed Homefront from distribution. The release date was to be September 20, 2011.

Between 2010 and 2011, I saw Pretty Much True…’s new cover design come to life (thanks in no small part to an incredibly talented painter/artist who painted the original cover art on a canvas and took a picture for publisher use), received the pre-publication PDF interior to check it for errors, and even attended BEA, which has thus far been my most exciting day as a writer. Taking a train from Connecticut into Grand Central Station, seeing NYC from behind the windows of a yellow cab, and then walking through Simon & Schuster, Penguin, and Norton booths? How much more literary could it get?

After BEA, a few things happened, one of which was not the publication of Pretty Much True…. Just before the release date, the deal fell through. No longer in distribution, the book sat inside a folder in my computer for almost another year.

A few months ago, a small press in Minnesota took an interest.

Fell through.

Pretty Much True… continued to sit in a folder in my computer. I considered re-releasing it myself. At least it would be out there, available. As it was, I was gifting it to people I thought would be interested as a PDF attached to an email. Why not Kindle-ize it, at least?

But then, in early March, Missouri Breaks Press came along. Publisher/Editor Craig Lancaster had read Pretty Much True… as Homefront and had liked it then, and still really liked it years later. He – who in addition to being a publisher is the respected author of 600 Hours of Edward, The Summer Son, and Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure (all must-reads) – wanted to publish it.

. . .

A few days ago, he sent me the first few pages of interior design to see what I thought.

I thought it was beautiful.

In the fat, three-ring binder that holds the marked-up printout of one of the first very rough versions of Pretty Much True… is a page right up front with this printed on it, a little something I found online when taking a break from writing and looking for some armor to help minimize the bruising likely to be caused by whatever it was I was getting myself into:

I’ve been reading some journal entries by a writer, first detailing the problems of trying to get a publisher’s attention with no publishing credentials, then noting the demoralizing problem of form or even vulgar rejections on manuscripts, the terribly long wait of a year or more for responses from publishers, the lack of any feedback on ways to improve the works or any small mention of the merits of the book that might give the writer some will to keep going. Finally, after innumerable ‘no’s, a light appears at the end of the tunnel in the form of a small independent publisher… The writer was Charlotte Bronte and it was 1847.

I thought, “However hard this might end up being for me, hell, at least it also happened to someone like Charlotte Bronte.”

When I clipped that page into the rings in 2006, I had no idea I’d end up being welcomed by that same indie light.

Thank you, Missouri Breaks Press!

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“resenting husband for being deployed”

If you copy and paste it into a search field, one of the results to turn up is a blog post written by a woman who resents her traveling husband for spending a lot of time away from home. A military spouse comes to her aid in the comments section:

There are LOTS of things you can do!!! I’m an expert at this! I’ve been an Army wife for 12 years. We’ve NEVER lived near family (we are currently in KS and family is in FL). And, during the past 8 years my husband has been deployed to Iraq more than once (he’s there right now). So, I am a single mom for 6-12 months at a time. I have 3 kids (5y, 2y, and 6mo). Here are my suggestions…

It’s not uncommon to read/see military spouses in this role: practiced when it comes to separation, pros at living the all-but-romantically single life, independent, and happy to help others learn to be independent, too. But military spouses/significant others surely aren’t born with this quality – they have to figure it out like anyone else. There has to be a learning period, a growing stage.

Yet, there’s little to be found online (with a cursory search) about resenting a deployed service member. Is it because the resentment doesn’t exist, or is it because it’s not popular to give voice to any anger or resentment you feel for a deployed loved one (“loved one” will henceforth be replaced with “lover” to eliminate the need to distinguish between spouse, fiance, and significant other)?

The deployed service members, after all, are the ones living in an unfriendly, often dangerous environment (how consistently dangerous their lives are depends largely on their MOS, but there’s usually a greater chance of being hurt/killed there than there is at home). They’re the ones missing out on “home” things like privacy, comfort, and weekends off. Everything they want or need isn’t as immediately available to them as those same things are to us, and just as we miss them, they miss us.

If they have kids, they have even more people to miss, more to worry about. Not just in terms of schoolyard scrapes or teen dramas, but in terms of the chunk of time parent and child are missing out on, time that can’t be given back.

What’s to resent?

This can’t be approached logically. One of the mistakes I think is made during deployments is that there’s too much trying to make sense of the many feelings – some of them not so pretty – smashing into each other in the course of a week, sometimes in the course of a day. Excitement and lightheartedness after the arrival of a letter, phone call, or email can change in an instant to depression or anxiety with a 3-minute news story.

There’s self-inflicted pressure to be able to “handle” things better by day X, guilt over a self-absorbed moment, and a lot of, “What I feel doesn’t matter, because s/he’s the one who’s deployed. I have no right to complain.”

That alone is breeding ground for resentment.

Not everyone feels it, but I’m willing to bet many do, even if it’s just for a few seconds. In Pretty Much True..., Mia – whose lover Jake is in Iraq during the early stages of the conflict  -  has her own moments of resentment, writing in an email (before deleting it),

I can’t be mad, can I? I don’t get to be mad. You’re at war, after all. Anything I feel is inconsequential.

In another scene, Mia sits in her kitchen thinking about Jake, but not necessarily consciously. It’s in this moment that she realizes just how much of her thoughts he occupies:

I wipe at a moisture ring with my sleeve cuff, back, forth, back, forth on the table with the wall clock’s tick tick. One in the morning, there, which means he is sleeping.

It’s lonelier when he sleeps. Four more hours, or so, until his alarm goes off, if he does indeed wake up at five. Five sounds right, sounds good. He wrote in his letter that he was up for sunrise, but maybe he was awake before that, since he was already drinking coffee at the time.

Jake (tick)

Jake (tick)

Jake (tick)

Jake (tick)

Not his face, not memories, but the name, repeating and repeating like a compulsive twitch, a skipping lyric. I whisper—to the air that just might someday reach him—“Sick, sick, sick of you.”

While I’m nothing like my protagonist Mia, I did draw from feelings I had while Ian was deployed. And I’m almost positive I had a “sick of you” moment. I wasn’t sick of him, but I was certainly sick of the ever-present awareness of his deployment.

Sick of not being able to look at the clock without automatically calculating the time difference. Sick of feeling simultaneously thrilled (yay! letter!) and sad (stupid letter means he’s still so far away…). Sick of not being able to control how long it would be until I saw him again. Sick of being afraid I would never see him again.

The emotions that accompany a deployment are weighty even if there’s no danger involved. Not seeing someone for a year is a tough thing to get used to. Add to that the chance that they could die (yes, anyone could die any day from anything, but rarely is anyone in your everyday life actively trying to kill you), and it gets a little more complicated.

The assumption – the healthier assumption – is that everything will be fine and they’ll come home, but it’s hard to ignore the reports of service members killed or wounded in the Middle East. It’s essential to prepare yourself, to some degree, for the possibility of such a thing happening. Which means that the day they leave can sometimes begin something of a mourning process.

The seven stages of grief are very present during a deployment. At least, they were for me when Ian left:

1. Shock and denial (Felt nothing the day he left, and liked to pretend nothing would happen over there and that he’d be home within a few weeks.)

2. Pain and grief (Realizing he was gone and that I wouldn’t get to touch or see him for who-knows-how-long was a blow.)

3. Anger and bargaining (I didn’t care who was in the White House -I hated ‘em. And if I just believed X, or if I just thought Y, Ian would come home safe. I would also, now and then, be mad at him when it seemed like everything over there was hunky-dory. How could he be having a “regular” life while I had latent anxiety every second of every day? Not fair. Also, You chose this/Your choices put us here/Why’d you have to go to war? Which  makes just as much sense as, Why’d you have to go and die, you jerk? No one likes things that make them unhappy.)

4. Depression, reflection, loneliness (None of this was constant, but I would cry sporadically, feel generally out of touch, and wish so hard to see him that it would hurt just to think about him.)

5. The upward turn (No longer inwardly fighting against what I couldn’t control was calming. It doesn’t mean there weren’t still bad days, but overall, there was less frustration and the lifting of an intense weight.)

6. Reconstruction and working through (I was able to devote more attention to work, treat each day as its own day rather than as yet-another-day-he-wasn’t-there, and enjoy the fact that, even though he was far away, we were still writing, talking, and having fun.)

7. Acceptance and hope (He’d be back when he was back. If something bad happened, I would deal with it when and if the time came; until then, I would live my life and look forward to his return and the life we’d have together after he came home.)

These are all reactions to an event that impacts us on a deeply emotional level. A lover going to war is no small thing, and the associated feelings are anything but simple. They range from elated to furious, from terrified to supremely confident, from proud to resentful.

And they’re all natural.

It’s been a few months since your husband left again for Afghanistan.

The last time he was gone, something bad happened, but it was the kind of bad that could have been worse. He was lucky to have escaped with minor injuries, and you were fortunate to not receive that visit.

In the few months since he’s been gone this time around, I’ve written you two emails.

Maybe it’s because I see your posts on Facebook, now and then, and you seem fine enough. A reply here, a brief post there, your words and pictures appearing with the same sporadic rhythm as they did before he left. “She’s doing great!” I hear myself assuming, and then I move on to something else.

When you share a picture of your children, I think about how cute they are, how powerfully their personalities come through in a still moment captured with your camera, how fast they’re growing, how happy they look.

It doesn’t occur to me that they miss their dad in a way I’ll never know, because I never had a parent go to war. A soul mate, yes. A parent, no. It doesn’t occur to me to wonder what it’s like for you to see their more profound moments of missing in the times they aren’t distracted by the things that distract kids, when they have time and space to think about him, or when they see his picture on the refrigerator or the wall.

It doesn’t occur to me to remember that seeming “fine” on Facebook (or in emails, or in silence) is often a facade. That waiting feeling isn’t something that can be seen. It’s not like crying, it’s not like frustration with the cost of a movie ticket that makes you say, “Seriously!?” to the innocent ticket taker. That waiting feeling is in the veins and the skin, and it doesn’t attach itself well to words.

You’d think I would be better at being a friend to you through this, having gone through a deployment myself. You’d think I would live on Skype, just waiting to catch you so I could keep you company or distract you for a few minutes, have a glass of wine with you even though having a glass of wine with you would mean one of us would be drinking it very early in the morning.

(Whatever. Hoda and Kathy Lee do it, and we, at least, could blame the time difference.)

In Pretty Much True…, the character you inspired (but only the best parts of her) says this:

We live in our small American neighborhood in our small American town. All we worry about is ourselves and how this war will affect us and the people we love. When Jake is home, you’ll see. You’ll care less about the war. It’s callous, but it’s true. You’ll care less because the soldier blown up by an IED won’t represent Jake, and the woman crying on TV won’t represent you.

When I wrote that, the people I had in mind were those “other” people I remembered from when Ian was deployed, the people whose loves had already come home. They’d left one reality for another, better reality, one of sound sleep and days not stained with anxiety and longing and no choice but to wait and see.

At the time, I hated those people, and I envied them, and I was irrationally happy for them. (It was very confusing, as you no doubt know.)

I never believed I would become one of them. Never thought I would fall into the 99% – the original 99%:  “Americans not in the military and watching war news from a blissful distance.” I never would have believed I could continue to be married to someone in the military and, at the same time, be so separate from the deployment experience I can still so vividly remember simply because he’s still here, that my heart-hurt for the families waiting at home would all too frequently last not much longer than one of the increasingly rare news stories covering the military in Afghanistan, or about the length of a YouTube video of a happy child, wife, or dog welcoming home a service member.

I thought of you this morning when a beer glass crossed my feed (it was a glass bought for a soldier who would never again be able to drink it), and I remembered your husband was deployed. Which meant I’d actually forgotten. I sent you an email asking only, “How are you doing?”

After hitting “send,” I wanted to take it back. I don’t know what I would have replaced it with, but certainly something…more. Something that lets you know I’m sorry for forgetting, sorry for forgetting you.

Sorry for becoming one of them.

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I think that could be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved.

Asked by Ann Curry on the Today Show this morning to clarify what he meant, his explanation mirrored what one man wrote in the comments section of the announcement on Military.com’s Facebook page:

A man has a natural reflex to protect a woman at all cost, this might be a bad idea

(To be fair, a few women expressed similar thoughts.)

Here are the most oft-repeated reasons people offer when trying to defend the idea that women don’t belong in combat roles (or, in particular types of combat roles):

1. Men have a natural instinct to protect women. They might get distracted from the mission by their need to shield women from danger.

If men have what they call an “instinct to protect women,” I think they’ll learn to get past it. After all, soldiers are, above all, professionals. And I would hope they would all have the instinct to protect and watch out for each other no matter what genitalia a soldier has. If they feel inclined to be overly protective, that’s not the female soldier’s problem – that’s the male soldier’s issue to deal with. One would have to question whether soldiers who can’t be appropriately professional are fit to serve in a combat role.

And, as my husband pointed out, soldiers will often risk themselves for the safety and protection of fellow soldiers:

Remember Blackhawk down? Delta snipers Shughart and Gordon volunteered for a suicide mission so save an all male Blackhawk crew. They didn’t have a chance and they knew it. Men have, and will, sacrifice themselves to protect their fellow soldiers.

2. Rape would increase

Who would be raping these women, exactly? Whoever it is, I’m sure they’re the ones who should be restricted from combat roles. Mental instability has long been one of the reasons for barring someone from joining the military.

3. If female soldiers are captured, they’ll be raped.

Possibly. And men might have their heads sawed off. They might also be raped. Should we keep men out of combat, too, because of the torture they might suffer if they’re captured?

4. If a male soldier sees a woman hurt or killed in combat, his mental health will suffer.

Soldiers suffer PTSD for any number of reasons. Some of them see a lot that they find disturbing – including seeing other male soldiers wounded or killed. Does this mean there should be measures taken to prevent male soldiers from bonding in such a way that witnessing death or injury will affect them?

(No.)

A well trained soldier recognizes that a soldier is a soldier, whether said soldier has a penis or a vagina.

5. From FB: “If women in the military want equality, than can be equal targets.”

No shit.

6. Having women in combat would ruin morale.

In 1994, the Department of Defense rescinded the Risk Rule and made additional noncombat positions available to women. By 1997, the percentage of positions available to female applicants had risen from just 67.4 in April of 1993 to 80.2.25 In 1997, the DOD asked the RAND Corporation to study the effect of these changes on readiness, cohesion, and morale.

The RAND study examined five attributes of personal readiness: “whether personnel are available, qualified, experienced, stable to the unit, and motivated,” and found that “the integration of women had not had a major effect on readiness.” Single mothers, the study found, did often consume the time of supervisory personnel due to “financial and child-care problems that impacted the unit.” Numerically, though, single fathers were still more common in the military than single mothers and “single parents of either gender were perceived to place a burden on the unit.” –From “Women in Combat: A Culture Issue?” by Lieutenant Colonel Henderson Baker II Source

7. From FB: “This PC BS is going to get people killed. Females rightly belong in the military but they do not have the physical or psychological skills to be in the Combat Arms.”

Physical:

Without a doubt, being in the military is a physically demanding job that not everyone is fit to handle. Despite this, all experts agree that there are some women, although perhaps small in number, who have the physical strength and endurance to be soldiers (Army Times, July 29, 1996). Source

Even if many women cannot perform certain tasks, those who can should not be excluded. Women should not be forced into an MOS for which they are unqualified or uninterested. Awarding of a skill should be based on individual ability and not on gender. While the physical makeup of a woman is different than that of a man, some women can out-perform their male counterparts, and this may account for any differences this make-up may cause. –From “Women in Combat: A Culture Issue?” by Lieutenant Colonel Henderson Baker II Source

Psychological “skills” (?):

Men and women deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008 experienced very similar levels of combat-related stress and post-deployment mental health impacts during the first year following return from deployment, researchers reported in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology^®, published by APA.

“Contrary to popular belief, women who go to war respond to combat trauma much like their male counterparts,” said lead author Dawne Vogt, PhD, of the Veterans Administration National Center for PTSD and Boston University School of Medicine. “And with the unpredictable guerilla tactics of modern warfare, barring women from ground combat is less meaningful.” Source

8. From FB: “Women I lov u but u being on the battle field is a very grave situation!”

You mean it’s not kittens and cotton balls? Dammit! Now no women will want to serve in combat.

LTC Baker concluded his essay with this, and it’s so perfect that I’ll paste it here to also serve as the conclusion to this blog post:

Our egalitarian society teaches our young females that they can be anything they desire when they grow up, but that same society contradicts itself when it says that women are not physically or psychologically strong enough to serve in military combat positions. As women come closer to entering all Army MOSs, let us honestly assess their impact and performance.

Since their inclusion, the public has been told “all is well” in this regard and the record of women in the service, supports this. But, let us be honest in our appraisal: We should have the courage to declare, “Enough is enough–allow women to serve in combat.” If we do not address these concerns, then it is the soldiers, the Army, and, ultimately, our nation that will suffer. We should be more concerned with national security then with archaic attitudes toward women. Let them join the fight fully!

This episode features a number of guests and writers, some of whom you’ll know and some of whom you won’t – but they’re all fantastically funny. Watch! (If you’re looking at the truncated post, click the post title up there. ^)

And, in case you missed it, here’s episode 7: “Writer Stereotypes”

(Which one are you? The columnist? The coffee shop writer? The sexist writer? The blogger?)

Just Cause is a new superhero novel by Ian Thomas Healy recently published by New Babel Books. (Congratulations to Ian, the most write-aholic writer I’ve ever encountered, the only one who makes me feel truly guilty for sleeping or eating or doing nothing at all when I could be using that time to write, and one whose refusal to not NOT be published by someone other than himself finally served him, as it should have.)

I read Ian’s engaging, energetic, funny, and page-turning novel Blood on the Ice (a “new adult” [vs. "young adult"] book) last year. In it, non-vampire hockey players battle vampire hockey-players (it’s cheating, really, to use vampire powers in a hockey game – as if they aren’t threatening enough off the ice), and the hero character, when not trying to figure out how to battle vampires, navigates a relationship with a woman whose sex-act preference (one you don’t often encounter in novels) and self-absorption have started to bore him.

Before reading Blood on the Ice, I enjoyed his short novel The Milkman:

When Liza, an intrepid reporter, stakes her career on an interview with a milkman named Blake, things go from weird to worse when they are abducted by aliens. After finding out the real reason aliens anally probe their abductees, the two heroes have no choice but to recruit a makeshift army of genius bikers to take the fight to the aliens and save the world!

No one writes what reviewer Jenn Zuko calls “snickering, boyish humor” better than Ian Healy, and I can only assume (having not yet read it) that Just Cause gives readers more of the same, in addition to a fascinating story and unusual–but highly likeable–characters.

I asked Ian to stop here on his blog tour so I could ask him a few questions about Just Cause (and the superhero genre, in general).

KT: Why superheroes?

IAN THOMAS HEALY: I’ve been obsessed with the powerful heroes in their brightly-colored costumes (or even the dark and grim ones–I’m looking at YOU, Midnighter) since a very early age. I didn’t really get into comic books until high school, but I remember reading Mordecai Richler’s Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, with the two “Child Power” superheroes of Shapiro and O’Toole (Jacob’s older brother and sister) over and over again as a child and then running around the neighborhood with a towel safety-pinned over my neck as my cape. I wanted to be a superhero. Hell, I still do. If anybody’s got an experimental serum or a radioactive beastie handy, I’m willing to talk.

The first comic book I recall owning was Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew #12 (a DC funny-animal comic book that sent up the genre quite brilliantly). Ever since then, I collect and read anywhere from 15-20 titles a month and have been for more than twenty years. Holy crap, that’s a lot of comic books!

KT: I’m admittedly unfamiliar with (ignorant of?) a superhero novel genre. Is there a superhero novel genre, or had they all been graphic novels, primarily?

ITH: Superhero fiction straddles a fine line between fantasy and science fiction. There have been superhero fiction novels for many years, but they’ve generally been out on the fringes of the speculative fiction universe. They don’t fit easily into a bookstore’s traditional divisions, because most people think “graphic novel” when they think of superhero fiction. That’s starting to change, thanks to people like George R.R. Martin and his lengthy Wild Cards series, Michael Chabon, Austin Grossman, Rob Rogers, Van Allen Plexico, Carrie Vaughn, Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge, and (I hope) Ian Thomas Healy.

KT: What makes Just Cause different from the others?

ITH: It’s accessible to new readers compared to the staggering histories in comics. Even Wild Cards, which I believe is the longest-running superhero fiction series, has put out 21 novels since 1987. That’s kind of a daunting amount of history to explore. Just Cause is a ground-floor opportunity for readers to get to know a brand new superhero universe as it develops.

KT: What’s the Just Cause story?

ITH: Salena “Mustang Sally” Thompson is a third-generation superhero and the fastest girl in the world. She’s just graduated from the Hero Academy and hopes to earn her place on Just Cause, the premier superhero team, not only because it’s what she’s been trained for since childhood by her superpowered mother and grandmother, but because she wants a chance to hunt down and defeat the battlesuit-wearing villain Destroyer, who killed her father shortly before she was born.

And, as is often reiterated, one should be careful what one wishes for, lest it come to pass…

KT: And why did you choose the revenge story? That is, is there a particular super-hero story format that writers tend to follow, or was there something about that particular narrative that drew you?

ITH: One of the biggest problems that superhero fiction authors have to overcome is the tendency to get “power-blinded.” That is, making the story about the powers and how they match up against other powers first instead of focusing on storytelling fundamentals. I make a conscious effort when I write superhero stories to make sure they are about the characters first and foremost. Developing Mustang Sally as a three-dimensional character, with her needs, wants, dreams, and fears, was a challenge I enjoyed. Her powers are a fundamental part of her, and the story requires them for plotting purposes, but she’s not just a collection of powers in a fancy suit.

I chose Mustang Sally’s story as the starting place for the Just Cause Universe. As she’s a third-generation hero, her family has been involved in the history of the JCU in some way or another since World War II. Three generations of speedsters–her grandmother Colt, her mother Pony Girl, and now Mustang Sally–have become the focal point for the whole setting. Mustang Sally’s story leads into others both future, past, and parallel to the events of Just Cause (which will have long-reaching ramifications in future books).

KT: Is the picture on the cover how you pictured your superhero (and did you get to provide input on the cover)?

ITH: I did get to provide input on the cover, but for the most part I only provided the artist with some basic descriptions and character concepts and he did the interpretation on his own. She’s wearing red (the traditional color for speedsters in comic books), and her costume has some of the features which I outline in the book. Her boobs on the cover are impressive specimens, although in the book I describe her as very slender (like any long-distance runner would be). But I understand that sex sells, and if those luscious melons get a few more readers to buy copies of the book, I won’t complain.

KT: You wrote in your blog stop at Gae Polisner’s site that picking a favorite super power is like a chef picking a favorite meal: impossible. I’m going to make you pick one, but not for all time – just today. What would be the superpower you would want today?

ITH: There’s a minor character in my novel Deep Six, which probably won’t be released until 2013, who doesn’t require sleep at all. Consequently he’s one of the most well-read people you’ll ever meet, and he has three very understanding girlfriends. Although my wife probably wouldn’t be nearly as understanding, I like the basic idea of not having to sleep. That’s six more hours a day I could get stuff done.
_____

I’m not surprised.

Get Just Cause at Smashwords or direct from New Babel Books.

QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE ART OF OVERCOMING DESPAIR

by Craig Lancaster

After I finished my second novel, THE SUMMER SON, and delivered it to the publisher, I did what I usually do at the conclusion of a big writing project: I took a deep breath, and I kept writing.

The difference, this time, is that I didn’t embark on one of the myriad ideas I had for another novel. I found myself drawn to short stories, something I’d pursued only haltingly before. I wrote stories about lost and lonely men and women, people pushed to the margins of society and their own lives: among them a traveling salesman consigned to a late-night bus ride; a teenage girl running from abuse in her hometown and falling into the indifference of a larger city; a newspaperman in a crisis of career and confidence; a basketball coach who, to borrow the words of the great Neil Finn, lost his regard for the good things that he had.

For nearly a year, the stories poured out. They weren’t consciously linked in time or in theme, but they were bound by one thing that I found impossible to escape: my own state of mind. My marriage was unraveling. I had learned, after a lifetime of veering between troughs of depression and soaring heights of manic energy, that I have a form of bipolar disorder. (I’ve also learned about the liberation that comes with finding a way to raise the floor and lower the ceiling, emotionally speaking.) My means of coping with the turmoil in my life was to sit at my writing desk and find a path through my own thoughts, exorcising my fears and my insecurities.

The result is QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE ART OF DEPARTURE, a collection of ten short stories with perhaps the most inscrutable title I’ll ever choose. (My promise to you: There are no actual quantum physics involved, and the meaning of the title will become clear enough when you read the book.) Some of the stories appeared elsewhere first: “Cruelty to Animals,” a tale of badly mismatched lovers, was in the Spring 2011 issue of Montana Quarterly. Three of them—“This Is Butte. You Have Ten Minutes,” “Alyssa Alights” and “Star of the North”—were originally bundled into e-book form. And the last and most hopeful story, “Comfort and Joy,” was written last December and sold for a dollar, the net proceeds of which I donated to Feed America.

While all of this was happening, I was also getting my publishing company, Missouri Breaks Press, off the ground. The first book I did, Carol Buchanan’s GOLD UNDER ICE, was a Spur Award finalist. In July 2011, I collaborated with my colleague Ed Kemmick to bring out THE BIG SKY, BY AND BY, a collection of Ed’s essays and stories about Montana people and places. The success of those books helped give me the confidence to bring out QUANTUM PHYSICS under my own banner—not so much because I’m an ardent self-publisher but because my autodidactic tendencies compel me to explore this business from every possible angle. A collection of short stories, which most publishers shy away from on marketing grounds, seemed like the right project to take on. I hired the best editor I know, Jim Thomsen, and he helped me deliver a book that I’m intensely proud of.

I hope you’ll give it a look. It’s available in trade paperback ($14) and e-book versions for a damned sporting price ($1.99). Links are below:

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Physics-Art-Departure-ebook/dp/B005H9BH2E/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/quantum-physics-and-the-art-of-departure-craig-lancaster/1104594403?ean=2940013109551

This week, in “Do it Yourself: Self-Published Authors Take Matters Into Their Own Hands,” Lepucki examines the benefits and pitfalls of self-publishing and presents a few ideas that beg to be addressed.

1. After being encouraged in the comments section of “Shutting the Drawer: What Happens When a Book Doesn’t Sell?” to give DIY try, Lepucki decides to learn more about how effective it’s been for writers. She asks a couple of friends, Victor and Smolin, about their experience with it.

Victor:

When I asked him about readers’ response, he said, “People have been very receptive and complimentary. Of course, most all of the books have been bought by people I know. What else would I expect them to say?”

Smolin:

When I asked how readers had responded, he said he hasn’t received any feedback. “But, then again,” he added, “I didn’t publish them for feedback.”

The first example is troublesome because, when used in an article published in a venue like The Millions, it perpetuates the stigma that has long surrounded self-publishing: “The only people who’ll read your books are friends and family. But, hey – so cute!”

The second simply supports the first. Implication: no one is reading you if you self-publish. (Not anyone who matters, anyway.)

Lepucki does go on to say, “Unlike many other self-published authors, they haven’t been tirelessly (some might even say obnoxiously) promoting their work,” which would explain why no one is reading it – they haven’t heard about it. However, as accurate as “some might say obnoxiously” is (everyone who tirelessly promotes themselves can be called obnoxious, from Jennifer Lopez to Justin Bieber), it’s hardly necessary to include, here, as – again, in an article such as this in a publication such as this -  it serves only to label self-published authors as pesky flies swimming around in the Celebrity Chef-prepared soup served to the Traditionally Published Authors.

One might point out to Lepucki that her articles are a fairly obvious form of self-promotion that will ideally give her new novel a better chance at traditional publication. There’s nothing wrong with it – I’m all for self-promotion, and I agree, it’s obnoxious, but calling it obnoxious in an article that ultimately comes out against self-publishing is simply in poor taste.

It also seems important to point out that most authors published by traditional houses are also responsible for a lot of self-promotion (I know I’m not the only one receiving newsletters from bestselling authors about their upcoming appearances, new releases, and 50%-off sales.)

2. Lepucki says of her two friends quoted above, “It’s an intriguing contradiction: the desire to publish a book without an expectation for readers.”

It’s actually not very intriguing, and there’s not really a contradiction. To not publish your book because a publisher hasn’t taken it on is to have no expectation for readers. It’s certain: if you leave publishing to the publishers who are saying “no” to you, you will never have a reader. Ever. Your year or more of hard work will sit in a drawer because someone else hasn’t patted you on the head and said, “It’s okay for you to release this, now.”

If you determine through whatever channels you use that your book is good and is ready for readers and that waiting for a publisher to stamp “good enough for us!” on it is a tragic waste of time (life’s really too short for that), and if you publish it yourself because you want readers to read it, you have an expectation for readers.

And if you self-publish, you actually have a shot at reaching them.

3. Well, maybe. Lepucki writes,

And yet, both Victor and Smolin maintain a hope for readership. In this regard, self-publishing provides the manuscript with a liminal existence — it’s technically available to the world, even if hardly anyone in the world is aware of it.

And they should maintain a hope for readership, unless they expect their work to do its own promotion. If they do that, yeah – they’ll probably stay lost (thanks to Lepucki, though, their Amazon rankings probably saw a bump over the last couple of days, and from what she writes about their work, it’s probably warranted).

If Victor and Smolin aren’t making any efforts to promote their books, it isn’t self-publishing that’s failing them – they’re failing themselves. If you want someone to be aware of your work, you have to present it, and this is true no matter who you are or what you do. You can’t create a masterpiece and set it in the middle of your living room and expect people to somehow smell it from the sidewalk, knock on your door, and ask to come in and see it.

4. But, if you create it and you show it to the public yourself, are you “cool”? Lepucki says no :

Okay, I’m just going to go ahead and say it: At this point in time, self-publishing lacks the cool factor. It’s… dorky. Go ahead, call me a snob (check), call me the mean girl (check). You can also call me someone who loves a well-made, beautifully designed book that makes me shiver with desire. To me, a good-looking book implies an understanding of the marketplace and how to maneuver within it…

I don’t know if it’s because I’m in my late 30s that I find nothing at all appealing about snobs, mean girls, or those who would readily admit to being either, but if it’s a snobby mean girl who is proclaiming herself to be the decider of what’s “cool,” I feel pretty okay about being “dorky” as a self-published author.

Nasty reply out of the way… I agree that a good-looking book is more appealing. There’s no two ways about it: if it looks professional, you trust the content. If it looks like someone made the cover in an hour on their computer (guilty! my first cover for Homefront was terrible), chances are, you’ll think the writing is just as sloppy/amateur. A nice cover does imply an understanding of the marketplace – on the publisher’s part, that is, not the author’s. The problem is that self-published authors are, by definition, the publishers, so when they mess up the cover, they risk ruining their book’s chances.

Fortunately, the rise in self-publishing interest has meant a boom in designers ready to help authors create beautifully designed covers. (Of course, this is often not an option for those without $800-$3,000 ready to spend on design, so as in most areas, the less money you have, the greater the disadvantage.)

5. Lepucki continues with the idea of self-publishing and its coolness factor:

Two of my peers — Los Angeles-based writer Matthew Allard, and my former classmate at Iowa, Jason Lewis — have both published their own fiction, and made it seem hip to do so.

Basically, they did some savvy marketing. One created a limited edition, the other created a musical accompaniment to his book. I admire the —– out of people who “get” marketing, who have these scathingly brilliant ideas that make people go “Oooh! Must have! Must have!” It’s a special skill, and not one all writers have, unfortunately. That’s probably the biggest reason writers want publishers, who have a team of marketers. All we have is, well, ourselves.

And if we’re not cool enough, I guess we have to do our best using traditional, less inspired means (radio, local TV, blog tours, publications willing to look at self-published work that’s been vetted, etc.) and hope the writing itself helps eventually.

6. Lepucki goes on to assume self-published authors all secretly want to be “accepted”:

Even writers who self-publish well, who successfully produce books that don’t fit into the publishing industry’s rubric of what’s marketable, let alone categorizable, still want entrance into the established world they initially turned away from. If only for assistance with production. If only to say, “My book’s for sale on the front table at Barnes and Noble.”

Even in 2011 that value can’t be denied.

This is true. Publishers get you in more stores than you can get yourself into. Publishers’ logos get you taken seriously by big reviewers. That is a true value. However, if and when bookstores and reviewers (“Helloooo, New York Times!”) come around to considering vetted self-published work, publishers will instantly become less desirable. Yeah, we’re users.

7. Here, Lepucki seems to make the assumption that self-published authors are trying to circumvent rejection:

With my first novel, I suffered rejection from editors. The writer who self-publishes sidesteps that rejection, only to face possible rejection in the form of readers’ silence.

Many actually try the traditional route, first.

Many also have impressive backgrounds in writing, understand the revision process, seek out reader feedback before calling the manuscript “finished” so they can make revisions based on editorial suggestions made by trusted colleagues, and have – most of all – confidence in their ability.

Many writer friends have received very positive feedback from agents who have said, “I love this, really, but publishers these days…”

Surely there are those who self-publish without ever experiencing a single rejection (or getting reader feedback or making revisions or caring much at all about the work), but many don’t do it to escape rejection; they do it because waiting years for the “right” approval doesn’t make sense, anymore.

8. Lepucki concludes with the following:

Even so, I’m not running to the press with my first book. In a second essay, I’ll further explore why not. I’ll also examine what self-publishing means for readers, and what traditionally published authors think of all these D.I.Y. developments.

I sincerely hope Lepucki finds more than two readers to quote in her upcoming installment, because I too would love to know what readers think about self-publishing. I’ve seen both – readers who automatically assume all self-published work is terrible because they read two really bad self-published books in a row (and probably didn’t do much looking into the author beforehand, so they’re somewhat to blame – buyer beware), and readers who love the indie authors and passionately support them. I hope Lepucki’s piece reflects the spectrum of viewpoints.

I’m also interested to read what traditionally published authors will say, and whether she’ll ask those who were successfully traditionally published, but who ended up turning to self-publishing (can I nominate Dean Wesley Smith and James Moore?).  They would probably be the most interesting, and valid, perspectives to have (“What did you think about self-publishing then versus what you think now?”).

Related post:

Kill the First Novel? Are You Insane? A Response to Edan Lepucki

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