A bowerbird, or so I read years ago in National Geographic, or Smithsonian, or one of those other popular magazines with a bent towards science and nature, was a native bird species peculiar to Australia and the farther reaches of New Guinea, which had the curious habit of decorating its nest with all sorts of colorful bits of this and that – glass, shells, colored leaves, pieces of glass and plastic, berries – anything and everything which caught it’s eye and which it liked enough to pick up and take home, arranging it with all those other finds in pleasing patterns. This apparently makes sense to the bird doing the arranging, because they seem to be quite set on those patterns. They will, according to researchers, also restore bits that are deliberately disarranged back to the pattern which they chose. It also seems, according to the internet (which I turned to in confirming this tiny and almost useless bit of knowledge – hey, it’s on the internet, so it must be true!) it is the male birds who do this, so this is where this simile falls apart. I am, and have always been of the female persuasion and pretty happy overall with that designation, although in a truly just universe, I would have preferred looking a hell of a lot more like Audrey Hepburn, as well as having her mad dancing skilz.
But I do have somewhat of a similarity to the bowerbird (of whatever sex) because I collect stuff, random stuff that is attractive and catches my eye, and which I can arrange in attractive patterns. I do this when I write, or more specifically when I am reading and researching for what I am preparing to write. I never know what particular bit will engage my interest – and some items are very odd bits indeed. I keep coming back to them, and by this I know that they must be an element in the story. For “Adelsverein” I kept returning to the Goliad Massacre of 1836, to the kidnapping of children from the Hill Country by raiding Indians, to a throw-away comment in an old memoir – a then-senior citizen recalling that his youngest sister actually wasn’t of his blood, she was an tiny orphan found and rescued from the Verein camp on the Texas Gulf Coast, never able to recall her real name. I also kept circling back to the recorded memory of an elderly woman, recalling proudly that she was 90-something and didn’t need glasses to thread a needle – and also recalling that the husband she loved, and had been married to for only 13 years, being taken away by the Hanging Band during the Civil War and hung, for the crime of being a Unionist in a Confederate state – all this, in spite of her attempting to sneak his revolver to him. Reading about these tiny events was like getting a small electrical shock, or perhaps recognizing something that I had known in another lifetime. These combined with any number of other bits and pieces of frontier lore, with small and humble items seen in museums, with paintings and sketches of scenery, daguerreotypes and memoirs, even a 1850’s travelogue by a famously observant political writer who did a horseback journey through antebellum Texas and the south. Thrown into this mix are my own visits to various places in the Hill Country, my own first-hand observations of clear green rivers, their beds paved with round marble-white gravel, sessions with subject matter experts in frontier arcane, the memory of certain people and conversations — and then arrange it all in a somewhat-logical pattern. Just like a bowerbird, although my own bower is a famously complex excel spreadsheet of a dozen and more categories, organized by month and year. All those pretty, shiny bits are plugged into the place where they seem to me to belong.
In a year or two, there is a book come out of it, all; a ripping good adventure yarn with the added benefit of having the very best bits of it based on historical fact; not bad for a bowerbird.
Celia Hayes
Author - To Truckee’s Trail & The Adelsverein Trilogy
www.celiahayes.com
Ξ December 24th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Thunk |
Well, it’s a series of three book drafts–a marvelous supramundane space odyssey. And, long ago, I bought this domain to host the release of those books. But, publishing being what it has been for decades, the first book, a prequel of a series that precedes The Deepening books, never saw print. So the domain languished.
I’ve had offers to sell thedeepening.com–some nice and some ludicrous, ludicrous like the one this year by the folks who made that horrible D movie–but never felt like parting with it. So a couple of years ago I thought, okay, I’ll start an online glossy fiction magazine…which I did, with an ISSN and everything. What a GREAT BUNCH of stories by a GREAT BUNCH of authors we had…and no readers…except a few dedicated supporters and fiction writers wanting to scope out the ‘zine in order to get published in its pages.
When my eyesight as well as my bank account gave out, I tossed in the towel on the fiction magazine.
But it really bothered me that my very favorite entertainment, fiction reading, was losing ground, losing market share, in the entertainment world. It also bothered me that good books kept going unpublished. What to do? Well, it isn’t for lack of publishers or the ability to get books into hands of readers. It’s about getting readers’ (and non-readers’ attention.) So The Deepening, stage two, was conceived.
What was conceived? Something that was fun for me, not a lot of work (except for set-up, of course), and provided readers, authors, publisher–anyone, really–the means to promote a good fiction read–novel, short story, fiction magazine, hyperfiction… .
So, here we go. And if no authors come to promote their books, so be it. I read enough to fill its pages regularly, so you, our visitors, won’t have any reason not to check out the new articles here every week! Book mark it. It’s going to be exciting!
Reading takes you away into a secret world. It’s the only way you can get there.
Ξ December 5th, 2008 | → 2 Comments | ∇ Thunk |
Imagine waiting fifteen years for agents and publishers to respond to a query or a submission?
Fifteen years.
I know an author who has been just that patient. And the few editors who responded said, yes, the books were excellent, but…they didn’t fit their present needs, didn’t fit the “present market trends.”
Fifteen years worth of trends?
Then there’s another author who spent two solid years querying agent after agent, then another year querying publishers. She’s got another couple of years to wait according to the pubishers’ guidelines. So, five years?
How about the author who spent a year getting an agent, that agent sold their manuscript to a publisher within six months, and that publisher then decided not to publish the book…two years after the sale. Three and a half years only to have to start over?
Years. Decades, in some cases. That’s publishing? Ridiculous. What are they waiting for? Death of the author? (Maybe…but that’s another can of worms.)
What if the manuscript is time sensitive? …Not a happy situation. The contemporary story written today for an immediate tomorrow will be long outdated by the time traditional publishing gets around to putting it in bookstores…if they ever do.
That’s why a lot of writers, good and bad, throw up their hands and turn themselves into independent publishers, publishing and then marketing their own books. Not everyone has the patience nor the longevity required to wait on agent and publisher time lines…which seem to run on a more geologic, maybe even cosmic, clock rather than on good old Human Standard Time.
Ξ December 1st, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Thunk |
How do you go about finding good novels to read? Read reviews? Try one? Stick to authors you know?
I know what I do mostly: Pick up the book, read the back cover, read the front and back flaps, Start reading chapter one, go to some arbitrary spot in the middle, scan down the page with my eye, go to the back of the book — not the end, but somewhere in the last half inch of pages, and scan down that, too, to see if the writing holds or if it has reduced its quality to “trite.” If I like it, if the story intrigues me, I’ll buy it.
I like handling books before I buy them. I don’t particularly like buying online…though I do. I enjoy idling away hours at a good book store. Unfortunately, the only new bookstore we have locally is an indie whose children’s section is larger than all the rest of the store. (Owner is a grandma, probably a great grandma.)
So, the question stands, folks: How do you go about finding good novels to read?
Ξ November 22nd, 2008 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Thunk |
Lost in Anonymity by DLKeur, copyright 2008, all rights reserved. Lost in Anonymity prints are not marred by lettering. They measure 12 inches square and are hand-signed. $120 each.
Good books, left to languish. Manuscripts never to see print.
Ever wonder how many good stories, great fiction, no one ever had a chance to read…because the author couldn’t get a foot in the door?
I do.
I wonder.
Today, authors will often turn to self-publishing to get what they deem to be a good story into print. But, you know what? If the book IS good, I don’t ever hear about it. Even if it’s bad, I don’t hear about it. Why is that, do you think?
…Authors lost in anonymity. Books never seen.
We aim to change that here at The Deepening.
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