LOCKE DOWN

So what are we to make of John Locke?

Not the philosopher but the eAuthor.

* 8th member of the KINDLE MILLION SALES CLUB, following Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins and Michael Connelly

* First self-published author to hit Kindle Million Sales Club

* First self-published author to hit #1 on Amazon/Kindle

* Sold 1,100,000 eBooks in 5 months by word of mouth

* Has had four of the top 10 eBooks on Amazon/Kindle at the same time, including #1 and #2; has also had six of the top 20, and eight of the top 43…at the same time!

* Every eBook John Locke has written and published has become a best-seller.

His latest post on his blog, FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS,

http://www.donovancreed.com/Blog/tabid/105/ID/40/Fathers-and-Daughters.aspx

is a heartfelt, yearning description on his sorrow of seeing his daughter growing up and going to college.

She will never be his little girl again. And yet in his heart, she always will be.

Then, he darts into selling his latest book, BOX, with its cover showing a half-dressed girl the age of his daughter. Its hero, a sociopathic doctor who kills patients of other doctors.

It is a follow up to the first book on said doctor, whose cover had another clothing-challenged girl the age of his daughter.

Locke has written that each of his rare posts are crafted carefully to sell his books. So FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS was written to sell BOX. My ghost cat just coughed up a spectral furball.

He has recently signed a deal with SIMON & SCHUSTER to publish his books under his imprint JOHN LOCKE BOOKS. Yet he is faced with the twin problems of customer recognition and product placement. Then, there are the lack of print reviews.

Locke says,

"There’s a natural bias by reporters and editors that indie books don’t measure up. For another, I’ve been told (unofficially) that if newspapers review one indie book it would open the floodgates.

“Next thing you know, a million indies will call, demanding us to review their books!”

Also, traditional publishers’ ads are a huge source of revenue for print media, and traditional authors are a staple for TV talk show interviews. Where traditional media is concerned, indies and traditional authors are adversaries.

To put it another way, if you’ve got a popular blog, and Coke pays you a million a year to advertise on it, would you post a positive story about a wonderful new Pepsi product?

Locke says of the success of the self-pubbed 50 Shades of Grey,

“We’re still living in a world where self-published books aren’t allowed to be discussed in polite society until the gatekeepers buy the rights.”

"E.L. James has done a fantastic job!

She’s dominating the charts, and will likely break some of the all-time publishing records. My comment refers to the hesitancy of TV and print media to publicize or review indie books.

Ms. James self-published her book in May, 2011, and worked her way up the charts utilizing the indie author’s best friends: social media and word of mouth.

But was she interviewed on TV? Were her books discussed by talk show hosts or reviewed by newspapers and magazines? Not to my knowledge.

But in March, 2012, public awareness of 50 Shades exploded!

Within days you couldn’t turn on the TV or open a newspaper without hearing about E.L. or her books. They were mentioned and discussed on every TV talk show, in every newspaper and magazine you can name.

Six weeks after Random House purchased the rights to her books, E.L. James was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World!

Would all this have happened if 50 Shades had remained an indie book? I like to think so, but my gut tells me no."

What do you think of all this?

For more of John Locke's views, check out IndieReader:

http://indiereader.com/2012/05/john-locke-on-the-big-problem-still-facing-indies/

SEX HELPS

"Sex without love is a meaningless experience,

but as far as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty damn good."

- Woody Allen

Sex does help. Just not the way we would think in our novels.

Jodi Henry once wrote an excellent post ( http://jodilhenry.blogspot.com/ )

on the subject she thought I was going to discuss : sex in literature.

A squrim-worthy topic she calls it. It is that and more because :

Sex sells.

You roll your eyes and go, "Duh!"

I mean, just look at the skyrocket sales of 50 SHADES OF GRAY and its two sequels!

Yes, sex sells ...

but not always for the reasons you might think.

Men, of course, are hard-wired to see a beautiful woman and have their hormones go into a conga line ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conga_line )

But we men are more complex than the cliches written in COSMOPILITAN.

Sex. Lust. Love.

The first two are primal instincts. The third gives birth to legend and magic.

Every writer is in much of his work. But it is not as straight-forward as that.

J.R.R. Toilken rarely, if ever, wrote love scenes. Instead, he wrote distantly of Love, the concept with which Tennyson teased but never consummated in THE IDYLLS OF THE KING.

He was a shy man, and it shows in what he chose NOT to write.

He reflected his times -- as we must reflect ours in what we write and for whom we write.

But for whom do we write? And what exactly are "our" times?

We live in a lonely age. From teenager on up, we feel outside, misunderstood, and alone -- the three labor pains that give birth to the possibility of love.

A reader is drawn to a novel by what is lacking in her/his life.

We've already touched on some of the things most people feel lacking in their lives. It can be summed up in one word : intimacy --

Sex is only the tip of that iceberg floating in the existential void of our modern times. There is much more beneath the murky surface.

How many of us feels valued, loved for who we truly are - bulges, skin blemishes, and other imperfections not withstanding?

Not many.

How many of us have such passion and fire in the night that we tingle in the morning light?

Even fewer.

Many of us settle for half-relationships, tepid gropings in the dark that leave us feeling empty, not full, the morning after.

Why is that?

In the process of love-making, we leave a bit of ourselves with the other. If we make love without feeling love, the other fails to leave a bit of themselves within us.

Inside we have become less ... not more. Do that enough times and a void is carved within us.

That is why we have become the Hollow People, seeking to fill that emptiness within with all the wrong things :

Sex without satisfaction.

Passion without permanence.

Lust wearing the mask of love.

Think of the words of John Masefield :

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

Why did I quote Masefield's poem?

We all long for that handsome, beautiful Other who will tenderly stroke our cheek,

fan the fires of our passions,

and fill our hearts and head with the laughter of two souls meant for each other.

Romance. Magic. Love.

Those are the stars a winning author steers by.

Fix them to your mast, and you will never go wrong.
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