Read on to discover the secrets behind editorial oversight, amazing discoveries, future challenges, and the importance of diversity in anthologies:

Jeff: Why should people care about this anthology, with so many year’s bests out there?

The commonality was American and Fantasy; why publish an anthology of stories that are all alike?

Matt: I don’t know if people in general should or could care about Best American Fantasy. I mean, there are lots of other things to care about. Genocide, global warming, war, poverty, suffering. But let’s say you’ve already cared about those sorts of things, and you’ve even cared about other things, like what shoes to wear and whom to love, and you’ve still got some caring left. And one day you think, “Hey, I’d like to read a strange and interesting short story, preferably one published recently!” Well, then, it’s time to care about BAF. Because this is a book that does things other books don’t. That’s why we made it. We saw a gap. We wanted to fill the gap. We saw oodles of stories being neglected because they didn’t fit into a particular marketing category or a narrow aesthetic, and we wanted to give them some love. And we wanted to do other things, too, like create a way for interesting and idiosyncratic writers to spend some time as guest editors and show the world the sorts of weird fiction they care about. We thought readers might find that intriguing.

Now I’ll turn the question back around on the two of you and ask: When you made the final selection for the anthology, what mattered most to you? Were you trying to create an anthology of fantasy stories from non-genre sources, or did you have other goals in mind?

Jeff: I just wanted it to include the best, most interesting, most original stories we could find. While aware of the fact that the purpose of the anthology was to fill a niche not currently being served, this didn’t really play into the decision-making process. I do think that in trying to be that “pure” we’ve created an anthology that will look different to each individual reader, depending on how they’re coming to it, and what they’re coming from. Which is to say, I’m not sure there are that many readers who will love every story in BAF. But I don’t know that that should be the goal of a year’s best.

Ann: I echo Jeff on searching for the best stories we could find. I was not interested in where they came from or who wrote them. The story must speak for itself and that is all that is important. I was actually quite surprised to find so much excellent fantasy being published in the literary journals. We also searched online journals for fiction and had many lively discussions while choosing the final stories. Our main goal was to provide an anthology with rotating editors, so that readers will get a different take for each volume. All editors (and readers, too) have their own prejudices and favorites. By doing it this way, I believe this keeps BAF fresh, new and always changing.

Matt: Looking back now with a wide-angle lens, what do you see in the landscape of American short fiction? How do these stories fit into that landscape?

One day you think, “Hey, I’d like to read a strange and interesting short story, preferably one published recently!”

Jeff: I think these stories are hardwired into that landscape, that most magazine editors at the literary magazines no longer think of something with a fantastical element as immediately escapist or not worthy of serious consideration as literature. The landscape strikes me as incredibly diverse and vibrant, despite many lamentations from Stephen King on down about problems. Yes, “workshop” stories are still being published and yes there are stories that disappear up their own excretion apparatus, but that’s bound to happen when you have so many hundreds, even thousands, of publications out there. On the whole, I think a lot of writers are doing brave and necessary work in the short story form.

Ann: When speaking of “American” short fiction, whether it be fantasy or mainstream, I think of work that has a blend of all kinds of cultures and influences, a melting pot if you will. American writers have so many influences and a history that is decidedly different from their European, African, Asian and Middle-Eastern counterparts. And a history that is also so much younger. It’s almost as if the American writer is trying to define that history with each story. When you read through BAF, you will see some fiction with an American Southern flavor. Others with that American Tall Tales persuasion. And yet others with a California or Old West or New England bent to it, just to name a few. It’s all about the imagination, whether a “mainstream” or “fantasy story”. And I think of American literature as a whole encompassing both worlds very nicely.

Matt: What most surprised you — what had you least anticipated before you began reading for BAF?

Jeff: I hadn’t anticipated finding so much fantasy material in the literary magazines and, for 2006 at least, I hadn’t anticipated liking that material more than most of what I found in genre magazines.

Ann: I was very surprised at the quality of fiction coming from the online magazines. It had been so long since I looked at online magazines and I was very inspired by what I saw. I was also excited to see so many different types of literary journals.

Jeff: Matt, what’s the biggest challenge for a series editor do you think, having now completed work on volume 1? And how do the guest editors perceive the role of the series editor? What’s the dynamic there?

Matt: The biggest challenge is certainly the amount of reading. I want our guest editors to be able to put together an eclectic book, a book nobody else could ever create, and to do that I have to seek out stories from every venue I can find. I’m not a fast reader, either, so it means constant, steady work. Much of what I encounter isn’t appropriate for the book — there’s no way it would fit even the most open definition of “fantasy” — and then I don’t want to just dump all that I do find onto the guest editors’ laps if it’s obviously not of the quality we’re looking for. I think the first volume set a particularly high bar for quality, and so now the challenge for volume two is not to let the bar fall.

As for the guest editors, I of course hope they see me as a wise and endlessly generous saint who again and again leads them to caves full of treasure. In reality, I hope at least they find me more help than hindrance, as I try to guide them toward interesting material. They might simply see me as an annoyance, because I try to get them to justify all their choices. If I do my job well, I’m relatively invisible: neither yearned for nor resented.

Jeff: Now that you’ve had time to go through the whole process of putting together a year’s best, has your perception of the task changed, and will you be doing anything different in future years?

Matt: Well, I have a bad tendency to just jump into things without reflection. So I had no idea what I was doing in taking on this job. But then, none of us did. I was the only one, though, who hadn’t had any experience editing an anthology before. And then I decided to completely uproot my life — to finish a masters degree and start a job search while we were putting the book together,and then to move from New Hampshire to New Jersey while we were in the midst of doing the initial publicity for the book, which was another thing I had no experience with and a certain horror of (both publicity and New Jersey). It’s been remarkably fun despite all that, though had we had a less patient and indulgent crew, I might have been murdered in my sleep by hired guns. I still might be.

I don’t think my perceptions have changed so much as I’ve learned for more than I ever thought there was to learn. For future volumes, I want to be doing more to find places where great stories are being published. The most thrilling joy for me throughout this whole process has been finding publications the guest editors had never heard of, convincing them to look at a few stories I’d found there, and having them say, “Wow!” That’s when I love this job. The thrill of discovery mixed with the joy of sharing. That, ultimately, is what all of us are trying to bring to whoever reads the book.

Let’s finish with those whoevers reading the book. What advice would you give to a reader of BAF? How will they get the most pleasure from it?

Jeff: I see it as a collection that reflects the reading tastes of a very eclectic group of editors, and for that reason I don’t believe it’s an anthology that every reader will love all of. But I don’t believe a year’s best should be something everyone loves from cover to cover. A best-of should try to be both entertaining and challenging, and not all in the same way. It’s not like a regular anthology. It exists because it is someone’s idea of the best, regardless of the “names” or any other consideration.

Ann: Jeff is correct. Not everyone will love every story. But our goal was to have a wide diversity of fiction styles and themes here. The commonality was American and Fantasy, but beyond that, you can see all kinds of variety. Why would we want to publish an anthology of stories that are all alike? And why would anyone want to read it?

• Best American Fantasy Website
• Jeff VanderMeer
• The Mumpsimus
• Helpful Link To Buy The Book at Amazon

Technorati Tags: best american fantasy, fiction, anthology, matthew cheney, anne vandermeer, jeff vandermeer, fantasy

The decision to write Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict wasn’t exactly a decision. It happened like this: I was standing in the kitchen of the house I used to rent in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles, and I saw, in my mind, the opening scene of my book unfold. I saw a twenty-first-century woman who, like me, reads and rereads Jane Austen’s six novels. Unlike me, she wakes up one morning in the body and life of an Englishwoman in Austen’s time. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and finally I decided to write down what I saw. Once I opened that door, there was, of course, a good deal more to her story.

It wouldn’t take a quantum physicist to figure out why Courtney Stone made her appearance in my head. After all, she embodies all the “what if’s” I posed in many an idle fantasy indulged after yet another reading of Pride and Prejudice or another viewing of the 1995 BBC adaptation. What if I could hang out in one of those drawing rooms in Jane Austen’s world, pretending to do needlework (“pretending” being the operative word for someone who cannot sew) while stealing glances at some hottie in tight knee breeches? Would it be a dream come true to inhabit that world, or a case of be-careful-what-you-wish-for? What exactly do Austen’s books tell me about her world, and what do they not tell me? What is invisible to me as a contemporary reader? Just how sanitized are even the most “faithful” of the film adaptations? Why do I, with all my freedom and choices as a contemporary woman, fantasize my way into the world of Jane Austen? Writing this book was an opportunity to explore those questions.

There is another question I keep hearing, and it concerns the current spike in the popularity of all things Austen. That question is “Why now?” It is difficult to imagine topping Devoney Looser’s hilarious answer (here). Nevertheless, I’ll venture a couple of theories.

Here is the first: Quite simply, it’s score one for the snowball effect of the collective consciousness. Like Austen’s “one shoulder of mutton, you know, drives another,” one could say that “one Austen movie drives another quickly through the development process.” It is, after all, the films that are sexy enough to grab most of the headlines. And there are at least six of them, two in theatrical release (Becoming Jane and the upcoming Jane Austen Book Club) and at least four coming up on PBS. The books then gratefully hitch a ride on the pop culture express.

Here is another theory, which came out of something my husband said to me the other day when I was obsessing over something of no consequence whatsoever. “The mind,” he said, “is an unreliable narrator.” His comment led me to ponder whether we are now living in the era of the unreliable narrator—from our widespread distrust of traditional media and Washingtonian mouthpieces to our own overly analytical and self-helped-to-death minds. Perhaps our need for the reliable narrator is stronger now than ever.

For me, there is no narrator more reliable than Jane Austen, the keenest and funniest observer of human nature of any author I know. It is her all-knowing, all-seeing narrator who holds up a mirror to our human failings as well as our capacity for magnificence. It is she who guides us to distinguish truly trustworthy behavior from the posings of those who have nothing to recommend them but a handsome face and an agreeable manner. It is she who shows us how to spot greed, jealousy, arrogance, and vanity at a hundred paces, regardless of how smartly dressed it is. Most of all, it is she who shows us how to laugh at all of it and not take ourselves so seriously. That is why I can’t (and wouldn’t want to) stop reading and rereading Austen. For me, her six novels constitute the most reliable set of self-help books I could ever want to own. Add to that her gift for storytelling twists and a love story with a satisfying ending, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a much healthier sort of addiction than those in which we humans usually indulge.

Austen’s hilarious skewering of the follies and flaws of human beings is what makes her novels timeless. Human nature, after all, hasn’t changed at all since Austen’s day. Nevertheless, I, like many Austen addicts, do find myself drawn to the period details of her world, the window dressing, if you will. What makes these details attractive has little to do with their inherent qualities. After all, empire-waisted gowns are not as well-suited to my figure as they are to, say, Gwyneth Paltrow’s. And given the choice between spending five hours in my car driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles, as I did the other day, to four bone-jangling days in a horse-drawn carriage, I’d take the car any day. Nevertheless, I am attracted to those details precisely because they are of her world, because they give me greater access to her stories.

And so in writing Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict I was able to indulge another aspect of my addiction, immersion in the details of Austen’s world. And yes, when seen through the Hollywood-tinted lenses of postmodern nostalgia, spending four days on the road in a horse-drawn carriage doesn’t sound that bad after all. Especially if at the end of your journey you get to sleep in a four-poster bed in a sumptuous mansion and rest up for the ball where you dance with Jeremy Northam and look just like Gwyneth Paltrow in your empire-waisted gown.

Still, I’d venture to say that our deepest yearning isn’t merely to escape the noise of modern technology for the bonnets and balls and carriages of Jane Austen’s world. We, like our favorite protagonists, long to escape the unreliable narrators of our minds for an omniscient guide who writes our own story, the one with the happy ending.

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict is available at bookstores right now, and Laurie Viera Rigler’s website is a treasure trove for fans of Jane, ready-to-become fans of Jane, or just people who understand the value that comes from wasting time on a really fun site. Laurie is also making appearances in support of her novel.

Technorati Tags: confessions of a jane austen addict, laurie viera rigler, jane austen, pride and prejudice, jane austen bookclub, becoming jane

“What did you mean, when you wrote- ” is how the question begins. Sometimes the answer is very specific and concrete, but often, it’s not. What did I mean when I wrote it, or what does it mean to me now, or what meaning are you about to suggest that I will gladly discover in the next moment and henceforth claim forever after as my own? Authorial intention is almost always a complex matter, perhaps especially for the author.

As a reader, I love it when a good novel offers itself up, layer by layer, for interpretation and analysis. It’s one of the rewards of reading deeply, when you find echoes and patterns and imagery that herald or alter the significance of what has happened, what is happening, what is about to happen. Dos it really matter what the author had in mind? What counts is what the reader has in mind.

However. The author may have had more in mind than she knew. Sometimes the author is completely surprised to discover all sorts of evidence in the text that reveals more meaning than she meant to mean. In my first novel, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, there is a scene during which the villain of the story, a selfish Holocaust survivor, undressing before an illicit sexual encounter, takes off his necktie without un-knotting it, merely by sliding the knot down (so as to save time and effort later, when he gets dressed) and then he hangs it on a doorknob. Later in the novel, another character commits suicide by hanging on this same door. Implausible as it may be, while I wrote the earlier scene with the later events of the novel already mapped out in my mind, it was not a deliberate image, not a foreshadowing gesture planted there for the astute reader, although several book group discussions have pounced on this foreshadowing moment, and I have never denied its meaning at that point in the story. And I think there is a reason that gesture came to mind for Victor, though manifestly I used it to show the way he always took satisfaction in cheating, in not having to do what other people do – in this instance, tie his necktie again

In that same novel, there is a scene when Victor is out for dinner in a fancy restaurant with his young girlfriend and the novel’s main character when he suddenly drops to the ground and hides under the tablecloth to avoid being seen by some friends of his wife. The novel had been in print for a year when it occurred to me that this scene was very obviously an inverted echo of the bizarre events surrounding my father’s death (in 1983, twelve years before my first novel was published), when his one-armed mistress locked herself in the bathroom in his hospital room so that she and my mother wouldn’t have an unfortunate encounter at his deathbed. (I have described this more thoroughly in a recent essay, “The Loves of His Life,” which appears in the anthology The Other Woman, edited by Victoria Zackheim.)

Does it add any meaning to the novel itself for a reader, knowing this autobiographical echo? Probably not. But it adds meaning for me, as a reader of my own work. It teaches me something about my own mind and about my writing impulses and instincts. It helps me try to tune in all the more for those signals, because I do think writing at many levels invariably enriches the narrative. I have learned from reflecting back on my own texts in these ways, because now that I see those connections I can set about making such connections within the stories. To see how everything connects to everything else – that’s challenging. Sometimes it’s called being psychotic. Sometimes it’s where the work gets richer and stranger. Seeing connections like this has helped me learn to trust my own strangeness.

Another sort of unconscious intention that runs through all four of my published novels became really obvious to me only this past spring as I wrestled with a key element of my fifth novel in progress. I have a complete map, the novel is entirely worked out in many if not most respects – but I hadn’t really settled comfortably on the narrative strategy. Then I had a brainstorm and found the perfect fit for the story. And then I realized that for the fifth time, with no forethought or contextual intention, I am writing a novel which features its own artifactness. What do I mean by this?

My first novel is in three parts. The first part is a journal in letters that gets lost. In the third part of the novel, a character turns up with that journal under his arm.

The Music Lesson, my second novel, is a journal kept by a woman involved with an IRA splinter group plot to steal a Vermeer from the Queen. My third novel, The Little Women, is really a novel within the novel, and perhaps a third of it consists of intrusive reader’s notes commenting on the text, and then come the author’s notes defending the text. The readers and the author are the “real” people on whom the characters in the internal novel are based. (Maybe that sounds complicated, but it really isn’t, on the page.)

My fourth novel, Triangle, is stitched from all sorts of artifacts and documents, from newspaper articles to oral history interviews to trial transcripts. Apparently the document with which the novel is launched, an ILGWU fiftieth anniversary commemorative pamphlet, is persuasive enough that some dozen scholars have written me about their perplexity that the ILGWU doesn’t have this document, it’s not in any library or archive, where did I get it, would I share a photocopy? And my main character, Esther Gottesfeld, the last living survivor of the Triangle fire, is quoted on a website devoted to safe working conditions and fair wages for textile workers, with credit given to Ruth Zion, the fictional Triangle fire historian whose interview transcript it is. (here)

And now I am deep into my fifth novel, Temper, about a fourth generation chocolate candy business in turmoil. I have found the voice that gives the story exactly what it needs. It’s a certain kind of document. I resisted this obvious solution for a while, concerned that I am at risk for repeating myself. But I’m not. The narrative strategy, this artifactness, is only the same in the broadest sense. This is how I find voice. Voice is how I drive the narrative. This is how I write.

Far be it for a BS guest to get in the last word. Katharine Weber, perhaps in a humble moment, forgot to mention that in addition to four wonderful novels, she has a website. It’s here.

I’ve been writing about Aud (rhymes with cloud) Torvingen for ten years. In The Blue Place she was someone I would have run from, a woman *this* close to being a sociopath. In Stay she was grieving, tentative and open to the world for the first time. In Always she is finally learning the balance between strength and vulnerability. In other words, Aud grows and changes; she is different in each novel.

The books are narrated by Aud in first person, which means the narrative tone and style has to change as Aud does.

It’s embarrassing to admit how long it took me to figure that out.

I was used to reading series books about people like Travis McGee and V.I. Warshawski, Spenser and Robicheaux; they stayed pretty much the same, book after book. They appeared to react to the same kinds of events with the same kind of action and emotion; the authors used the same kind of narrative structure, the same metaphors and vocabularies to tell their stories: the sandy-rumped girls, the cypress house with its gallery and bass jumping in the lake, how a guy with a size 16 neck can still cook. Over and over again.

I hadn’t set out to write a series character (I was halfway through The Blue Place before I understood the novel was merely the first act of the play that was Aud); I’d never really considered how it might be to write more than one book from first person. I wasn’t ready. So when I sat down to write Stay in the same bullet-train, cold-edged, urban-metaphored style as The Blue Place, I was shocked that it wouldn’t work. Aud was not only in a different geographic and emotional place, she persisted in seeing and responding differently. I kept writing then throwing away chapters, and then one day, duh, it hit me: change the metaphor systems, change the focal length, change the expectations. That is, change the voice. Just don’t change it too much.

That evening I sat on the porch with a beer and wondered what on earth I’d got myself into. I searched my library for novels that did what I knew I had to do: change the first person voice of a series character. I couldn’t find any. I was on my own.

Eventually I found the voice. In Stay Aud’s focal length is just a little longer, her responses are just a little more considered, her metaphors are more pastoral than urban. I knew that with Always I’d have to change it again.

For the third novel–the third act, which pulls together, illuminates, and then alters the first two–I knew the difference would have to be radical. Through iteration after iteration, I messed with Aud’s voice, and finally hit the right note–Aud’s focus is now wide-ranging, her metaphors are historical, her reactions are reluctant, even hesitant; she’s a teacher as well as destroyer; she is protected as well as protective; her sentences are longer; she can tell jokes (sort of). But that wasn’t enough. I also had to play with structure. I found a way to show Aud actually integrating change by alternating two narrative styles: a series of closed-room self-defense lessons in Atlanta, in the narrative past, and chapters exploring in Seattle, mostly outdoors, in the narrative present.

This naturally led to further challenges–slightly different voices in both sections, different plots, different casts of characters, but the emotional arcs had to resonate and build–but I didn’t care, I was having a blast. Here was a character I was utterly familiar with doing new things, playing with new people in a new city and with a new perspective. We learn how she became the Aud of The Blue Place; we learn what she thinks of her own change; we even meet her mother. It excited me. I love change (–in fiction. In real life I sigh and accept it. I remember watching Thunderbirds, years ago, and a character saying ‘Change is, of course, to be deplored,’ and leaping off the sofa shouting, ‘Yes! Yes! Curse all learning experiences.’ Or as a Deadwood character might say, ‘Well f*ck the f*cking new.’) The books that have always appealed to me have been the ones with real consequence for the characters, the ones in which they understand you can’t step in the same river twice. If you go on that journey and are lucky enough to come home, home looks different: it’s changed, you’ve changed.

Aud, though, has been changing me, too. She has been the ‘I’ in my head for ten years. I wonder how long a writer can do that and stay flexible. Is it possible to keep growing and changing as a writer with a first person narrator?

• Always

Since the announcement in June that my first novel, The Kommandant’s Girl, was up for a Quill Award, I have heard from many readers who are surprised that the book, which depicts a young Jewish woman’s struggle in World War II Poland , was nominated in the romance category. I can only laugh and shrug. From the time my book was accepted for publication in April 2005, I have watched as the industry batted it between genres like a ping-pong ball.

The first indication of this came a few months after acceptance when my publisher told me that they wanted to change the title from The Kommandant’s Girl to something “less historical.” I hurriedly submitted a list of 40-plus alternative titles and the publisher selected half of one of my suggestions, renaming the book A Fine Crack of Light (causing many friends and family members to say “huh?” and teaching me to never include anything on a suggested title list that you aren’t willing to live with). They also gave it a gorgeous, albeit decidedly romantic cover. So perhaps I should not have been surprised when Publishers Weekly, giving the book a starred review, dubbed it “historical romance at its finest.”

But the genre debate was not over. In the summer of 2006, my publisher informed me that feedback from key accounts indicated that they loved the story, but were not enthusiastic about the cover and title. The release date was set back six months, and the book was given its present, more literary cover, becoming The Kommandant’s Girl once more. Barnes and Noble featured it as a book club selection for April 2007 in the genre of historical fiction. Romance was dead, or so it seemed, until the Quill nomination revived the debate.

So after two years, two covers, two title changes and too many genres to count, I have to ask: Is there a difference? The story itself has not changed. The book has been well received by mainstream, romance and historical reviewers and readers alike. Being called romance has its ups — sales have been great and I’ve gained many enthusiastic readers — and downs — I’ve arguably gotten less review coverage and respect from the independent book stores, and some would-be male readers have expressed hesitation (which always disappears when they pick up the book.) Based on my experience and my observations of and conversations with many talented writers, I cannot help but wonder if genre is a distinction without a difference, a line that has blurred to the point where it is no longer meaningful.

And then I look to my British publisher, which decided to go with the best of both worlds: a historical title (Kommandant’s Girl) and a salacious romantic cover (Nazi passionately kissing woman). The result was a bestseller.

With eating and drinking comes making merry, and we spent the evening chatting and trying to work our brand-new camera. Then it happened…someone dared to ask our true first name, which, alas, always leads to a lengthy discussion (“Did your mother do that to you on purpose?”). Two, maybe three, chatting groups away, Carolyn Turgeon, author of the gorgeous new book Rain Village, heard us utter the secret word. She tells the story far better than we ever could, which is just about perfect because it leads into a topic that both fascinates her and threads through her new book.

What you are about to read is mostly a true story.

When I first met Kassia at the Unbridled party at Book Expo this past spring, I was informed that she is named after a spice. And not just any spice, but cassia, which is related to cinnamon. I’m sure I appeared cool and collected, even glamorous, as this news was conveyed, but in reality a wave of longing and jealousy moved through me and a tear or two might have appeared in my eyeball. Cinnamon! If you’re going to be named after anything, it should be that. Sadly, my own name means “full grown.”

I don’t know if there is anything so powerful as the smell of cinnamon. As far as smells go, anyway, unless you count the scent of bitter almonds that is a reminder of the fate of unrequited love. I mean, burn a cinnamon stick candle or heat up a vat of apple cider with cinnamon sticks floating on top. Tell me you do not imagine long winding country roads, chimneys with smoke puffing out of them, crackling fires and pies straight from the oven, bright red and yellow leaves winking from tree branches and then hurling themselves to the earth, making that licentious crunching sound as you step over them. Tell me you don’t imagine corn mazes and haystacks and pumpkins and crows. It’s a scent that’s both homespun and exotic, as much associated with mama’s home cooking as with Roman funeral pyres or Cleopatra, who was rumored to have carried cinnamon along with her jewels.

I not only love cinnamon, I have a real, bona fide problem with it. I have a character in my novel, Rain Village, who smells so strongly of cinnamon and cloves that when she joins the circus her mentor tries everything to rid her of the scent, burning her clothes and scrubbing her skin with lemon juice. But her scent is so strong that after watching her perform, women return home and brew up vats of hot cider steeped in cinnamon sticks, or put out bowls filled with oranges stuck through with cloves. Later in the book, a breeze rises up and passes through the circus, carrying with it the scents of cloves and cinnamon, so strong that people take to their beds with fever, or begin sprinkling hot chocolate with cinnamon and brewing apple cider to satisfy the cravings the spiced air leaves them with.

I burned cinnamon and pumpkin spice candles when I was writing the book. I also, of course, burn them when I am doing dishes or watching Project Runway, but that is beside the point. The scent was so strong it threatened to overtake the novel completely. At one point I might have mentioned the scent on every other page, which to me seemed only right and natural. I mean, how else could I make each page seem like perfume, like apple pie, like something you’d want to roll around in? Isn’t that what a book should be? In my writing workshop, however, people shockingly claimed that I went TOO FAR, and when the book got to Unbridled, by which point I’d already (painfully) cut 5000000 references, my editor still suggested I go through and cut every reference that wasn’t essential. He also pointed to a page where I both use the name Gabriela and the phrase “clove and cinnamon,” and said I just couldn’t do that. I’d been found out! Can I help it that when I first saw Jorge Amado’s novel Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon. I swooned with jealousy and desire? It might be my favorite book of all time, and I haven’t even read it.

A little scent goes a long way, my editor said. But I wanted my book to be like Cleopatra’s sails, which were said to be, in some accounts (obviously the correct ones), soaked in cinnamon as she made her way to Marc Antony. I wanted my book to ripple in the breeze, too, as I sailed upon it, hypnotizing and seducing everyone in its wake. What is so wrong with that? So many novels these days are happy just being prim and scentless. Other than Marquez’s bitter almonds (unrequited love! who else could make an Almond Joy seem so romantic?), or the gorgeously undulating scents in a book like Perfume, or the many sultry spices in a novel like Mistress of Spices, can you think of many scents in literature? Where the smell leaps off the page and weaves its way into you? Where the pages bat their eyelashes while baring their perfumed shoulders? I’m sure there are some, but I cannot think of them, and to me this is as criminal as my own spiceless moniker.

In our (never) humble opinion, we believe you should go buy Carolyn’s book immediately — it is the perfect mix of magic, mystery, and scent (also, running away to join the circus). You can catch her in all her podcast glory right here. And she has a website (truly, the fun never ends!) here.

Technorati Tags: carolyn turgeon, rain village, unbridled books, writing, publishing

The problem, of course, is that there’s always a bigger, scarier monster in the closet, and even the superstores are nervous. As venerable institutions like Tower Records face the end of their storied lives, independents are growing increasingly…creative. And some of them are really grasping the one thing they’ve said all along: it’s the community, stupid.

If there is one thing the Internet has taught us, it is that humans (our particular species) are semi-social creatures. We like to hang out in places that feed our particular interests, and we like to interact with those who share those interests. The problem being, of course, is that some of have very narrow interests. Back in the olden days, these were called the derogatory “niche”; today, they earn the admiring description “niche”.

Granted, some niches are bigger than others (example: knitting niches, surprisingly big), but independent bookstores are seeing the value of targeted, serious niche selling. Granted, this concept works a bit better in larger urban areas where there is sufficient aud…

Oh wait, what are we saying? This is the Internet Age. Niche retailers can build real-life and virtual communities. It’s like magic. It’s a way of doing something the mega-chains cannot. The biggies simply don’t get online community-building the way independents can. In trying to be everything to everyone — in the least offensive manner possible — the chain stores manage to do nothing for anyone. We don’t even think that Amazon’s recent forays in the Wild World of Web 2.0 have done much in the way of community-building, but maybe we’re hanging out with the wrong crowds.

Niche booksellers — okay, let’s be plain-spoken here, booksellers who target specific genres — have an incredible advantage. Knowledge. Generally, the booksellers are genre geeks, be it horror, mystery, romance, or science fiction…or any genre in-between. In the Tower Records article noted above, one complaint that Kirk voiced (but didn’t write about) was the lack of knowledgeable clerks. When you go into Borders, chances are you’ll find someone who reads, but not necessarily someone who reads deeply in your particular genre. A niche retailer will not only be intimately familiar with the arcana of the world of Hobbits, but so will the clientele. Oh, yes, it’s weird, but only if you don’t inhabit the world.

[Caution: marrying into the geek community can have detrimental effects on your ability to remain above it all. You may find yourself defending the very thing you make fun of. Sorry, totally off-topic, but we felt it was an appropriate warning.]

Niche retailers offer deep catalog, not just the latest hits. They offer readings and signings and discussions with authors who are so off the Barnes & Noble radar, they’ll never be found. They offer ephemera. They offer conversation. They offer community. And they can bring this whole enchilada together in the physical and online space. This is what they mean by the best of both worlds. Please note that we are talking about possibility here, not necessarily execution. We’re the idea people.

While others worry about the death of the independents, we see hope and light. Normally, this means we’re running a fever; today, it’s just excitement at possibilities.

• Genre bookstores hold off big chains

Technorati Tags: geeks, niche, books, bookstores, tower records

We applaud the decision to go with original content — good move on the part of Borders. The rest? Hmm, not so much. First, let us say that there’s a bizarre, almost obsessive, interest in snacks at the Borders website. Now, snacks are important, but there’s a reason some people call it “wine club”. Seriously, three primary navigation nodes…and one is recipes? Already, one senses this is less about discussing great writing than selling more books.

Moving on, we, as noted, like the focus on original content. In the first month, you get a video of people chatting and snacking with Mitch Albom. Okay, if we had to chat with Albom, we’d probably be snacking, too, but, well, see above re: wine. It’s a book club, people, pull out the good reds!

Or the good reads, your call.

Here is the major issue with the Borders book club: it’s one way. You get to watch a video of people talking about a book. Or you get to read a book in the privacy of your home (or out in public, no rules about that) and then you get to watch the video. Or just selected “chapters” of the video (get it, clever, no?). You, the average reader, have no way, no mechanism of communicating with Borders or your fellow readers. It’s not a book club, it’s a television show.

There’s also no mention of next month’s book. Now, our book club is gearing up to read Thomas Pynchon’s V. We all know that it will take a while to get through all the pages, so club rules dictate at least a month’s notice. Courtesy, you know. A mere mention of the next title would have made this more useful to people.

Presumably, Borders is trying to drive traffic to its website. The problem with this book club is that it gives people no reason to come back on day-to-day basis. And if you don’t have a way of pushing information to potential readers (there’s a newfangled thing called “RSS” that would come in handy here), they’re eventually going to to forget about the book club. Of course, we could be wrong. Maybe Borders is planning on blanketing the planet with press releases every month.

Technorati Tags: borders, book club, mitch albom

That thought is long gone, replaced by a much more comfortable and familiar “Huh?”

There are so many things to ponder here. First, of course, is the price. Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist (or, rather, G.W. Dahlquist) will be serialized in ten weekly installments, each week, you get a cliffhanger read! Apparently, these installments will be arriving by mail, and the total cost of the serialized version of the novel will exceed the list price of the put-together version of the novel by roughly ten pounds (no, we’re not going to do that; if you want a US dollar conversion, you have to do it yourself). Sure, that makes sense.

The serialization is limited to 5,000 copies. Presumably that also makes sense. Especially since they’re trying to build a water cooler-type buzz for the book in the UK. See, the water cooler thing works much better if you have, oh, ready access to the product. Otherwise the next week, it’s only the same old people talking about something nobody else can have. Buzz tends to wane as time passes. Let us call this, for lack of a better term, the Snake on a Plane corollary to marketing science.

Then there’s the puzzler: apparently, Penguin is seeing this as a chance to build enthusiasm for its “fledgling” website. People, we’re entering the final months of 2006; the site is long past fledgling status. It should have all of its grown-up feathers and be flying high by now. The fact that publishers are still confused about this concept keeps the BS family awake long into the night.

So how will this build excitement for the novel? We’re glad you asked — and just like the Reuters reporting team, we’ve chosen to leave the best for last. Fans of the serialized version (and US fans, since the book is already released here) will then get a chance to discuss the book online, preferably at the website devoted to the novel’s extensive mythology. Hmm, we do like the sound of that. Extensive. Mythology. Lots and lots of content to delve into, a place where we can get lost, talk to others who are sucked into the world the author has created.

So far, the site is, well, less than we expected. It didn’t “launch”, so we’re going to click on the link that serves as backup in event of an anticipated failure to launch. Whew! Success. Okay, so what we have going on here is a pretty nice Flash site. It looks really pretty, but doesn’t deliver the key elements we’re seeking: extensive mythology and community interaction (where, pray tell, does Penguin expect all this discussion to happen? Oh right, they think bloggers will be doing the heavy lifting). We did learn that the author is the world’s sole remaining practitioner of mesmerism. Who knew only one remains standing? Make us wonder what happened to the rest of the planet’s mesmerisers? Have they all gone underground? We are worried about the practice, very worried.

It does not seem to us that Penguin will achieve its goals with this promotion. The website, sadly, is all about selling the serialized version of the novel. Can we assume that after the 28 days left in the promotion have passed, the site will magically revert to something less “buy, buy, buy” driven? Probably we don’t have enough brain cells remaining to remember to go back and check. Since we can’t do much beyond read a few screens of text, there is no incentive to return. Pity, because the book sounds interesting, and building a deeper mythology would really generate good word-of-mouth. Given that the marketing firm behind the online “Lost” campaigns is at work here, you’d think there’s be less focus on corporate branding, more on story-building. We are far too picky, we know.

What Penguin has created here is a very elaborate commercial; what Penguin needed to create was a community. To build buzz, you must provide a hive. Hmm, we clearly need more coffee if that is the type of thing coming from our fingers this morning. But you get the point: this is a half measure, not a full-out effort.

This is a 125,000 pound marketing venture designed to promote a hardcover edition of a book. Yes, 125k on a serialized novel (presumably mailing costs are incredibly high because Penguin isn’t planning to make a dime, or is it a farthing?, off this stunt) and a website.

• Penguin revives the serial novel for online buzz

Technorati Tags: marketing, books, publishing, mesmerism, Penguin, Gordon Dahlquist, GW Dahlquist, Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

We feel that we have learned so much — with more to go. But let us get into why you’re really here. You want to know how to land a book deal and an agent (not necessarily in that order). Let us assure you that the process is easy: education (does not have to be of the formal variety), hard work, a few lucky breaks, and subletting your apartment.

Hmm, that’s the kind of formula we should patent. We would make a fortune. In the second installment of MediaBistro’s new column “Book Keeping”, author Shari Goldhagen describes how she followed our soon-to-be patented process and made it big. What? Who is Shari Goldhagen? We are sure you’ll be hearing about her book, Family and Other Accidents, soon — but let us focus on how you can apply her learned lessons to your life.

So Goldhagen wrote the book, found an agent, ended up selling her story for a goodly sum (goodly sums are always a nice thing). It will be a hardcover release. Everyone’s happy. The book is going to sell like gangbusters. But wait! Hardcovers don’t sell like gangbusters, Harry Potter excepted. What can be done?

I think that the idea was that some of the chain bookstores had read it and they thought it had a much bigger audience as a paperback than as a hardcover. I actually read something in the [New York] Times the other day about a couple of books that had come out in hardcover and sold 10,000 copies, but then when they come out in paperback they just really took off. I think the idea was to get that take-off earlier. Then of course you have the hardcover for the people who actually want the hardcover. And for author vanity, I suppose!

We like that. We know someone who is into the hardcover thing in a big way; she won’t read paperback. She can have the hardcover; we stuff enough into the purse — the less bulk, the better. And there you have it. Success in a few easy steps.

• Book Keeping: Shari Goldhagen, Family and Other Accidents – Armed with an MFA from Ohio State and a partial manuscript for her first novel, this author describes how she landed an agent and scored a book deal (Note: appears to be for subscribers only)

Technorati Tags: shari goldhagen, family and other accidents, books, publishing