Well, I’ve done it.  For any readers of this blog who might be interested in some of the films and TV shows that I’ve been ODing on from Netflix, you can now visit my secondary blog, “Northingflix,” by visiting northingflix.wordpress.com.  I probably won’t keep it updated quite as frequently as this one, but feel free to take a look if you’re bored and out of ideas on what to rent for the weekend.  You might just find something interesting.  But we here at Northinflix, LLC, reserve the right to retract that comment at any time.

I’ve been giving heavy consideration to creating a brother blog for “My Books Are Waiting,” which will provide an outlet for my other passion, film.  But I won’t be calling it “My Films are Waiting,” since all I’ve got to offer in that realm are a few silly movies featuring our cats.  No, I’ve been thinking that it might be fun to use our ridiculously high-powered Netflix account to another end:  Discussing recent titles that have come to me in the mail.  To be honest, the only reason this idea is tempting is because my wife and I have watched a ton of great movies and TV series lately that many people may or may not have heard of.

So, stay tuned.  It’s very likely that I’ll have another blog up-and-running on this topic someday soon.  And just in case I’m sending out the wrong signal here, I’m talking about recent films like “Little Children,” and TV shows like “Huff.”  I’m not the type to gorge on action flicks and the latest eight-season -long drivel that Fox pumps out.  Though there may be a few posts about dirty secrets (who doesn’t love an ancient episode of “McGuyver” every now and again?)  For all of those who are interested, I’ll keep you posted.

While perusing my blogroll this afternoon, I realized that until now I’d misspelled Dystel & Goderich as Dystel & Giderich.  My humblest apologies for this mistake.  Not to mention that I’m now on a first-name basis (and in a writer’s group) with someone who is represented by their company.  Embarrassing?  Yup.

I’d also like to take the opportunity to draw your attention to the newest addition in the roll — “Snapshots at St. Arbucks,” written by a very clever man with an endearing literary voice.  (It wasn’t just his recent comment on my “Rejected 2.0″ post that convinced me I should add him to my list; really, I’ve read his work and I like it a lot.  And you should read it too, dammit.  Period.)

Speaking of which, I’d like to invite the opinions of fellow writers on the topic of rejection.  After receiving numerous rejections for a manuscript, there is always the compulsion (for me) to fret over “what is wrong with it” and seek to re-re-polish/edit/rewrite the hell out of it.  But lately I’ve found that I’m more likely to continue with current projects, ignoring the old, turning my back on those that are still floating out there aimlessly from agent to agent or publisher to publisher.  I’d like to know what approach other writers take to this process.  Do you dance the dance?, or do you simply shrug and say, “To hell with them — I know it’s good, I spent three years relearning how good it is.  I’m just going to keep on writing new stuff till I luck out.”  What I guess I’m asking is, Is it wrong to believe that you’ve done the best that you can if no one ever turns to you and says, “I’d like to publish you”?

I certainly don’t think so, but how about you?

Well, it’s that time again folks! A few months after submitting my most recent project to Hotel St. George Press, I received a rejection letter via email. Here it is, in its perfect simplicity:

Dear Christopher,

Thank you for your submission, Sanatorium [my tentative title]. Unfortunately, we can’t
find a place for it at Hotel St. George Press at this time. We wish
you luck placing your work elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Alex Rose

Now that’s a proper rejection letter. Short, to the point, but with the slightest hint of possible non-form-letterness. Then again, the title of my book was, in fact, in all caps in the original email. Hmmmm. Ah, well. Still have one pending out there in the literary ether.

Force fields, time travel, hovercars, and mind reading are no longer a thing of the past…nor the future. Certainly not the present, either. But wouldn’t it be cool if someone were to finally come out and say just how possible such things would be, given the right technology and time?

Enter Michio Kaku, physicist, and author of Parallel Worlds and (most recently) Hyperspace. I was lucky enough to unpack an ARC of his newest book — due out from Doubleday in March of next year — entitled Physics of the Impossible. Science fiction moonlighters rejoice!

Kaku takes all of our favorite sci-fi tricks like teleportation, phasers, starships, and invisibility, and subjects them to a grading system. Is it a Class One Impossibility?, or Class Five? How could these things actually work?, and what improvements must be made to our technology in order to enable them to work? As he does so well, Kaku’s writing is as accessible to the layman as it is entertaining (I must imagine) to the more erudite aspiring Stephen Hawkings. He laces in great illustrations and examples from every known corner of the literary world. From Tolkien to Star Trek, Plato to Back to the Future. Here is one of my favorite quotes from the book, on the topic of invisibility:

Clearly, invisibility is a property that arises at the atomic level, via Maxwell’s equations, and hence would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate using ordinary means. To make Harry Potter invisible, one would have to liquefy him, boil him to create steam, crystallize him, heat him again, and then cool him, all of which would be quite difficult, even for a wizard.

Playful and wry, but unflinchingly honest about the lengths to which our present technology may or may not be able to take us, Physics of the Impossible somehow manages to be informative but also a light read. Well, maybe not “light” in the truest sense, but certainly a good weekend, lounge-on-the-couch read, with the occasional guffaw and frequent, “huh, that’s interesting.” For anyone who loves science fiction, but disapproves of its far-fetched themes, this book will make you want to curl up in front of a Battlestar Galactica marathon and say, “Hey,…maybe that’s only ten years from now…who knows?”

Just sat down for a smoke and a quick email-check — both of which I do too often.  I was hugely excited to find that support@wordpress had sent me a comments moderation email.  (Of which I’ve disappointingly gotten only one before now.)  I simply had to approve it, for it’s one of those comments that should not go unseen.  Here it is, in full, a comment posted for my most recent entry, “The Blue Nametag”:

Hello! I just want to know, why I have found this page using russian keyword, that translates from Russian like “roof”?

Excellent question.  Apparently I’m big in Russia.  Take that, America!

So at long last I was invited to attend an event where I was fortunate enough to meet with published authors. It was inevitable, I suppose, but wholly unexpected at the same time. Unexpected also was the treatment an unpublished writer received when in the midst of a few award-winning/nominated authors. This is my story:

The Utah Humanities Council rang in their tenth year of Book Festivals on the last weekend of October. To celebrate, there was a reception on the Friday preceding. This literary soiree was held at the Salt Lake Main Branch Library — a stunning building with those glass-walled elevators that I would’ve loved to have ridden in as a kid. (Ignoring the fact that I was giddy while riding said elevators, even as a twenty-seven year old.) Guests included ambassadors from any bookstore within a fifty-mile radius, as well as notable authors who were to be featured the following day.

Among them, there was Sara Zarr, front-runner for the National Book Award; Terry Trueman, author of the award-winning Stuck In Neutral; Gordon Campbell, mentioned in a previous post for Missing Witness; and fellow King’s Englisher, Ann Cannon.

Sara Zarr, who is currently in NYC for the NBA awards ceremony, was the first author I met that night. A very approachable young woman, Sara is not at all what one might expect from a person whose debut novel is queuing for a prestigious award. Her second novel, Sweethearts, is due out next year — but you can read a review on the popular blog, Advanced Reader. For young adult audiences, Ms. Zarr’s work is a must-have. (And I’m not only saying this because she’s a great person; she’s a damn fine writer, too.)

I didn’t meet Terry Trueman until about a half-hour before the party wound down. He was exceptionally tall — though coming from a five-foot-seven source, I’m guessing that’s a bit misleading — and he was, in a word, hilarious. Not five minutes into a conversation with him and I felt that I’d actually made a professional acquaintance in the book world. He confessed that he was terrible at correspondence — as many writers do — and yet handed me his card, an open invitation to email him whenever I pleased.

Most interesting to me about that night was that each time I encountered a new author, the immediate (and obvious) question was, “So, what do you do?” (The coveted Blue Nametag betrayed their own professions, of course.) My response was invariably, “Oh, I’m a writer, but I work for the King’s English.” Now, this response generally elicits the following question: “Do you have anything published?” One might even expect this question to come more readily from a published author, and yet not once was this the case. Both Sara and Terry simply said, “Really?, what do you write?”

Perhaps it was that they spied the extreme lack of a Blue Nametag dangling from my neck; perhaps not. Who can say? All that I know is that when I entered, I was asked the most important question of the night. A kindly, diminutive woman seated at a long table said, “Are you an author?” She meant, “Do I give you one of these wonderful and priceless Blue Nametags, or just the regular, boring old white one?” And to be honest, folks, I actually stammered at her. I almost came right out and said, “Yes, I’m an author.” Why not? It wouldn’t have been a lie.

The reason all of this strikes me as odd is that I’ve never been so comfortable announcing that I am, indeed, a writer. For once in my life, it didn’t seem like a joke to be proud, though unpublished. And the fact that this feeling occurred to me in the most unlikely company is a mystery. Like my father always said, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” Well, fine — I’ll give him that one. But it seems that I finally have a chance to “know” a few of those “who’s.”

Many of you may have already heard of The Slush Pile Reader. Brainchild of Swedish-born Johanna and Pascal Denize, The Slush Pile Reader is designed to deliver completed manuscripts directly into the hands of a reading public…before the manuscripts are even published. The idea is to “let the public decide” what should or shouldn’t make it to the shelf. By casting their votes, readers get to have a role in what Slush Pile will consider for publication. Interesting, no?

I see two immediate flaws, however. One of which is the most obvious: What the hell will my book look like when it’s published by a company owned by people who’ve never been in the publishing industry before? (The Denizes have had experience in business development, and their partner, one Henrick Kemkes, has worked in Web development.) But the question remains: Will the book actually come out looking like it was printed and bound at Kinko’s?

The second, probably more futile question, is: Who are these “readers?” Because, let’s face it, if the average reader is actually an average reader, then (s)he will probably prefer to read published manuscripts, just as the average reader almost always has. Lord knows there are a few of us out there who risk our friends’ pride by offering to read their work (always an interesting transaction), but how many people out there are willing to extend such a favor to a complete stranger? How many of us really want to dash the hopes of a struggling writer by voting NO against them? (I imagine heaps of John K Tooles scattered in all directions, as far as the horizon.) Furthermore, there’s this nettling question of just who these “average readers” will really be.

Will these readers be work-from-home readers who have a lot of time on their hands, and figure that they may as well use their time to offer their valuable opinions to aspiring writers? Or will they be hoaxters who want nothing more than to pin the writer against a wall and rail them with negative votes, just for the sheer hell of it? No, what’s most likely is this — The Slush Pile Reader’s integral “audience” will most likely be us. The writers. It seems painfully obvious. It’ll be nothing more than an anonymous writer’s workshop where some people will actually be nice, constructive, et cetera; others will be competitive, shouting out big NO’s, simply because someone else did the same to them; still others will be wrought with despair at criticisms or taking advice from others a little too often. And so on. Most of us know what goes on in some workshops, and it seems to me that Slush Pile will be no exception.

Then again, I could be powerfully wrong. Perhaps we should all register and just see what happens. Someday we could have a book on the shelf that looks as good as something printed on an HP2575 Inkjet. And we shall hope that they don’t plan to name their “publishing house” after the website.

After finishing Wodicka’s All Shall Be Well…, which I addressed at length in my last post, I moved directly on to the dark Edwardian mystery, The Somnambulist.  Jonathan Barnes, an Oxford grad and contributer to the Times Literary Supplement, has made his debut with a wonderfully weird book.  At first I thought I was in for a Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell sort of tale, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.  The Somnambulist manages instead to be hilarious at moments, absurd at times, and intriguing overall.

Edward Moon, illusionist and part-time crime-solver, is bored with his life.  He hasn’t had a good mystery to solve in quite a while.  He and his “Watson” — in this case an eight-foot tall mute who writes on a chalkboard (and can’t spell a damn thing correctly) — are quickly dragged from their torpor when a circus freak called the Human Fly commits a murder.  Sound bizarre?  You don’t know the half of it.  Among the many despicable characters in this book are a man who claims to know the future because he’s “lived it,” a brothel full of mutant prostitutes (among whom Moon himself has a few favorites), and an incredibly hate-able albino.

It’s Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently books, though set in the world of Doyle, as told by a pleasantly bombastic and wholly unreliable narrator (whose identity remains a secret till the end of the story).  To dust off an old adage, “There’s something in it for everyone.”  And that’s not something I say often — in fact, I loathe cliches as much as the next writer.

The Somnambulist is due out from William Morrow, a Harper Collins imprint, in February of 2008.  Though naturally you could track a copy down in the UK, where it’s been out all year.  Once more, damn you Brits for getting all the good stuff first!   

It’s not often that the younger writer — and by this I mean the writer in his or her twenties — comes across a fantastic work of literary fiction written by someone of a similar age. (I’m excluding here the sort of sensationalist pulp that passes as literary these days, with regards to a young writer whose name I refuse to mention and whose books make me physically ill.) Enter Tod Wodicka, author of All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well. Young literary novelists rejoice, for here is our man!

Originally published the UK this year, the book will make its American debut in January of ‘08; I can only surmise that the Brits got dibs because Wodicka, though originally born in New York, is an expatriate living in Berlin. He was only twenty-nine when his novel was published by Jonathan Cape, a division of Random House. (This means I’m only two years behind the man.) In the States, it’s being published under Pantheon, an American imprint under Knopf — also, of course, a division of Random House.

Burt Hecker, the main character of the piece, is 63, divorced, and dresses in medieval garb. He calls himself a “medieval reenactor.” Often he’ll refuse to interact with anything that wouldn’t have been present during medieval times — in the first chapter he politely refuses to drink coffee, calling it “OOP,” or “out of period.” The story begins with a pilgrimage from the States to Rhineland, Germany, in order to celebrate the 900th birthday of St Hildegard von Bingen. What the others in his company don’t realize is that Hecker has bought a one-way ticket. He admits that he has no idea why he did this, and seems whimsically aloof to the consequences.

I’ll leave the synopsis there. I suppose if your interest has been piqued, you’ll either track down another blurb through the links above, or just order the book and read it. The latter being, of course, the recommended approach.

What appeals to me most about this novel is Wodicka’s execution. Though told primarily in first-person subjective, there are seamless interweaves of rumination that blend incomparably with the present-tense narrative. The effect is not unlike the daydreaming mind: One moment, Hecker will be sitting in a car, staring out the window, and the next he’ll be revisiting a road trip that he and his ex-family had taken years prior. But the stunning element is that the two, very separate, times overlap. Clothing, conversation, and setting all seem to intermingle. And yet never is there a moment that Wodicka’s style resembles the rambling (and often confusing or boring) feel of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Which is a great relief to me, since stream-of-consciousness has always left me feeling like more of a codebreaker than a real reader.

For further information, there are a few sites to visit. One is a great interview from the BBC, linked with Wodicka’s name above, but also here. Not to mention that there’s a collection of CDs on Amazon; the author wishes to point out the various musical influences on his book.

(I would never have built a link to Amazon, in all honesty, unless the tiny blurbs Wodicka offered for each of the albums weren’t supremely entertaining. Most of it is Hildegard’s own music — that’s right, she isn’t only a saint, but also a famous composer.)

All of that being said: READ THE BOOK.