“Old” D’Agnese Blog

This blog has moved! Go here...

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 09:13:53 -0400

Some important news! This blog is moving to a new address, effective...like, two minutes ago.

As I’ve been making more friends among readers and writers, it’s become more important to me to have a place where we can have a conversation, and this blog is no long the most convenient place to do that.

For now, the website is staying, the blog is moving here.

The RSS feed is here.

I look forward to seeing some of you in the new space.

The Hoboken Sandwich

Tue, 29 May 2012 10:07:04 -0400

You were probably comatose last week if you didn’t come across Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech. Every website under the sun linked to it.

One part that caught my ear was this bit where Gaiman revealed himself to be—at least to my mind—a sandwicheer:

***

“We're in a transitional world right now, if you're in any kind of artistic field, because the nature of distribution is changing, the models by which creators got their work out into the world, and got to keep a roof over their heads and buy sandwiches while they did that, are all changing. I've talked to people at the top of the food chain in publishing, in bookselling, in all those areas, and nobody knows what the landscape will look like two years from now, let alone a decade away. The distribution channels that people had built over the last century or so are in flux for print, for visual artists, for musicians, for creative people of all kinds.”

***

Buying sandwiches, Neil?

The reference reminded me of the late Warren Zevon’s last-ever appearance on David Letterman’s show in 2002. Zevon was dying of cancer when he basically suggested that the key to a good life is remembering to enjoy every sandwich. When he died, his friends did a tribute album with that very name.

Sandwicheers are guys who love themselves a good sandwich and figure out ways to work discussion of said sandwiches into commencement speeches and poignant TV appearances.

I know these guys. I had one for a roommate once. And I’d like to think that I’m at least an associate member of their club.

Years ago, when I was living in Hoboken, New Jersey, I wrote an article about my favorite sandwich, which appeared in The New York Times. I was a freelancer for the newspaper back then, writing each week about fun, weird, quaint things to do in New Jersey for the now-defunct New Jersey section of the Times.

According to the newspaper’s search engine, I probably wrote about 120 articles for the paper during this period of my life. (Unless I wrote 60 and the paper ran 60 letters of complaint.)

But one of the most personal pieces was this essay about the prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich that was so popular in the delis there in town. My family and I had a long history with that sandwich stretching back to my childhood.

The article begins:

***

THERE was a bitter, if forlorn yet stubborn beauty everywhere you looked in Hoboken.'' So wrote Edward Abbey, the naturalist and writer, who lived in the Mile Square City for a single year in the 60's, or maybe the 70's (he was not clear on the point).
A year is not a long time, but he stayed long enough to sing the praises of the town's 25 bars, only two of which -- the Clam Broth House and the Cafe Elysian -- survive. In one passage, he says Hoboken is ''too sweet, too pure, too romantic'' to be lumped in with the rest of New Jersey. Sometime I think he has a point.
For me, the town's magic comes wrapped in wax paper.

***

I’d reprint the essay in its entirety here, but those stories were all work-for-hire and the Times owns the rights. Boo-hoo-hoo.

As God is my witness, I’ll link to them all one of these days.

If you want to read it, though, you can go here.

Thanks to Jack Silbert for providing the photo.

That Gum You Like Is Back In Style

Mon, 28 May 2012 17:46:45 -0400

Tod Fisher, the detective in my book The Mesmerist, apparently has a fondness for old-fashioned chewing gum, specifically the three brands now produced by Cadbury Adams.

From what I understand, these gums aren’t hugely popular today, but they do sell enough for the manufacturers to justify making them in batch quantities every couple of years.

Clove gum tastes like, well, cloves, the spiky spice you’ve tasted in Christmas wassail concoctions or else in various holiday ham dishes. Black Jack tastes like licorice or, more formally, anise. And Beeman’s tastes like wintergreen, the flavoring in birch beer.

I got hooked on these gums back in the early nineties when, if I’m not mistaken, Black Jack was referenced in the David Lynch’s TV show Twin Peaks. (See the video here.)

I enjoy them but I don’t find them in stores that often; when I do I buy a handful of packs. Yes, you can order them bulk online, but somehow that feels like defeating the purpose. These are gums that ought to bought from a barrel in a quaint general store, or a modern store that’s ably faking that milieu.

When I was writing The Mesmerist, I gave Fisher an affinity for “nostalgic” gums, since so much of his personality is about squelching things from his past. But the novelty gums quickly worked their way into the plot. At one point, the flavor of Clove gum triggers one of the cop’s sense memories. At another, the gum plays a critical role in an escape.

If you spot them anywhere in the real world, you ought to try them. They’re just plain tasty.

Readability & the Self-Published Author

Mon, 28 May 2012 16:39:34 -0400

Productivity guru David Allen says we all need to get handle on our “collection points” if we want to get organized. That’s why I love the Readability app—it helps me collect everything I want to read on my Kindle.

Every day I come across articles and blog posts I’d like to read more thoroughly or even a second time. I used to bookmark these, but I’d never go back to read them. I used the “reading list” feature on my Safari browser for a while but eventually stopped using it efficiently.

Then I signed up for Readability and added a “Send to my Kindle” button to my browser bar. Now, when I come across a post or longer article than I can’t just zip through immediately, I send it to my new collection point, my Kindle. The next time I settle in with my e-reader, I have a bunch of articles waiting for me. I’ll read them before or after I get into the book I’m currently reading. This way, nothing slips through the cracks.

There’s been some research to support that the notion that the ideal environment for digesting reading material is not the web, when you’re battling ads, work, and other distractions. Apps like Readability strip out the ads, the reader’s comments, and convert articles into mini e-books, so you can adjust fonts and point sizes easily.

I downloaded the Readability app to my phone. Technically, I don’t need to do this, but my phone’s with me more often than my Kindle is. If I’m ever stuck somewhere without reading material, I can easily open the reading list on my phone and knock off a few more articles on my list.

I think GTD-master David Allen would approve. He argues that we feel overwhelmed the more collection points we have. Reducing those points helps us more efficiently process them. In the old days, I used to have a basket of unread magazines and newspaper clippings in the TV room. That basket is less and less relevant as I find more of my articles—typically about the book publishing business—online. The Kindle is now my virtual magazine basket.

This article at Moby Lives is somewhat incorrectly titled “The Ethics of Reading It Later.” They note that for all the reading we do online, we don’t really like the experience because it’s uncomfortable. We’d rather read on our own time, in our comfy chairs, under a comfortable light, and without ads.

That raises issues for the people who put that content out there, people who are banking on us seeing those ads.

And reading apps such as Readability, Instapaper, and Pocket pose an interesting dilemma for self-pubbed authors, whether we’ve noticed it or not.

Many writers post free short stories on their blogs. The implication is that you can read that story on the author’s site for free, but if you want the story on your e-reader, you need to buy it from a retailer such as Amazon or Smashwords. Scraping the text and converting it into an ebook has been regarded as unethical. It happens, but it’s not worth fretting about, we’re told, because it has historically been too much trouble to do.

But if all it takes is a click of a button to turn someone’s blog post to an e-book, and the whole culture is moving to this reading model, some writers are going to think twice about posting that story.

Others will say: Who cares? If you care enough about my work to convert it, read it tonight on your Kindle, and save it to your library, huzzah to you.

I think I’d kill to have more readers like that. But I don’t know yet what they’re going to cost me.

Amazon's emailing my friends and readers

Sat, 26 May 2012 15:21:09 -0400

This week I got four emails from readers and friends who reported that they’d gotten an email from Amazon alerting them that I had a new book coming out. This is the first time I’ve ever experienced this from Amazon, so I thought it was worth trying to analyze what’s going on.

First, the book in question is a small, stocking-stuffer-sized book published by Quirk Books, entitled Stuff Every American Should Know. It’s part of a series Quirk has going: Stuff Men Should Know, Stuff Moms Should Know, Jokes Men Should Know—you get the idea.

The series sells well for them, and they asked my wife/co-author and me to contribute a book of U.S. history trivia, as a result of our series for Quirk on the signers of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration. The signers books sell well in historic site gift shops, and Quirk thought it might be smart to do a “Stuff” history title. The book is really short—10,000 words—and lists for $9.99. (I know, I know.) The print edition is out June 5; the Kindle edition is already out.

But look at what Amazon’s been sending to my readers. All of these emails were sent between 6:30 AM and 7:00 AM of the days in question.

On May 22, Reader #1, who has only bought my (traditionally published) children’s book—in other words, none of my history titles are in this person’s purchasing history—received this:

Notice that the ad features the new book but also has room for four more titles, in this case my book for freelancers (Random House); a history title (Quirk); my children’s history title (Scholastic); and my weeks-old, self-published novel, The Mesmerist. (Bang drums, blow trumpets here.)

On May 24, Reader #2, who has only ever bought one of my self-published books, The Scientist and the Sociopath, reported receiving this email:

In this case, Amazon dropped The Mesmerist and added my children’s book about the mathematician Fibonacci, traditionally published by Holt.

On May 25, Reader #3, who has bought my signer titles in the past as gifts, reported receiving this ad. Notice that it displays yet a different permutation of my titles. Clearly, the system omits from the ad any book which it knows the person has already has bought.

My wife heard from a fourth reader who has only bought our freelancer title. Reader #4’s ad promotes the same “Stuff” title but touts it as my wife’s book. This makes sense; my wife’s byline comes first on our freelancer title in Amazon’s system.

I have no idea how many of these ads went out this week. My contact at the publisher confirms that this is a “new” thing Amazon is trying, but she didn’t know if it’s only for certain titles or authors. It’s also not clear if this ad went out to people who had bought books similar to the “Stuff” title.

I was excited to get some attention for not one, but two of my most recent books. The big question here is what impact have all these ads had on sales of all of my titles? I’d say, Meh. Judging from the ranks of the “older” books that have appeared in the ad, I’d say not much. I can tell you that the ads had virtually no impact on The Mesmerist, which is the title I was most curious about.

For about two seconds I wondered if they’d ever send out something like this to announce the arrival of one of my self-pubbed titles, but I think it’s clear that this is aimed at drumming up pre-orders and self-pubbed titles don’t get logged into the system the same way as traditionally published titles, which have on-sale dates. But the system does use sales data from self-pubbed books and isn’t above promoting self-pubbed books in the “more” section.

As for Stuff Americans Should Know, it is now solidly in the five-figure rank range, a far cry from the deep six-figures it was a week ago. In fact, on May 23, when I checked the hardcover book’s rank, I saw that it had hit three lists:

I just checked the title and the rank is slightly better and it’s still on the same three lists—all without racking up any reviews. I don’t expect this bounce to last long without the reviews.

So I guess we can say that the ad did its intended job, which was to drive sales and pre-orders for Stuff. I intend to check the sales figures of all the books that have appeared in this ad this week and report back if/when I learn anything interesting.

+++++++++++++++++++

Some other news:

* I’m looking into some other blog options because it’s becoming apparent that people actually do stop by to read this and I’d like the chance to interact with you in a manner better than this iWeb blog will allow. More on that as soon as I make a decision on platform.

* I was surprised/delighted that The Mesmerist has picked up some reviews already from people I don’t actually know, which is gratifying. The most substantive review is here.

* Both of my novels could still use some reviews, so I’m continuing my offer: If you’d like a free copy of either Jersey Heat or The Mesmerist in exchange for your honest review on Amazon and anywhere else you’d like to post, kindly contact me via my contact page and I’ll send you a file for your device. If you want to participate but don’t “do” devices, write me anyway and I’ll hook you up with a tidy PDF version. (Paperbacks coming soon; I promise.) And no, I’m not afraid that you might hate the books. I need reviews of all kinds, good and bad.

The Mesmerist is live! (Sort of.)

Thu, 10 May 2012 15:52:28 -0400

My new e-book, The Mesmerist, is live on Amazon. It’s been published to B&N and Smashwords as well, but will take a while to filter through to those stores.

Both of my novels could use some reviews, so I’m making a limited-time offer: If you’d like a free copy of either Jersey Heat or The Mesmerist in exchange for your honest review on Amazon and Goodreads, kindly contact me via my contact page and I’ll send you a file for your device. If you want to participate but don’t “do” devices, write me anyway and I’ll hook you with a tidy PDF version. (Paperbacks coming soon; I promise.) And no, I’m not afraid that you might hate the books. I need reviews of all kinds, good and bad.

Here’s the pitch:

***

Are you a think—or an unthink?

On the streets of New York City in the 1970s, this is the only question that matters.

In the age of disco, the city has become home to an underground culture of gifted individuals who can kill with a glance or heal with a touch.

A vicious madman is sucking the life out of his victims—crushing their hearts, withering their bodies, and leaving their corpses old before their time.

All with the power of his mind.

Now a skeptical young cop and a federal agent obsessed with the occult must run the killer to ground before they find themselves facing the unthinkable.

An 85,000-word urban fantasy noir by the author of the eco-thriller, Jersey Heat.

This full-length novel is intended for mature audiences.

***
If you’re looking for more discussion on this, I can tell you that the book is set in New York, 1979, which was an interesting time in the city’s history. It’s the age of disco, the age of the city’s most famous serial killer (Son of Sam), and the time of America’s first great oil crisis. (A gallon of gasoline hit $1 for the first time that year, which had devastating knock-on affects for the American psyche.)

New York City was in a fiscal nightmare. Trash littered the streets; graffiti was rampant. Most of the parks New Yorkers treasure today crawled with drug dealers. The city was a crime-ridden dump because the middle class was fleeing the island for the suburbs, taking their tax dollars with them. The disaster of America’s involvement in Vietnam had wrapped up in 1975, but the effects of that war were still impacting the nation’s politics. Nixon was out of office, and Americans had elected a mild-mannered peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, as their president.

And yet, at the same time, it was a time of great flowering for artists such as Warhol, Hockney, and Serra. Gehry and Pei were designing some of their greatest architecture, and the World Trade Center was nearing completion in lower Manhattan. Part of the novel touches on the art scene of the time.

And I intend to follow up this book with two others in a trilogy, featuring the book’s two occult detectives, Soul and Fisher.

As Fisher and Soul try to track their killer, they’re forced to make sense of the killer’s powers by researching books on psychic phenomenon. So there’s kind of a bizarre paper chase going on in the plot.

When I was a child my father was obsessed with psychic phenomenon, and I suppose I absorbed this stuff by osmosis. He devoured old books about men like Emile Coue, the father of autosuggestion; Edgar Cayce, a psychic who claimed to “read” books by sleeping on them; Edmund Shaftesbury, a quack and charlatan who tried to teach people the power of “personal magnetism”; and Thomson Jay Hudson, a skeptic who tried to make sense of these bullshit claims.

In my book, of course, all this stuff is treated as if it is true. Fisher, the cop, is the skeptic; Soul, the FBI man, is a believer.

You can page through Hudson’s book here, and see some of those old-fashioned print block designs they used in books of that period, if that interests you…

Sample page 1
Sample page 2
Sample page 3

I hope this is a good introduction to the concepts of this book. I’ll be back in a few day or so to talk about the art world connections.

Oh—in the time it took me to write this post, I sold a copy on Smashwords. Yay.

I bow, as always, to the incredible talent of Jeroen ten Berge. Here’s the complete cover image:

Coming Soon: The Mesmerist

Tue, 1 May 2012 09:34:53 -0400

The Mesmerist is an urban fantasy noir novel that I’ll be releasing this month. The story is set in an alt-version of 1979 New York City, in an era when looks can kill and hands can heal.

I’ll be posting some more details as they’re ready.

I bow, as always, to the incredible talent of Jeroen ten Berge. Here’s the complete image:

Picasso's Bull

Sat, 3 Mar 2012 09:21:06 -0500

My late journalism professor came from the school of hard-hitting newspapermen of the 1940s and 50s. Later in life he switched to magazine work, which was more lucrative. One publication paid his way from Philadelphia to New York so he could be on the premises while they edited his work. They were in a rush to get the article edited so those pages could be shipped to the printer. They put him in a nice office with a typewriter, where he waited, doing nothing. He enjoyed fine lunches and a lovely hotel room at their expense. Finally, after a week, an anxious editor brought in some sheets of paper with some redline comments. "Here it is! We're going to need this right away. When do you think you could get it to us?"

"You can have it in fifteen minutes if you leave it with me and shut the door," he said.

Nothing has changed in 50 years.

At every turn the writer, journalist or author is told to rush, rush, rush, to get the work in on deadline because it is Very Important and because his editors are On Deadline. The writer delivers the work, and the deadlines somehow evaporate as editors take months to get back to them.

I’ve seen this happen in every corner of the publishing industry with the exception of newspapers. In newspapers, they still have daily deadlines. I’m only now revising a magazine article that I delivered three months ago because it took the editors that long to get back to me with notes (and my check).

And late last night I received word that an editor will absolutely, positively get me comments on a book I and another ghost client delivered five months ago.

I’m a little obsessed with such things these days because everything is tied together in my mind with the growth of indie publishing. The book industry wants to know why it is doing poorly. I’ll tell you why if you can answer why it takes five months before you tell your authors what you think of their book?

Nothing is without consequences. The second advance payment of any traditionally published book is typically tied to the book’s delivery and acceptance. That means that before the writer can receive his/her second payment, he must deliver the book, and have the editor read it, edit it, and submit requests for changes to the text. The writer must make those changes, and deliver it back to the editor. The editor must then formally “accept” those changes. In some publishing houses, the book must be submitted to the copy-editing department. Then, and only then, will the publisher cut the author his second check.

In our case on this project, we could easily receive our money six or seven months after we’ve delivered the book.

What a way to thank an author for getting a book in on time.

Now, you could very well say to me, as one Man of Business once did, “Well, you can’t rely on that one book to pay the bills. You must be working on more than one thing at a time.”

I am and I do, good sir. In this household we have five traditionally published books in various stages of production at the moment. Some are our own, some are ghost projects. And I have no doubt that five times in a row we will be made to feel unimportant by our dilatory publishers.

Yes, I know. They are quite busy.

But so am I.

There’s another element at work here that is more difficult to discuss. For whatever reason, people equate time with quality. If a book takes a long time to produce, people reason wrongly that it must be better than a book that took a short time to produce. A fast writer is judged harshly under this paradigm. Now a lot of editors are spouting the lie that self-published books can’t possibly be as good as “professionally” published books because professional books are...professionaler. Because editors and their crack teams lavish attention on a book to make it the very best before it goes out the door.

My answer to that is, it depends. I spend a lot of time in bookstores and I see a lot of beautiful looking books out there. I read a lot of great books too. But what makes them beautiful or well written is not months and months of work. Most book designers I know have many books to design and whip out covers covers as fast as they possibly can. They’re the equivalent of writers like me. They have a massive job to do and they pull it off quickly and expertly because they’re experts who happen to be quick.

My wife went through something similar on a project she once worked on. On a conference call with the publisher and the nominal author, my wife announced that meeting a deadline only two months away was reasonable and achievable. The author, whose name would be on the book but who would write not one of those words, expressed concern: “That’s too soon. This needs to be good.”

The implication: Shouldn't this process take years?

We go through this each time we write a book of this sort. People don’t want to accept that a first draft of a book can be written in such a short amount of time. If it can, it can't possibly be any good. The work and the writer are judged by this.

I took a lot of art classes when I was a kid. I distinctly remember one instructor telling me to stop making sloppy circles on my page and learn the value of putting down one correct line instead.

Watch Picasso draw that bull in thirty seconds. Look at how he knows just how to move his hand to create the slope of the bull’s back. When he flicks the brush at the bull’s head, he knows from years of experience that the bristles will leave a stroke suggestive of the bull’s horn. And he knows just how little paint to apply to hint at the bull’s legs.

Tell me: How is Picasso’s approach different from Elmore Leonard’s famous dictum?

“Leave leave out the parts nobody reads.”

Some of the best movies produced in Hollywood were scripted in six weeks. When someone is paying you money in Hollywood, they want those pages fast. Some people sit and write crappy movies in that time, others gold.

It's not the time but the talent of the artist that matters. Experts do a lot with the time handed them. Boobs only piss it away.

L.A. Cappuccino

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:27:04 -0500

Denise sent this photo to show me what she’s having for breakfast on the West Coast.