When you are born as the change is happening, you may not
notice it. Smart phones aren’t too smart
for an eight-year-old. They are simply
telephones as expected. They are not too far beyond me even though I am a few
days past 70, but I work it at the speed of a tortoise.
Editing — The Old-Fashioned Way |
I am going through a manuscript written some years ago. It is unpublished. It is one of my favorites and one I have
always believed was the most accessible, the one with the broadest appeal, of
all my mysteries. I thought it was my
“big “ book, my best seller. I received
the most complimentary rejection letters on this one. In fact one of the big publishing houses made
an offer, but rescinded it before the paperwork was processed. I believe the
company’s second thoughts were based on two ch-ch-ch-changes in the
marketplace. This was about the time the
big box bookstores took over book retail, but long before Amazon and the
arrival of e-books. The big boxes would order high numbers of each book because
they could return the ones that didn’t sell. That meant publishers had to print
25,000 copies of a book to meet the chain’s demand, though books prior to this
one sold 5,000 or so. It doesn’t take much to do the math. This big box killed
many of us midlist writers who had good reviews and a modest but consistent
following and whose sales only a few years earlier were profitable for writer,
retailer and publisher alike. Some of those who slipped into near oblivion were
multiple award winners. Also, about this time, as Borders swept across the
land, publishers gained the ability to track book sales of any author in the
marketplace. The sales figures of my books (The Shanahan series primarily),
once acceptable, were not only transparent but didn’t meet the new
number-crunching criteria set by the mega-stores. Even though this new “big”
book of mine was a standalone and stood a chance of breaking out, I believe my
sales record haunted me. My name didn’t inspire enough confidence.
Though I was glad I kept my day job, I kept writing and kept
looking for publishers. Good thing. After
a decade of writing and submitting, I found a home for my initial series, and in
fact for what would be the next eight Shanahans. Incidentally, the latest, Killing Frost, is due out May 1. I’ve also had others published, and my most
recent books are also available in newer technologies — all the formats,
including e- and audio books. In the
fall, a mystery novella will be released from a different publisher. This shows a certain amount of adaptability
to the ch-ch-ch-anging times. The idea of novellas or novelettes appears to be
gaining popularity, perhaps boosted by the availability of the Kindle and its
cousins and various reading habits of new readers.
However the “big” book was never published. It occupied a
storage box in the basement until recently. Time has passed, and the book is
almost a fresh read. Fresh in the sense that is almost new to me. That holds promise. I can make what I
consider a good book better. Not so
fresh in the sense that it takes place in the present moment. It’s a decade-old
present. In a dozen or so years the world around us has changed, subtly perhaps.
but changed.
Since that was written, what didn’t exist or was incredibly
exotic is now common place — the aforementioned smart phone, plus battery
operated cars, GPS, Google and its search capabilities and multiple view
(satellite or street level) maps, YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Spotify,
not to mention the way we get news. In the scheme of things, all this is
relatively recent. The major TV networks
are calcifying. We don’t need to wait for the six o’clock news and we don’t. We
get 24-hour news on cable and streaming video to our phones. Moreover, everyone
armed with a smart phone is a reporter. Everyone with a blog is an editor of a
magazine, of sorts. We have aggregators funneling information to niche
interests. We have video capability on our iPads and phones, allowing folks to report
instantly from streets around the world.
They report riots, rebellions, and weather catastrophes. The act of reporting may play a major role in
world order and disorder, catch bad police behavior or catch a thief, overthrow
a government or laugh at silly cat antics. One person with exhibitionist
tendencies may take a “selfie” that is viewed by a million folks.
Whether or not all of this is utilized in a novel is far
less important than the notion that this is our culture now, an aspect of the
environment, even when we’re not actively using the technology or even aware of
it.
In short, my “big “ book, written when there were still
public telephones, when a criminal needed to be tailed physically instead of
electronically, and when half the population smoked. No texting or tweeting. Tattoos no longer mean
you’ve just been released from prison. Even though the plot works and the
characters have substance, this means my book needs at least some subtle
updating to have the immediacy of now. The reader needs to feel he or she
staying in the world he or she knows.
On the other hand, I have another, smaller book, also
pillaged from the paper- picture- and book-strewn cellar It is also old enough
to be more retro than current. In this
one, however, there is benefit to its age, to its innocence of the passage of
time. It is life as it was, that is when
life was at a slower, less complicated, and less efficient pace. The patina adds dimension to the story, which
is as much about an isolated small town stuck in time as it is about a solution
to a crime. Unlike the big book, which
is meant to be immediate, this one is best left as is.
I suspect many publishers and their acquisition editors
think writers aren’t always the best judges of their work. Noted.
But, after examination, both of these, in my less-than humble opinion, are
worth getting out there in the marketplace, one in an updated fashion ready for
a broad, mainstream audience and the other, a kind of retro rural noir,
certainly quirky, probably more suited to a smaller, independent press, and to readers
who appreciate quirky.
2 comments:
I like how your brain works. Always have.
The feeling is mutual. Looking forward to your wading off the sandbar with your own fiction.
Ron
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