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."

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.

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.

Teen Writing Project

Yesterday, I read the second book in a series by a teenager. According to the backcover bio, she began writing the first book in the series at 13, and she's sixteen now. The book isn't awful. In fact, it's not bad. Lots of typical errors of the young, like choppy sentences, repetitive structure, extremely casual description -- hey! it sounds like a teenager! And I think young teenagers would go for it: vampires, elves, cold queens, hot knights, no explicit sexual references, plenty of action and everyone spats like high school.

Whoever was behind this project -- her parents, her teachers -- was paying attention to adolescent motivation. My twelve-year-old, for example, a few times a year starts these big story ideas. The last one actually had an outline and ran about thirty pages. But no, it's not done. None of them get done. And that's my fault because I'm not supplying a solid enough reason to motivate him to finish.

Maybe the standard principle of always finishing something you start is good enough for baseball or track, but the difference between a sports season and a writing project is the party, the awards ceremony, the public accomplishment.

Writing is different. Writing is all about personal achievement, inner strength, sitting alone in a room for hours and hours. So what if your mom reads every word and thinks you're wonderful? That's just not the same as a medal hung around your neck in front of hundreds of cheering fans. (Or, the desire to be the kid who gets the medal hung around his neck in front of hundreds of cheering fans.)

Not that I want to encourage grown-up writers to expect or desire swooning adulation. Heck, fine words from Mom would be great. Remember, it's all about personal achievement, inner strength, blah blah blah.

But kids are different. A little bit different. Just like reading really great books to your kid will motivate him to become a reader, treating his hard work as a writer with fanfare will encourage him to keep sitting alone in that room, working at getting better.

And so we're back to the parents of the teenaged vampire novelist. Again, whoever was behind her was right on track. How many kids quit reading for pleasure at the age of 11 or 12, when they make the switch from elementary school to middle school? Why not encourage kids to write, read and critique each other's work.

No, this is not a school project. This is only for kids who really like to write and read, but often get caught up in more instantly gratifying activities. This is a project for parents to encourage, critique, encourage again through rewrites and research, help with editing, etc. At the end, publish the book.

The author I read yesterday published through AuthorHouse, I like to use Lulu because they're more hands on and you can print one or a hundred or a thousand.

But the vampire novelist's mentors were even smarter than this: they encouraged the girl to write the first book of a series. Book One was about 130 pages (large type, large leading -- typical y/a format), the second slightly longer. But hey, there's no reason why your kid's first book could be twenty-five pages or less. Why not?

Beware: Here's the one single largest problem with this second book that I read yesterday: she started exactly where she'd left off, as if I'd already read the first book, which I hadn't.

Everyone, including J.K. Rowling, starts a new book in a series with a little starter-course for those who jump in cold. (Actually, J.K. Rowling did this up until the second to last book, at which point she must have decided that her new readers would start at the beginning.) There are lots of different ways to go about this, and lots and lots of series to glean for ideas. But, it must be done. I still don't really know why the vampires were the good guys, which seemed important in the context of the second book.

Finally, publishing sites like Lulu and AuthorHouse should take advantage of teen writers by placing their books in special, browsable sections where like authors can easily order their books, read them and make comments. What a great idea!

Resting On It

It was 630 AM and I was sitting with my coffee, feeling depressed about the first job on my list for the day. It was a book review. I'd read the book, made my notes, but I had no idea what I was going to say.

This used to happen frequently during my years spent as a researcher. Often, I had to write papers on different subjects, like Special Forces in the Vietnam War, or the OSS in Asia, or the evolution of the horse. I'd read as many books as I could reasonably find, make pages and pages of notes, then despair. The problem wasn't just that I had to report on these topics, but I had to make sense of them in terms of the entire project.

But I only let despair get me down once or twice because I found out how to work through it, completely by accident. One day I was so exhausted by the whole thing that I laid down. Maybe I sort of fell asleep, maybe I didnt... The gist is that the information swirled (or gurgled) around in my conscious and unconscious, and certain pieces began to come together and harden. All of a sudden (although not necessarily sudddenly) I knew what I wanted to say. And once I understood what I wanted to say, the saying was easy.

I think the problem of writer's block is often often a symptom of this same despair at confusion. For example, a writes comes up with a tremendous first chapter, but can't write a second. Why? I say it's simple: Because he doesn't know what he wants to say. Because there's no thesis. He's got a big, empty horizon, but no structure to draw the eye.

If you don't believe me, in this morning's Guardian, there's an interview with scientist and author, Ian Stewart. He says: "It's a very interesting process organising the thoughts in your head into something that will make sense on paper, at book length. Unless you have a pretty clear idea of what you want to write about and why, and some sort of story that will make it all fit together, then it's pointless starting writing... If I'm having trouble writing something, that's a sign that I don't understand what I'm talking about and I haven't thought it through properly."

The Value of Books

A couple of days ago, I went over to my boss's garage to pick up the box of university press galleys I'd collected during the BEA. (The story about the selection is at ForeWord This Week.) I had a couple of errands to run after the pick-up, and as I pulled up and parked in the first lot, I contemplated moving the precious cargo out of the bed of my truck and into the front seat where I could lock the doors. That was my first thought. My second was: Who's going to steal a box of books?

Who indeed? I've lived many different places around the States, plus Mexico and Spain. I've been robbed just about everywhere, with the worst cases occurring in Mexico. However, never, never ever in my long experience of loss, has anyone bothered with the books on my shelves. In fact, the most horrific theft also involved vandalism—crapping on the floor, toothpaste on the walls, stuff set on fire—they stole pens, my spare glasses, a mirror, clothes, boots, but the books (and the cash hidden inside them) were untouched.

All right, so everyone's had books stolen from them. I once had a friend say that the only things worthwhile stealing were books and hearts. But maybe book thieves are not the same sort of people who pilfer out of the backs of trucks or defecate in the middle of a living room. Maybe book thieves are us.

There's a story in last week's Economist about librarians in Timbuktu. When the Moroccans raided in the 16th century, the city had long been a wealthy center of Muslim scholarship—more than 25,000 students were enrolled in the university there at its peak. During its destruction, the people of Timbuktu did what they could to save the scholarship, stuffing manuscripts into clothing trunks and heading out into the desert. There they've been for hundreds of years. Until now. Little by little, native librarians are hunting out the "precious cargo" and convincing the caretakers to return it to public and private sites of conservation. As the imam of Timbuktu's great mosque says, "Writing remains, but stories disappear."

Here's to book thieves everywhere: May you prosper and return overdue favors.

And When It's Priceless

I read this yesterday in the Guardian, and haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It hardens in the stomach like a rock. Millions of rock-filled stomachs rising out of the earth with guns in their hands.

In Iraq's four-year looting frenzy, the allies have become the vandals

British and American collusion in the pillaging of Iraq's heritage is a scandal that will outlive any passing conflict

Simon Jenkins
Friday June 8, 2007
The Guardian

Fly into the American air base of Tallil outside Nasiriya in central Iraq and the flight path is over the great ziggurat of Ur, reputedly the earliest city on earth. Seen from the base in the desert haze or the sand-filled gloom of dusk, the structure is indistinguishable from the mounds of fuel dumps, stores and hangars. Ur is safe within the base compound. But its walls are pockmarked with wartime shrapnel and a blockhouse is being built over an adjacent archaeological site. When the head of Iraq's supposedly sovereign board of antiquities and heritage, Abbas al-Hussaini, tried to inspect the site recently, the Americans refused him access to his own most important monument.

Yesterday Hussaini reported to the British Museum on his struggles to protect his work in a state of anarchy. It was a heart breaking presentation. Under Saddam you were likely to be tortured and shot if you let someone steal an antiquity; in today's Iraq you are likely to be tortured and shot if you don't. The tragic fate of the national museum in Baghdad in April 2003 was as if federal troops had invaded New York city, sacked the police and told the criminal community that the Metropolitan was at their disposal. The local tank commander was told specifically not to protect the museum for a full two weeks after the invasion. Even the Nazis protected the Louvre.

When I visited the museum six months later, its then director, Donny George, proudly showed me the best he was making of a bad job. He was about to reopen, albeit with half his most important objects stolen. The pro-war lobby had stopped pretending that the looting was nothing to do with the Americans, who were shamefacedly helping retrieve stolen objects under the dynamic US colonel, Michael Bogdanos (author of a book on the subject). The vigorous Italian cultural envoy to the coalition, Mario Bondioli-Osio, was giving generously for restoration.

The beautiful Warka vase, carved in 3000BC, was recovered though smashed into 14 pieces. The exquisite Lyre of Ur, the world's most ancient musical instrument, was found badly damaged. Clerics in Sadr City were ingeniously asked to tell wives to refuse to sleep with their husbands if looted objects were not returned, with some success. Nothing could be done about the fire-gutted national library and the loss of five centuries of Ottoman records (and works by Piccasso and Miro). But the message of winning hearts and minds seemed to have got through.

Today the picture is transformed. Donny George fled for his life last August after death threats. The national museum is not open but shut. Nor is it just shut. Its doors are bricked up, it is surrounded by concrete walls and its exhibits are sandbagged. Even the staff cannot get inside. There is no prospect of reopening.

Hussaini confirmed a report two years ago by John Curtis, of the British Museum, on America's conversion of Nebuchadnezzar's great city of Babylon into the hanging gardens of Halliburton. This meant a 150-hectare camp for 2,000 troops. In the process the 2,500-year-old brick pavement to the Ishtar Gate was smashed by tanks and the gate itself damaged. The archaeology-rich subsoil was bulldozed to fill sandbags, and large areas covered in compacted gravel for helipads and car parks. Babylon is being rendered archaeologically barren.

Meanwhile the courtyard of the 10th-century caravanserai of Khan al-Raba was used by the Americans for exploding captured insurgent weapons. One blast demolished the ancient roofs and felled many of the walls. The place is now a ruin.

Outside the capital some 10,000 sites of incomparable importance to the history of western civilisation, barely 20% yet excavated, are being looted as systematically as was the museum in 2003. When George tried to remove vulnerable carvings from the ancient city of Umma to Baghdad, he found gangs of looters already in place with bulldozers, dump trucks and AK47s.

Hussaini showed one site after another lost to archaeology in a four-year "looting frenzy". The remains of the 2000BC cities of Isin and Shurnpak appear to have vanished: pictures show them replaced by a desert of badger holes created by an army of some 300 looters. Castles, ziggurats, deserted cities, ancient minarets and mosques have gone or are going. Hussaini has 11 teams combing the country engaged in rescue work, mostly collecting detritus left by looters. His small force of site guards is no match for heavily armed looters, able to shift objects to eager European and American dealers in days.

Most ominous is a message reputedly put out from Moqtada al-Sadr's office, that while Muslim heritage should be respected, pre-Muslim relics were up for grabs. As George said before his flight, his successors might be "only interested in Islamic sites and not Iraq's earlier heritage". While Hussaini is clearly devoted to all Iraq's history, the Taliban's destruction of Afghanistan's pre-Muslim Bamiyan Buddhas is in every mind.

Despite Sadr's apparent preference, sectarian militias are pursuing an orgy of destruction of Muslim sites. Apart from the high-profile bombings of some of the loveliest surviving mosques in the Arab world, radical groups opposed to all shrines have begun blasting 10th- and 11th-century structures, irrespective of Sunni or Shia origin. Eighteen ancient shrines have been lost, 10 in Kirkuk and the south in the past month alone. The great monument and souk at Kifel, north of Najaf - reputedly the tomb of Ezekiel and once guarded by Iraqi Jews (mostly driven into exile by the occupation) - have been all but destroyed.

It is abundantly clear that the Americans and British are not protecting Iraq's historic sites. All foreign archaeologists have had to leave. Troops are doing nothing to prevent the "farming" of known antiquities. This is in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention that an occupying army should "use all means within its power" to guard the cultural heritage of a defeated state.

Shortly after the invasion, the British minister Tessa Jowell won plaudits for "pledging" £5m to protect Iraq's antiquities. I can find no one who can tell me where, how or whether this money has been spent. It appears to have been pure spin. Only the British Museum and the British School of Archaeology in Iraq have kept the flag flying. The latter's grant has just been cut, presumably to pay for the Olympics binge.

As long as Britain and America remain in denial over the anarchy they have created in Iraq, they clearly feel they must deny its devastating side-effects. Two million refugees now camping in Jordan and Syria are ignored, since life in Iraq is supposed to be "better than before". Likewise dozens of Iraqis working for the British and thus facing death threats are denied asylum. To grant it would mean the former defence and now home secretary, the bullish John Reid, admitting he was wrong. They will die before he does that.

Though I opposed the invasion I assumed that its outcome would at least be a more civilised environment. Yet Iraq's people are being murdered in droves for want of order. Authority has collapsed. That western civilisation should have been born in so benighted a country as Iraq may seem bad luck. But only now is that birth being refused all guardianship, in defiance of international law. If this is Tony Blair's "values war", then language has lost all meaning. British collusion in such destruction is a scandal that will outlive any passing conflict. And we had the cheek to call the Taliban vandals.

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

Let's Say It's Really Cheap

Very interesting entry today on Seth Godin's Blog. Take a look, then we'll talk.

Okay, so pricing is a big issue out here in self-published land. A while ago I talked about how I was forced to adjust my Smallfish Clover price up from the reasonable $15 to the expensive $20 in order not to actually PAY bookstores, distributors and Amazon to sell my work. (Amazon is the real problem, as they run off with 55% -- even so, I can't, and you can't, live without 'em.)

However, my book costs less than half of what it retails at, and there's no reason why I can't sell it at a lower price directly to customers of the IAMO website. I can see how this might turn into something of a pain in the butt if I'm having to package, bookkeep and run off to the PO every day. What about a $2 download? Does anyone actually download a big fat book then read it on screen?

I don't know. No one really knows reader's present or future tolerance of on-line reading. Let's find out.

Aside: A few weeks ago I did read an entire, 300 page book on my computer. The author had purchased a review at Clarion, and our old copy stated that disks were acceptable as review copy. (I quickly changed that language, and now we accept only print -- but wait...) I asked a couple of reviewers if they were interested, and they said no.

However, I think the main problem was that the reviewers didn't have laptops, and sitting in front of a desktop PC more than they already did was unappealing.

I ended up reading the book. And I have a laptop. In fact, it wasn't that bad -- apart from my lap getting a little warm at times. The book came as a clean, bright PDF; I could adjust the type for reading at any distance; I read it here there and everywhere; it kept my place; and I could take notes directly, without the normal process of handwriting and transcribing.