More Proof

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They’re here!  The second proofs for The Wicker Man have arrived.  Nothing makes you feel like a book will actually happen than seeing the stages unfold.  In the meantime I’ve begun seeking an agent for the next book.  This is always a tricky process—work a ton on a pitch, send it, and try to forget about it because most agents simply won’t respond.  If they do it won’t be for a month or two.  And even then they may not like what you’ve written.  It’s a weird system.  Meanwhile at least I’ve got proofs to read.  Proofreading is stressful enough.  I’ve read my new book proposal lots of times.  It was only after I’d sent it to a couple of agents that I found the typos.  You are your own worst editor.  Even if you’re an editor.

Still, you feel like proofs arriving should be occasion for a day off work.  Like your boss would say, “That’s quite an accomplishment!  Why don’t you take a day off to get started with it?”  I live in a fantasy world, I guess.  The proofs arrive with their shot of adrenaline and then you’ve got to read other people’s ideas for less interesting books (or so it seems).  Maybe this is why not so many editors write any more.  It’s exhausting.  Of course, I’m writing this post instead of reading the proofs.  Every diet should have some variety, even the literary kind.

I’m not a fussy author.  Some turns of phrase I will fight over, but I know copyeditors mean well.  I’ve done some copyediting myself, and I meant well.  Authors are people who are in for the long haul.  From the time you start working on a book (and if finding an agent is part of the process, you need to add several more months) to completion is generally measured in years.  It’s not unusual to get no pay at all for this work.  As Ivan Klima wrote: “A truly literary work comes into being as its creator’s cry of protest against the forgetting that looms over him, over his predecessors and his contemporaries alike, and over his time, and the language he speaks.  A literary work is something that defies death.”  If you can forgive the sexist language, there’s a great deal of truth there.  And part of that process is the effort to locate an agent who shares your vision.  And, of course, getting proofs back to the publisher on time.

World’s End?

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I’ve been writing on religion and horror for quite a few years now.  Sometimes you come across a horror movie, or novel, which addresses this directly.  Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World is one such novel.  A friend strongly recommended this, and indeed, the first half went impossibly fast.  This despite my dislike of home invasion stories.  It nevertheless kept me on the edge of my seat.  I should probably say there will be spoilers here (there will), in case you haven’t read this but intend to.  I’ll hold off on them until the next paragraph, though, so if you’re a faster reader than I am a writer you won’t accidentally run upon them.  So, a family consisting of two fathers and an adopted daughter find the cabin, where they’re vacationing, invaded by four people who believe the world is going to end.  Spoilers follow!

The world is going to end unless the family agree to sacrifice one of themselves to stop the apocalypse.  The strangers are armed while the vacationers are not.  And, as usually happens when those with weapons confront the innocent, the armed prevail.  But.  But the family refuses to sacrifice anyone.  Then the brainwashed four do something unexpected—they kill one of their own.  They continue to do this, attempting to convince the men that if the invaders all die, and neither of the men is sacrificed, the world will end.  Quite a bit of the novel then becomes a theological discussion regarding what kind of god would make such a demand.  Of course, if you read Genesis you’ll already know the answer, right Isaac?

Tremblay knows not to tip his authorial hand as to what’s really happening.  As the cabin becomes a mess of blood and gore, the television seems to be showing predicted apocalyptic events.  The invaders can’t reveal their source of secret knowledge because they receive visions telling them what to do.  The whole thing raises that most troubling of questions: who is really in charge?  Is there a bloodthirsty deity who requires a willing death or are the invaders simply good at acting out their paranoia and interpreting events to meet their expectations?  So it is that Cabin becomes a disturbing story—nearly a theodicy—asking age-old questions of what happens when religious belief conflicts with rational materialism.  There are enough hints of supernatural happenings to make the reader wonder.  And when it ends it affirms something many of us are exploring these days—religion and horror have much in common but neither is clearly understood.

Ultimate Collectables

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“Collectible ebook” is a phrase you never hear.  That’s because such a thing doesn’t exist.  Even though I work in the publishing industry, I’m not really a fan of ebooks.  I don’t write my books anticipating pointing to some screen and crowing, “I wrote that!”  No, books exist as entities and there’s a kind of contempt associated with making them disposable by creating them out of ephemera.  I’m not wealthy enough to be a serious book collector, but when I buy used books I notice the rare category of “collectible” with some envy.  This is a book that has been treasured.  You see, I know that when I die I’ll leave little behind apart from my books.  If they were ebooks they’d be worthless.  You can’t sell them or trade them in.  Or even put them into a little free library.

Sometimes buying electrons seems to be more convenient than the alternative.  For example, we’ve pretty much run out of space for DVDs and Amazon seems unlikely to fold soon (like UltraViolet did), so subscribing to a streaming for a movie seems safe enough.  Yes, you can resell DVDs, but often for a pittance and you gain by opening more space.  The space books take up demonstrates their importance.  We bought our house with an eye toward book space, and even though we don’t have many books that would be considered “collectible,” we do have many that are interesting.  Unusual.  They have been conversation-starters when we’ve had the curious over.  (I always look at other people’s books when invited to someone’s place, if they’re publicly displayed.  It’s how people get to know each other.  I’ve never looked at anyone’s ebooks.)

Books are a cultural object.  The big tech companies have been trying to drive traffic to ebooks for years.  The pandemic gave them a leg up, but book sales—print book sales—also increased.  You can watch only so much Netflix, I guess.  I have yet to find a study that shows something read on a screen stays longer, or receives deeper engagement than something in print does.  To be sure, electronic reading has its place, but its place isn’t to replace actual books.  I guess I’m suspicious of the electronic revolution.  It feels fragile and tenuous to me.  If the power goes out we’re left without our gadgets and their contents.  You can still light a candle, however, and read an actual book.  And if bought and treated wisely, you may even find something collectable on your hands.

The Other Mississippi

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Salmon aren’t the only animals that head back to their ancestral homes late in life.  There’s a draw to where we’re from.  Many humans can’t physically return for socio-economic or emotional reasons, but there’s an urge that may transcend generations.  For me it’s always been traced through my maternal line to upstate New York.  My mother’s [redacted for security question purposes] family had been in the upstate region around Schenectady for generations, as traced back as far as the 1770s.  It was my maternal grandfather, branching off from his father (who made it as far as central New York) who eventually left the state, after teaching in a one-room schoolhouse, for which, in those days, you didn’t need to be a college graduate.  In any case, I have a fondness for the Hudson Valley and an interest in its history.  

Allan Keller was a journalism professor who never became famous.  His Life along the Hudson is one of those charming, dreamy books about yesteryear.  Richly illustrated, it really isn’t a history (Keller wasn’t an historian) so much as a set of vignettes illustrating the role and importance that the river has had not only for New York state, but for the United States as a whole.  There are chapters about famous residents, battles of the Revolutionary War, historic houses, quirky facts, boating, and railroads.  It’s an interesting cross-section of a forgotten part of America.  Today when we hear Hudson River we tend to think New York City.  And while that’s not wrong, it certainly isn’t the whole story.  The Hudson early on connected Albany with Manhattan as they grew to be the two major points around which the Empire State expanded.

The book was never a bestseller.  It’s not particularly rare.  It is, however, a series of snapshots.  One of those was 1976, when the book was published.  The Hudson had become so polluted that major remediation efforts had to be put in place to redefine it from a cesspool to a beautiful waterway that took the breath away from many early travelers.  This valley was once considered one of the truly scenic spaces in the United States.  Now it’s pretty much a suburb of New York City, but it retains much of its earlier appeal, if you know where to look.  I’ve tried to find jobs that would allow me to move back to this region of upstate New York, but I’ve ended up in my own immediate home state of Pennsylvania.  I’d go back a couple more generations, if I could, but even salmon sometimes never make it back home.

Coming to History

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Perhaps because I was a critical thinker at a young age, or maybe because I’ve always been insistent on fairness, I never took an interest in American history.  I cast my eyes back further, wondering how we got to where we are.  Such looking backward would lead to my doctorate.  Now, however, I’m interested.  I’d pay better attention to American history in school, were I now required to attend.  I’ve known about Kenneth C. Davis’ A Nation Rising since shortly after it was published.  My family listened to part of the recorded version when long car trips were more common.  Remembering what we’d heard, I eventually purchased the print book as well—I’m a fan of print and always will be, I’m afraid.  I only resort to ebooks when there’s no other option.

In any case, what drew me to these Untold Tales from America’s Hidden History was the information about early revivals.  Particularly those of George Whitefield.  Now, I’d learned about Whitefield in seminary (it was in United Methodist history, as it happens), but I hadn’t realized that he was America’s first superstar entertainer.  People flocked to hear him preach and he even caught the attention and friendship of Benjamin Franklin.  It’s estimated that Whitefield reached an audience of about 10 million hearers, and this was back in the eighteenth century.  He also preached in England and since the American population was just over 2 million in those days, it means he was enormously popular over here.  It was Davis’ book, not a seminary class, that made me aware of the fact.

Having grown up in one of the original thirteen colonies—Pennsylvania was a state by then; I’m not that old—you’d think I might’ve been more interested.  George Washington was in western Pennsylvania at least a time or two, and I even found a Civil War coat button poking out of the ground in our backyard once.  Nevertheless, it took adulthood, and perhaps the recognition of just how fragile our democracy is, to kickstart my interest.  Davis’ book is good for those who are interested in the lesser-known aspects of American heritage.  We aren’t always the good guys, though.  This isn’t the heavy-duty history that totters with facts and figures.  Really, it’s a set of fascinating vignettes of many people mostly forgotten these days.  And like most American histories, it shows that our political troubles today are nothing new.

Shepherding Books

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One of the truths of publishing books—unless you make it to one of the big five, and even then it can’t hurt—is that you have to promote your own books.  Almost no publisher can afford to get word out that you’ve published your incredibly interesting tome with them.  So when I received an invitation from Shepherd to put together a list with one of my books on their site, naturally I said yes.  The way it works is your book page features a category of books, anchored by your own, and followed by five recommendations.  The idea is that people attracted to your subject will find this list and your book and, perhaps, just perhaps, buy a copy.  Since Nightmares with the Bible still hasn’t come out in paperback, I started my list with Holy Horror.  You can check it out here.

Authors often have no sense of scale.  Thousands of new books (perhaps up to two million) are published each year.  Think about that for a second.  Even the big five publishers can’t promote every single book, not at that rate.  There is a real satisfaction in having written and published a book, and many authors take that as a kind of entitlement.  “I’ve done my work, now somebody else should do the advertising.”  That may be fine if you have tenure somewhere and your prestige is assured.  If you’re a mere mortal like the rest of us, however, that means using social media.  Make a webpage.  Start a blog.  Get a Twitter and Facebook account.  The fact is, unless you do these things people won’t be able to find you.  They don’t spend their weekends at the local library browsing the shelves for new books.

Photo by Tanner Yould on Unsplash

Shepherd is a free service to authors.  I know many people who write (most of whom don’t read this blog) but if you know of anyone who does, point them to Shepherd.  The homepage has a convenient “Contact Us” link at the bottom.  Some websites will promote your work for a fee.  For me, I’m still waiting for royalties to come anything near what I have to spend to write my books—so far it’s been a money-losing venture.  I’m optimistic, however, that some day my books will be published in the affordable range—not just the big five do this, but most publishers have to be persuaded, through social media presence, that you can help find readers.  Shepherd is a good place to start.

In Pictures

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Old photographs are haunting.  One thing I’ve long noticed about high school pictures from the early twentieth century is that those kids look much more grown up than today’s graduating seniors.   (Or even my graduating class, for that matter.)  We’ve extended childhood since then, now stretching it into young professional stage.  Who doesn’t want to be forever young?  It seems to me that those who spend time in bookstores know about the Images of America series of books.  These record what local historical societies collect and put them out there for public consumption.  Some day I’ll get them for all the towns I’ve called home.  For now, however, I wanted a peek at the early days of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow.  If you’re by chance not familiar with the series, these books have captions and brief introductions to chapters so there’s context to explain it all. But the pictures are the draw.

One of the other features I noticed was that in a number of group photographs, a person or two is often listed as “unknown.”  It’s a fair bet that the other people in those antique images knew who these forgotten individuals were.  Photography, however, doesn’t really help those born before the mid-nineteenth century.  The photograph has a mysterious power.  It preserves a moment in history and as soon as the shutter clicks we’ve already become an older person.  In my work I have to locate people and I do so on university websites.  I’ve discovered that most faculty are far older than their pictures suggest.  Who has time to update the incremental changes every year?  Before you know it, your hair’s gone gray and you’re struggling to keep the pounds off.  We look at our younger selves and wonder.

At least I do.  I see pictures of a younger me and wonder what he might’ve done differently if he could see a picture of a present-day me.  One thing he would appreciate is my beard, such as it is.  Neither father nor step-father wore a beard, but young me always wanted one.  As life would have it, I couldn’t manage a passable one until after seminary while guys I knew in high school had heavy beards even then.  But this is a small thing.  The real changes take place in our heads.  Each day, each second, is a learning opportunity.  That’s perhaps the reason I like books like this.  Photographs of a place of fascination, even though I know none of the people or their families, are a real draw.  And they’re a form of haunting.

First Second

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The thing about self-published books is that titles sometimes confuse.  I’d read Linda Zimmermann’s Hudson Valley UFOs without realizing it was a sequel.  Part of the reason is that her previous book was titled In the Night Sky.  Since I have a compulsion for completion, I knew I’d have to circle back to read the first book, even though it might take months to get on my schedule.  I realize the title of this book is based on her documentary by the same title (which seems to be unavailable for viewing these days), and the subtitle, Hudson Valley UFO Sightings from the 1930’s to the Present, does the heavy lifting of saying what the book is about.  So why am I reading about this in the first place?  Well, UFOs have continued to be in the news lately, which is interesting in its own right.  But also I’ve been reading about the Hudson Valley for some time.

Although I’ve never lived in the Hudson Valley (or New York, for that matter), I have family connections.  My maternal grandfather’s family had deep roots in the upper Hudson Valley and I’ve always wanted to move there but jobs never aligned with hopes.  That hasn’t prevented me from maintaining an active interest in the area.  Besides, I like weird stuff—if you read this blog that’s self-evident.  There do seem to be places where strange things seem to concentrate.  (I mentioned this in regard to the Denver Airport recently.)  I’m one of those people who’s always found New York City a weird place, and it’s the southern end of that corridor.

In any case, Zimmermann’s book is pretty much like her second one on the subject.  She provides accounts of UFOs from witnesses who responded to her call for reports in preparation for her documentary.  I tend to think that many people can tell what’s supposed to be in the sky from what’s not.  I’m also aware that many people don’t have the background of trying to identify whatever they see and that mistakes are often made.  It doesn’t help that Zimmermann includes some accounts that are pretty clearly crackpot cases.  Some editing would’ve helped (which is true of many self-published books).  What’s so interesting about this collection is that what many people report seeing is so similar.  For those of us who don’t live in the Hudson Valley and who’ve never seen anything odd on our trips there, this may be the closest we get to the strangeness overhead.

Cat Nipped

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Holy Horror began with movies from 1960 on.  You see, I had watched the 1982 remake of Cat People without ever watching the original from 1942.  The remake has Paul Gallier, the brother of Irena, as a religious leader.  He doesn’t cite the Bible, so the movie fell outside the limits I set for that particular book.  I recently watched the 40-year older original version and was surprised to find not only the religion intact, but also the Bible as part of the story.  Both versions integrate religion and horror and some of the scenes are very close between the two.  The original centers around Irena Dubrovna, a Serbian immigrant.  In addition to originating the The Lewton Bus technique, the film also introduced a religious origin for the horror.  When Irena meets Oliver Reed, she explains to him that in Serbia, in her home village, some witches were driven out into the woods of the surrounding mountains by the Christians.  There they formulated a curse leading to becoming cat people when aroused.

Irena, fearing sexual arousal, spends time apart from Oliver after they marry, mainly watching the black leopard at the zoo.  One of the custodians warns her it’s an evil animal, a monster as described in the book of Revelation, which he quotes.  Of course, this leopard is an ordinary big cat, and the woman to whom he quotes Scripture is a cat woman.  Irena knows inside that she’s one of the cat people, but nobody will believe her.  The film also makes use of a quote from John Donne regarding sin.  Indeed, the film makes it clear, even after Irena dies, that she had never lied.  While she’s stalking Oliver and Alice in their office one night, Oliver pulls down a T-square, the shadow of which forms a cross on the wall, and he abjures her, in the name of God, to leave them alone.  Religion, the clash of religions, makes the monster.

Cat People, despite having had a mixed reception, was an influential movie.  Like much of early horror, it’s tame by today’s standards.  And yet it’s aged well.  I didn’t expect to be drawn in as much as I ended up being.  After all, I’d seen the remake first.  America at the time had a fear of the Balkan region, where mysterious eastern Europeans still had tales of vampires, werewolves, and cat people.  Of course, the last of these was invented for the film.  The director, writer, and producer wanted to create an intelligent horror film, which they did.  Moody, atmospheric, and based on religious tension, it is worthy of a Holy Horror sequel.

The Goodreads Zone

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It happened on Goodreads.  I suspect she had no idea how much that simple “like” meant to me.  Social media is too big to be everywhere, so I primarily engage with those who reach out to me (without trolling), on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Goodreads.  Even with my activity on these venues, comments are rare.  Likes a bit more common, and always appreciated.  Several months after I posted a review of her book, As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling on Goodreads, Anne Serling liked it.  That may not seem like much, but this was the actual daughter of Rod Serling himself, liking something I wrote.  If you feel the way I do about The Twilight Zone this will be a personal brush with greatness.  Almost as if Serling himself approved.

I’ve met a few famous people in my time.  Mostly they are ordinary people and act like ordinary people.  Only those of us around someone famous know that millions of people have heard of one of us.  Heard of and admire.  The rest of us manage to get along, but we do so without notice.  Unless someone “likes” what we do.  It’s kind of like having someone famous blurb your book.  In any case, my childhood consisted of many snippets of things that made me who I am.  One of those snippets was The Twilight Zone.  I watched a lot of television growing up.  We were not a reading family (neither parent finished high school), so the television was the item of choice after work/school.  Much of what I watched washed off.  Not The Twilight Zone.

Like reading through the Dark Shadows novels, I’ve been slowly watching my way through The Twilight Zone alone.  Nobody else in my family cares for it and since I don’t have much free time I only get to it on rare occasions.  Now that mowing time is here, those occasions are even fewer.  I guess I feel that I have to justify why I’ve come around to writing about horror as an adult.  You don’t get to be an adult without having some kind of childhood first, and mine involved The Twilight Zone.  Anne Serling’s involved being raised by the creator of The Twilight Zone.  To me, that’s a validating kind of fame.  To be seen by someone who could, if she wanted, have an instant and ready-made audience.  A reverie, started by something that happened on Goodreads.

Childhood History

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It looked just like I remembered it.  Having recently read the account of a Hiroshima bomb survivor, I had a hankering to read it.  John Hersey’s Hiroshima was my brother’s book, growing up.  He read it and told me about it, but I’m not fond of war stories or accounts of human suffering.  Still, having read a contemporary account at work I realized how little I knew about what had happened to the survivors.  So when I saw this little book at a local AAUW book sale, I picked it up.  Even after all these years it’s still a page-turner.  In my mind, ever hoping for merciful resolutions, the atomic bomb had killed just about everybody instantly.  A lifelong pacifist, I believe war morally unjustifiable (prisons should be for autocrats, not for minor offenses).  Those who start wars, such as Vladimir Putin, should be required to read this book.

I wasn’t really quite sure of what to expect.  I’d heard that the account involved the interwoven stories of six survivors.  It wasn’t quite as complete as I supposed it would be.  Of course, it was published in 1946, after appearing as a New Yorker article.  As I came to the end, I wondered what had happened to these people.  None of the six, a year later, had any semblance of a normal life, and scientists even then didn’t understand the consequences of what might happen to those the bomb didn’t directly kill.  I guess, in my mind, the city had become an irradiated wasteland.  I didn’t realize it had been rebuilt and that over a million people now call it home.  The was a blank in my mind after the dropping of the bomb.  Hersey’s book has started to fill in that blank.

My mind tends to trace things to their origins.  I’ve always thought that way.  Those who enter into politics ought to be required to pass a test on corruption.  They should be required to study diplomacy.  They should have to read books like Hiroshima to see what the consequences of their selfish acts can do.  Considering the real life horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is important to me to see that the cities are rebuilt.  It’s like looking up the bio of an actor who dies in a movie, just to make sure s/he is really okay.  Why is it so difficult to treat other human beings as human beings?  Why do we still allow war mongers to become national leaders?  Have we learned nothing since 1945?

Young Reading

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It was more the lede line than the story.  Melissa Kirsch’s “The books we read when we’re young help shape the adults we become in ways we don’t always grasp” caught my attention.  My own current rereading of Dark Shadows books certainly reflects that.  As my You Tube video on Dark Shadows considers, it was the books more than the television show that shaped my young mind.  Consciously, I know that’s probably the main reason I’ve always wanted to live in Maine.  It may seem strange to some to want to move where a vampire frequently visits, but there was more going on in those stories than I realized.  It would be enough to make me tremble were I a young persons’ fiction writer.  They have so much influence.  Spending my younger years searching for a father took me some strange places.

My other young reading was, naturally, the Bible.  I can’t remember how young I was when I began to try to read through the King James.  Eventually I did get through, and then I started all over again.  Clearly my entire life has been impacted by that early fear of Hell that drove me to the Scriptures.  Perhaps that combination of Bible and Dark Shadows novels led to Holy Horror and its aftermath.  In other words, my youthful reading led to what has become a vocation, of sorts.  That elusive university, or college job in Maine never came to fruition.  I tried many times to get a toehold there, Bible in hand.  I’ve ended up back in Pennsylvania, where I started.  And I’m still reading.

I’ve read a good number of good books, but it has been some time since one set my life off on a different trajectory.  Some books have lead me to write books, and books I read often suggest even more books.  Whether I die today or thirty years from now, books will have defined my life.  I grew up reading them and wanting to write them, with no real idea how to do the latter.  One of those childhood books convinced me that a career outside the church was one not worth having.  Indeed, were I clergy now my enjoyment of horror would certainly garner more attention than it does in my current role as “some guy.”  I am, however, that person who grew from a worried-looking kid who’d not yet figured out that my reading choices would lead to a life measured by books.

The ultimate adventure…

Many Days

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Science fiction.  I used to consume it by the bookful, and even now I occasionally turn back to it.  Having read Doris Piserchia’s A Billion Days of Earth, I do have a confession to make.  I don’t know why I read it.  Literally.  As I’ve indicated many times before, I keep a reading wishlist.  It’s comprised of books that others recommend and things that catch my eye.  Every now and again a used book sale will bring something unexpected into the mix, but overall, I rely on my list.  I can’t remember who recommended A Billion Days of Earth, or why.  The cover is striking in that 1970s sci-fi way, and it took me back to the actual seventies when I was reading sci-fi quite a bit.  Some of that cover art still mesmerizes me.  So, about the book…

I didn’t know what to expect and received what I was expecting.  This is a philosophically heavy novel that, in the style of some other seventies fiction I read, was a bit difficult to follow.  The main idea (and there will be spoilers) is that Sheen, a silvery, shape-shifting being, emerges a billion days along.  Evolution has taken multiple tracks with animals such as dogs and rats becoming essentially what humans are today (or were in the seventies) and humans evolving into what the other animals call gods.  Sheen slithers about the world taking the egos from all creatures, kind of assimilating them.  A rat person and a dog person resist the relinquishing of their egos while the world around them begins to collapse.  The “gods” refuse to help.  Then, at the end, the gods board their spaceship, and released by Sheen, leave for another planet.

Although I was confused most of the way through, the book leaves a lot to exegete.  This is definitely a retelling of Genesis 1–3.  Sheen offers people (and animals) paradise in exchange for their egos.  Nearly everyone, except those who think (a small number) accepts this offer.  Even the gods are tempted.  We’ve got the snake (Sheen), the expulsion from paradise, and the gods who separate themselves from humanity.  But still, I’m sure there’s something more that I missed.  There are subplots for Rik (rat man) and Jak (dog man) and the rich Filly family that seem to evade conclusion or resolution.  Or maybe once the gods are gone there’s nothing more to say.  This seventies classic left me thinking.  And wondering who it was that recommended it to me.

Wicker Proofing

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I’m currently reading the first proofs of The Wicker Man (due out in August).  While necessary, proofreading is a pain (and I work in publishing!).  You have to put everything else aside and concentrate on what you’ve already written, and if you’re like me, moved on from, to get your earlier work out.  I’m extremely time conscious.  I have many things that I would like to accomplish in the time I have left.  Right now one of my priorities is book six.  It’s already written, but I’m revising it for the umpteenth time.  Then the proofs come.  This is one of the issues a graphomaniac faces.  It’s part of trying to make a life from words.  And it distorts time.  I submitted my Wicker manuscript back in December.  Since then my mind has largely been elsewhere.

Proofreading—or is it proof reading?  I’m not a proofreader—isn’t the same as it used to be.  These days you proofread a PDF and use the markup tools for changes.  I had developed a kind of nostalgia for the old-fashioned proof markings.  Now you highlight the offending text and add a note to explain what you would like changed.  This makes me worry about time too, since I’m probably among the last generation who will even known what proof markings are, apart from historians of publishing (and yes, there are historians of publishing).  I am fortunate in having had a good copyeditor for The Wicker Man.  S/he didn’t change much but pointed out where my wording was ambiguous.  Those of you who’ve read me for a while know that some of that ambiguity is intentional, no?

A quick turnaround time on proofs is necessary.  Of course, mine would arrive on a Wednesday.  That very same day I was asked to be a reader-responder to a journal article, also with a brief turnaround time.  I wanted to say “No,” but as an editor I know how difficult it is to find reviewers.  Anyone who publishes should consider it a moral obligation to review when asked.  Just like jury duty.  Thursday and Friday mornings were spent reviewing the article (which I hope will be published, whoever wrote it).  All of this was done without picking up a pen (as much as I wanted to) or leaving my laptop.  As much as I enjoy those proof markings, nobody has the time for them anymore.  Even now I’m playing hooky from proofreading to write this blog post.  I’d better get back before someone notices that I’m gone.

Entitled Titles

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Movies have a tremendous impact.  Nowhere is this more obvious than in movie titles moving into standard vocabulary.  “McGuffin” (which autocorrect thinks is “McMuffin”) and the Wilhelm scream may not be household terms, but many people know what they are without being movie experts.  Even more impressive is when a movie title becomes its own noun.  I learned about the Rashomon effect not from movies, but from history.  When a story is told from more than one point of view, often with contradictory accounts, this is known as “the Rashomon effect.”  It’s named after a movie, Rashomon, that I’ve never seen.  I suspect I’m not the only one to use the phrase who hasn’t.  Movies can become points of reference.  We’re quite often visual creatures and movies can reach large audiences. The title plays a crucial role.

As the writer of a small blog with a small readership, and of books with small circulation, I often think of how movies manage to reach so many people.  I’m constantly discovering movies from before when I was born, or from countries far away.  They ask, like this blog, for only a little bit of time and yet they provide so many things to think about.  In many ways they are the mythology of our age, and no matter whether you watch on your phone or the big screen, you’re joining the ranks of believers.  Sometimes a movie becomes a cultural reference, such as is the case of “the Rashomon effect.”  But this can lead to its own set of problems.  Movies, like some bestselling books, often have one-word titles.  Sometimes that word fits many movies (as in Entity/The Entity).  Or sometimes it has a wider meaning, such as Avatar.  Or it refers to another well-known reference, such as Titanic.  I’m not picking on James Cameron here, but making a point that movies may make meaning, but they also bear the weight of their titles.

Titles are often sticking points with authors.  Many academic writers like the draw of the clever or pithy title, but such titles often hurt the sales of their book.  Using a quote as a title, apart from making confusion, also runs into duplicates.  Titles can’t be copyrighted, so multiple books (or movies) can use the same one. Quotes have long been favorites, so using them for titles is not a good idea.  I was distressed (mildly) when I realized that my fifth book, The Wicker Man, would bear the same title as the movie.  (That’s the way the series rolls.)  I’m now reading the proofs and thinking about titles.  My next book may not have a one-word title, but I hope I’m getting close.  And maybe it will have a little impact?