Status: On vacation.
Doing: Writing on this blog; answering e-mails; working out, and well...you know the rest! :0)
Watching: TV still offline.
Listening to: "String Theory"; Politics of Dancing 2 (2-disc CD compilation)
Reading: Kushiel's Scion. Page 292.
STAR TREK: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD-BOOK 1. Page 206.
STAR TREK: DOCTOR'S ORDERS. Page 14.
TOPIC: THE DISPARITY BETWEEN THE RICH AND THE POOR GETS WORSE
Ever wondered why you're not making it on 2 or 3 jobs these days? Why your level of income never seems to put you in the much vaunted middle-class or upper class of America?
Why even going to college doesn't seem to be making that much of a difference in your take home pay--after you get that new job you've been studying and training for?
It's because of politics, politicians, and the rich who control both.
Yes, that's right: The rich control the politicians. And therefore control the directional policy of our government and thus our country's direction. (Ever wonder why Halliburton has been making such a killing in Iraq these days? Why upwards of $50 billion of your tax monies have suddenly vanished without a trace--and no one in the government can figure out why? It's because the rich have been enriching (or "stealing") their way of out from underneath you during this whole conflict.)
The more money they have, the more control they have over people like you and me.
It's the reason why--in the last 30 years--worker productivity has exploded 76% and your level of income (or hourly wages held by 80% of today's working-class American) has only increased a paltry 2% during that time.
That's right kids: TWO PERCENT. IN 30 YEARS!!!
Why not the other way around? Why not an increase of 76% of our hourly wages included in that 76% of worker productivity?
I'll get to that in a second. But here's a startling fact for you to chew on:
Back in the 1950s, your parents grandparents were making roughly the equivalent of $9.88 an hour--thus being able to afford to move into suburbia America and buy that nice house and afford good healthcare.
Live the American Dream!
But today?
That doesn't exist anymore.
Today, corporations like McDonalds are still paying their workers $5.85/hr--for the last 11 years--while companies such as Wal-Mart can afford to pay every worker of theirs substandard wages and still get away with it...
Why?
Because they keep their prices low. That's how they are able to get away with this. And like McDonalds--make billions in profits.
But you would think that corporate companies like these would generously include the workers and give them a leg up for each million the company makes--thus increasing their hourly wages...?
Unfortunately, that's not how it works. While fat cat CEOs can get either their 'golden parachutes' in life or death--the average American worker is stuck at substandard wages for the rest of their lives; always dependent on the same companies which have been milking them for years of their hard-earned monies.
So while Bush conservatives and die-hard neocons can blame the Democrats and liberals for wanting a redistribution of America's wealth--through 'living wages' and universal healthcare--the truth is, they are also in the same boat as we are.
Reason why I am stuck at $535 a month on Social Security instead of $10,368 a year on Social Security. (If our wages were $27 per hour today instead of $5.35 or $8.01 in some states.)
Because of what's been called the 'gilded age'. Where the rich and wealthy control the manifest destinies of those beneath them--and continuously reap the benefits of their hard labor.
When someone works for a company, they aren't getting the full benefits of their hard work. The years of dedication and labor aren't paying off for them in terms of steady salary increases or giant bumps up in their hourly wages--but the guys above them--are the ones whom are benefiting the most!
This is the reason why our wages haven't increased at all in the last 30 years! Because of the way the 'gilded' system has been set up in America's workforce--to primarily benefit the rich and wealthy. (Why do you think the Republicans are so intent on keeping those tax cuts for the rich? Because the rich control them. And they have every reason to keep being generous to them--at the expense of everyone else.)
Everyone else gets to take a massive pay cut and zero benefits. Because it's all about keeping the rich richer and the poor poorer.
And at this very moment in our nation's history (2008), the gap between the rich and the poor is so systemic, it's reached a point where the divide between the two classes had last met prior to the Great Depression of the 30s.
Which means...?
We are very well looking at another depression because of the affluent rich's command and control of American policies. And through them...? The American workforce.
If we had high pay and excellent health benefits, the middle class would be as strong as it was now as it was back in the 50s--when your grandparents were getting paid a living wage.
Nobody would be suffering!
People like myself wouldn't have to be struggling to make ends meet on such a pittance of an income! But that's the way politics--and the rich--have arranged it for these past three decades.
It's what has kept 80% of working-class Americans from both the middle nd lower class rungs so poor and unable to make ends meet.
So while getting a good education is key to a higher-standard of living, don't hedge your bets too quickly that it will translate the same way once you get that job you've been wanting. Because 9 times out of 10, most of us won't get there at all.
We will still be struggling to make ends meet. To provide for our families--because politicians, policies, and the rich, have dictated that for us.
It's where they want us.
Why do you think so many first-time authors don't make it after being published? Why they are given such a pittance for an advance and thus expected to do everything for themselves?
Why do the majority of publishers cater so much to their rich client lists and not to the newbie whom just started out?
Because the rich control the value of those chips. They decide on what you should get and what you can do without as a published author for the mainstream industry.
They dictate on what you can and cannot write. Because it's all about the money.
It's the same everywhere you look. An inequality in both living and finding that all important American dream.
Because the rich and powerful control it all. And only the way we can ever hope to break that cycle is by taking the money that's been flowing into our politicians' hands all these years--and back into our own.
But the question remains: DO WE HAVE THE COURAGE TO STAND UP AND TAKE BACK WHAT IS OURS? DO WE HAVE THE COURAGE TO SAY 'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!'--AND TAKE BACK WHAT HAS BEEN STOLEN FROM US ALL???
Well...do you?
Sky
Showing posts with label publishers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label publishers. Show all posts
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
EARLY FRIDAY LOOK BACK.
Status: Reading what's next on the Starchild Duel rewrite. Starting Chapter 144. Could last 100-150 pages at the least; seeing how close to the end I really am. If I'm lucky, I could very well start Starchild Ruin in the next couple of weeks.
Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails
Watching: Nothing at the moment. A quiet early Friday morning.
Listening to: Taped C-89.5 music. (Seattle radio station.)
Reading: Nothing at the moment. I still have Kushiel's Scion to finish--but things have been so nuts in the past couple of months, I haven't found the time to read.
TOPIC: THE LAST 80 YEARS IN PUBLISHING: A LOOK BACK
I found this article to be particularly appealing since it has some interesting 'factoids' from the last century on some of the things which now graces the mainstream publishing circuit.
Sky
***
Writing mag's advice through the decades
CINCINNATI - Emma Gary Wallace, professional author, had more than a few notions about the business of writing.
With a resume that included essays in housekeeping and cooking magazines, and a popular Christmas story, "The New Neighbor," she was able and ready to share tips with readers of a new monthly magazine called Successful Writing.
"Writers waste a great deal of postage sending stuff around the country to impossible markets," she observed. "Don't carry coals to Newcastle or offer jewelry in a blacksmith shop. Every magazine has its own policy and makes a definite appeal to a certain clientele. Study these and take them into consideration when offering your wares for any market."
The year was 1921, and advice about writing was —and remains —a market itself.
The timeless cry for help as one makes the great leap from the desire to write to actual writing to published writing has inspired countless books, magazines, classes and Web sites. Successful Writing, now Writer's Digest, is one of the oldest players in the business. Based in Cincinnati at the corporate headquarters of F&W Publications, it still enjoys a circulation of more than 100,000.
"I sincerely believe that we have something to offer a broad spectrum of writers at every stage of their development, from the novice to the veteran writer in every genre," says Writer's Digest editor Maria Schneider.
For anyone who wonders what the emerging writer has faced over the decades, the magazine's files — preserved in bulky, bound volumes — tell a dual history. Evolution is constant, as technologies from airplanes to computers, and historical events from the Great Depression to the sexual revolution, bring on new markets and genres. But at the heart of the game, the riddle remains: How does one write, and write well? How do you get your writing noticed and sold?
Like the best epics, reading through the pages of Writer's Digest is less about finding the answer than enjoying the questions.
"It's like asking if we're any closer to the great mystery of how one paints a portrait or composes a symphony?" says mystery writer Lawrence Block, who for years contributed a column to Writer's Digest. "Most of the arts certainly are extremely difficult, and there are always more people who want to do it than can do it."
Writer's Digest features interviews, market surveys and general advice. The April issue includes a cover story on vampire novelist Laurell K. Hamilton, updates on such "hot" genres as romance and horror and an essay by contributor Bonnie Trenga, who recommends that sentences run no longer than 40 words because "your readers don't have a very long attention span."
When the magazine debuted, "crook stories" were in, dialect was out and the great new draw was "motion pictures," or photoplays, a business barely as old as the century. The Goldwyn Co. ran an advertisement about its hunt for the "screen's own Shakespeare." An article reported that the "penurious playwright who used to peddle manuscripts" was "probably writing his plays for the motion pictures now, and living in ease."
Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and other modernists were already breaking up traditional narrative and grammar, but in the early 1920s, the marketplace belonged to the straight and the simple.
"A readable, lucid style, is far preferable to what is called a `literary style.' ... a complicated method of expression which confuses rather than clarifies thought," one columnist advised. A suggestion for nonfiction writers: "One of the surest ways to please editors is for the writer to prove himself accurate."
The market often danced to the tune of current events. In the '20s, the rise of commercial flights resulted in "airplane fiction," adventure stories set in the skies. The repeal of Prohibition, in 1933, led to new opportunities in beer industry journals.
During World War II, romance writers were urged to forget those Depression-era tales of financial peril and were reminded that if a young man wasn't in uniform, the writer had to explain why. At the end of 1945, after the Japanese had surrendered, correspondent Sgt. Donn Hale Munson reported that the "war market" was "shot" and that it was time to "take your hero out of uniform ... and put him back in civic clothes."
The times could change as surely as snow melts in spring. In January 1981, the cover story centered on authors and their typewriters, and revealed that Gay Talese used dental floss for repairs. By April, the magazine was running a long article on word processors. By the end of the year, one article speculated about an "easily accessible database network."
Cyberspace and electronic publishing seemed like science fiction for much of the 20th century, and it took a science fiction writer to catch the future. A 1971 essay by the editor of Galaxy magazine, Frederick Pohl, an award-winning science fiction writer, uncannily anticipated print-on-demand and electronic books as he imagined the market of 2001.
"Suppose you want to read a novel. You type out the name and byline on the keyboard of your teletype, and `order' a copy of the book. Immediately it starts printing out your personal copy, a page at a time," Pohl writes. "And if you don't care about (having an actual book), you can hang your TV tube over the foot of the bed, have the book displayed to you a page at a time and read it at your ease."
Scandals that seemed new in recent years were around long before. In the 1930s, articles were appearing on plagiarism, ghost writing ("as old as the proverbial hills") and journalistic fakery.
In the 1950s, a new genre — teen fiction — was identified.
If publishing was ever a gentleman's game in tweed, the pages of Writer's Digest were not telling. Books over the decades were compared to breakfast food, chewing gum and oil-burning engines. A columnist in 1930 complained of the "abnormal emphasis being stressed on sex." As early as 1945, the industry was condemned for selling its soul to the gods of publicity.
"Nowadays it is not enough to publish a book; it must be sent skyward like a trial balloon, carrying its banners and famous names," complained Vardis Fisher, an Idaho-based author and newspaper columnist.
Romance and mystery were in demand all along, although trends and publications have come and gone.
In the early '20s, you could try Saucy Stories, which called for "fiction with very rapid action" and a few "clever epigrams" thrown in, or "The Youth's Companion," which "welcomes humor and pathos, but not pessimism." During the Depression, the MacMillan Co. was looking for "realistic, proletarian" novels, while by 1974, in the wake of Watergate, magazines from the National Tattler to The Woman were seeking investigative pieces.
The writer in 1949 looked out on an especially interesting market. Whisper magazine was seeking "sensational material, only with tabloid treatment." Jungle Stories was soliciting stories on "native tribal life or adventures of white men in the jungle."
Both sides of the Cold War were possible: Personal Liberty Magazine sought examples of "the enslaving spirit of Communism, Nazism and fascism." The Kapustkan Magazine wanted fiction "aimed at the evils of war, greed, hypocrisy, secrecy, poverty, injustice, intolerance, inequality and intimidation."
A caution: "Brevity desired."
The market was a code to crack and self-proclaimed experts came bearing solutions, such as J. Berg Esenwein, whose advice "plucks out the heart of magazine writing" and saves much "eye strain" for young writers. Readers of the '20s and 1930s likely heard much about William Wallace Cook's Plotto, "a new method of plot suggestion." Other options included Grace Porterfield Polk's "Polk-a-Dot Primer for Poets" and the Sherwin Cody School of English, presided over by Cody himself, a bearded man with a stern, professorial gaze.
No one was readier to counsel, and console, than Thomas H. Uzzell, identified as a former editor of Collier's and a market watcher whose ads and essays appeared for more than two decades.
In 1931, as the Depression dragged on, he reminded the idle businessman that the empty hours could be filled writing that long-promised book. "Necessity has launched more literary careers then you'd like to imagine," Uzzell observed.
A decade later, soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II, an Uzzell ad was headlined "WAR! NEW MARKETS! NEW DEMANDS! NEW PROBLEMS! Can you solve them?" Uzzell declared that in "such times only craftsmen, trained writers with editorial insight can survive. Escape and propaganda must be combined."
The famous, too, have prescribed. Somerset Maugham, in a 1942 essay, thought hospital doctors were ideal writers because they have seen human nature "bare" and frightened. Fifty years later, Stephen King urged against writing outlines, even as the magazine itself touted a system of plotting with index cards. Michael Crichton believed that you should get published first, then worry about an agent.
All agreed that the only way to become a writer was to write. The prolific John Updike recommended steady work habits, while Michael Chabon said nothing was possible without "talent," "luck" and "discipline." And in the early 1920s, a promising young short story writer offered a terse formula for success after a less fortunate peer sought help on how to develop a plot.
"Your letter was very vague as to what you wanted to know," the author scolded. "Study Kipling and O. Henry, and work like hell! I had 122 rejections slips before I sold a story."
The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was not easily discouraged.
Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails
Watching: Nothing at the moment. A quiet early Friday morning.
Listening to: Taped C-89.5 music. (Seattle radio station.)
Reading: Nothing at the moment. I still have Kushiel's Scion to finish--but things have been so nuts in the past couple of months, I haven't found the time to read.
TOPIC: THE LAST 80 YEARS IN PUBLISHING: A LOOK BACK
I found this article to be particularly appealing since it has some interesting 'factoids' from the last century on some of the things which now graces the mainstream publishing circuit.
Sky
***
Writing mag's advice through the decades
CINCINNATI - Emma Gary Wallace, professional author, had more than a few notions about the business of writing.
With a resume that included essays in housekeeping and cooking magazines, and a popular Christmas story, "The New Neighbor," she was able and ready to share tips with readers of a new monthly magazine called Successful Writing.
"Writers waste a great deal of postage sending stuff around the country to impossible markets," she observed. "Don't carry coals to Newcastle or offer jewelry in a blacksmith shop. Every magazine has its own policy and makes a definite appeal to a certain clientele. Study these and take them into consideration when offering your wares for any market."
The year was 1921, and advice about writing was —and remains —a market itself.
The timeless cry for help as one makes the great leap from the desire to write to actual writing to published writing has inspired countless books, magazines, classes and Web sites. Successful Writing, now Writer's Digest, is one of the oldest players in the business. Based in Cincinnati at the corporate headquarters of F&W Publications, it still enjoys a circulation of more than 100,000.
"I sincerely believe that we have something to offer a broad spectrum of writers at every stage of their development, from the novice to the veteran writer in every genre," says Writer's Digest editor Maria Schneider.
For anyone who wonders what the emerging writer has faced over the decades, the magazine's files — preserved in bulky, bound volumes — tell a dual history. Evolution is constant, as technologies from airplanes to computers, and historical events from the Great Depression to the sexual revolution, bring on new markets and genres. But at the heart of the game, the riddle remains: How does one write, and write well? How do you get your writing noticed and sold?
Like the best epics, reading through the pages of Writer's Digest is less about finding the answer than enjoying the questions.
"It's like asking if we're any closer to the great mystery of how one paints a portrait or composes a symphony?" says mystery writer Lawrence Block, who for years contributed a column to Writer's Digest. "Most of the arts certainly are extremely difficult, and there are always more people who want to do it than can do it."
Writer's Digest features interviews, market surveys and general advice. The April issue includes a cover story on vampire novelist Laurell K. Hamilton, updates on such "hot" genres as romance and horror and an essay by contributor Bonnie Trenga, who recommends that sentences run no longer than 40 words because "your readers don't have a very long attention span."
When the magazine debuted, "crook stories" were in, dialect was out and the great new draw was "motion pictures," or photoplays, a business barely as old as the century. The Goldwyn Co. ran an advertisement about its hunt for the "screen's own Shakespeare." An article reported that the "penurious playwright who used to peddle manuscripts" was "probably writing his plays for the motion pictures now, and living in ease."
Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and other modernists were already breaking up traditional narrative and grammar, but in the early 1920s, the marketplace belonged to the straight and the simple.
"A readable, lucid style, is far preferable to what is called a `literary style.' ... a complicated method of expression which confuses rather than clarifies thought," one columnist advised. A suggestion for nonfiction writers: "One of the surest ways to please editors is for the writer to prove himself accurate."
The market often danced to the tune of current events. In the '20s, the rise of commercial flights resulted in "airplane fiction," adventure stories set in the skies. The repeal of Prohibition, in 1933, led to new opportunities in beer industry journals.
During World War II, romance writers were urged to forget those Depression-era tales of financial peril and were reminded that if a young man wasn't in uniform, the writer had to explain why. At the end of 1945, after the Japanese had surrendered, correspondent Sgt. Donn Hale Munson reported that the "war market" was "shot" and that it was time to "take your hero out of uniform ... and put him back in civic clothes."
The times could change as surely as snow melts in spring. In January 1981, the cover story centered on authors and their typewriters, and revealed that Gay Talese used dental floss for repairs. By April, the magazine was running a long article on word processors. By the end of the year, one article speculated about an "easily accessible database network."
Cyberspace and electronic publishing seemed like science fiction for much of the 20th century, and it took a science fiction writer to catch the future. A 1971 essay by the editor of Galaxy magazine, Frederick Pohl, an award-winning science fiction writer, uncannily anticipated print-on-demand and electronic books as he imagined the market of 2001.
"Suppose you want to read a novel. You type out the name and byline on the keyboard of your teletype, and `order' a copy of the book. Immediately it starts printing out your personal copy, a page at a time," Pohl writes. "And if you don't care about (having an actual book), you can hang your TV tube over the foot of the bed, have the book displayed to you a page at a time and read it at your ease."
Scandals that seemed new in recent years were around long before. In the 1930s, articles were appearing on plagiarism, ghost writing ("as old as the proverbial hills") and journalistic fakery.
In the 1950s, a new genre — teen fiction — was identified.
If publishing was ever a gentleman's game in tweed, the pages of Writer's Digest were not telling. Books over the decades were compared to breakfast food, chewing gum and oil-burning engines. A columnist in 1930 complained of the "abnormal emphasis being stressed on sex." As early as 1945, the industry was condemned for selling its soul to the gods of publicity.
"Nowadays it is not enough to publish a book; it must be sent skyward like a trial balloon, carrying its banners and famous names," complained Vardis Fisher, an Idaho-based author and newspaper columnist.
Romance and mystery were in demand all along, although trends and publications have come and gone.
In the early '20s, you could try Saucy Stories, which called for "fiction with very rapid action" and a few "clever epigrams" thrown in, or "The Youth's Companion," which "welcomes humor and pathos, but not pessimism." During the Depression, the MacMillan Co. was looking for "realistic, proletarian" novels, while by 1974, in the wake of Watergate, magazines from the National Tattler to The Woman were seeking investigative pieces.
The writer in 1949 looked out on an especially interesting market. Whisper magazine was seeking "sensational material, only with tabloid treatment." Jungle Stories was soliciting stories on "native tribal life or adventures of white men in the jungle."
Both sides of the Cold War were possible: Personal Liberty Magazine sought examples of "the enslaving spirit of Communism, Nazism and fascism." The Kapustkan Magazine wanted fiction "aimed at the evils of war, greed, hypocrisy, secrecy, poverty, injustice, intolerance, inequality and intimidation."
A caution: "Brevity desired."
The market was a code to crack and self-proclaimed experts came bearing solutions, such as J. Berg Esenwein, whose advice "plucks out the heart of magazine writing" and saves much "eye strain" for young writers. Readers of the '20s and 1930s likely heard much about William Wallace Cook's Plotto, "a new method of plot suggestion." Other options included Grace Porterfield Polk's "Polk-a-Dot Primer for Poets" and the Sherwin Cody School of English, presided over by Cody himself, a bearded man with a stern, professorial gaze.
No one was readier to counsel, and console, than Thomas H. Uzzell, identified as a former editor of Collier's and a market watcher whose ads and essays appeared for more than two decades.
In 1931, as the Depression dragged on, he reminded the idle businessman that the empty hours could be filled writing that long-promised book. "Necessity has launched more literary careers then you'd like to imagine," Uzzell observed.
A decade later, soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II, an Uzzell ad was headlined "WAR! NEW MARKETS! NEW DEMANDS! NEW PROBLEMS! Can you solve them?" Uzzell declared that in "such times only craftsmen, trained writers with editorial insight can survive. Escape and propaganda must be combined."
The famous, too, have prescribed. Somerset Maugham, in a 1942 essay, thought hospital doctors were ideal writers because they have seen human nature "bare" and frightened. Fifty years later, Stephen King urged against writing outlines, even as the magazine itself touted a system of plotting with index cards. Michael Crichton believed that you should get published first, then worry about an agent.
All agreed that the only way to become a writer was to write. The prolific John Updike recommended steady work habits, while Michael Chabon said nothing was possible without "talent," "luck" and "discipline." And in the early 1920s, a promising young short story writer offered a terse formula for success after a less fortunate peer sought help on how to develop a plot.
"Your letter was very vague as to what you wanted to know," the author scolded. "Study Kipling and O. Henry, and work like hell! I had 122 rejections slips before I sold a story."
The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was not easily discouraged.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
THURSDAY'S MUSINGS
Status: On Vacation; exhausted from the past few days' ordeals
Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails
Watching: Nothing.
Listening to: Nothing.
Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)
TOPIC: WHEN IN DOUBT? FABRICATE!
It's very odd how my local paper picked up on something about people fabricating their life stories just to embellish things a bit more--in order to get picked up by a traditional publisher. What's even more scary is how these same houses we want to be published by do not even pick up on the fact that what they may have could be faked! (Much like Jame Frey's A Million Little Pieces.)
They don't do any checking of their sources to make sure that the material is what it says it is.
But they publish it anyway--because they believe in its authenticity and its ability to sell books to a sympathetic reading audience.
I thought about doing that too. You know...just make up a few things about my life as well.
For example?
Instead of living in a breadbox for an apartment (which has seen better days), I could say that I've been living in a lavish condominium in downtown Seattle and making a six-figure income as a telecom engineer for let's say...Quest.
On top of that, I am a gradudate of Havard (cum laud), raised by a rich and well-to-do family, and basically am a staunch supporter of George W. Bush himself.
And this, I could add in my own personal autobiography and have it published by some big name publisher in New York--and they would never know!
But...
It wouldn't be the truth. Much like these two incidences illustrate:
Boring life story? Don't worry, just create one that will sell
The book publishing industry, through its apparent refusal to hire fact checkers, has single-handedly changed the definition of "memoir." A memoir used to mean one's own personal story; one that couldn't happen to anyone else because it happened to the author. These days, however, it's good enough for an author to believe, or feel strongly, that it happened.
Last week, Riverhead Books, a unit of Penguin Group USA, published "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir. This week, the publisher is busy recalling all copies. The memoir, by Margaret B. Jones, is about her life as a half-white, half-Native American foster child growing up in South-Central Los Angeles, living among gangs and running drugs for the Bloods.
The memoir, three years in the writing, was immediately debunked by the author's sister after a profile of her appeared in the New York Times. Cyndi Hoffman identified the memoirist as her sister, Margaret Seltzer, who is white and grew up in a well-to-do Los Angeles suburb with her biological family and attended private school. Now of course Seltzer says she's sorry (but it was the only way to get the story out). Her editor, Sarah McGrath, says, "There's a huge personal betrayal here as well as a professional one."
"I've been talking to her on the phone and getting e-mails from her for three years and her story has never changed. All the details have been the same," McGrath said. Well, what more proof do you need?
After the denouncement, McGrath called Seltzer "naïve." Perhaps that goes both ways. ("Hey, on the phone, and on paper, she really sounded like a former gang banger.")
The episode comes on the heels of the news that a Holocaust memoir, "Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years," by Misha Defonseca, was also made up. Published is 1997, "Misha" is about a Jewish girl from Brussels who walked across Europe by herself during World War II and spent months living in the forest, sometimes among wolves. Before it was published, two historians warned the publisher that the work was fantasy.
Never mind.
It turns out Misha Defonseca is really Monique De Wael, orphaned daughter of two Catholic members of the Belgian resistance. Before Seltzer and De Wael, it was James Frey, making up details in his book, "A Million Little Pieces," his "memoir" of his drug addiction and recovery. The story of Misha, De Wael helpfully explained, "Is not actual reality, but was my reality, my way of surviving."
Whatever.
Apparently there's no cache in writing fiction anymore. But the absence of fact-checking doesn't turn fantasy into reality.
***
From the net
NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir about a mixed-raced girl growing up in a gang-ridden neighborhood of Los Angeles, is a fabrication and the 19,000 distributed copies of the book will be recalled, its publisher said on Tuesday.
Author Margaret B. Jones, is actually Margaret Seltzer, a white woman who grew up in Sherman Oaks in Southern California and attended a private Episcopal school, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
In a tearful telephone interview with the newspaper, Seltzer admitted she never ran drugs for a gang and never lived with a foster family as she had claimed in the book.
Riverhead Books, the imprint of Penguin Group that published the book, will offer refunds through booksellers to anyone who bought it, spokeswoman Marilyn Ducksworth said.
The incident is the latest black eye for the publishing business. Two years ago author James Frey admitted he had fabricated key parts of his drug and alcohol memoir "A Million Little Pieces," which was the top selling nonfiction book in the United States in 2005.
"The business of publishing is so difficult, so challenging, and so elusive at times that people will do anything," said Lee Gutkind, author of "Keep It Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction."
"You would think what happened with James Frey would wake up the publishing world," he added.
According to the Times, Seltzer, 33, also never graduated from the University of Oregon, as she claimed.
In a statement, Riverhead said that Seltzer had provided "a great deal of evidence to support her story," including photographs, letters, support from a former professor and from people who pretended to be her foster siblings.
Ducksworth said Seltzer's real sister had called the publisher to express concerns, after which the story fell apart. Riverhead is canceling Seltzer's planned book tour.
"When it became known that the author was misrepresenting her personal story we took it seriously, moved very quickly and attempted to corroborate new information we were presented with," Riverhead said in a statement.
***
Writer admits Holocaust book is not true
BOSTON - Almost nothing Misha Defonseca wrote about herself or her horrific childhood during the Holocaust was true.
She didn't live with a pack of wolves to escape the Nazis. She didn't trek 1,900 miles across Europe in search of her deported parents, nor kill a German soldier in self-defense. She's not even Jewish.
Defonseca, a Belgian writer now living in Massachusetts, admitted through her lawyers this week that her best-selling book, "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," was an elaborate fantasy she kept repeating, even as the book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France.
"This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," Defonseca said in a statement given by her lawyers to The Associated Press.
"I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed. I beg you to put yourself in my place, of a 4-year-old girl who was very lost," the statement said.
Defonseca, 71, has an unlisted number in Dudley, about 50 miles southwest of Boston. Her husband, Maurice, told The Boston Globe on Thursday that she would not comment.
Defonseca wrote in her book that Nazis seized her parents when she was a child, forcing her to wander the forests and villages of Europe alone for four years. She claimed she found herself trapped in the Warsaw ghetto and was adopted by a pack of wolves that protected her.
Her two Brussels-based lawyers said the author acknowledged her story was not autobiographical. In the statement, Defonseca said she never fled her home in Brussels during the war to find her parents.
Defonseca says her real name is Monique De Wael and that her parents were arrested and killed by Nazis as Belgian resistance fighters.
The statement said her parents were arrested when she was 4 and she was taken care of by her grandfather and uncle. She said she was poorly treated by her adopted family, called a "daughter of a traitor" because of her parents' role in the resistance, which she said led her to "feel Jewish."
She said there were moments when she "found it difficult to differentiate between what was real and what was part of my imagination."
Pressure on the author to defend the accuracy of her book had grown in recent weeks, after the release of evidence found by Sharon Sergeant, a genealogical researcher in Waltham. Sergeant said she found clues in the unpublished U.S. version of the book, including Defonseca's maiden name "De Wael" — which was changed in the French version — and photos.
After a few months of research, she found Defonseca's Belgian baptismal certificate and school record, as well as information that showed her parents were members of the Belgian resistance.
"Each piece was plausible, but the difficulty was when you put it all together," Sergeant said.
Others also had doubts.
"I'm not an expert on relations between humans and wolves, but I am a specialist of the persecution of Jews, and they (Defonseca's family) can't be found in the archives," Belgian historian Maxime Steinberg told RTL television. "The De Wael family is not Jewish nor were they registered as Jewish."
Defonseca's attorneys, siblings Nathalie and Marc Uyttendaele, contacted the author last weekend to show her evidence published in the Belgian daily Le Soir, which also questioned her story.
"We gave her this information and it was very difficult. She was confronted with a reality that is different from what she has been living for 70 years," Nathalie Uyttendaele said.
Defonseca's admission is just the latest controversy surrounding her 1997 book, which also spawned a multimillion dollar legal battle between the woman, her co-author and the book's U.S. publisher.
Defonseca had been asked to write the book by publisher Jane Daniel in the 1990s, after Daniel heard the writer tell the story in a Massachusetts synagogue.
Daniel and Defonseca fell out over profits received from the best-selling book, which led to a lawsuit. In 2005, a Boston court ordered Daniel to pay Defonseca and her ghost writer Vera Lee $22.5 million. Defonseca's lawyers said Daniel has not yet paid the court-ordered sum.
Daniel said Friday she felt vindicated by Defonseca's admission and would try to get the judgment overturned. She said she could not fully research Defonseca's story before it was published because the woman claimed she did not know her parents' names, her birthday or where she was born.
"There was nothing to go on to research," she said.
Lee, of Newton, muttered "Oh my God" when told Defonseca made up her childhood and was not Jewish. She said she always believed the stories the woman told her as they prepared to write the book, and no research she did gave her a reason not to.
"She always maintained that this was truth as she recalled it, and I trusted that that was the case," Lee said. "I was just totally bowled over by the news."
***
Often, it is too late for the publisher to do anything about it. But the question still: Why didn't they bother catching it in the first place?
This is just another clear example of the pitfalls in traditional publishing. Tread carefully when dealing with your publisher. Make sure what you've written is yours and not some fantastic yarn about a "pre-supposed" life which never existed.
Because defrauding the public and the industry comes with a not-so-nice consolation prize in the end.
Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails
Watching: Nothing.
Listening to: Nothing.
Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)
TOPIC: WHEN IN DOUBT? FABRICATE!
It's very odd how my local paper picked up on something about people fabricating their life stories just to embellish things a bit more--in order to get picked up by a traditional publisher. What's even more scary is how these same houses we want to be published by do not even pick up on the fact that what they may have could be faked! (Much like Jame Frey's A Million Little Pieces.)
They don't do any checking of their sources to make sure that the material is what it says it is.
But they publish it anyway--because they believe in its authenticity and its ability to sell books to a sympathetic reading audience.
I thought about doing that too. You know...just make up a few things about my life as well.
For example?
Instead of living in a breadbox for an apartment (which has seen better days), I could say that I've been living in a lavish condominium in downtown Seattle and making a six-figure income as a telecom engineer for let's say...Quest.
On top of that, I am a gradudate of Havard (cum laud), raised by a rich and well-to-do family, and basically am a staunch supporter of George W. Bush himself.
And this, I could add in my own personal autobiography and have it published by some big name publisher in New York--and they would never know!
But...
It wouldn't be the truth. Much like these two incidences illustrate:
Boring life story? Don't worry, just create one that will sell
The book publishing industry, through its apparent refusal to hire fact checkers, has single-handedly changed the definition of "memoir." A memoir used to mean one's own personal story; one that couldn't happen to anyone else because it happened to the author. These days, however, it's good enough for an author to believe, or feel strongly, that it happened.
Last week, Riverhead Books, a unit of Penguin Group USA, published "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir. This week, the publisher is busy recalling all copies. The memoir, by Margaret B. Jones, is about her life as a half-white, half-Native American foster child growing up in South-Central Los Angeles, living among gangs and running drugs for the Bloods.
The memoir, three years in the writing, was immediately debunked by the author's sister after a profile of her appeared in the New York Times. Cyndi Hoffman identified the memoirist as her sister, Margaret Seltzer, who is white and grew up in a well-to-do Los Angeles suburb with her biological family and attended private school. Now of course Seltzer says she's sorry (but it was the only way to get the story out). Her editor, Sarah McGrath, says, "There's a huge personal betrayal here as well as a professional one."
"I've been talking to her on the phone and getting e-mails from her for three years and her story has never changed. All the details have been the same," McGrath said. Well, what more proof do you need?
After the denouncement, McGrath called Seltzer "naïve." Perhaps that goes both ways. ("Hey, on the phone, and on paper, she really sounded like a former gang banger.")
The episode comes on the heels of the news that a Holocaust memoir, "Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years," by Misha Defonseca, was also made up. Published is 1997, "Misha" is about a Jewish girl from Brussels who walked across Europe by herself during World War II and spent months living in the forest, sometimes among wolves. Before it was published, two historians warned the publisher that the work was fantasy.
Never mind.
It turns out Misha Defonseca is really Monique De Wael, orphaned daughter of two Catholic members of the Belgian resistance. Before Seltzer and De Wael, it was James Frey, making up details in his book, "A Million Little Pieces," his "memoir" of his drug addiction and recovery. The story of Misha, De Wael helpfully explained, "Is not actual reality, but was my reality, my way of surviving."
Whatever.
Apparently there's no cache in writing fiction anymore. But the absence of fact-checking doesn't turn fantasy into reality.
***
From the net
NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir about a mixed-raced girl growing up in a gang-ridden neighborhood of Los Angeles, is a fabrication and the 19,000 distributed copies of the book will be recalled, its publisher said on Tuesday.
Author Margaret B. Jones, is actually Margaret Seltzer, a white woman who grew up in Sherman Oaks in Southern California and attended a private Episcopal school, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
In a tearful telephone interview with the newspaper, Seltzer admitted she never ran drugs for a gang and never lived with a foster family as she had claimed in the book.
Riverhead Books, the imprint of Penguin Group that published the book, will offer refunds through booksellers to anyone who bought it, spokeswoman Marilyn Ducksworth said.
The incident is the latest black eye for the publishing business. Two years ago author James Frey admitted he had fabricated key parts of his drug and alcohol memoir "A Million Little Pieces," which was the top selling nonfiction book in the United States in 2005.
"The business of publishing is so difficult, so challenging, and so elusive at times that people will do anything," said Lee Gutkind, author of "Keep It Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction."
"You would think what happened with James Frey would wake up the publishing world," he added.
According to the Times, Seltzer, 33, also never graduated from the University of Oregon, as she claimed.
In a statement, Riverhead said that Seltzer had provided "a great deal of evidence to support her story," including photographs, letters, support from a former professor and from people who pretended to be her foster siblings.
Ducksworth said Seltzer's real sister had called the publisher to express concerns, after which the story fell apart. Riverhead is canceling Seltzer's planned book tour.
"When it became known that the author was misrepresenting her personal story we took it seriously, moved very quickly and attempted to corroborate new information we were presented with," Riverhead said in a statement.
***
Writer admits Holocaust book is not true
BOSTON - Almost nothing Misha Defonseca wrote about herself or her horrific childhood during the Holocaust was true.
She didn't live with a pack of wolves to escape the Nazis. She didn't trek 1,900 miles across Europe in search of her deported parents, nor kill a German soldier in self-defense. She's not even Jewish.
Defonseca, a Belgian writer now living in Massachusetts, admitted through her lawyers this week that her best-selling book, "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," was an elaborate fantasy she kept repeating, even as the book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France.
"This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," Defonseca said in a statement given by her lawyers to The Associated Press.
"I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed. I beg you to put yourself in my place, of a 4-year-old girl who was very lost," the statement said.
Defonseca, 71, has an unlisted number in Dudley, about 50 miles southwest of Boston. Her husband, Maurice, told The Boston Globe on Thursday that she would not comment.
Defonseca wrote in her book that Nazis seized her parents when she was a child, forcing her to wander the forests and villages of Europe alone for four years. She claimed she found herself trapped in the Warsaw ghetto and was adopted by a pack of wolves that protected her.
Her two Brussels-based lawyers said the author acknowledged her story was not autobiographical. In the statement, Defonseca said she never fled her home in Brussels during the war to find her parents.
Defonseca says her real name is Monique De Wael and that her parents were arrested and killed by Nazis as Belgian resistance fighters.
The statement said her parents were arrested when she was 4 and she was taken care of by her grandfather and uncle. She said she was poorly treated by her adopted family, called a "daughter of a traitor" because of her parents' role in the resistance, which she said led her to "feel Jewish."
She said there were moments when she "found it difficult to differentiate between what was real and what was part of my imagination."
Pressure on the author to defend the accuracy of her book had grown in recent weeks, after the release of evidence found by Sharon Sergeant, a genealogical researcher in Waltham. Sergeant said she found clues in the unpublished U.S. version of the book, including Defonseca's maiden name "De Wael" — which was changed in the French version — and photos.
After a few months of research, she found Defonseca's Belgian baptismal certificate and school record, as well as information that showed her parents were members of the Belgian resistance.
"Each piece was plausible, but the difficulty was when you put it all together," Sergeant said.
Others also had doubts.
"I'm not an expert on relations between humans and wolves, but I am a specialist of the persecution of Jews, and they (Defonseca's family) can't be found in the archives," Belgian historian Maxime Steinberg told RTL television. "The De Wael family is not Jewish nor were they registered as Jewish."
Defonseca's attorneys, siblings Nathalie and Marc Uyttendaele, contacted the author last weekend to show her evidence published in the Belgian daily Le Soir, which also questioned her story.
"We gave her this information and it was very difficult. She was confronted with a reality that is different from what she has been living for 70 years," Nathalie Uyttendaele said.
Defonseca's admission is just the latest controversy surrounding her 1997 book, which also spawned a multimillion dollar legal battle between the woman, her co-author and the book's U.S. publisher.
Defonseca had been asked to write the book by publisher Jane Daniel in the 1990s, after Daniel heard the writer tell the story in a Massachusetts synagogue.
Daniel and Defonseca fell out over profits received from the best-selling book, which led to a lawsuit. In 2005, a Boston court ordered Daniel to pay Defonseca and her ghost writer Vera Lee $22.5 million. Defonseca's lawyers said Daniel has not yet paid the court-ordered sum.
Daniel said Friday she felt vindicated by Defonseca's admission and would try to get the judgment overturned. She said she could not fully research Defonseca's story before it was published because the woman claimed she did not know her parents' names, her birthday or where she was born.
"There was nothing to go on to research," she said.
Lee, of Newton, muttered "Oh my God" when told Defonseca made up her childhood and was not Jewish. She said she always believed the stories the woman told her as they prepared to write the book, and no research she did gave her a reason not to.
"She always maintained that this was truth as she recalled it, and I trusted that that was the case," Lee said. "I was just totally bowled over by the news."
***
Often, it is too late for the publisher to do anything about it. But the question still: Why didn't they bother catching it in the first place?
This is just another clear example of the pitfalls in traditional publishing. Tread carefully when dealing with your publisher. Make sure what you've written is yours and not some fantastic yarn about a "pre-supposed" life which never existed.
Because defrauding the public and the industry comes with a not-so-nice consolation prize in the end.
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