Tag Archives: the year of dan palace

“Finished” is a beautiful word.

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Having finished first revisions of The Year of Dan Palace yesterday – retitled Someday April (which refers to Dan Palace’s fantasy of a future relationship with his ex, April) – I am free. FREE!

Until Monday, that is, when job-hunting pressure begins, but the future doesn’t exist, so there’s no point in thinking about that now.

And so, free time – until revisions are needed and/or I start a new writing project – will be spent doing the following:

1. Making hee-lay-ree-ous videos for “Inside the Writers Studio,” a show created by R.J. Keller and me. You can find “Inside the Writers Studio” (a PaperRats production) on its YouTube page, friend us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

Watch the first episode. (The second is on the way.)

2. Reading! I get to read! For fun! Without guilt!

3. Writing blog entries here and there, no doubt.

What are you doing with YOUR free time?

The Princess Parade

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In writing The Year of Dan Palace, I couldn’t help but include a scene that has Dan sitting in a restaurant across the table from a teenage girl and her father. The teenage girl is wearing a shirt that says “Princess” in sparkles across her chest. (The scene goes on to illustrate the curious practice of wearing a shirt with writing across the breasts when not welcoming sets of eyes on the breasts, but for now I want to focus on the word “Princess.”)

A year or two ago, I heard a woman say on some show or other, “Every woman is a princess and should be treated as such.”

http://www.lullabyebaby.com

I don’t know anyone, personally, who would say this kind of thing, but then again, I don’t know a lot of people. If TV is even a semi-accurate reflection of modern society, I’m sure there are those out there who really do twitter from behind glossed, pouting lips that they have an inner princess who needs feeding.

“Princess” is a misnomer for some of today’s girls and women who believe, for whatever reason, their vaginas entitle them to automatic privileges and special treatment.  If you’ve ever seen the show “Bridezillas” on the WE channel, you’ve witnessed a few prime examples of this recent (and, with any luck, fast-passing) behavioral trend.

These girl-women yell at their bridesmaids, insult their future husbands, stomp and flail and pout, and use as an excuse that it is their day.  (1. Note: a wedding is not the woman’s day, but a celebration of the union between two people.  2. A little secret someone should let the men in on is that a woman who behaves that way over a wedding will continue to behave that way until the divorce is final.)

To be fair, some of the women featured on “Bridezillas” are simply picky and detail oriented, and for what they’re paying, they should be.  But many others are selfish and cruel, and their behavior obviously has little to do with isolated wedding-day expectations and a lot to do with this new insistence that sporting a set of breasts gives a girl-woman full license to be an asshole.  [I really try not to swear in my blogs, but this is the most fitting word to use, here.] And if being concerned with planning the perfect event is what brings out the evil in the Bridezilla girls, what’s the excuse used by the girls on shows like the “Real World,” the “Bad Girls Club,” “Big Brother,” “Jersey Shores,” and the rest?

A talk show I watched last year or the year before centered around this idea of being proud of what I find to be reprehensible and socially unacceptable behavior, and the woman being interviewed—who was not at all embarrassed to put herself out there as a speaker for all bitchy princesses—named as one of the rules of princess-dom a guideline that went something like this:  “When a princess is walking on the sidewalk, she never moves for someone else.”

What happens when one princess gets in the way of another?

Princess bitches are so popular right now, as is bad male behavior (overblown arrogance, superiority complexes, fighting), that I hate to think of how this is affecting the behavior of the teenagers watching it, or influencing their idea of what it means to be “cool.” The idea that cruelty and meanness is “cool” is about as surprising to me as it was when I found out today’s high school girls are having sex because they want to be popular. When I was in high school, the last thing that made girls popular was having sex. (I mean, I’m sure it made them popular with boys who wanted to have sex, but that was about it.)

What I find most disappointing about these self-proclaimed princesses is that they’re ruining things for real women who for decades have been working toward being taken seriously and treated as equals to men. These days, the loudest female voice comes from those whose only interest seems to be living on a cloud-high pedestal with a whip in one hand and a pink-colored drink in the other, which they’ll greedily slurp from in between snide remarks.  (And they neither poured—nor paid for—that drink, make no mistake.)

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Diana, the most famous of princesses known to our generation, might have had her own small neuroses, but when she wasn’t lamenting her marriage to a man who never loved her or suffering from bulimia, she was helping clear mine fields and visiting underprivileged nations and dealing graciously with the public.  She was not chest-bumping people on sidewalks, baring her teeth at society, or insisting she was the most important person ever in all of existence.  Princess Diana had what today’s spoiled little girls with their false sense of entitlement are severely lacking:  class.

Quitting gets a little easier every time.

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I used to smoke regularly. It started when I was 13 with a Marlboro red 100 (if you’re going to do it, go big). My friend D and I sat at the top of a long set of stairs leading down to a narrow path that cut through my small Neckarsteinach neighborhood, and she pulled one from the soft pack. “Are you sure you want one?” she said.

“Yeah. Just give it to me.”

I was an automatic inhaler. I didn’t even know how to puff. I’d take a drag, and then I’d blow out the smoke, cough, and spit.

“Are you inhaling?” she said.

I said I didn’t know.

“Try just puffing,” she said.

I pulled on the filter and the smoke crawled down my throat. I shrugged, blew out the smoke, coughed, and spit. She laughed.

I switched to lights and smoked off and on until 9th grade, when I started for real. (Cigarette in the morning before school, “nic fits” before I could run outside with friends to have one during the long break between second and third period, cigarette or two after a chili-fries and egg roll lunch, etc.)

I tried quitting at 18, and I was almost successful. My boyfriend at the time and I  both wanted to quit, so we stopped bringing our cigarettes with us in the car, and I remember I even had a successful night downtown – not one cigarette. (“Downtown” means “at the bar” – Germany, 16 legal age.)

I don’t remember when or why I started up again, but I did.

I tried to quit again at 26 by cutting down to no more than four cigarettes a day. It was working very well – I’d just gone down to three a day – and then, on the morning of September 11, I broke away from the TV after watching for two hours to rush to the gas station for a pack.

At 29 years old, I was still smoking. My hair had also gone through enough highlighting to have turned all of it very light blond, and I decided I did not want to be the 30-year-old cigarette smoking bleach blond. Before my birthday, I dyed my hair back to its natural color and started to quit smoking again by cutting down. (Cold turkey doesn’t work for me – it’s too rigid.)

Something similar is happening with my efforts to quit marketing Homefront.

The addiction to marketing started out slowly enough – I made a MySpace page, designed a few fliers.

As I learned more about the many marketing avenues there were, I gradually and increasingly immersed myself in promotion for two years. (Minus the time spent working one of those years.) Making phone calls, sending emails, arranging readings and signings, and so on. And on and on and on.

Before Homefront, I’d been writing all kinds of things. Short stories, articles, essays, flash fiction. When I finished one project, I would send it out for rejections and start a new one.

For over a year, I’ve been trying to quit marketing Homefront so I can get back to writing new things. I tried once in late 2008 after starting Dan Palace my first week living in Connecticut. I figured I’d write while I looked for a job, and when a few weeks later I started working for the newspaper, I was successful, for the most part, at forgetting about Homefront. My days were too busy to worry about marketing. Every now and then I’d dip into it if something occurred to me that I hadn’t tried, yet, but the activity was very sporadic.

A year later, when I moved to Tennessee, I was going to take a year away from working to write. Not market, write.

It worked for a little while. Then I’d hear something on the news that applied to Homefront – something allowing me a lead-in for a press release – and the writing would be set aside for the marketing.

Several months ago, I was almost successful at letting go again. I finished writing Dan Palace and the editing was coming along. I was determined to let Homefront sit for good.

But then we got this news we were moving again, and I was too busy to have any real zone-time for editing/revising/rewriting Dan Palace, so I thought I may as well use random hours here and there to market Homefront…

Thank goodness for wise people.

One of them told me yesterday that if I can’t let go of Homefront, I won’t be able to enjoy working on something new.

This person is absolutely right.

I’ve done all I can with it, and if I want to be a career writer, I have to be able to put my energy into the creative writing process. I have to be able to enjoy it the way I did when I was writing Homefront and everything that came before it.

Besides. The last thing I want to be is that person clinging desperately to the one thing she did years ago because it felt so good and so right. You can get away with being a bleached-blond smoker when you’re young, but the day comes when it just starts to look ridiculous and it’s time for a nicotine patch and a trip to the salon.

Winner announced, and a blog hiatus

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The winner of the contest to win a signed copy of Homefront is Shannon Kinney – congratulations, Shannon! (If you missed the contest and the interview introducing it, you can still find it here.) Thanks to everyone who entered – it was a lot of fun to answer your questions.

More great interviews will follow at Backword Books, including this week’s interview with R.J. Keller, questions asked by the Johnny Denovo mysteries author Andrew Kent. Get thee to the interview not only to read the interview, but also to find out how you can win a copy of Keller’s Waiting for Spring.

I’ll now be taking my leave of all things internet (twitter, facebook, this blog…all things [well, except for email]) until December 1 to do some serious, focused, and long-procrastinated writing. I leave you with these pictures of fall. I hope you’re enjoying yours.

P.S.

This isn’t what I should be writing right now.

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Since yesterday, I’ve been looking forward to today. Rain, they said. Clouds. Perfect writing weather.

I finished a long project on Friday and, since Monday, have been re-immersing myself in the hedonistic goals of Dan, Jenny, April, and Nina in The Year of Dan Palace. (It takes some time, when you’ve been away for a while, to slide back into the story. It’s all so much inertia.)

Today I was pretty sure I’d be ready for the writingrain and some wow-I-love-this-stuff wordplay. I would write three pages (my write-a-day goal), by god!

Or, well…not. There’s more re-acquainting to do, it seems. The writing felt stilted. Also, while in the midst of frantically trying to make sentences that meant something, I was involved in a series of emails that included a message by a Published Author whose publisher won’t renew their contract with him for the series he writes because of a chain bookstore’s “sales level requirement.”

Fall below their sales level requirement with one book, and they won’t buy the next book by that author.

Twice in one week, now, I’m finding myself plagued by spiritual illness. (The first was caused by an ad for “Toddlers & Tiaras” that showed three year-old girls in Woman makeup and hairspray gyrating to pop music.)

The news from the Published Author about his publisher’s non-renewal came just hours after I read this piece in Marketing Week about Dan Brown’s name appearing larger on a book cover than does the actual author’s name. Because the publisher thought it would help sell the book.

I’m sure it’s probably always been this way–publishing as a financial enterprise, rather than an artistic one–but I can’t believe it’s always been this bad. I can’t believe the industry has always been more interested in only churning out books “written” by celebrities or that were otherwise absolutely guaranteed to make #1 on the NYT Bestseller List…not because of the book, but because of the brand (or author) name.

What hope could there possibly be for me,  a “new” fiction writer, un-famous, un-Ann-Coulter-obnoxious, un-15-minutes-notorious, un-Writer-Cool-with-New-York-connections, un-HipBlogger, in the Real Publishing world ?

After writing Homefront, I put a lot of work into looking for an agent. I heard a lot of “marketability problem” and “tsk, new writer,” and ultimately decided to go independent. I found my own readers, acted as my own publicist, and sent the book to a number of reviewers. The reviews were all–and I hesitate to say this because it actually might sound a little Ann Coulter obnoxious–good. They were. But, even with the praise of critical reviewers backing the story and the writing, agents weren’t interested. Even with readers telling me they loved it, book clubs choosing it for their members, radio shows (including NPR) interviewing me about it, agents weren’t interested.

I truly cannot express how confusing–and, as a result, frustrating–that was. (Is.) “Oh, nope. Sorry. Good book, critics love it, readers love it…nah. Not for us.”

What?? (…gets out wine glass, thinking maybe one has to be drunk in order for it to make sense…)

The Year of Dan Palace, which I’m writing now, is represented by an agent. I was more than excited to find her, and I’m still more than excited to have her. But I have to remember that “agent” doesn’t necessarily = publication. And, of course, it never did, but the situation is worse, now. Some might use the word “dire.”

From what I keep hearing about the publishing industry–particularly as it pertains to fiction by new writers (and literary? oy)–the time I spend worrying over the quality of writing in Dan Palace might just be a huge waste of time.

There’s always self-publishing again, which is an absolutely wonderful alternative that has been more than rewarding, both personally and artistically, but it also, unfortunately, means making even less than a tiny bit of money. (Real Publishing won’t earn you a living, either, but I might make more than fourteen cents per book sold.)

I ended today discouraged. Almost afraid to write. While I love and believe in publishing independently, I do have that typical author dream of making money writing and seeing a Real Publisher logo on the binding. (Mostly because I have this fantasy of seeing my book in more than one bookstore. It would just be cool.) Devoting time and passion and soul (and blah blah blah) to something that may end up going nowhere financially is … I mean … why the hell bother? I’ll just end up working some regular old job and being pissed off that I don’t get to write.

The answer came after some thought, this afternoon: I’ll do it because…?

That’s the only reason, really.

Well, and there’s this: Ian, who agreed to be the only one working while I finish this book, wants me to finish it. (Probably so I can get off my butt and get a job. I don’t blame him.) And because he has agreed to give me this time, I have it. I have the time. I have a half-written book. I have an agent.

If I think at any length about the likelihood of getting Published and the frustrating process of trying, what I won’t have is the concentration or the inspiration.

All I can do at this point is make sure I do a good job, or at least my personal best. That, I have control over. It may be the only thing, but it’s something.

(And if I can get my next book into Backword Books, I’ll probably not be so upset if I have to let Real Publishing go.)