S is for SIREN as in SEX DOESN'T SELL

Ghost of Raymond Chandler here.

I'm carrying on the backwards stroll
started by Twain, that buffoon.

I see your brow wrinkle at my name.  I am forgotten ...

which is hardly a surprise.

This is now a culture of bells and whistles, of Lady Gaga (whose name is too easily made into the butt of a joke) and her meat dresses, and pornography for bored housewives.



 

 

Sex truly does not sell ... even as steak does not sell ... it is the sizzle which whets the appetite for both.

Take my time with Hollywood and Bogart.  It was the promise and tease of sex to come which sold films and the novels which gave birth to them.

I remember the first time I met Veronica Lake:

Her blonde hair was glossy under a Robin Hood hat that might have cost 50 dollars and looked as if you could have made it with one hand out of a desk blotter.

Now, women no longer wear hats or much of anything else with style.

I remember seeing Gloria Swanson the last time:

From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.

Most of you who visit Roland's blog dream of writing a bestseller.

Amazon Best Sellers


I will help with that:

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

Remember that and you may have a shot ... a long shot ... but a shot.

Take time to take note of the world and all its lush details.  Put them in your writing, in your dialogue, in your descriptions. 

Tell your tale like no one else can.  How many ways have you heard Obama described.  Let me:

Obama has as much charm as a pair of steel-puddler’s underpants. 

Now, even if you have no idea what a steel-puddler is, you know how I feel.

I am known for my dialogue but after years of exile in England, I felt I had to learn American just like a foreign language. 

I even invented a lot of the slang in my books myself ...
hence steel-puddler.

But reality and fiction have to be balanced.  Take my P.I., Philip Marlowe. 

The real-life private eye has about as much moral stature as a stop-and-go sign.

 But I felt that by creating an incorruptible hero I gave my work the “quality of redemption” that all true art required.

When Time magazine called Marlowe “amoral” I was furious, writing that my novels represented

“the struggle of all fundamentally honest men to make a decent living in a corrupt society. It is an impossible struggle; he can’t win.”

But to end with what I started ... to write a siren well there must be that quality of redemption that is the hallmark of all worthy literature.

Yet tempered with the harsh reality of sex.  Let me illustrate with the catchword:

Blonde.

There are blonde and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blonde as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk.

There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-blue glare.

There is the blonde who gives you the up-from-under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very, very tired when you take her home.

 She makes that helpless gesture and has that damned headache and you would like to slug her

except you invested too much time and money and hope in her. But the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is as deadly as Lucrezia’s poison vial.

There is the small perky blonde who is a little pale and wants to pay her own way

and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of her love for Lady Gaga.

There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can’t lay a finger on her

because in the first place you don’t want to and in the second place she is reading the Wasteland or Dante in the original.

What am I saying?  Sex is supposed to be fun.  It begins that way in real life but eventually becomes a prison. 

Make it fun and original in your novels, and your books will sell.

So, you out there, do you think sex sells in novels?

Do you consciously add it in your story? 

Do you look for it in the novels you are considering  to buy?

T is for TRICKSTER as in CALL ME KAI-YOTE

Coyote here.

You say that in two sounds
not three, two-leggeds. 

Surprised to see me here? 

Why? 

It is amusing me to see Roland doing this A-Z GAUNTLET backwards.  It appeals to my contrary nature.

You say you don't believe in me?  Wonderful! 

When that good-looking hombre saddles up beside you tomorrow tonight in your favorite bar, you may sing a different tune in the morning.

But you'll be smiling. 

Don't go glaring at me like that, Alice.  I am always true to my nature ...

except when I'm not.

You wonder how I know Victor's ghoul friend? 

Well, now, there are a pack of tales how that came about.  You can find one in THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT:

http://www.amazon.com/THE-THREE-SPIRIT-KNIGHT-ebook/dp/B00AD94EQE/ref=pd_sim_kstore_3

{Cover courtesy Leonora Roy}

Let me tell you another one.  I'll even call it "ANOTHER ONE":

One morning in a Time that could have been but wasn't, yet might still be, Coyote paddled his canoe furiously down the River Lethe.

He glanced cautiously over his shoulder many times. At the shore a blonde ghoul, yes, children, ghoul, called out, "Oh, sir! We are being chased!"

Coyote snorted, "Me, too, ghoul. Every legend for himself I say."

The young gypsy beside the ghoul laughed, tossing a ball bearing up in the air. "I say that you would hate a hole in your canoe."

Coyote smiled wide with all his sharp teeth, "I like you."

Coyote looked at the ghoul skeptically. "Will you make a meal of me if I let you in?"

The gypsy laughed, "She already had her fill of finger sandwiches ... Trojan fingers."

Coyote winked at her. "I begin to like you, too, The Wentworth."

The ghoul gasped, "You know me?"

Coyote laughed as he pulled up to the shore, "I always know what I need to ... unless I don't."

A splash of water, a swirl of skirt, and a leap of legs later, and the gypsy and the ghoul sat behind Coyote.

"Oh, you are naked!" squealed the ghoul.

Coyote nodded happily, "Under my fur I surely am."

The gypsy grunted, "You've lost one of your tails, too."

The ghoul frowned, "What do you mean 'one,' Victor?"

The gypsy laughed, "Well, Alice, he is sitting on one tail but the bushy one seems to have slipped its moorings."

Coyote sighed, "Don't remind me."

The ghoul named Alice grew sad. "How did that happen?"

Coyote laughed bitterly. "There I was fighting a river monster when the most beautiful fox woman strolled on the shore with her canoe to stare at my wonderfulness."

The gypsy named Victor arched an eyebrow. "That's what you call it, huh?"

Alice slapped his arm and said, "Do go on, sir."

"Well," said Coyote, "the monster must have never seen a naked fox woman before and bellowed, 'Another one!'"

Coyote smiled at the memory. "I took the opportunity to drive my spear into his heart."

He shook his furry head. "I turned to the fox woman and said, 'Thank you for the distraction, Another One.'"

Coyote snorted, "She told me her name was not 'Another One' but Inari and took my lovely tail."

Coyote chuckled, "So I took her canoe and came away with wisdom as well."

"What wisdom, sir?" asked the ghoul named Alice.

Coyote turned and winked at her. "The problem for us two-leggeds is that too often we let monsters tell us who we are."

HOW TO CREATE AN INSTANT BESTSELLER

{Alice and Victor courtesy of Leonora Roy}

 

 

HOW TO CREATE AN INSTANT BESTSELLER?

Sex.     Controversy.      Violence.

Relevance to today’s culture.

No, I’m not talking 50 SHADES OF GREY.  I’m talking

GONE WITH THE WIND.

WHAT?

Yes,

GONE WITH THE WIND.

Almost from the start, controversy surrounded the novel.

 

It wasn’t only the romantic passions of Gone With The Wind that enflamed readers, it was Mitchell’s volatile mix of racial and gender politics.

 

Her glorification of the Old South and its racial bigotry outraged many in her day,

 

and that outrage burns just as hotly with lots of modern readers as one can see from the recent commercial success of The Help.

Just as disturbing to some was Scarlett’s ruthless money grubbing during and after the war.

 

 

Published only a couple of years after the Great Depression, the novel re-enacts a story that was fresh in the minds of readers of that era who had just witnessed their own version of financial collapse.

Her survive-at-any-cost morality, her slippery situational ethics were perfectly suited for the time this novel appeared and are still as relevant 75 years later.

 

To many, Scarlett’s cutthroat behavior was evidence of all that was wrong with capitalism,

 

while to others she was a symbol of all that’s right.

 

And for a woman, of all things, to dominate her male counterparts both in the boardroom and the bedroom made many readers bristle all the more.

As the film critic Molly Haskell says about Scarlett “… you hate her and you love her, a heroine of ambiguous morality who is revolutionary … in that she refuses to be chastened, brought to heel …”

For similar reasons, THE GODFATHER impacted the bestseller lists.

Whether the exploitiveness of reality TV, which plays such a central role in The Hunger Games, will still concern anyone in 75 years is doubtful.

 

But there’s little question that our national discourse will still be galvanized by issues of race and gender and avarice, all of which Gone With The Wind so richly explores.

What novels have you read recently that you believe will still have an impact 75 years from now? 

 

Will the HARRY POTTER SERIES have that kind of long-lasting impact?

 

What about your novel?  Victor Standish says, "Of course!"

 

But you know how humble he isn't!  :-)

SAVE THE DUCK!

 

He survived Hurricane Katrina!

 

But now his life is in your hands!

 

Send a comment to my post down below or the duck gets it!

U is for UNDER the hood

 

 

 

What moves your story along is what gets your car going, too.

 

The engine under the hood.

 

Some novels idle rough.

Some jerk, sputter, then stall.

Others run smooth and fast.

The difference?

 

What's under the hood.

I have always likened your novel

 

to the concept C.A.R. :

C ..... Conflict

A ..... Action

R ..... Resolution

CONFLICT -

I. You can put a bow tie on a penguin, but that won't make him

James Bond.

 

(And I wouldn't bet any money on him in SKYFALL either.)

* Calling an emotional moment conflict doesn't make it so.

 

A.) You and I deal in conflict every day

B.) But authors won't be writing books about us.

1.) Our spouse calls us fat, and our snapping back ...

2.) Conflict ..... yes.

3.) Dramatic Conflict? Usually no ...

unless magic revenge spells fly in the next chapter!

 

C.) My life on the streets of Post-Katrina New Orleans ...

1.) Conflict? Yes.

2.) Dramatic Conflict? No.

3.) Katrina is old news ... which has a shorter shelf life than dead fish.

a.) Its horrors are only fresh to my nightmares.

b.) There were only losers, no winners. All the villains I saw got away with their crimes.

c.) There was no correcting action I could take,

therefore no satisfying resolution. Only comforting the grieving over losses, that in many cases should have never happened.

d.) Your novel should not be depressing. The reader can be depressed for free.

You're asking her/him to part with hard cash money.

II.) Then, what is Dramatic Conflict?

 

A.) Let Robert Frost explain :

Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

B.) DEATH or LIFE

1.) At least in the mind of your Main Character.

2.) The want must be primal ... the roadblock to it must be overwhelming.

3.) Think Zombie Movies :

a.) You're either Fast Feet or

b.) You're Fast Food.

 

c.) Life gets cut back to the basics :

the quick or the dead

or the undead.

ACTION --

I.) Hemingway was right --

A.) "Never confuse movement with action."

B.) What then is Dramatic Action according to Hemingway?

1.) He insisted that the action and its form be solely placed on one individual.

2.) The character needs to dominate that action.

Focusing on a single matador against a single bull distills the larger human drama of all of Mankind against those dark forces that threaten us.

C.) Your hero shapes the kind of action :

1.) Robert Jordan of FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS:

2.) While Jordan is the epitome of the hero in his actions,

he is also in command of himself and his circumstances to a far greater extent
than Hemingway's previous heroes.

He is driven to face reality by deep emotional needs.

C.) For action to be dramatic, it must be either ...

1.) A direct attack upon the problem or

2.) A direct defense against it.

D.) Harry Potter writing his Congressman about nasty old Mr. Voldemort just doesn't qualify.

RESOLUTION --

I.) Satisfying.

A.) Simple?

 

B.) Not hardly.

 

Have you ever thrilled to a great suspenseful mystery, only to gasp out loud at the resolution,

"That's it?"

C.) Look at those books that you put down in your lap with a smile.

They all had one thing in common:

1.) They lived up to the promise of the build-up.

2.) They lived up to the mood of the prior chapters.

a.) One book I read with gusto.

It was about a young painter

living above a strip club.

b.) Delightful, picaresque characters, snappy dialog, some truly funny moments, and a pace that never leaves you flat-footed:

c.) "Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom" is a comic circus of strippers and bikers, cowboys and Indians, and fine art.

How could you go wrong?

d.) An ending that put a sour taste in my mouth and drained all the fun out of the entire read.

Think Christopher Moore's funniest book, ending like THE GREAT GASTBY.

e.) You can buy a hardcover for a dime from Amazon and see for yourself:http://www.amazon.com/Duncan-Delaney-Cadillac-Doom-Haskett/dp/096788330X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1294367299&sr=1-1

D.) Be true to the mood, promise, and premise of your book. If it takes you a month to write that solution that has your reader gasping in laughter or wonder, take that month.
***
What do you think is the most important thing to remember when writing? 

***

V as in Mark Twain's VALENTINE TO VIRTUE and VALUABLE lesssons in how to succeed as a writer

{Photo in public domain}

 

Ghost of Mark Twain back again.

Seeing as how I started out the week, it seems only fitting I end it.  so here is my

VALENTINE TO VIRUTE
 

Now, I don’t claim to have all the virtues – only nine or ten of them. 

I just picked up M. de L.’s new French dictionary just published in Paris, and it defines virtue as

“a woman who has only one lover and don’t steal.”

And in that sense I have just fallen plumb in love with a new gal:

the Cinderella of tech, Sophia Amoruso.
 

‘Who’s she?’, you ask.  Why, she’s the slyest little thing that looks like a Goth princess but with a side order of Tom Sawyer wiles.

She started Nasty Gal, an eBay page that sold vintage women’s clothing.

Last year, Nasty Gal sold nearly $100 million of clothing and accessories — profitably.

That’s right, children: an eBay page –

an eBay page to sell some of the vintage designer items she found rummaging through Goodwill bins. She bought a Chanel jacket at a Salvation Army store for $8 and sold it for $1,000.

She found Yves Saint Laurent clothing online on the cheap by Googling misspellings of the designer’s name, reasoning that anyone who didn’t know how to spell Yves Saint Laurent probably didn’t realize his value.

She styled, photographed, captioned and shipped each product herself and sold about 25 items a week. She named the eBay page “Nasty Gal” after the 1975 album by Betty Davis —

not the whisky-throated film star Bette Davis, but the gleefully sexy singer and style icon Betty, whose brief marriage to the jazz legend Miles Davis inspired the song “Back Seat Betty.”

And if all that ain’t virtue, I surely do not know what is.


Now, don’t feel bad that you ain’t as virtuous as my new darling, Sophia Amoruso.  Most folks are as virtuous as they can muster, according to their lights.  But with many I guess their lights are a little dim.

Virtue has never been as respectable as money, but my new love has both, don’t you know?

Sophia, my new darling, has given you struggling writers
valuable lessons in how you can succeed in your own dreams.

What do you think are some of her lessons?

Here are some thoughts of my very own.  Don't laugh, children.  I get them every now and then:

It is important not to limit your perspective about what you are trying to create to the mere medium you are creating it for.

As a novelist you are not creating a book, filled with paper pages that have ink on them.

You are creating a media franchise.

Whether it is a successful one, intentionally, or unintentionally, is up to you.

How did Sophia do it?  How can you adapt her ways to your own?

Think arresting title ... perceived value versus real value ... desires draped as needs ... the psychology of the folks viewing.
 

W is for OSCAR WILDE_Lost and Found in the Past

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

(16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900)

was an Irish writer and poet.

After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s.

Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.

But not in my mythos. Oscar is all too alive, holding court in his own chambers deep within the haunted jazz club, Meilori's.

Here is an excerpt of Sam McCord visiting him for what may be the last time from CREOLE KNIGHTS:


I looked around me. Everyone was so caught up in their own words and thoughts that they hadn't even noticed my arrival.

Oscar, dressed as always as the most colorful of peacocks but as tall as an ostrich, was bending his head next to the hot sunset of Cora's hair.

He laughed. Then, he smiled and spoke to both the courtesan and de Morny in a gossip’s whisper.

"You ask what I stole from the good Captain. Why his words, of course. One evening I spied what he was writing to his beloved Meilori and quite brazenly used them in my letter to my wife, Constance, that I was writing at the same time."

Cora hushed, "You actually read one of his love letters to Lady Meilori?"

"Indeed and borrowed from it quite boldly. What were those words now? Ah, yes:

'What can I tell you by letter? Nothing that I would tell you in person. The message of love travels not by pen and ink. Your presence here would not make you any more real, for I feel your fingers in my hair, and your cheek brushing mine. The air is full of the music of your voice, my soul and body seem no longer mine but mingled in some strange way with yours. I feel incomplete without you. Always and Forever, Samuel.'"

 "Of course I signed my own --"

Oscar tilted his head, stiffened as he heard the chiming of my spurs. His eyes met mine. He turned pale.

"S-Sam, I meant no harm."

"None taken, Ostrich. In fact, I'm honored that a poet like yourself didn't feel diminished borrowing from an weary pilgrim like me."

Cora's fingers went to her mouth. "Sam, you look --"

"--like hell? You just came from the Demeter. Me? I came here through my night club in New Orleans ... a few years after that voyage."

Comte de Morny wasn't called the shark of Paris for nothing. His mind was quick. His eyes even quicker.

"How few would that be, Captain? Your face seems about the same. But your eyes ...."

"They've seen a few more sights than they wanted, Comte."

Oscar looked uncomfortable. "You can't blame them for being curious, Uncle Sam. It never hurts to ask."

I made a face. "Unless you ask for hurt."

Oscar looked pained. "I would not have had you heard me talk about Meilori, Sam. I know when she left you seven years ago --"

Cora looked shocked. "S-She left you? But you and she are so much in love."

Oscar snorted, "Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."

Cora frowned, "You two are married? And still she left you?"

I shrugged. "She seems to think my heart left her first."

Cora's long fingers tenderly touched my cheek, staring up at me. "No one who could see the loss in your eyes would believe that."

Oscar sighed, "One of the many things you learn in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be."

DeMorny cocked his balding head. "Meaning?"

"Meaning that selfishness is not living as one wishes but demanding that others live that way as well. Meilori wanted Sam to be both what he is and what she wanted him to be. An impossible demand."

"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe I threw away a treasure because I wasn't smart enough to find a way to keep it."

Oscar's sad eyes bored into mine. "Ordinary riches can be stolen or lost. Real riches cannot. In your soul, Sam, are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you. Not even by you. The love you still have for Meilori is one of those things."

I grasped his shoulder firm. "That's why I come here, Ostrich. You help put things into perspective for me."
***