THE GALLOPING HORSE AND ITS TAIL
I have been feverishly writing my new crime novel since Christmas 2015. Despite voluminous, time demanding research needed for the story, both for settings and technical elements, in four short months I produced around forty chapters in excess of 70,000 words. All the while I had the strange feeling that the story was a galloping horse and I, the writer, was running after it, barely holding on to its tail.My biggest fear was to lose grip of that tail. If I interrupted my furious pace for any reason, would the story run away from me, never to return?The fear was[...]
ON PIANISTS, REAL OR IMAGINARY
Soon after the publication of my second book Appassionata, an anthology of seventeen short stories, I began fantasizing about how wonderful it would be to have a recital by a solo pianist entitled The Music of Appassionata. My first attempt at organizing such an event drew a surprising observation about pianists, real or imaginary. My flagship story Appassionataunfolds amid music for solo piano performed by Modesto, an Italian character I invented, a skillful amateur pianist. These include all three movements of Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata (# 23, Opus 57, in F minor), Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G minor, the Chopin Nocturne in E[...]
WITNESS HOW SAUSAGE IS MADE; THE PUBLICATION PROCESS
As I prepare my second book for publication I am increasingly realizing that a writer's life revolves around three phases with each project, writing itself being one of them, but less than a third. The mechanics of submitting for publication, the second, is grunge work, with numerous stumbles along the way. The longest phase is post-publication publicity, which, for most projects, never ends.I am currently deep within the grinder of the publication process. This has its own various stages. Self-publishing removes what for most writers is the most daunting first step of the process: finding a publisher. With Dogmeat, my[...]
TITLE TROUBLES
Two months ago I ran into Bob Lawrence, a local pathologist and erudite socialite. He was dining at Wine Wizard's with his elegant wife Eleanor. Bob loved my book Dogmeat and penned a positive review for it on Amazon.com. I told them that my new short story book was ready for publication. When they asked me what the title would be I said Appassionata, and told them what the flagship story entailed. They surprised me with a firm response that they would not buy a book with that title, nor would others. This touched off a rare crisis of confidence[...]
ON THE BRAIN AND THE HEART
As we await the artist I hired to complete sketches that will accompany my stories, we have begun working on preliminaries to publication. Included are various elements of the marketing copy, a summary of the book being a most essential component. I had no idea how to go about summarizing seventeen diverse stories in a brief essay. Mim to the rescue. The following is a draft summary for Amazon.com. [...]
EPIGRAMS, A SURPRISE
"I left this page blank," wrote Mim my editor, "for an epigram. That is, if you want one." I e-mailed her back, "What is an epigram?" I felt foolish that I did not know. By the next day, not only did I learn what it was, I had several different choices for her and we swiftly decided on a suitable one.When a manuscript is ready to publish small add-on projects can catch the inexperienced writer by surprise. With my first book Dogmeat, I worked on an Introduction as I wrote the book, the work more painstaking than any other section.[...]