Review - The Book of Someday by Dianne Dixon

The Book of Someday is Dianne Dixon's second novel, and like her first (The Language of Secrets, 2010-11), it's a great read.

Her latest interweaves the stories of three women who share a disturbing history but don't know each other.  

The book opens with Livvi Gray, a shy and insecure writer with a dark past who is haunted by a recurring dream about a woman in a silver dress and pearl-button shoes. Livvi is experiencing some success with her writing and meets a new man who is everything she wants, except she has a feeling he's withholding something from her.

Meanwhile, we meet Micah, a hard-driving and wildly successful photographer who's kept people at bay all of her life. She has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and suddenly she feels it important to visit several people she has slighted in the past. She begins a cross-country journey to make amends. At least that's her intention.

Then Dixon takes us back in time twenty-six years to tell the story of Anna Lee, a new mother whose husband can't seem to hold a job or make her happy. Despite her misgivings, she agrees to take in her husband's troubled teenage niece for the summer. Fireworks ensue.

A former screenwriter, Dixon is a skilled storyteller. Her characters come alive on the page and we begin to care about all three women. But it's not until the final pages of the book that we discover how these three women are connected. For me, that was frustrating, even though the resolution was more than satisfying.

If you like stories with mystery and a twist at the end, you'll enjoy The Book of Someday. 

Review - City of Mirrors by Melodie Johnson Howe

Melodie Johnson Howe’s latest novel, the detective thriller City of Mirrors, is a fun romp through Los Angeles with an unlikely heroine, the aging starlet Diana Poole.

When the novel opens, Poole is mourning the loss of her screenwriter husband and the even more recent death of her movie star mother. Poole is forced to go back to work and lands a part in a movie. But things begin to go seriously awry when Poole agrees to visit the young star of the film and discovers her body in a dumpster behind her apartment. Poole turns detective, and the more she uncovers, the more things don’t add up, but bodies do.

This is Johnson Howe’s second Diana Poole mystery (the first was Shooting Hollywood, 2012), and its considerable twists and turns will both amaze and delight readers.

Poole is a wonderfully complex character, and Johnson Howe has masterfully captured the angst of an aging actress who’s suddenly alone. She worries about how she’ll support herself without her husband, and frets that the one job she’s been able to land will somehow disappear (it does). Coming to terms with her contentious and tenuous relationship with her narcissistic late mother is an underlying theme that will resonate with anyone who has struggled with an overbearing parent.

Despite her very real fears, Poole is a fearless and smart detective, and Johnson Howe’s brilliant plot keeps Poole – and readers – guessing until the final page. If you love mysteries, this one belongs on your books-to-read list.

At Avila once again. And thoughts on writing.

It's hard to believe, but my writing buddies and I have been coming to Avila Beach to write every six months for nearly seven years. We are back this week, and it is a time I relish for the quiet, the serenity, the opportunity to get away from my office and client work for a few days and focus on my own writing projects.

It's beautiful up here, as usual. We always come up in April and October. Sometimes it's chilly and foggy; often it's sunny and warm. Today it has been both: chill fog this morning dissipating to warmth and sun this afternoon.

The hotel we stay in is on the ocean, so anytime a walk on the beach beckons, you can have your toes in the sand within minutes.

This is a time to breathe deeply, to ponder, to journal, to figure out a writing problem. I'm working on two book proposals, and also planning to write two book reviews and several blog posts. 

I've been reading Jon Katz's Bedlam Farm Journal recently. He posts several times a day, and even after only a few weeks I feel I know him and his artist wife, Maria. And I feel I am on a first-name basis with his dogs, Frieda, Red and Lenore, the three donkeys, the sheep, and the barn cats Flo and Minnie.

These past few weeks, Jon has shared the drama of Minnie's run-in with a wild animal of some kind.  Her leg was severely injured, broken and mutilated, and Jon and Maria had to decide whether to have Minnie euthanized or have her leg amputated. I've followed the story each day, from their decision to amputate the leg through the surgery and, now, Minnie's recovery back at home.

For the first time in her life, Minnie's in the house, and getting used to the luxuries there. They plan to return her to her life as a barn cat, once she's healed, but I'm wondering if Minnie will choose otherwise. 

Meanwhile, Jon writes about the dogs and the sheep, the donkeys and the vagaries of small-farm life, all the while documenting his posts with his photographs. 

Over the weekend he blogged about his visit to the University of Tulsa, where he taught a workshop on memoir. (He's the author of 12 books, most of them memoirs and most involving dogs.) 

The literary crowd didn't take much to his assertion that he is writing memoir now essentially through his blog. Agents and traditional publishing are things of the past, he told them. 

I can't say I disagree with him. I enjoy writing in my journal every day. From now on, I will share more of my thoughts in this space as well. If you're a writer, you have to write, even if the old formats fall away and a new world of online publishing takes its place. 

The old system of unfettered gatekeepers has crumbled in all genres, which may turn out to be a very good thing. I know it is for readers, who now have unlimited access to writing that previously might not have made the cut. Some of it may be awful, yes, but there will always also be those singular treasures that no one in traditional publishing was willing to take a risk on. I trust this will be as good for writers as it is for readers. I believe it will be. Time will be the judge. Meanwhile, I'm willing to take a chance on the new world order.  

The Editor Gets Edited

When I began to write my memoir six years ago, I did not imagine how long it would take, or how much give and take, and revision, would be involved.

I finished a complete draft of About Face, A Journey to Self, in November 2012. Sent it off to my agent thinking I was done. But I was in for a surprise. I had worked for five years, tinkering, revising, sweating over every verb and noun, not to mention the structure and tone. Buy my agent said, “Why don’t you have a professional editor look it over; there are some repetitive passages, and it’s always good to have another set of eyes on a manuscript.”  

How could I refuse? I had had a handful of trusted colleagues read the manuscript, but I hadn't paid a professional editor to edit it.  Even though I myself edit books, I also know that everyone - everyone - needs to be edited. But who would I choose? I knew many exceptional editors, but I didn’t want to hire someone who knew me and my work.

I thought of the teachers at Antioch University Los Angeles, where I studied for my MFA in creative writing. I didn’t want to hire anyone I had worked with directly, but there was an adjunct professor in fiction – Christine Hale – whose residency workshops were exceptional. I emailed her: “Do you do developmental editing?”

She said no, but her husband did. Mc McIlvoy is a retired creative writing professor and founder of the Warren Wilson low-residency MFA program, where he still teaches. He has been editing books for thirty years.

We talked on the phone, and I realized his philosophy on editing was closely aligned with my own. I hired him the next day.

For the past four months we have worked on my memoir. I sent my original manuscript, which he critiqued. Then we talked for an hour. I went back to revising, and sent it back to him a month later. Overall he read the work three times, and we talked about his suggested changes and my revisions twice more.

Throughout, I was variously encouraged, despairing, exhausted, sick to death of it, and ultimately, thrilled with the result. The book has become the memoir I had envisioned it could be, and I needed Mc’s keen eyes and sensibilities to help me get it there. It is fuller, deeper, longer – and revising it involved copious amounts of wine and tears.

Each time we’d talk, Mc would say, “Now, where can you go a little deeper with your mother … (your dad) … (your surgeon).”

He made structural suggestions that strengthened and bolstered the narrative. He offered precise comments throughout that guided me to specific places that needed attention. He was unerringly supportive and encouraging. I think he walks on water, and I highly recommend him. Moreover, I will return to him with future books. (Here is his website.)

I sent the revision off to my agent last week. We’ll see what he thinks. Meanwhile, wish me luck. And keep writing!

A Great Week at the Summer Writing Institute

This is a short video of photos taken by Nancy A. Shobe at the inaugural Summer Writing Institute at Antioch University in Santa Barbara. Thank you, Nancy!

The Publishing Times, They are A-changing

Recently one of my clients read on Facebook that I had gotten an agent for my memoir.

“I’m curious about where you stand today on the subject of self-publishing vs. the traditional route,” he wrote. “Your advice to me a couple of years ago was this: Turn to self-publishing when the other options have been exhausted. It was good, clear advice, and I’m glad I followed it and got an agent rather than self-publishing. But the landscape has changed since then. Would you give the same advice today?”

Hmm. In a word, no.

When I started to write my memoir five years ago, the publishing world was a very different place. Self-publishing was still widely considered the last resort for authors who couldn’t get a legitimate publisher to consider their work. I’ve worked with other writers for all this time as a writing coach and developmental editor, and two years ago I was still telling my clients to try the traditional route first. Today the options are so compelling and vast, I am advising my clients to consider all options, including self-pubbing from the outset.

The publishing industry is as uncertain today as at anytime in recent memory. Certainly debut authors have a harder time of it, particularly novelists. But there are so many new, innovative avenues to successful publication now that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend self-pubbing first.

Interestingly, a recent study found that “hybrid” authors – those who publish both traditionally and as self-published authors – are making more money than either traditionally pubbed authors or self-pubbed.

Even so, when I finished my memoir, I was determined to try the traditional route first. I know a number of agents, and one in particular had encouraged me to write my story all those years ago. I had little more than a very rough first chapter then, but he read it and said, “Keep writing!” Over the ensuing years I approached the work intermittently, until two years ago I decided to pursue an MFA in creative writing, and I made my memoir my thesis. That was the key for me; just the motivation I needed to stay at it. Last fall I spent a month in Costa Rica rewriting and finishing the book. In January, I sent the manuscript off to my agent friend. And … waited.

And waited some more.

After a month I emailed him and didn’t get a response. Keep in mind a query to an agent typically would not be answered for two to three months. But I knew this agent. So I decided to go ahead and submit the book proposal to other agents. I had a good query letter. I made a list and sent it out to about 15 agents.  And … waited.

It was an exquisite lesson for me in patience and in learning to follow my own advice to my clients: Wait. Send out more queries. Don’t despair.

Man, we do, though, don’t we? Despair? Writers are champions at despair.

I finally got about a half-dozen responses, all of them very positive about the manuscript, but nearly all said they didn’t think they could sell it to a traditional publisher. I’m not a celebrity, and while I’m fairly active on social media, I don’t have the kind of platform they seek (meaning tens of thousands of friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter). Most said the memoir market has become oversaturated. While memoir sales have slowed down, it’s still a pretty robust genre, but that’s the conventional wisdom in the industry right now.

Thank goodness for my agent friend, my original cheerleader. He finally did read it and called me. He loves it. So, I am thrilled, but also going into this process with clear eyes. It’s only a first step. There’s no guarantee that an editor will love it as much as my agent does. We’ll have to discuss strategy and how long to try to sell it to a publisher. If, ultimately, it doesn’t sell, I will have to make a choice. Self-publish then? Absolutely.