Components of a Bestseller

Bestseller. It has a ring to it. But what are the components to a book that make it take off when another book sputters. First. It has to be good. And maybe that lets out a lot of books. Good is defined by the reader who tells another reader who tells another. Bestsellers are a word of mouth phenomenon when it is all said and done. Even today with the Internet the word is still passed on from trusted source to trusted source.

This is why the people who buy  two hundred five starred reviews get little traction. The reader is missing in that scenario. And yes bait and switch is alive and well. We will still download a book that looks great from the Amazon reviews only to find we have been had. The reviewers were friends or family or they were bought and paid for. This sadly happens.

But the book that is honestly reviewed by someone who really loves it is a double edged sword. Not only will that person review the book they will then tell someone about it. It happens more than you think. I get asked a lot what I am reading and I will rattle my brain and say...well this is a great book that I read a while ago. I even helped sell a copy of Wilson's biography when a man picked it up and stared at it and I spouted out and said, 'That's a good book." We talked and then he bought it.

Yes of course you have to market. Yes you have to do all those thousand and one things to get people to notice your book. But really the real test is is your book good enough to have someone in a Barnes and Noble blare to someone else "hey I read that book! It's good." That is the acid test of any potential bestseller.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have

A Clean Well Lighted Coffee House to Write In

Rewriting is mind numbing. The same thing over and over and over. Four hundred some plus pages you climb over like a runner who just keeps going around the same track trying to improve their time just a little. Each time you start again you hope this might be the final lap, but there is always that nagging suspicion that one more time might be the charm. To pull this off without losing your mind requires boat loads of coffee, sweets, and lots of company and spurious noise. You have to trick your mind into not wandering off and never coming back. So you haunt every coffee house you can find.

The first coffee house works for a while until the Internet dies. They complain that their  WIFI has been going in and out and of course when you are there it just up and dies. You need the Internet. Not for the rewriting but for the breaks to give your mind release. You need something to distract you between chapters and after eating lunch and caramel rolls and drinking coffee you feel it is time to go find somewhere with WIFI. You run down the street to a little dark coffee house run by a tough woman who gives you a hot chocolate. You plug in and start again. That's when you hear it.

You need background noise not the greatest hits of love songs from the Seventies.  Afternoon Delight gets you off the chair to hunt down the tough Chicago woman who is reading The Inquirer behind the counter. Pardon me. But could you put on some classical music or jazz? The flat expression. NO. She goes back to the Inquirer. You sit down again to Mandy, It Don't Matter to Me, Have you Ever Been Mellow. That's it. You can't wall it out. Olivia  Newton John doesn't belong in your novel. You unplug and give the tough broad from Chicago a dirty look and head out into the snow.

Starbucks. Ah, you know the menu. A good place to plug in. Consistent. You bust in, a man on a mission. Every table is taken. Worse the one table with an outlet is taken. You stare at the lone man drinking coffee by himself. You have an hour of battery time if only the sonofabitch would leave! No, you aren't ready to order yet thank you very much. You stand around and glare and glare. Nobody cares and nobody is giving up their table. Shite! You head back out and down the street. Desperate for a clean well lighted place to write in or at least a place with an open table.

You head into Cozi Cafe and find a corner table with an outlet.  You plug in, order some really bad coffee. Sit down and begin again. Wifi works. There are sweet rolls. There are no people. It's as cold as a morgue, but you can work here. At least for a little while.

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

Getting Hemingway's Bed

He did sleep. Between hunting big game and fishing for swordfish and fighting in the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, WWII,  bullfighting and boxing and writing brilliant novels and winning Pulitzers and Nobel prizes and going through four wives and three homes and doing just about everything a writer can do to make a name of himself and still be taken seriously, after all that he did sleep. In a bed. I had walked past the room he had been born in a hundred times on my way to the attic. That room still held me in awe, but the more terrestrial part of his life, the one of waking up in a bed like anyone else intrigued me. That's why I said I would get his bed.

The Hemingway Foundation needed someone to drive up to Petsosky Michigan to get his boyhood bed. I voluteered. Why not? Petosky figured into many Hemingway stories and I wanted to see the cottage so central to his earlier stories. But more it seemed like I could get a little closer to the man. A bed is fairly personal and I thought bringing the bed back with me would give me more insight into the writer, the man, and might just be a great adventure. Of course it was during January and the biggest snow of the year. But who cares. Hemingway wouldn't have batted an eye.

So I headed up in my Ford for Petosky to the home of his great nephew who had the bed in a  storage shed. The trip up was long and lonely and snowy. But I hummed on the adrenalin of my mission. It was right in there with driving to New York to stomp around and look for agents. It ranked up there with getting my first novel published by a man who had never pulblished anything. It ranked right up there with deciding to write fiction when everyone I knew was taking a real job. It certainly ranked up there with the day I went up to his attic.

So I met his nephew. Jim. He was a nice man with a contagious smile. We made small talk and then he showed me the storage shed that contained the bed. We dug out the bed from under a bunch of junk. The springs were rusted and the white paint had flaked off. But it was his bed, his nephew assured me with a chuckle. One of the spindles fell off and I put it in my pocket as we loaded the bed in my Explorer. The great nephew bid me farewell and I headed back for Oak Park.

Writers like to embellish. If you were Hemingway you embellished like a God. But I really did run into a blizzard. The Midwest was hit with the worst snow storm in twenty years. The highway literally disappeared. I crept along with my strange cargo until I was forced off into a parking lot where a lone bar light burned through the whiteout conditions. I left my car and went into the bar to find other stranded travelers. Suddenly we became a club and we passed the night drinking and telling out stories. I said I was a writer and that I was bringing Ernest Hemingway's bed back from Petosky. People politely nodded and smiled and moved away.

The storm lifted and I got back on the road at dawn. I drove into Oak Park late in the afternoon and unloaded the bed in the Hemingway house where the Foundation repainted it and put a new mattress on and made it up like Ernest had just slept there. I'd like to say I glimmered something about the man from his bed or that my quest to bring the bed back gave me an idea of what he had gone through in some of his adventurers. But in the end it turned out to be just some rusted old steel springs and peeling wood that I brought back from a storage shed in the middle of nowhere. In that way, it was very Hemingway.

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

Going back to High School for a Book Speech

He could feel the breath. He could feel the touch. It had not happened quickly. He had come to give a speech. A writers speech. Several writers speeches. He had been distant at first. The teachers had grayed. They had mellowed. Ceased. The rooms still were warm. It was November after all, almost Christmas. The RCA loudspeaker bellowed the announcements of seventeen years since. He watched a clock he had seen with unlined eyes.

The speech was automatic. He had already given enough. He went to the BOYS room. There were no men in this world. Just teachers and BOYS. He went into the tiled museum. Palace of his own pimple forays, kinky hair inspections. The mirror was the same. He looked better than then. He was uglier then. Uglier by comparison, but quite beautiful and gawky for sixteen. The stall was still small and he sat where he had sat for years. Graffiti had vanished of course. But it was his BOYS room and he became again. He had some time and crept around.

 He was able to leave and float back. He could feel him now. He could feel the sixteen year old heart pumping fresh ideas, wounds, voracious pride. He walked past a blue locker. He had pulled on the lock before. Moments of books long gone and papers wasted. Moments of mussed coats and gloves--a scarf. Maybe there was a picture. Maybe. He could feel him now.He walked past athletic pictures of his time. Black and white ghosts long ago. He was not among them he was sure of that. He was never that official, but he was among the faces. A stairwell dimly lit. It was dimly lit with the half light of his time also. He had run down it unthinkingly. He never thought then. He was an expert of emotion, of being. He was Zen master of his short destiny. He was contained.

Yellowed wood of a gymnasium peeked through a door. The smirks and squeaks of young feet and muscles stopping and starting with abandon. There were no warm ups. There was no warm downs. There was the moment of motion taken from other moments and replaced just as deftly. There was the fast breaths of hearts barely tested, barely creased. Still he walked on, floating down hallways of a biology class, a french class. They had sat in front of spring windows, dreaming of the outdoors. The sun had played beyond in the fields with real creatures just below. Crickets, cicadas, frogs.

The long light of heat played down the sweet dusty scent of books and papers, pencils and erasers. They held their chalk to the boards he daydreamed too. They held their chalk while he laughed, humoring, encouraging, they laughed too. He could smell the lunches. They were indescribably brown and warm. They were milk and brownies, potpies and carrots. Trays of them floated down the corridor. He waved through the food of lusty appetites. He waved through the scent of unspent inertia. It was the fuel of little Gods--American high school fare. And he was there too.

Passing on a cold morning across the courtyard. Full of confidence, worried about his hair, his face. To be preoccupied with one's looks again. Oh this would be a luxury. He was talking with friends, cracking jokes, laughing at nothing. Cold breath as he passed back into a corridor, passing pictures and trophies again. Dead matter of his time.Then suddenly he was back in the old wing again. Back to the window he began from. There were the uprights of the field. The snow fence was up and the field browned. A coach he met didn't remember him. He shook his hand and walked on. But he remembered him. He remembered him as a God of his time. He was a naysayer, a maker of destiny. He had told him once he looked like an All American. How could anyone forget that?

He would have to speak again soon. He would have to become who he was. He stared at the goal posts. They were tinged with cold again. They were tinged with his cold of days waiting for breaks. There would be a Christmas break and he would be free. There would be a spring break and he would be free. There would be a summer break and he would be free. Absolutist, all of them. Free from their luxurious drudgery.

Still the uprights gleamed and he lingered. He looked for him coming from the parking lot. He looked for him bouncing with abandon. He would bounce with a scant dearth of years lived. He could not have thought he would look again at forty eight. There are no such parallels. Sixteen year olds are not required. The bell rang and he braced himself. He touched the old wood of the windowsill. He touched the cold of the glass. He had touched these before he knew that. The field was fading with the day. He was leaving. A glance again--winters gold, youths maiden, life's opium, a necklace of unlined moments from his alma mater days.

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

The Delicate Dance of Agents and Authors

It is a marriage. You have a courtship then a honeymoon then a working marriage and then at some point a divorce. You never like to think of getting divorced when you are married but it happens. But lets back up to the courtship. You are a writer and they are an agent. You have something they want and they have something you want. It should be symbiotic and so you start out by courting them. You send out your manuscript until an agent accepts and you go on a date.

Usually the first phone call is all hugs and kisses. They love your work and you love them because they promise a way to the promised land. The phone calls are all feel good and you get off feeling like you could leap tall buildings. Then you enter the honeymoon. They are submitting your work to editors. This is unbelievable. You have just jumped ahead ninety percent of other authors. You have a conduit to that mysterious world of publishing. Now is when you have your first quarrel usually. The rejections start coming in and you question the agent. Why did you submit it to them/ How about this person? This is a minor quarrel and you roll on.

Now here is the first fork in the road. The agent does or does not hit pay dirt. If he does not find a home for your book then you are looking at a quickie divorce. You might drag on a while but lets face it the bloom is off the rose and agents are in business to make money and if they can't make money off you then those calls will not be returned and those emails will go un-answered. You simply fall out of love. It happens. But if the agent sells your book then you go to the next level.

Now your are in a thriving working marriage. You have made the agent money and you have made money. Everyone is happy. This could last a very long time especially if your book does well. Maybe a lifetime. But, unfortunately, a lot of times the contract is paid off and the royalties dwindle and the followup book might not pan and then you enter that declining era in the marriage where no one is happy. You feel like you are not getting enough attention and the agent doesn't want to wast time on projects that won't pan out. So you divorce.

As an author you have to be very attuned to this cycle in author/agent relations. You want it to all work out the best but you don't want to be delusional either. If it feels like a bad marriage it probably is and you best be on your way to divorce court. There is nothing worse than thinking someone is doing something on your behalf when they aren't. So go get a divorce, then jump right back in the saddle and start dating again.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

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.

Your Book is Delayed....Now What?

There is nothing easy about getting a book published and for most authors the final moment is seeing the book on the shelves in a bookstore. It is nice to get an advance copy in the mail and read it through just to see how it feels. But the end of the path lies in the stacks of the bookstore where you see the spine peeking out with your name on it and you feel the whole sweep from the very first word you wrote to the signing of a contract, receiving money, and finally, the placement among men and women who have done the impossible--published a book. But what happens if your book gets delayed?

Think of a pregnancy suddenly extended. For years you have carried this baby and it became heavier and heavier and there were times you thought it would never come into this world. Finally you are given a date and everything in your body is focused on that day when your baby will come into the world. One world will end on that day and another will begin. The months seem to take forever and you peg all sorts of things to the publication--your age, your financial situation, your very reason for being. Then you go to the doctor a few days before delivery and he shakes his head. Sorry, we are having some complications, we are going to have to delay this a few months.

Wham. You stagger out. That baby has just gained ten more pounds. Everything is in disarray. That  book you have been working on as a followup gets pushed back. You have lost your ability to concentrate. You spend your time wondering when your book will appear. This happens quite a bit in publishing. It is a business and businesses don't run smoothly. But the author is outside the combine and all he gets is a big we will get back to you with a date. So you wait and wait and wait. You carry your baby around, lurching from side to side because you are gigantic. You tell the doctor you are literally going to blow up if you don't have this baby soon. He shakes his head, just a little longer, just a little longer....

You try and work and think irrationally maybe this baby will never be delivered. Maybe you will be pregnant forever and your book will be in a hellish limbo and like the baby your book will slosh around in the never never land of gestation, a stillborn child of your ambition. So you waddle on, cranky, pissed off, overweight, bottled up, a writer waiting for deliverance. Is there anything worse.

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