write

New and notable

... so just came upon this interesting story from the LA Times ..

"THREE years ago, French journalist Philippe Vasset published a droll, cynical novel called "ScriptGenerator©®™," founded on the familiar notion that there are no new stories under the sun: " 'Everything has been said.' This mantra of artistic circles, you, entrepreneurs, can use to your advantage. If everything has been written, filmed, and acted, if the flow of stories has effectively come to an end, it means that narrative has finally become raw material, a commodity. Therefore its treatment can be mechanized." Not only does Vasset conceive screenplay- and novel-generating software that eliminates the writer altogether but he reduces all successful narrative to "the quest." By way of illustration, "ScriptGenerator©®™" is itself written in quest form.

There's something to Vasset's theory. Most memorable protagonists (Indiana Jones, Anna Karenina, Dickens' Pip) are on quests of some sort. Accordingly, Amy Bloom's new novel, "Away," could be called formulaic. Her protagonist, Lillian Leyb, is on a quest of the most classic variety: to be reunited with her young daughter, lost in a Russian pogrom. Yet rather than feeding the sour commercial pessimism Vasset so wittily encapsulates, "Away" testifies to the truism that execution is all. Bloom isn't fighting traditional forms; in some respects her second novel is one more standard American immigration tale. But her execution is exquisite, and exquisite execution is rare -- not only in books but (alas) in almost any undertaking."

Jane Austin rejected???

It really sucks to have a book rejected. But this story in the LA Times details a writer who, in an experiment, sent in a manuscript that was copied from Jane Austin's best-selling work and received lots of rejection notices.

Go figure!

Promoting a Mystery

... so scanning Amazon I came across this "review" from folks who met the author of
at Malice Domestic (a conference for mystery writers). I'm sending you the link so you can read all for yourself, but below is a short excerpt that underscores why it is so important for authors to really promote their work in the most assertive way possible:

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful: Like a foreign flavor - strange on the palate at first but surprisingly satisfying., June 16, 2006 By Rae Stabosz "stabosz" (Newark, DE) - See all my reviews     "This review is from: The Chef Who Died Sautéing (Paperback) I met the authors of The Chef Who Died Sauteing at the 2006 Malice Domestic convention in D.C. They were outgoing, delightful, and drew attention to their offering in a most creative way -- they dressed in chef's whites both days I attended the conference, and they introduced themselves easily. As a writer myself, I like to reward any author who exhibits a get-up-and-go attitude towards getting her book known. In today's business, a single published book can fall into the pool of novels like a drop of water, to be swallowed whole. I bought the book because I really appreciated how the authors had gone that extra mile to promote it. All that said, I had a hard time getting into it. Ariel Quigley, the detective, is a college level English teacher who has a strong psychic streak and a penchant for attracting manifestations of ghostly spirits. This threw me off at first, as did her embrace of Tarot card readings and "dowsing", because Ariel's (and the book's) point of view was that these things, admittedly looked at askance in much of society, are very real. I have a great resistance towards characters who are "endearingly flakey" or "new agey".