I just got the cover for the hardcover Valentine’s Day I’m in with Sandra Kitt and Celeste Norfleet. I think it’s really classy, but the guy does happen to be, well, white. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m told he will be darkened up a bit for the final cover. That makes me wonder how much of this lightening/darkening goes on to make models appropriate for a particular publisher.
I guess that falls under the category of things that make you go hmmm.
British educators are actually considering replacing the word “failure” with deferred success. As they say, WTF? Apparently those stiff upper lip blokes are worried that telling a child he/she has failed will put them off of learning forever. I’m sorry, but you can call it Great-aunt Sophia if you want to, but failure is failure. Kids know when they are not doing well in school. And if failure is really ony delayed success, every grade becomes success of some kind, so why bother to put yourself out. Instead of focusing on what words make students demoralized, how about focusing on what actions make kids succeed–real success, not the deferred kind.
In order for students to flourish they need three things:
1-a family (nuclear and extended that places education as a priority, where adults at home read and place value on real achievement.
2-a school that is dedicated to student success. That’s not as easy as it sounds these days. As there is more and more talk of teacher accountability, there is also less and less teacher creativity allowed. In New York city where I teach, we’ve been inundated with programs for math, phonics, reading or whatever that require no more effort to teach (as mandated) than it does to read the script that comes with the program. We must all be on the same page, they tell us. As proof that this works, Joel Klein (the school chancellor) and our beloved Mayor (Bloomberg) claim elevated test scores as proof these programs work. Not! Almost every teacher I now gives lip service to these new programs and keeps her door shut. What teachers end up doing on grades in which students have to take standardized tests is to spend most of the year teaching to that test so that students won’t be penalized for not doing well–as in getting left back.
3-an innate desire to learn. I think all children are born with natural curiosity, but 1 and 2 listed above, as well as the larger society help to squelch that. In many people’s view it is more important to send a child to school in the latest FUBU than it is to send them with a couple of pencils and some crayons. I have children come to school and the first book they own is one given to them by me. Parents, especially young ones, don’t realize that if your child comes to kindergarten and doesn’t know letters, numbers, shapes, colors, days of the week, they will have to play catch up with the other kids from the get-go. By the same token, teachers have to take kids where they’re at and work at boosting them up to where they belong rather than complaining they’re not where they are supposed to be.
Most of all, it’s not any individual failure that is detrimental to kids, it is the feeling that they can’t succeed at anything that is the problem. Calling failure success only cheapens the real achievements kids make.
Well, I’m off the soapbox now. What do you think???
Time finally ran out today for James Doohan, aka Mr. Scott from Star Trek. This is sad news for me since I’ve been a fan of the show since way back when we were called Trekkies not Trekkers .
I always thought of the crew of the Starship Enterprise more as symbols than as people: Captain Kirk stood for leadership; Spock intellect; McCoy emotionality; Chekov ethnic pride. Uhura stood for femininity (as opposed to beauty–Yeoman Rand, or (a distorted depiction of female) love and dedication–Nurse Chapel). To me, Scotty stood for pride in one’s profession and dedication to craft. Every week, Scotty could be seen tending to his bairns, the engines that powered the ship.
One of my favorite episodes, The Trouble with Tribbles, showed Scotty backing off from a fight with Klingons–until they insult the Enterprise. Then all bets were off.
While I never took to attending conventions or learning to speak Klingonese (I might have if Michael Dorn from TNG came to visit), I remember the show fondly–believe it or not from the time it first aired not reruns (I told you I was old). Ah well, I guess it was finally Scotty’s turn to get beamed up. So long, old friend.
Anyone else have any Star Trek memories?
The other day I started a good book, an award-winning book, a book others told me I should read as an example of great literature. I was looking forward to to reading this book, but before I’d finished the second chapter I had to put it down. Why?
I was so freaking depressed I didn’t know what to do with myself. In the space of some twenty-odd pages this author had described at least three acts of cruelty or outright abuse dealt to the story’s heroine or other characters in the story. That was enough for me.
I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand the appeal of gut-wrenching, angst-inducing, literal blow-by-blow descriptions of things one human being decides they simply must do to another. I’m not talking about murder and mayhem. That I like. Maybe it’s the fact that this story dealt with abuse of children. I understand the villian of this piece and the progaonist both find some peace at the end of this story, but I’m not interested in the redemption of child abusers. Castration and incarceration, maybe. A horrible excruciated death, now that’s better. If anyone wants any suggestions on how this can be accomplished, just let me know.
Someone uses literary agent Deidre Knight’s name to scam writers. Be careful out there.
If it’s my name, it’s two Rs, folks, two Rs.
I don’t know why the name Deirdre is so hard for some folks to pronounce or spell, but apparently some people just can’t get it. I’ve had Deidre, Dedra, Didra and one imaginative soul who sent correspondence to Diidra Sazoy. Considering I was working for a huge company at the time, it was only dumb luck that this letter ended up on my desk at all.
As just me, I have always joked that I will answer to anything that starts with a D. That’s why I tell most people to call me Dee–saves on having to correct anyone.
But as an author, I appreciate having my name spelled correctly if folks opt to use it. I’m not talking about readers, though that would be nice, too. But places like Amazon? Yikes. I went hunting for my November book to see if it was up. As far as I knew it wasn’t until I searched for the title Body of Truth instead of my name. There it was under Deidre Savoy. It’s not like my name isn’t big as life right on the cover. Oy!
On one writers list to which I belong, there’s been talk of author branding–creating an author image expressed through everything the author does. I have to admit, I’m not sure what my brand is. What I’m doing now, I think of as “slightly skewed romantic suspense” since romance, suspense and dry humor mixed together are what my books are about.
What does this have to do with my blog? Well, I started out trying to do this romance/romantic suspense/publishing industry strictly professional/factual type of thingie here. Honestly, that wasn’t working for me. Why? It’s summer, it’s hot (I’m allergic to air conditioning) and I’m crankier than usual. Aside from that, I only have so much interest in spreading the word on the publishing industry. I do that at a monthly workshop I give at my local Barnes and Noble and I’m on hiatus from that, too.
So I decided to refocus my energies and just write about whatever comes to mind. I changed the subtitle on my blog to the “Wit and Wisdom of a Curmudgeonly Author. I like the wit and wisdom part. Folks tell me I’m (ahem) witty and as an educator I like to think of myself as wise. It’s the curmudgeonly part I’m still not comfortable with, even though it probably is accurate. If the word curmudgeon brings to mind someone old and cranky, that’s about how I’m feeling now, but I might change it, depending on my mood.
If you don’t think the word curmudgeonly fits, I am willing to listen to all substitutions. But be nice. I already warned you I was cranky.
As school is out for the summer, I have the luxury of sitting in bed with my laptop watching bad movies on TV. The movie today is The Poseidon Adventure, starring Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Stella Stevens, Pamela Sue Martin and some other folks whose names I’m not going to remember until they get to the credits. In this disaster movie, several plucky survivors of a capsized oceanliner try to make it to the engine room from which they hope to be rescued.
Growing up, this was one of the movies my older sister and I watched over and over again every time it came on the 4:30 movie (anybody remember that?), God only knows why. When I look at it now, the thing that strikes me most is the dichotomy between male and female roles in the story. The men are uniquely brave–they may argue about the way to proceed, but none of them shrink back from trying to lead the not-so-merry band toward safety. Even nebishy Red Buttons, like the Cowardly Lion, discovers his courage when he needs it.
On the other hand, the women shriek and scream and panic at every opportunity. The one woman who performs a brave act–a zaftig Shelley Winters–gets to die for saving Gene Hackman from a watery death. And you know tough-talking, former prostitute Stella Stevens isn’t making it out of there alive, though her death makes the least sense of any of them. She just oops! falls for no good reason. The only adult female to make it through the movie is a whiny, whimpy pain in the butt who makes you want to choke her every ten minutes. Talk about too stupid to live.
Granted, this movie was made in 1972, at about the same time Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman was turning into a feminist national anthem. Today we’ve got all sorts of kick-butt heroines–ladies who can tackle the latest terrorist or things that go bump in the night. I am really enjoying this trend, even though I have always appreciated the emotional strength and resilience of female charaters more so than the physical. The tendency sometimes with kick-butt heroines is to temper their physical strength by making them angsty to make them seem more “feminine.” Like Sydney Bristow weeping every other minute and ruining an otherwise perfecty good show. Not necessary folks. Women are strong in every way, and there’s nothing wrong with showing it.
Which leaves me with just one more question: is there a more cringe-inducing thing on the planet than a close-up of Ernest Borgnine’s dirty face?
As yet another story involving unscrupulous folks taking advantage of naive writers comes to light, I am again amazed how many such folks exist out there. Since the average writer doesn’t make enough from their writing to support themselves without a trust fund or a spouse to pick up the slack, you’d think there would be easier targets for scams–for instance little old ladies and their mattress money. What these people specialize in is conning a lot of writers out of a little bit of money at a time. What they count on is writers being too mortified at being duped to report it.
As a published author, I’m often asked what advice I have for aspiring authors. It used to be to persevere, that the traditional publishing process was a big waiting game. Since the advent of self-publishing, I’d added that new writers who went that route should make sure the product they put out was “ready for the marketplace”–that publishing well was better than “getting something out there” that they might not live down. Maybe I’d be wise to add another caveat akin to “never let them see you sweat”–never let them see you’re desperate.
As writers, we know that it’s a buyers marketplace. There are far more books being written than there are slots on the publishers’ lists. This can make anyone eager to get their work out into the marketplace feel a little anxious. Even turning to self-publishing is no guarantee that your work will be seen anywhere aside from the boxes in your own garage.
Even though writing is a solitary profession, I urge aspiring authors to get out into the writing world, even if it is only online. There are a plethora of writer’s groups where you can discuss the writing life, like my own fictionfolks group at Yahoo. Research any company you think of doing business with. Visit sites that report scams such as Preditors and Editors, Writer’s Beware and other websites. And remember, like with anything else, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
This entry is in response to the feedback on my last entry. For those of you who don’t know, I changed that entry somewhat, as something I wrote at the end seemed to invite criticism (as opposed to critique) of the work the artist did on the cover for Body of Truth. As a fellow artist of another sort, I know I wouldn’t want my work posted anywhere for someone to make fun of. The artist’s rendering isn’t the issue–aside from knowing the difference between a Manhattan and a Bronx skyline. We all work hard for the money. Besides, cover artist don’t come up with concepts, that comes from elsewhere.
I agree that it would indeed be foolhardy if this blog was the first place I voiced displeasure with my cover. That would be a disservice to all involved. But it is also true that publishers will invariably ask you what you want on the cover, then put on there whatever they think will sell. As I’m in this to make money, too, the publisher’s motives and mine are not at odds. Where we differ is execution. Who’s right–them or me? Who the hell knows, but I’ll tell you this, every single person who has read this book has said “Huh?” when it comes to this cover. Even my twelve-year-old daughter (who I assure you has not read one word) said, “But where’s the dead body on the cover?” Now I admit, she’s a bloodthirsty little thing, but she’s got a point, no?
Well, I wasn’t exactly expecting dead bodies, but rather some hint that suspense plays a large role in the story even though it’s a romance. What I was expecting was one of those dangerous/sexy photographic covers I’d admired on other Dafina romantic/suspense titles. (See titles by Sophia Shaw, Janette McCarthy Louard and Angie Daniels for examples of what I mean.) Instead of wondering “Why me”" I’m wondering “Why not me?” especially considering that there is more of a suspense plot in my story than in some of the others who got the treatment I wanted.
At any rate, I don’t feel I am complaining (or at least hope I don’t come off as some whiny author) but in some ways anticipating what I know I am going to hear from readers. Like LaShaunda said, readers like to know when their romance is tempered with some other element, like suspense or the supernatural. So folks, be advised, this book has more than one mystery to solve, one hell of a sexy couple and an ending that will knock your socks off.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can read the book yourself (and for the time being the excerpt on my website) and decide what you think. (Hint, hint.)
