Getting Those Trade Reviews

Ok we are talking Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, Library Journal. The Pitcher was covered by all four. And I am not talking about paying for any of them. I am talking about getting reviewed on the merit of your book. Which brings me to the first point. Write a good book. That is the best thing you can do to help yourself get these coveted trade reviews that sell to the publishing industry and the libraries. Now after you write the very best book you can write then here are some pointers.

Send your book in early. Say four or five months before your publication date. This is standard. Send an ARC if you have one but if all you have is the finished copy then the send that. And do not send it to a general mailbox send it to the editor who is reviewing your particular genre. Now I am really talking about fiction here since that is all I have written. Everyone of my five novels including the last book have been covered by the trades.

Which leads me to another truth. Once you get one of your books covered by the trades it is much easier to get your next novel covered. They know you do quality work and are much more willing to look at your next effort. You may have to send in several copies as they do tend to get lost and some gentle email follow up helps.

But I go back to my original point. All this is lost if you don't have the book. Write the very best book you can. The trades will follow.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher


 

The Building Anxiety of Breaking Bad

Can't sleep. Tossing and turning. Or better yet waking up after an hour of sleep and not knowing where I am or who is next to me. Freaky. Then tossing and turning again and not sleeping. Too much coffee. Too much sugar. Maybe. Or is that show that has me up all night and I am now in the fifth season and when I go to bed I am  wound up tight like a spring about to pop...could it be the building anxiety of  Breaking Bad.

I had been warned. Don't watch it before you go to bed. Pshaw. I can handle it. I have watched worse. But no there is something bothering me now. The moon night.  The blue glow outside where the wheel barrel sits in the yard. Did I leave it there? What about the step ladder still on the front porch from Halloween. What about the back door...did I lock it.

The dog jumps up and barks by the window. I  jump out of the bed and stare out the window. Wired. Too much. Too much. And I am only season five. Something has to give. This watching before bed is making me strange. Back under the covers and watching the bright yard. No one is there. But there is that shadow....I have really got to stop this.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

The Validation of the Writer

Went to dinner with my father and the usual came up. Questions of writing and teaching and the related and of course the conversation went to a sort of end run with my father pronouncing me a great teacher but of course conveniently forgetting I had written five novels with the fourth do out in the spring and the fifth due out in the fall. I had to remind him that I had been well paid for some of those books with auctions and dinners with agents and publishers in New York and movie rights sold and awards and the books were with the largest publisher in the world and I had been in the New York Times, Chicago Tribunes, USA Today, LA Times, NBC, CBS, People magazine. I had to remind him I did an NPR interview with Robert Siegel and my books had been chosen as a Book of the Month selection and garnered starred reviews in PW with  foreign rights sold. And I had even hit the Best Seller list for a time. But all of this of course fell on deaf ears.

And this is because for most people in America and maybe the world you have not made it and become that other person until you have made it in the spectacular sense of getting a million dollars for your book and seeing it on the big screen. And even then I am not sure he would think I had become the novelist that I saw myself as. Something to do with not being able to really understand people whom we know might have actually done something different. This is a hard concept and probably harder for parents.

But lets just say validation can be bought. Clearly it has to be in the pages of a newspaper that someone has just received untold millions for their book for this is our bar now. The Harry Potter author is a billionaire and that is a writer! You think I jest but in actuality we have come to this. Unless someone can prove in some spectacular way they have crossed the line into the uber fame and fortune then we are now suspect and probably a fraud. For we all know that most people can not do anything that rises above the normal give and take of a normal nine to five life. The middle class is hopelessly dogmatic that way. Thou shall not try anything beyond the pale.

And so my father and I hashed it out and he apologized for not seeing me as the writer. And I know he will never see me as the writer no matter how many books I publish. True, if I can obtain bragging rights to the multi million dollar advance this might tilt him in my favor and then he can equate literary endeavour with that old lottery saw: I knew the boy could do it! But until then I will be what ever thing I am doing at the time that is more recognizable. I have worked a lot of jobs so it would go something like this.

There is my son the baker, waiter, construction worker, landlord, real estate agent, broker, professor, janitor, security guard, teacher, workshop leader, telemarketer, bouncer, DJ, busboy, teachers assistant, bartender. Oh....and he writes some too.

www.billhazelgrove.com
 

Novels as Commercials

Just read a novel that should have been a commercial. There were so many gang banger mainstream idioms that I surely could have been watching a commercial for Vans(which were probably mentioned twenty times as well as Timberlands) and maybe that is what it was. A very long YA commerical for hip hop gang banging dudes and dudesses who really could walk off the page and hawk some product with a yo  inference and then slink back into the book in their hoodies and Vans and cruise away sucking on jungle juice, giving us all "daps" and slouching into the fade away sunset.  CUT...that's a wrap.

The director was the only dude missing in the novel. But he or she was there in the editing looking for a hook. The bi-racial hook was the one used in this novel and one can see the plot slither away under the pressure of this editing. I don't think we need this...maybe a little more angst about being half black and half white...and so the author lays it on, but there is a fault line that gets violated. What was the authors original intent? What engine drove the story.

Books are written from the inside out and not the other way around. The problem with the publishing environment of today is that a lot of editors will tinker around and ignore the core of the novel and try and hang "popular" ornaments on the novel tree, but like a tree that is over decorated the book sags and eventually falls from the weight. These ornaments slow the book down and destroy the focus and worse they stand out as bogus...someone elses design other than the sculptor. And it happens all the time.

The author wants to get published. I get that. What is sad,  is that the original intent of the author , the thing that got he or she  to write the book in the first place is really the only chance for a book to take off.  Originality with a big O. You cannot fake it....though some try.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Left Gets Wimpy On Rush

Bill Mahr and others have already pulled in their gonads on this one. Rush is just having some fun like we all do. So says the wimpy left. He's just being Rush and is like Ed Shultz on the left calling Laura Ingram a slut or anybody else who lobs missiles rightward. Sandra Fluke is just coming under the drubbing anyone in the public eye gets and that's the way it goes. Whats good for the goose is good for the gander. Crapola enmasse with a cherry and whipped cream for all the wimps.

Cmon. Get a life. Rush is a hate monger that hides under the very garbage you give him cover. Haven't any of you guys ever got into a fight before? The guy who punches hardest and first usually wins and Rush has been punching down anybody who disagrees with his racist bigoted hock for a very long time. Hatemonger hiding under ideology. He doesn't give a damn about you covering for him because  he knows very well what he is saying and doing. If you aint in Rushville you are nowhere and you aint  nobody.

White and Conservative. All others need not apply. He doesn't care about democracy. It is his democracy and he attacks anyone who disagrees and he attacks viciously. Cowering people into submission is not what the use of the airwaves was intended for. It is not OK to have the equivalent of a Nazi on the radio lambasting the President, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women...just about anyone who doesn't agree with  the almighty Rush. He is a bully. He has always been a bully. He is not a journalist. He is not an entertainer. He is a kamikaze of totalitarian zeal who destroys people who do not agree with him. He is a hatemonger. Let me say it again. He is a hatemonger in a golf shirt with a cigar.

So giving this guy cover while he beats up on a woman is about the lowest order of wimpiness the left has yet to come up with. Its a war guys. That's the how the other side sees it. Wake up.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Book Downloading by Google Inc.

Good luck stopping the illegal downloading of books.  I have seen my titles popping up here and there and I requested that Google not scan my books. Mostly they disappeared after that but I just saw Tobacco Sticks my second novel out there on a Google site. The whole book just sitting there for whoever wanted to read it. Sure. Why not? Can you really stop people from downloading books? No. You can't. Think of a ship taking water with a million holes in it...no way. The era of the contained paper book ended with the digital age. Everyone is going to have to get used to it and start thinking along the lines of Steve Jobs

The IPOD did a huge favor for the music business. It produced a paraydyme where downloads could be corralled and paid for by the end user. The Napster world was scary, a universe of people shooting music all over with sharing engines.And  of course that goes on but what Jobs did was he made paying for music sexy. The same way the Kindle is making paying for books sexy. And we better hope those Kindle users stick with the program and don't go rogue and start shooting in files from Google.

The reality is this. The people who are honest and feel the need to pay for a service provided will pay for their books and music. The people who feel they are entitled to take what they can will do so and nobody will be able to stop them. The same people that speed or blow tolls or cheat or don't put their shopping cart back or steal a case of water in the bottom of their cart will swipe books and music files. Nobody will ever change that.

But fortunately, a lot of people will follow the rules and still pay for their books be they paper or digital. The rest will steal until they publish a book or write a song. Then they will scream bloody murder.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Authors and the Fight Between Amazon and Barnes and Noble

There is a big fight going on between Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Basically Amazon is trying to squash traditional book publishing with the Kindle and Barnes and Noble is fighting back and saying they are Custers last stand between traditional publishing and the cold windy streets of Ebooks. Authors are in the middle but according to the NY Times article we will suffer if BN goes down because people will quit buying books and we will be left with our little downloads to make a living. That would suppose authors are making a living now.

The one percent rule applies here. About one percent of the authors make all the money and the rest scramble for the crumbs. Shelf space is the dividing line and if you cannot get shelf space in a store then you do not exist. You may be one great writer but there are only so many slots or so much space in a store and your book might not make the cut. So you have effectively disappeared. Or you never got up to bat in the first place. Getting a book of fiction published has never been easy and now it is something like winning the lotto (except for the money of course)

So where does that leave authors. Wellllll (as Ron Paul would say) you know having an ebook out there might not be like having a real book but it beats the alternative: oblivion. And I don't mean you are not still writing oblivion, I mean you are still writing very good books that you simply cannot get published or get onto the shelves. So you really don't exist. And that is a very real fate for most authors in the old paradyme. Not to say we all don't want the book published route, but if presented with some water verus no water in a desert, I will take the few drops offered.

So who knows if BN will win. The big authors do have a lot to lose. They are making real money. The literary mid list fiction writing authors probably will do better in an Amazon dominated world. At the very least they will get their books out there and if they hustle and word of mouth gets going, they might even sell. And they can have all the shelf space they want.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...one word...plastics

Hemingway's Attic--Surviving As a Writer

"There are no classes for how to survive as a writer. It is usually the school of hard knocks. Writers mostly keep to themselves and flame out or end up in some gutter without telling anyone of their journey. There are lots of books on how to get published and make a bestseller and how to sell books. But to survive as a writer in a society that does not recognize writing as a viable way of life is very tricky. Most will not undertake it. Many will wait until retirement and then write their self-published novel. It is all very safe and not who Hemingways' Attic  is for.


This book is for the writer. This book is for the man woman or child who has no choice in the matter and who makes the decision to be a writer or die. It is like that. Once you know you are a writer then there is nothing you can do. So this book is for those who must survive in a world intent on crushing the writer. It is no coincidence all our great writers went to Paris in the twenties. America has never had much patience for artists of any kind. This is a can do country and it would seem artist are outside that charge.

So if you are still reading then this is a good thing. My history tells only my story. Yours may well be different. You may hit it early, later, or not at all. But here is the thing. I have been up and down many times, but through it all I have always had one goal…to keep on writing."
  Excerpted from Hemingways' Attic

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Hemingways' Attic (surviving as a writer)

From Scroll to Kodex to reading The New York Times in Wisconsin

Up in a cabin with nothing but my kindle I downloaded the NY Times and read Lev Grossmans piece on the limitations of the digital format versus what he called the the codex  (book) which evolved from the scroll. He says if anything we are not making enough of the change. He is right and he winds up his piece saying the constrictions of the digital format is it's undoing. He is right. You cannot go from the end to the beginning with the kind of ease of a book. You cannot find  a page you wanted and then shoot ahead and back again to the place you wanted to be. Ebooks are just harder to navigate and they do feel contained.

Saying that Grossman finishes up saying that he will stick with the book. It is everyones choice and I understand his frustration. Reading on the ereader is very different. You just don't have that physical book in your lap to tear to pieces and mark up and read and jump around in. It's almost like the story is caged and you can't quite get to it. But here is why the new medium trumps all. Convenience. Humans move to convenience like ships to water. I can think of no better example than sitting up in Wisconsin and reading Levs article and then the entire NY Times Sunday paper in a cabin in middle of the woods.

There was no way for me to do this at my in laws place before. The town five miles away had the Milwaukee Journal and if you drove further to a grocery store you could get the Chicago Tribune. But NY Times, no way. But I read Lev's piece and then Maureen Dowd and here was the big thing, I could drop it on the couch and then fall asleep and then pick up where I left off. I would have never read any of this without the ability to snatch the newspaper out of thin air.

And I have written about the limitation of reading the NY Times on the Kindle and I stand by preferring the paper over the digital. But there is no doubt that conveniencewill trump everything. We are only getting busier and more pressed for time. Going to a bookstore or to a grocery store will be a luxury we will pass on because it's just so much easier to sit in our cabin and start reading. The scroll gave way to the Codex for much the same reason. It was just so  much easier to read.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Pensions are DOA

The world has changed. Look at Greece and London and America. The old days of doing a stint of thirty years and then retiring are gone. Pensions are DOA. The problem is that you now have millions of people with absolutely no safety net and that is sucking down the people with a pension. The people who have nothing because of our prolonged recession do not want to pay for anybody. They have nothing and have nothing to lose. The bottom line is there is simply not enough pie to go around anymore.

One group has taken more than their fair share and this has left millions holding the bag. You have to question the worker states set up under capitalism where people are plugged into jobs with the promise of gold at the end. This scenario worked for a long time as along as people were making money and there was still enough pie to divvy up. This is not the case any longer. One group is taking a good healthy twenty seven percent of the wealth pie and capitalism has simply run out of gas. With so many people displaced, the old promised gold is now under attack.

The protected groups are no longer protected and this world is ending quickly. There is simply too much economic devastation globally to fund the people who cut the deal way back when. The metaphor of people drowning and swamping those in the life boats is too easy too resist. But it is no less true. The pension lifeboats are being swamped by those with nothing. Conversely the governments have nothing to pay and they are letting everyone know now: you have been the victim of the biggest bait and switch in history.

There is no gold at the end.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in July

When Your Team Loses

I don't know why but I am moving a little slower for a Monday. Maybe it is the winter that starts to really drag in January with the long slog to spring like some grey ghost that envelops the land with snow and bitter soul deadening cold. Or maybe it is the normal questioning that goes on during the dark months where you count your age and your situation and like a poker player with only so many chips left you wonder why you have squandered so many wagers on losing propositions. Or maybe it is because your team just got bounced out of the Super Bowl by a bunch of cheese heads. Nah, that couldn't be it.

But you never know. Sports are a strange thing.  We forget ourselves for a while and wrap our destiny with the team or the individual. Life is a bet and we bet on the underdog, the come from behind team that will let us know maybe there is a chance. Maybe we just don't like to lose in anything and if you revel in the victories there is no shaking the defeats. And I am not even a sports person, but I went down the road and screamed and yelled for the Bears to stomp the Packers into the turf at Soldier Field with everyone else. They didn't. They got stomped instead.

And still intellectually your day goes on. I''m not getting a million dollars to play football. The day dawns with it's expectations and thudding reality whether the Bears win or lose. But there is something there. A win gives you just a little zazz because you feel that all things are possible. A mediocre life suddenly becomes entwined with something bigger than ourselves. Humans are better in groups and we give off a buzz that is felt by all. Walk into any stadium and you pick up on that energy like a drug. But of course the flip side is once that battery drains it takes the juice from everyone.

So here we sit. Monday. Grey winter in Chicago. All those nagging questions. What am I doing with my life? Why don't I do something else? How did I live all those years? What's it all about anyway? Why didn't Cutler stay in the game? Why did I buy this house? Why couldn't Erlacher keep running and not get tripped up by the quarterback on his interception? I Is there really a God?

Why couldn't the Bears beat the Packers?

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off in April

Paying Thirty Four Bucks for Twain's Book

So do you pay the big number and have a tombstone square of paper that you can either read or beat off an intruder and probably be charged with reading a concealed weapon? Twain's  book is big and it is expensive. Yeah I know so and so has it for blah blah. Well I couldn't find it anywhere except the little independent bookstore that supported my book and that thirty four bucks is with a ten percent author discount!

And I vacillate. Christmas. Blowing lots of dough on gifts and everything else commensurate with making merry and what I am going to go plunk down thirty four bucks for a book when people are downloading for ten bucks? No. I'm not going to to do it! Even though I special ordered the thing and they got it in and gave me to Friday (today) to come in and pick it up or they would sell it to the next person in line who requested a copy and by the way the publisher is totally backlogged and so good luck finding it somewhere else. Still, I hesitate and sit in the coffee shop across the way telling myself in a very Scrooge like way that it is ridiculous to pay thirty four dollars for a book!

My brother said he would wait for the paperback. Sensible. Very sensible. Wait for the price to fall and of course it will and paying thirty four dollars now for the book is just plain stupid. Why times being what they are that thirty four dollars could go a long way in food or other necessities and of course you can't eat a book and you can't pay your electric bill or gas up your car with a book so it is utterly ridiculous to pay thirty four bucks for something clearly I could do without. I mean I am still trying to finish Jonathan Ferris second novel and it has slowed down and I am reading Dickens again and I am thinking about cracking Portis's True Grit which is in my backpack as well and so it is ridiculous to add this monstrous book to my list and pay thirty four Somalians!

So into the car. Yes, Yes. All done and go pick up the kids and get the tires changed on the car. There. You cant' put a book on your wheels. Tires. Practical. Practical. Keep driving. Yes, well, I'll just stop in and let them know I don't want the book. That is only fair. They close at five and it is four forty five. Yes. Ok. Park the car. Yes. Just let them know. Hello. Oh, you are here for your book....let me get it for you. Wow! Look at the size of that thing. Ha! Wow! Just let him know now that you don't want it. Jesus, it is huge. Just let him know. Now.Well, we had a lot of people who want this book but I held it. So, will that be cash or credit? I stare at him and my mouth moves in the proper direction and I nod and let him know that I will be making the sensible decision right now! Ah, I say, you know what? Yes? Ah, I really think I should....Yes? I should, I should...I should really....Yes? I should, should, should, should, should. Yes? Yes? I should, should should, should, should, should, shoooould... Yes? Yes? Yes? ...PUT IT ON CREDIT!

 Fine, I'll wrap it up.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January

Political Theatre on the Left and Right

The first thing we have to do is admit we are no longer watching news. We are watching political theatre. Theatre is fine. Drama is a good thing and it has a  long tradition. A good story pulls us away from our worries and cares for a little while and hopefully we learn a thing or two. But theatre is not news. The reason we watch FOX or MSNBC has little to with news and more to do with our convictions. We want to watch someone with our views get into it with someone else on the other side. If we wanted to watch news we can always tune in Wolf and Anderson and David Gergen. Snore.

Political theatre is a hell of a lot more fun. We are invested in it. It's those damn liberals. It's those damn conservatives. Get a good guest on the show and grab the popcorn and they are off. Will Rachel Maddow tear another Family First conservative to shreds? What the the hell is Keith Olbermann talking about in his special comment anyway? Will Sean Hannity get the whole Great American Panel to tackle the spineless Democratic consultant sandwiched between the wrestler and the NASCAR  driver? Will Bill O'Reilly lose it? Will Glenn Beck break down and cry and explain how in the hell the founding fathers wanted us to live one more time? Now that is entertainment, but it is not news.

It is fine to watch these shows as long as we know we are watching entertainment. Rachel Maddow does research the hell out of the issues and Keith Olbermann passionately believes in what he is saying and Sean Hannity really does believe he is doing the country a favor by exposing the socialists on the left--but the motif of taking a  position and piling on to support it quickly becomes political theatre with a supporting cast of players like Dick Morris on The Factor or the now famous Juan Williams or Howard Fineman and Ezra Klein for Olbermann and Maddow. Any good play must have it's supporting cast and everyone does a hell of a job at putting on the show.

Not that we are not more informed by the end. Not that we don't learn something. But all theatre has a moral imperative or the irony of truth and if David Gergen suddenly came out on the stage and started reading the news we would object to his dry recitation of the days events. But here is the litmus test; a war breaks out with China. Who do you tune in? Fox? MSNBC? No, you turn on the news.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

William Hazelgrove's latest novel is Rocket Man due out in January. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0982139241/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0615213073&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0B1G6JP18H927X52KV3A

To Plot or Not to Plot your Novel

Many novelists worry about plot and go through elaborate outlines. My own experience with plot produced  one certainty...if I outline it then I surely go off my outline. On my second novel, Tobacco Sticks, I used a large notebook to hold the voluminous outlines that took place over years and years of planning the book. I really thought that I could just map the novel out, all I would have to do is connet the dots. When the day came to begin writing I ended up going off my outline immediately.

The worst thing was I cut the first fifty pages of my carefully plotted novel. Then I decided I didn't like all the characters I had so carefully researched, complete with genealogical histories. So I cut some of them and swung the focus around to my narrator. The book immediately went off the outline again as the nexus of the plot changed and what I thought was the central crime of the novel became ancillary to a much deeper crime. So I crossed out and changed and made arrows and scribbled out huge sections of my outline.

Then the novel began to really run into trouble once I passed page seven hundred. I did not plan on War and Peace and that was where I was headed. So I hastily cut a lot of back story and took a run for the end. When I finished the book it did not resemble my outline except that some of the characters I started with made it to the end. So I threw out the outline and came up with a much more fluid approach to the book. I would simply outline the scene for the next day in a notebook and not go beyond that. This turned out to be the perfect solution and  one that I continue with today. I know what I am going to write the next day and it allows for the twists and turns of any good book. So much for plot.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
His new novel Rocket Man will be out in January.

The Firewall of a Book for the Writer

Writing a book is very remote. You work on books for years and years and then it is sent out. Reviews come back from many sources. Some are paid reviewers (though less and less) and many are book sites and bloggers. But they come back commenting on a piece of stone. You cannot change the book. The book is finished and someone may or may not like the book, but there is nothing you can do.  Very rarely will an author take another crack at a book and make changes after it is published.

Not so in the blog land. The comments that come back hit you right away. You literally just finished writing the thing and people are telling you what they like and don't like. Many times the comments get personal. This is unfortunate and a real byproduct of a medium that is so open. Because the writer needs a firewall. He needs something between himself and the reader or he becomes influenced and loses his objectivity. Death for the writer.

Some might say that is the advantage of the Internet. That the net is more real time, interactive, and therefore more malleable to what is now. That may be true for information driven blogs, but for fiction or even for editorials which use the same device as fiction, this does not work well. Writing is highly subjective. We have all read the bestseller we thought was terrible. Or the book a friend doesn't like and we love. This is the nature of writing. But somehow the writer must remain above the fray. He must have something between himself and the reader. A firewall that allows him to write in isolation.

So all one can do is turn off the comments or ignore them. To have your ego stroked or torn down is an infringement on the author's vision. It is simply not the same as a critique of a story or a novel. On the Internet, sadly, things get personal very quickly.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out in the fall.
www.billhazelgrove.com

Getting on Oprah 101

There should be a starting line with a guy waving a checkered flag. A man with a starting gun who looks at his watch and then fires his starting pistol. All authors then heave their books toward Harpo Studios and whoever hits Oprahs feet gets their book picked for her Book Club. The streets and the Chicago river would be littered with thousands and thousands of books not thrown with enough might, enough sweat, enough desire to break the magic boundaries of the Oprahs inner sanctum.

Franzen walks in after dissing her with his last book. Some guys have all the luck. Most authors cant' beg borrow or steal their way into her book club. It is a curious mix of what? A good story, a dog story, a story of Midwestern families? Maybe it isn't story at all. Maybe it is a curious mix of who you know and how much moxie your publisher has. Or maybe you just haven't had a hard enough life to lift yourself into the I saw the light crowd and overcame drugs, alcohol sex. Maybe you just don't have a story to tell.

Of course one doesn't really know what gets Oprah to pick a book. Some say you have to get her best friend Gail read the book. Some say  you have to hope that someone in her audience recommends a book to her. Some say there is simply no sure way to get into her book club and you might as well buy a lottery ticket. There used to charges of favoring minorities but that went away. Maybe, maybe you just have to write a really good book and let the chips fall. Nah.

William Hazelgrove's novel Rocket Man is out in the fall
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

A Good Ending Worth a Thousand Words

Ending novels are rough. You roll along for about a hundred thousand words and suddenly you know this thing has to end. The question is of course how to tie up all the ends without looking like you are tying up all the ends. Of course Hemingway and Fitzgerald discussed and used the dying fall which for thier time was fairly radical. The dying fall is you really dont' end the novel but sort of just let it fade away like the protagonist at the end of A Farewell to Arms. He walks home in the rain after Catherine dies and that is it.

But most novels we need some sort of resolution and it is amazing how many novelists can't quite pull it off. I just finished a novel where the story kept me engaged all the way along and then it ended. I didn't know it had ended and turned the page looking for the next chapter. It was blank. I turned back and reread the final paragraph again. This was it. This wasn't a dying fall, the author just couldn't figure how to get out of the story and so the book ended with a whimper.

Its not that the end has to have fireworks, but there should be some circling back to fulfill the promise of the beginning. Maybe not a perfect egg but at least a circle. If the author is lucky then the end will surprise you. The end should reveal something that comes like lightning to the author and the reader. It might be a gentle epiphany or it might be the smoking gun. But the point is there should be satisfaction to reader and writer alike that this is the end and there will be no more. A good ending allows us to close the book and nod, ah good book. And that is what every writer and every reader hopes for.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out in the fall.
http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Man-William-Elliott-Hazelgrove/dp/0982139241/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
www.billhazelgrove.com

The Impact of 9/11 on Contemporary Novels

Writing a contemporary novel in the last nine years is writing under the shadow of 9/11. You cannot write any kind of book about American life and not have the impact of that day inform the work. To do so it as the author's peril. The world changed, America changed, people changed after that day. Life pivots around the day the planes struck the World Trade Center and you have life before and after and there is no comparison. Everything changed. Values. Lifestyles. Economics. Where we live. How we live. The spectre of 9/11 as a precursor of eventual Armageddon did not start to fade even five years after the event. Even if you did not put duct tape and  plastic on your windows, you excepted the other shoe to drop any minute.

And so that leaves the novelist. How to get your hands around such a monstrous event? Earlier writers had to deal with World War II in much the same way. It was too big to handle, yet it changed writing itself. As did World War I. But 9/11 was not a war in a classic sense and so war novels will not do. There has been no Naked and the Dead. There has been no Thin Red Line or From Here to Eternity. Jonathan Letham and a few others have taken stabs at parts of mushroom cloud that is 9/11, but no one has nailed it per say. Even Jonathan Franzen sidestepped it in Freedom. It is just too big

But novelists must factor in 9/11 into their landscape. It did affect people. It does affect people and where that fits into your particular fiction will be determined by the skill of the novelist. People literally changed the way they lived after that day. People moved out of cities. They moved into the country to get away from a potential mushroom cloud and then nine years later could not remember why they moved. But they do know. It is there every time the anniversary rolls around. Our very polarized schizophrenic society is a testament to that day. Glen Beck, Tea parties, Sarah Palin...these are products of our troubled times and must be recognized by the novelist.

So we may stick our head in the sand and say 9/11 belongs to an era. But it does not. It is the Perfect Storm of the Twenty First Century, informing every aspect of American life. For the novelist the trick is to deal with  this Perfect Storm, but not let it engulf and overwhelm the story. Anyone who lived through that very dark day can tell you that is no easy task.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out in September.
http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Man-William-Elliott-Hazelgrove/dp/0982139241/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Writers Never Retire

Retirement. Where does that come from? Some sort of hangover from the World War II generation. Certainly the people who grew up in the last Great Depression never thought about retirement. Something companies and stock brokers came up with so people would invest their money. Whole generations working based on the dream or the promise that one day they could hang it up like Mr. Jet Blue and just say screw it, I'm done and now I am going to kick back. Asta La Vista baby. Then again, maybe not.

New York Times says people are really frightened now they won't be able to retire. The massive unemployment is draining savings and 401Ks and the houses aren't worth half their value anymore and the stock market crashed. Bottom line, people who assumed they were going to retire are thinking they may work until the day they die. Grim reality and very frightening for many, but for writers, it is something we have always known, because writers never retire.

It is write until you drop. That is the writer credo, if there is one. Once you commit to the road of the writer then security goes right out the window. You make peace early on with the fact you will never retire, in fact you don't even recognize the concept. What? Sit around and do nothing? If retirement is doing what you want then writers are already retired. The road of the writer is constant struggle. And if you aren't down with that in the beginning then pick something else.

So in a way the writer is recession proof. No one becomes a writer because they crave financial security. They crave something else. A walk on the wild side, a life less certain perhaps. But the promise of a nirvana at the end of years and years of writing. I don't think so. The only promise for the writer is that he will get up the next morning, sit down, and begin again.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out this month.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Writer in Hard Times

These are hard times. On this we can agree. The writer in hard times is actually better equipped for the deprivation that comes when the coins stop clinking. Apologies to all writers who laugh to the bank for the next sentence...Because writers are always having hard times. When someone decides to become a scribbler of literary fiction or any type of fiction then you make peace with the fact you will probably be broke a lot of your life. It comes with the territory, in fact hard times informs the work.

The obvious reference to Hemingway on the left bank stating hunger made his stories better is probably a little over the top, especially since he had his wife's trust fund to fall back on. But certainly the struggling writer (is there any other kind) produces his work out of a pressure that is exerted by his situation. If fiction is produced by incongruities in a persons psychological makeup then it is certainly ratcheted up by the tectonics of being unable to make a living. The struggling artist is not really a stereotype, artists do struggle, they struggle every damn day to produce their work and survive.

So when hard times hit then the struggling writer usually is fully armed. He or she may fall further down the economic totem pole, but the psychological armor is there. Writers never define themselves by bourgeois standards or at least they shouldn't. Writers define themselves by their work and most are happy to have the basics covered so the work can be accomplished. Whenever I took a job I always evaluated it not on how much I made, but how much I could write! This is not a normal evaluation and one thing writers find out before most people is that being broke is a state of mind and if you let it get you then it will.

So maybe art is for a man with a full belly, as EM. Forester said in Howards End, but  the artist writer survives through good times and bad and yes it is probably true you write better with your back against the wall. In that way, we should see a literary flowering any day now as the Great Recession drags on and on and on.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out in September. www.billhazelgrove.com