Month: September 2006

Two recent posts by Georganna of Writer’s Edge has gotten me thinking about two different, yet related, thought directions.

First, what magazines do you other writers get? I did my newbie/plebe duty and subscribed to Writer’s Digest. I read most of the first two issues, some of the next two, and maybe looked at the cover of the rest. Yawn. Far too many ads and far too short articles. And far too much stuff about vanity presses.

I recently got a subscription to Poets and Writers. I rec’d the first issue and was absorbed into it immediately. Sure, it’s chock full o’ ads too, but for some reason I don’t find them oppressive.

I also got Tin House for a year. Very high brow literature, in my humble opinion, and I loved every issue. But I couldn’t justify the cost so I didn’t renew.

I also get the GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies put out by Duke University Press. I am a member of the Gay/Lesbian Caucus and the journal is a side benefit. Reading the articles and stories makes my brain fog up. It has been too long since I read such big words.

Georganna’s first post was about how to find information about specific magazines. The second had to do with setting in a novel but it referred to an article on The Writer Magazine website.

So? What magazines/journals do you get that relate to writing?

Most days I don’t have the television on during the day. Even in the afternoons, we only have it on a few hours each day.

But sometimes, like if I need a cover noise or I am needing distractions, I’ll turn it on. Usually that means Animal Planet. Today I saw one of my favorite shows, Backyard Habitat. They were setting up a backyard to attract the yellow tiger swallowtail and the ruby throat hummingbird.

A few weeks ago, Joella and I were wandering the yard and a big shadow got my attention. I looked up to see this huge yellow butterfly. That thing had to be a good 6″ across. Lorna said it was a tiger swallowtail. So, with today’s show reminding me, I decided to look it up.

First, of course, I went to Wikipedia. While no result for “tiger swallowtail” came up, I went to “butterflies“. In the external links. From there I went to Butterflies and Moths of North America. And that is where I hit pay dirt (whatever that means).

At this website, you can do a keyword search for specific butterfly species. Or, better yet, do a map search. I narrowed it down to North Carolina, then to Buncombe County. Cool.

I have a scene in Simple Sarah where she is trapped in a landslide and befriends this beetle while she awaits rescue. I’m keeping the beetle, but I am thinking that a butterfly chrysalis opening where she can see it would be interesting for the character. The website gives me a chance to look up a similar part of the U.S. and ensure I get the time of year right as well as the process. Since she comes out of the experience as a different, or at least further evolved, person, the butterfly thing will help tremendously.

Way freakin’ cool. I love it when I get ideas like this. It’s like a charge to my creative self.

Easy to remember. They both have three letters.

If you are trying to sell a book either to a publisher or an agent, watch out for any of them that require a fee either directly or indirectly. For example, an agent will read your manuscript but will charge a “reading fee” to do so. Or the agent will read it for free then say you need to pay their editor to edit it for you. Or a publisher will say you have to help carry the load and pay for some of the publishing costs.

Run away.

Here’s another example. It is an actual email I got today. Odd thing is, it didn’t come to any of my writing email addresses. It came to one that is rarely used. Wee-erd.

Airleaf Publishing and Book Selling Services is the only company in the publishing industry contacting bookstore owners and selling books.

Whether you published your book print on demand, or with a subsidy publisher, we will sell it for you. (And no, you don’t have to reprint or republish with us.)

REACH 2000 BOOKSTORE OWNERS FOR $199!

We are offering our $399 Introductory Bookselling Package for just $199! That’s a 50% discount! This offer is only valid until Wednesday, September 17th!

What we do next is write a custom promotion about your book and then send it directly to the owner’s of 2000 independent bookstores. You approve the promotion, and can make any changes you want. You also help choose what part of the country and what kind of bookstores to target. We follow up all responses by mail or telephone.

As part of this package, we will also stock and sell your book in our stores in Harrison, Ohio, Martinsville, and Nashville Indiana. We can have your book for sale on our websites TODAY!

To take advantage of this amazing offer, call me 1-800-342-6068 or email [email protected]!

(If you don’t want to receive emails about selling your book just hit reply and type “REMOVE”.)

Craig Gustafson
Author Consultant

PS. Check out our ads this month in Oracle Magazine and Veterans Reporter, and our new websites (long list of websites deleted)

Okay, class, let’s dissect this letter, shall we?

1. The first sentence just makes no sense. How can they be the only company contacting bookstore owners and selling books?
2. Subsidy publisher equals vanity press (so sayeth Wikipedia). Print on Demand, aka POD, is also another name for vanity presses(so sayeth Georganna). Vanity press equals “Look What I Did, Ma!” (so sayeth me)
3. “This offer is only valid until Wednesday, September 17th!” And I ask: of what year? Sept 17th this year was a Sunday. Yesterday, to be exact.
4. Oracle Magazine is a real magazine, but I can’t really tell who the audience is. Part web, part business, part…something. Veterans Reporter is, as far as I can tell, a newspaper for veterans who live in Nevada. So how would their two ads have worked to convince me to give ’em a try?
5. Oh, and lest we forget…NEVER EVER EVER reply to unsubscribe to an email you never asked for. NEVER. By doing so, you just validate your email address as working.

To recap, I pay them $200 and they do a “custom promotion” for my book, contact 2000 bookstores, and tell them my book is for sale. Oh, and my book will be on the shelves of the company’s three bookstores in addition to being listed on their website(s).

Tell ya what, pay me $20 and I’ll pull out the Yellow Pages and contact at least ten. Gimme $50 and I’ll look on the internet for all the bookstores within a hundred miles of me. While not 2000, I betcha it would be a coupla hundred or so. As for the customized promotion, I’ll read or print what you say your book is about.

PS: And because I am such a geeky dork, Wednesday September 17th happens in 2008 (so sayeth timeanddate.com).

From BBC News:

Ancient civilisations in Mexico developed a writing system as early as 2,000 years ago, new evidence suggests.

The discovery in the state of Veracruz of a block inscribed with symbolic shapes has astounded anthropologists.

Researchers tell Science magazine that they consider it to be the oldest example of writing in the New World.

The inscriptions are thought to have been made by the Olmecs, an ancient pre-Columbian people known for creating large statues of heads.

(snip)

“It’s telling us that these records probably exist and that many remain to be found. If we can decode their content, these earliest voices of Mesoamerican civilisation will speak to us today.”

Chance find

The slab has been dated to the early first millennium BC. It appears to have been made by the Olmec civilisation of Mesoamerica, a geographical region located between the Sinaloa River valley in northern Mexico and the Gulf of Fonseca south of El Salvador.

(snip)

The Olmecs appeared on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico around 1,200 BC. They are known to have carved glyphs – a symbolic figure or character that stands for a letter, sound, or word – since around 900 BC, but scholars are divided over whether this can be classified as true writing.

The stone slab, named the “Cascajal block”, was first uncovered by road builders digging up an ancient mound at Cascajal, outside San Lorenzo, in the late 1990s.

It weighs about 12kg (26lbs) and measures 36cm (14in) in length, 21cm (8in) in width and 13cm (5in) in thickness. Its text consists of 62 signs, some of which are repeated up to four times.

(snip)

The team says the text “conforms to all expectations of writing” because of its distinct elements, patterns of sequencing, and consistent reading order.

Commenting on the discovery, Mary Pohl, of Florida State University in Tallahassee, said she believed the authors had made a good case.

“I think it’s a hugely important and symbolic find,” she told the BBC News website. “It’s new and further evidence that [the Olmecs] had writing and had text.”

The block was carved from precious serpentine rock, suggesting it was probably a holy object used by high orders of society for some kind of ritual activity, she said.

full article

They give an image to part of the tablet and a link to the rest.

I wonder what it says. If it were written on special stone, then it wasn’t a romance novel. Perhaps it was a priest’s diary and says nothing more than “Nothing special happened today.”

But perhaps it is a ritual or the history of a temple. Perhaps someday the Olmec Rosetta Stone will be found.

Linkage from Wikipedia:
Olmec
Written Language
History of Writing
Rosetta Stone

Since I’ve been so busy with edits and have opted to not get into agents for a while, I’ve not hung out at Miss Snark’s place in a while. My friend Sophia mentioned her so I went over to see what’s going on in Snarkdom lately.

Came across a post with a link to the Ultimate Bad Query Letter. If ever you even briefly consider contacting an agent, you need to read this. While it is funny to the point of almost wetting my pants, it is sad, sad, sad. (shudder)