Coffee, cake, chatting, and mulled wine with author Linda Huber in Zurich

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2015

 

For those who missed Linda’s blog post last week!

One of the challenges of being an independent author is creating connections, but this is also one of its perks. Since I started my micro publishing business back in 2010, I have had the good fortune of meeting many wonderful friends on social media. The true pleasure, however, is when you have the chance to get together with them in person. I’ve met several of my author and reader friends for lunch or an outing and these occasions are always an inspiration.

One such opportunity I had when meeting Linda Huber, the talented author of books such as The Attic Room and The Cold Cold Sea. During my yearly stay in my original home country, Switzerland, this November, we met in the city of Zurich. We took a stroll through the old part of Zurich, visited one of my favorite coffee shops, the richly decorated Cafe Felix at Bellevue, which serves excellent coffee and cake. While enjoying a cappuccino and a delicious Aprikosen-Streuselkuchen (apricot crumb cake), we talked about books, about Scotland (where Linda is from), California (where I live), and tons of other topics.

To walk off some of the calories, we took another stroll, admiring the many small shops, the beautiful old buildings, and Christmas decorations.

Since the weather was rather on the cold and wet side, we needed to warm up at one of the many Glühwein stands (mulled wine) which, together with roasted chestnuts, are very popular at this time of the year.

 

It was a truly memorable time and I look forward to more such occasions!

WIP is at the editor – what now?

Monday, October 13th, 2014

I just sent off my WIP, The Italian Sister, to the editor. 

It’s a great feeling to have the manuscript I have been laboring over out of my hair for a while. After a sigh of relief, panic sets in. WHAT NOW? I feel oddly abandoned without my work. Besides, I’m totally stuck on the sequel I was planning to write. And I mean STUCK!

Okay, I know, lots of writers go through this. I do have a few options, I guess:

 

 

1) I forget about writing for a while and enjoy a piece of chocolate instead. But that only takes a few minutes and then what?

2) A cup of coffee? A few more minutes. And then what?

3) I go on vacation–wait, you need money for this… Hmm.

4) It’s cheaper to just go for a walk in my beautiful neighborhood:

Okay, done that. Now what?

5) Read, but I do this all the time anyway. And reading can also be an escape to keep from writing. 

Gee, this is getting difficult. I’m running out of options.

I guess there is only one option left:

6) BUCKLE DOWN AND WRITE ANYWAY. Sigh!

Unless, dear writer/reader, you can come up with a better idea. What do you do when you’re stuck?

Cheers!

Voices of readers that make my heart leap

Sunday, May 13th, 2012

Writing is a lonely pursuit. You sit at your desk and put words on paper or on the computer screen and begin a silent conversation mainly with yourself. Eventually, if you’re lucky, someone else, a reader, will answer you back and so, out of the monologue a dialogue develops.

Reviews are one way readers communicate with an author. They let the author know if his or her words made them happy or angry or left them untouched. When I published my first novel, I received a few enthusiastic 5-star reviews from a couple of friends who read the book, liked it, and wanted to support me. That was wonderful. Publishing a novel or a poem is like sending a child out into the world. You want it to do well and you need all the encouragement you can get.


However, after a while my readership grew. People I don’t know and who don’t know me judge what they read on its own merits, according to their tastes, likes and dislikes. Some love it and respond enthusiastically, others like it a little, and a few may hate it. People have different tastes and look for different things in a book and so they react differently to it. And that’s the way it should be. An author does not need to please everybody. My only task as an author is to be true to myself and I hope, by doing so, I may connect with people out there of like mind. 


Every once in a while, however, I read a review or receive an email from a reader who tells me that my book touched him or her on a deeper, more personal level, that it reminded him of an experience or a situation in his own life. That for me is the highest praise. It tells me that I don’t only write for myself, but what I put down means something to someone else. I’m not just sitting in front of my computer or my notepad by myself; I am, in fact, communicating something of value to someone else. That’s all the justification I need to go on writing.

Thank you, dear readers, for sharing your thoughts with me!

How many times can you read the same book? Do I need a shrink?

Friday, December 23rd, 2011
I’m a book addict. Seriously. I have the same withdrawal symptoms drug addicts describe: I get depressed, nervous, jittery–you name it–if I don’t have a book to read, either on my bookshelf or on my Kindle. Ever since I got that wonderful reading device, I have been able to feed my addiction and hold the symptoms at bay more easily.
However, there are still times I all of a sudden realize that I AM OUT OF BOOKS, HELP! I just finished reading a book and realize that I have to find a new one. Fortunately, I have a “to be read” list on Goodreads–that’s a really nice feature. If you see a book you like but don’t want to buy it right away, you can put it on that list and access it any time with your computer. Or, my Kindle is in the process of being recharged, or I am somewhere else and don’t have it with me. Or, or, or–it happens. So what do I do?

I REREAD books.

Okay, I know lots of people reread books they really like, so what’s so unusual about it? Well, ahem, I reread books I like many times; we’re talking ten, twenty, thirty times and more. No kidding! That’s how serious my addiction is.

I just put back one of those books I reread I don’t know how many times back on the bookshelf. It’s a novel by Anita Brookner, Hotel Du Lac, a novel that takes place in Geneva, Switzerland. Anita Brookner is one those prolific more traditional British authors who write in different genres. Most of her novels deal with flawed human beings who struggle with love, identity, relationships–the stuff that novels have been made of since time immemorial. But she isn’t the only author whose books I keep rereading.

There are many books on my bookshelves I have gone through many times. Interestingly enough, I reread books on my brick-and-mortar bookshelves more often than those on my Kindle. I don’t know why. It may have to do with the fact that those physical books are more visible. I just grab one off the shelf and voila–the evening is saved.

Why do I reread the same books again and again? Of course, I have to like or love the book in the first place. But still, I mean I know the plot, I know exactly what happens. One reason is perhaps that I read books not just as a reader but also as a writer. Each time I read a book again, I discover something new: an image I hadn’t noticed before, an interesting sentence structure, etc. However, that’s only half the reason. I reread books even before I started to seriously write myself.

The only thing I can explain my book fetish is that fact that when I read, I leave this world and enter into the world the author creates for me. I travel to distant places, I slip into different personalities, I experience life through a different sensibility. I get totally absorbed in the book and this happens every time I read the book.

I guess it could be worse; I could be addicted to a more dangerous substance. The only drawback is the fact that I am also an author and have to write books, not just read them. And right now, I’m struggling with my writing and boy; it’s so much easier to read. So I indulge myself until my author voice hits me over the head and I throw the book away and pick up my writing pad. I struggle through a few pages, feel better, toss my pad and–yes, you guessed it–grab the book again.

Am I the only one afflicted with this “disease,” this book fetish? I hope not!

Indie authors–a reality check!!

Monday, August 8th, 2011





I have been talking and emailing with some of my fellow independently published authors about the problem of making it in the writing world, about selling books, getting some cold cash, climbing up the ladder of the giant Amazon or whatever other venue we have chosen. I can tell you, it has been a sob & whine fest (not wine, that would be a lot better), to say the least. I think we all need a reality check.
1) Writing books is hard. We are confronted with our demons of inferiority, doubt—does anybody really want to read this crap? Then there are moments of elation. Yes, yes, yes, I did it, I like it. If we don’t have these occasional warm feelings pulsing through our veins and arteries, we would give up sooner or later.

2) Publishing books the traditional way. That’s even harder, unless you have at least ten years to find an agent and the agent will need another ten years to find a publisher (if the agent lasts that long and doesn’t decide to quit and go bag groceries—there is nothing wrong with bagging groceries by the way). Okay, so perhaps I exaggerate a little. I haven’t tried that route for very long, so I’m not an expert here.

3) Publishing books as an independent author—fairly easy these days. BUT here is the clincher: promotion. It can be done BUT IT TAKES TIME. And that’s where many indie authors dive into a world of illusions. You write an excellent novel or two (that’s the bottom line), you do everything right, hire an editor, spend some money on a cover design, post in Amazon, B&N or other venue, blog about it, go on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Google+, collect reviews and expect to sell books like hot cakes, quit your day job (big trouble), and live happily ever after. It doesn’t happen that way.

The competition is fierce. There are thousands of independent authors fighting for a spot in the limelight and on Amazon bestseller list. I’m not saying it can’t happen. There are independently published authors who are successful and are able to support themselves that way and there will be more in the future. I personally know of a couple, one of them is Scott Nicholson, my editor. If you study the background of the authors who made the jump successfully, you will notice several common elements.

1) Most of these authors have written and published many books, anywhere from 10 to 20 or more.
2) They tend to write in a popular genre (thrillers, romance, YA).
3) Some have been published traditionally before going indie.
4) They know something about promotion and if they don’t, they are willing to learn.
5) They work their butts off and have been doing it for many years, often without much external or monetary reward.
6) They got lucky (important factor).

So, what are we newbies who have perhaps one or two novels under our belt and published them last year and perhaps this year supposed to do? Well, I can’t tell you what you have to do; I can only tell you what I plan to do.

I don’t depend on my writing to make a living, at least not yet. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen one day, but I am not holding my breath. And not depending on the income from my books gives me more freedom to explore and experiment with my writing, and it takes that awful pressure away of having to sell books all the time. I make my money as a freelance translator, I do odd jobs, I work temp jobs at a university. I know, I know, I hear you. Then you don’t have enough time to write. I wrote and published two novels and I translated one into German. I get up at five in the morning (okay, so sometimes it’s six), I don’t watch much TV, I have no social life, at least none to speak of. If you write one page a day, you have a 365-page novel in one year (which is much too long for readers with today’s limited attention span).

I sell a few books here and there, get some royalty checks that make me feel great. And I am the happiest person on earth if someone likes my books. That’s the greatest feeling of all. That’s why I try to write reviews of books I like to tell other authors that they made a difference in my life, that they touched me in a deep way.

And isn’t that what writing is all about, what art in general is all about? To go beyond the surface of things, to dig a little deeper than the glitzy veneer of “success,” and to share something meaningful with others. Do I sound like an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy idealist? Perhaps.

See, my background is in poetry, so I am used to not making any money as a writer. Poets—even famous poets or poet laureates—can usually not support themselves through their poetry alone. They either have a university job, they translate if they know more than one language, they teach, they have workshops, they bag groceries.

But there will always be times, in spite of all the wonderful things I just listed, when we feel down, misunderstood, discouraged, just simply rotten. IT’S CALLED LIFE. Get it? If we feel that way, it helps to connect with other authors, blog about your whine fest. It’s always good to know, we are not alone. Perhaps do something nice for someone else, it makes us feel better. Perhaps read a book—writers are supposed to read! And then let’s get back to work.

Happy writing—and reading!

Author in Training, Part 2: Revising – How much is enough?

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

I am in the process of translating my novel “Love of a Stonemason” into German. Having been away from the text for several months—I published it independently back in 2010—I look at it with fresh eyes and I’m beginning to see things I haven’t noticed before. When you translate a text, you pay close attention to every word and you notice details that escape you even with careful editing.

I have translated several books by other authors before, not novels but books on topics of Jungian psychology, which had been traditionally published by reputable American and Canadian publishers. I remember catching not just the occasional typos but inconsistencies in content that escaped the scrutiny of the author as well as the editors. Just goes to show: a text is never perfect.

However, that shouldn’t discourage us from trying to make it perfect, and one way to do that is to hire a good editor AND a proofreader. I had my novel edited twice. What I didn’t do is hire a separate proofreader and although my editor caught many of the spelling errors, he didn’t catch all of them and I may have added some as I was making the final revision. A few of my friends read the manuscript before I published it and discovered a few inconsistencies and typos. But even now, after its publication, a fellow author as well as a friend of mine are reading the book and are finding typos and other blunders. Although I cringe and hang my head in shame every time someone discovers a mistake, I am of course very grateful to all these people who contribute to the fact that one day, my novel will be (almost) perfect!

The wonderful thing about ebooks is that you can upload new and improved versions easily. With printed books it is a little more difficult but it can be done as well.

However, as I go through my book again, I also find not just typos but stylistic things that could be improved: two choppy sentences that could be merged into one, sentences which could be eliminated to make the text a little tighter, and so on.

The question I’m asking myself now: Do I leave the book the way it is (with the exception of typos, etc.) and use what I learned in my future novels? Or do I revise further? How much is too much? When becomes the desire to make it better an obsession?

Any thoughts on this? Authors: How much do you revise? When is enough enough?

PS: I’m going to talk about my experiences with writing and independent publishing for the next few weeks, so if you’re interested, click the Follow button on the right.

Happy reading and writing. And leave a comment, if you feel like it!