Smallfish Clover

Great Review, Fabulous Review

Remember how a while back I talked about "Getting a Review" -- about contacting the Amazon Top 50 and sending them a query. Well, it took a few months to hear back, but it was worth every minute.

***** stars
An immensely rewarding novel full of adventure and meaning,
August 12, 2007
By Daniel Jolley (Shelby, North Carolina USA)

Heather Shaw has written a quite remarkable - and certainly memorable - debut novel. Billed as "a story that gets kids and honors the epic worlds inside them," Smallfish Clover delivers all the adventure and meaning necessary to interest and fascinate older children and adults all at the same time. The fantasy games young Pace uses to entertain himself in otherwise boring surroundings are nothing compared to the life-and-death struggle he finds himself in after getting lost from his father inside a Peruvian market. Frightened and alone, unable to speak the native language, he waits in vain to be found and whisked away to the world he has always known. Then, as hope dims, he finds companionship and a measure of care among a group of street orphans overseen by Mabeareek, a man poor of means but rich of spirit (with a menagerie of animals seemingly a part of his very being) and a storyteller par excellence. While he can be inscrutable and one doesn't know exactly what to make of him early on, he is not a coercive influence upon the boys at all. If anything, he usually follows the boy's lead. In this new company of friends, Pace embarks on the adventure of a lifetime. What follows is a story full of tragedy as well as hope, one that quickly transforms Smallfish from an imaginative adolescent to a young man compelled to face maturity head on.

Pace, (whose English name is converted, somewhat comically, to Smallfish), picks up Spanish rather quickly, and almost from the start he is looked upon as an up-and-coming leader of the group (which makes for some potential friction with the older, de facto leader Zeus). He impresses the other kids with magic tricks and, drawing upon his martial arts classes back home, teaches the other boys the art of fighting. Soon, the troupe has given up panhandling in order to become entertainers of sorts, staging fights and profiting from their endeavors. Of course, success breeds danger from an older gang in that part of town, so Mabeareek eventually follows Smallfish's thinking and heads his troupe north, into the jungles and their more isolated villages on the way to the Amazon River itself. Relying on Mabeareek's story-telling prowess, the kids begin staging their own dramas, yet their successes barely manage to wipe away their tragedies. Their numbers shrink over time, for various reasons (some more tragic than others), until those that remain find themselves absorbed into a larger group of youngsters being trained, although they may not realize it at the time, to become terrorists. Forced to grow up far too fast, Smallfish must ultimately choose what kind of life he will lead, a decision that requires great bravery on his part.

The little street urchins who make up Smallfish's friends and companions are an interesting lot - especially Belem, the only girl in the group. She never speaks - not at first - until compelled to do so by an emergency. Initially, only Smallfish learns why she chose to remain mute for so long, but I would say that she goes on to serve as the real heart of the entire story. Any reader will be hard pressed to forget the likes of Toma, PayPay, Fatty, Pedro, Zeus, and Horse, though.

Eschewing a fairy tale ending, Heather Shaw paints a beautiful masterpiece of a story that leaves the reader feeling proud, sad, and somewhat confused - much like Smallfish and his friends feel much of the time. This is powerful, reality-based fiction - albeit of a reality few of us know, and one which no boy should ever have to face head-on the way Smallfish does. I did find the conclusion somewhat ambiguous, but this is one case in which the destination pales in importance to the journey itself. Pace's transformation into Smallfish is fascinating, albeit sometimes heartbreaking, to watch, especially in terms of the way he balances external and internal struggles on his accelerated path to early manhood.

Another Contest

This one just ended, but I know you'll all want to enter next year. It's The Hollywood Book Festival and they choose books in different categories that celebrate "books worthy of further attention from the TV/Film industries."

Contests for Small Publishers and the Self Published

Always a good idea to get your book into these competitions. They're inexpensive and have lots of categories. (You're welcome to submit to more than one.) If your book is good, there's actually a chance you might walk home a finalist.

Here's one at the magazine where I work, ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards. An iUniverse author won Bronze last year, and Silver the year before. Winners are announced in a special ceremony at Book Expo America.

I do know something about the judging process at ForeWord: 2 of each book are submitted by authors or presses and one librarian and one trade person read the works of the 10 -12 finalists. The judges then submit individual written qualifications of their choices for the medals and any special mentions.

This one, DIY Convention, is going into its sixth year and has its big party in LA. Entry fees run $50, and if you win the Grand Prize, you get $1500 and a flight to the party. They're particularly big on the self-published and give awards for best cover as well as best guerilla marketing.

In the Independent Publisher Book Awards, you can compete on the regional or national level. $80 to enter and a big party in NYC.

Finally, there's the National Best Book Awards. $49 to enter and they offer winners a 4 month listing in the magazine. All submissions get immediate, one month coverage on their website. Deadline is soon.

Good luck! See you at the party.

Sony Reader and International Standards

I was down at a construction site this afternoon, talking to a plumber. He'd been digging through the floor of an old building in order to install updated plumbing and was discovering all sorts of intrigues -- like the original sewer was a good three feet below the surface (unusual inside a building) and beneath the asphalt of an old parking lot. Hmmm. Anyway, the guy was talkative -- as most of these subcontractors are -- and told me about how in 2000 the federal government standardized all procedures for the installation of electrical, plumbing, etc. Up until then, every state had its own rules and ways of doing things. The standardization made some things harder, he said, and some things easier. But the best outcome was that he could move anywhere in the US and get a job without additional training and licensing.

Which brings me to this Sony eReader I've got on loan. Right up front, it's a terrific devise. About the size of a paperback, but much thinner; I can easily throw it in my purse and take it anywhere. It uses ambient light, so the more light in the room (or outside) the better the picture on the screen.

All the books on the eReader must have come pre-installed as they were mostly excerpts, plus a Harlequin and some no-name thriller. I'd recently been to site called Wowio which offered all kinds of books, although mostly those with expired copyrights. Sherlock Holmes sounded like something to keep in my pocket, so I went through the eReader box looking for the software to upload books.

Sure, there was software, but only for Windows and I'm a Mac gal through and through.

Being a Mac gal, I know how to get around roadblocks, generally, so I Googled "mac software for ereader" and no problem -- there was libprs500 to save the day. I installed it, grabbed the FREE book off Wowio and uploaded it to the eReader easy as pie.

Except that the Wowio format was PDF and the font was so small I needed a magnifying glass to read it. (Looks great on the computer screen however, if you're interested.)

Back to the drawing board. I go to the eReader site for selling books to figure out what format they're using and discover that the files come in a propriatory software that I can't convert to. And even if I wanted to BUY a book, I can't because I have to have, you guessed it, Windows.

I know that iTunes was similarly discriminatory at the beginning, but asap added software for "the others." You many years ago was that? Four? You'd think that it would be common practice by now to be inclusive rather than exclusive when marketing a "change your life" device. Even Apple messed up big here by only allowing ATT to run their cellular service. What's the point? How many more people would have purchased the iPhone if it worked across platforms? Why limit access?

Like the international standards for builders, electronics manufacturers need to unchain themselves from the notion that they have to own everything. It didn't work for railroad tracks and it doesn't work in an economy where stuff comes and goes with the speed of light. The eReader and the iPhone could have both changed my life. But they didn't. I'll just have to wait for a company to produce something that fits in everyone's pocket.

Beautiful Books

Sometimes books spring into my hands because they have a beautiful title, like The Unnatural History of the Sea by Callum Roberts (Island Press) or The Intellligence of Flowers by Maurice Maeterlinck (SUNY Press). Sometimes the title is weird, but the book is beautifully designed, like Angle of Yaw by Ben Lerner (Copper Canyon.) And other times the stars align and the whole book -- its shape, color, paper, title, subject, text, illustrations -- are impossible to resist. This has happened twice in the last couple of weeks.

The first one is Ashen Sky (Getty Publications.)

Ashen Sky: The Letters of Pliny The Younger on the Eruption of Vesuvius

Striking from the cover to the end pages to the title page -- even the content page is unusual and dramatic. The subject of the book is the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, although the introductory pages cover all known history. Two letters from Pliny the Younger to Tacitus describing the event that he witnessed, and in which his uncle and mentor Pliny the Elder died, make up the body of the book. Attention to detail is precise and elegant, from the shape of the outstanding illustrations by Barry Moser to the black tinting on the edges of the pages. This remarkable book would make an amazing gift for a student or a traveller.

The second book -- and this one fell into my hands today -- is Fifty Uncommon Birds of the Midwest (University of Iowa Press).

Fifty Uncommon Birds of the Upper Midwest (Bur Oak Book)

There are not enough superlatives to use in talking about this fantastic book. The design, the use of color, the subtle tinting on the illustrated pages, the page numbers and titles, the font choices ... it's all completely delightful. Then, there are the illustrations. Sure, we've seen a million of them -- Peterson, Audubon -- but Dana Gardner has made the images fresh and surprising. The text is by Nancy Overcott, a lifetime birdwatcher, and she provides highly crafted descriptions sprinkled with personal anecdotes, history and ecology. This is a book to give to everyone you know who loves the outdoors -- and don't forget to keep one for yourself.

Get Thee To a Bookstore

Just a short note today because I don't know about you, but summertimes are insane around this part of the world. First of all, there are the out-of-school kids and their unpredictable schedules, then there are the friends and relatives who show up week after week, on vacation and ready to party. (I live in a really nice 'part of the world' for summer fun.) And, since it is summer and maybe some of you writers and would-be publishers have a little extra time on your hands, I advise a little trip to the bookstore.

Say you've got a self-help book you want to self-publish. Go to the bookstore and check out the covers and lay-outs of books like yours. Check out how they've ordered their back-cover endorsements. Look at how they've arranged illustrations, table of contents, index, page numbers, headers, etc. Look at their chapter title designs. Take notes and make your book look like theirs.

I am completely amazed by the submissions that come into the office. Fiction covers that look like history, health titles that look like children's picture books, memoir that looks like nothing at all. If you're in a bind with publication dates, don't have a cover and need to get your book out for reviews with the requisite 5-6 months, send the book as a galley, i.e. no cover, just plain with stats. We gets lots and lots of those and they in no way deter from our considering the book for review. An awful, amateur, hasty cover and lay-out does, however.

Another sign of the amateur is a decorated envelope. We get them with little drawings, photos afixed with tape, hand-written messages to "Look Inside!" This is not elementary school and no one's going to give you a star because you can draw a flower.

To sum: Go to the bookstore, check out titles that are like yours, make your book look like it belongs on the same shelf. Then, put it in a plain brown envelope and send it to us.

Red Pencil

Yep, I'm still opening the mail. I think I'll keep opening the mail as it's the best opportunity for immediate sorting. I'll bet I've cut down on our managing editor's rummaging time by about 80%.

But here's the beef: The first thing I want to know when I open a package and pull out a book is what's the publication date. At ForeWord we're already sending out books with November/December pub. dates to reviewers. We can still handle a Sept/Oct edition, but on a very limited basis, which we really try and reserve for the very small publishers who can't get out the early galleys. Anything before then will either go into the Footnotes pile (for quick blurbs on-line), into my pile for special notice, or into the recycling.

Back to the point: I want to know the pub. date right up front. It's the A-Number-One issue upon opening the package. Once I know, once I’ve circled it with my red pencil, then I take a look at the book to see what it is, where it should go.

But, so often -- almost all the time -- I can't find the date so I'm standing there with my little red pencil hunting up and down the press release, looking for it.

Okay, so there's no standard format for a press release, but there ought to be. Put the stats up front and in my face. (By stats I mean, title, author, press, page count, ISBN, publication date.) Go ahead and write whatever you want below that -- even on top of that -- but make sure the stats are the first thing that draws my eye.

P.S. I said in a previous entry that I wouldn't remember who did the most impenetrable packaging job, but now that I've been at this for a couple of weeks, I take it back. I do remember.

Writing for Your Life

Robin Lippincott writes like a Creative Writing teacher. Although his new novel, In the Meantime begins beautifully with a preface of three short childhood memories, wide-angled and crisp—quite the trick—the body of the story immediately falls over itself with self-satisfaction. Listen to this:

And so the three friends flourished and floundered, floundered and flourished, as the seconds and the minutes and the hours and the days, the weeks and the months and the years, piled up and eventually collapsed and got buried underneath the sheer accumulation of time. Those nine months at school—how cruel and preposterous that the academic year had seemingly been designed to equal, in time, the gestation period of a human being from conception to birth, as if the two were somehow on par, equal—those interminable nine months, out of a miserly twelve in the year—even the clock and the calendar were unjust!—semed to distort and flatten time to Katie, Luke and Star (especially since, for children, there is only the present), and it was for them usually more a matter of flounder than flourish as, irritated, anxious and bored, they tossed and turned, flipped and flopped in their weekday school dests and their nightly beds, like fish out of water. Ah, but during those now sepia-tinted and sun-kissed summers, the season of their first meeting, when they were not, day by day, confined to desks and duties and doctrines—prisons all! Yes, in the summertime their skin breathed, their minds roamed free, their bodies grew and developed and shone in the sun, and their sleep was largely peaceful, dream-filled, and undisturbed.

I've noticed that a lot of Creative Writing teachers write like this, excessively. I think the job is the problem. Mr Lippincott can write, but the nature of his profession insulates him from the words "Cut the bullshit."

Let's take the paragraph and cut the bullshit.

And so the three friends flourished and floundered, floundered and flourished, as the seconds and the minutes and the hours and the days, the weeks and the months and the years, piled up and eventually collapsed and got buried underneath the sheer accumulation of time.

He's listening to himself read this stuff outloud in class.

Those nine months at school—how cruel and preposterous that the academic year had seemingly been designed to equal, in time, the gestation period of a human being from conception to birth, as if the two were somehow on par, equal—those interminable nine months, out of a miserly twelve in the year—even the clock and the calendar were unjust!—

And here, with the aside, is he trying to tell us that he, the author, is even smarter than he, the author?

seemed to distort and flatten time to Katie, Luke and Star (especially since, for children, there is only the present), and it was for them usually more a matter of flounder than flourish as, irritated, anxious and bored, they tossed and turned, flipped and flopped in their weekday school desks and their nightly beds, like fish out of water.

We got the fish metaphor.

Ah, but during those now sepia-tinted and sun-kissed summers, the season of their first meeting, when they were not, day by day, confined to desks and duties and doctrines—prisons all! Yes, in the summertime

More editorializing. Useful tip: whenever you smile and say —Wow, that was really clever, what I just wrote there— cross it out.

their skin breathed, their minds roamed free, their bodies grew and developed and shone in the sun, and their sleep was largely peaceful, dream-filled, and undisturbed.

Again, there's no doubt that Mr Lippincott can write —but I have no idea if he can tell a story.

Not to end on a sour note, here's a guy who shines. The story's about a boy, and it's completely beside the point that the mom is Chinese, a nurse, and always quoting Confucius, and the dad is unemployed, a drunk, a virulent anti-American and owner/operator of numerous firearms, for the weirdness and awe is always about being a kid. Remember when knowledge was closely associated with taste—a screen door, the bud of an elm tree, white crayons? This writing is all about details, and they are fresh, sometimes brutal, always a revelation.

I sat for a portrait at school.
Soon afterward, I received a paper sheet of wallet-sized prints. When I studied the proofs, I saw that I looked a lot like my mother, and not at all like the rest of my classmates.
With scissors, I cut the pictures apart and stored them in a drawer.
One day, I asked a girl if she would trade pictures with me. She said yes and gave her photo in an envelope. Later, when I opened the package, I saw that the photo was not of her, but of another girl in school.

* * *

On the way home, my father stopped at a bar. He led me inside, and we sat at a Formica-topped table. I had a soft drink, while he had a bourbon and a beer.
When we got back into the car, he said, "I'm going to take this boat places."
He sat for a long time with his head againzt the steering wheel. Then he turned the key, raced the engine and shot out of his parking space.

* * *

A boy who lived nearby took me fishing. When we got to the creek, he pointed to trout where they lay, camouflaged against the sand.
He dropped in his bait and almost immediately hooked a fish. After he lifted it onto the bank, he said, "You have to whack it out."
He grabbed the fish by its middle and hammered its head against a stone. The fish quivered, then stopped moving.
"Let's go fishing again tomorrow," the boy said.
The next morning, I put on my hip boots, picked up my gear and walked to the boy's house. When I knocked on the door, his mother answered.
"We're supposed to go fishing," I said.
"He's not home," she told me.

Tetched: A Novel in Fractals

Fiction Round-up 7/11

The first week on the new job is behind me, and my Smallfish Clover head is empty. Yes, the books appeared on my doorstep on time, and yes, I have placed them in local bookshops. A friend on mine feels strongly that I should organize a Release Party, for the simple reason that I can sell books without having to give up the 40% commission charged at shops. I think she's right, but I'm too busy -- the whole summer scene here in Northern Michigan is such a madhouse of activities and events, that maybe I'll wait until fall.

Anyway, what has struck my fancy this last week is the incoming fiction to ForeWord Magazine. Poor fiction writers -- so many titles, so little space. Like most publishers, our coverage is over 4 to 1 in favor of nonfiction. So, I thought I'd mention a few of the titles that caught my eye:

Foremost, there's Mandarins: Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, a collection of short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Archipelago Books). Written at the turn of the century, they are little masterpieces of technical control and ranging emotion.

The professor picked up the fan and raised his head, but his face bore a very different and most complex expression. Somewhat theatrically overplayed, it reflected pious circumspection at a sight he ought not to have witnessed, mixed with satisfaction at his own awareness of the same. (from The Handkerchief)

Another is Steps Through the Mist, also a collection of stories, connected, by Serbian Zoran Zivkovic. (Aio Publishing) For adult readers of literary fantasy/science fiction (think Isamov, even Bruno Schultz) these aren't going to knock your socks off. However, for young adults, they're a wonderful introduction both to the genre and to foreign literature.

I was so hoping that Boy, by Takeshi Kitano (Vertical) was going to be fantastic. Kitano is an award-winning film-maker -- great films, not so great writing. First of all, there's the first of all. Look at these first two paragraphs:

It had been two years since I'd last seen my brother.
For most of the year, he was out of Japan on business, but since we'd reached our thirties and started families of our own, we'd found ourselves wanting to catch up with each other once in a while. I don't remember who had suggested it first, but we decided to go for drinks at my friend's restaurant in Yotsuya.

Nope. Not good. Not the least bit interesting. Flat use of language. Stringy sentences. Why not just start in the restaurant and catch the reader up little by little? And yes, I did read on -- when they got to the restaurant -- but then they talked trivially about golf. Maybe the rest of the book is fantastic, but there are "so many titles, so little space" in my day as well.

Opening the Mail

I just spent my first morning at my new job as Editor-in-chief of ForeWord Magazine. To get a feel for what goes on around the office, I opened the mail. Boxes and boxes of mail. Mostly books. Many maddeningly packaged.

All right, so I'm not necessarily going to remember who mangled the job the worst, but all of you authors out there who send out review copies could, easily, make it a much less tedious task for the poor sucker in the mailroom.

First of all, no tape. I repeat: Do not use tape! It's completely ghastly trying to get through the mess, and my opener gets all gooed up.

Also, I dread anything sent in plastic-coated bubble wrap. I can't get the knife to go through that stuff at all, plus it clings to the book in an unreasonable manner. And then, there's the damned tape on top of it all!

Speaking of which, choose an envelope that gives your book a bit of room to maneuver. If you have to shove the thing into the wrapping, then I'll have to coax it out. I want a book that leaps into my hands.

No Styrofoam padding. Styrofoam is evil.

Also, if you're sending a book to a review magazine, forget the press kit. We throw them away. Press kits are for newspapers that may be interested in writing a feature without having to do research or make a phone call. At ForeWord, we review books, and the books will speak for themselves.

Forget the bookmarks as well, although I don’t mind a postcard reminder that a title is coming out in a month or two.

But don't forget the one page press release packaged with your book. Gotta have that for our filing.

My two favorite packages are the Priority Mail cardboard mailers -- a quick zip (no knife necessary) and they're open.

The other is the paper-wrapped bubble mailer. The press-and-stick fold comes undone without ado and we can recycle the envelope.

I'm not so crazy about the excelsior-filled press-and-sticks. Their folds never come undone, meaning I've got to cut across the top with scissors and that dusty stuff inside in noxious.

Oh, and one more thing: No Tape Ever.