Propping Up Literary Fiction Sales

Ok, I'll admit it. I lack what it takes to write serious literary fiction. Stephen King settled that issue for me in his book, On Writing, when he said, "You will never be a great writer unless you are born with it." Great writers must be passionate about something, right? I'm only passionate about things I shouldn't eat or drink.

So the arrogance of someone so lacking as myself, offering up a thesis that literary fiction doesn't sell and inferring that cognitive critters might solve that problem, is not lost on me. But even the most calloused devotees of esoteric fiction among publishing gurus, are hard pressed to make the case that a Nobel Prize winner will outsell a good murder mystery, thriller, vampire, or diet book.

Obviously there is a market for literary fiction. I buy lots of it myself. James Lee Burke, recently nominated for a National Book Award, wrote the only crime genre fiction I've ever read until Steig Larsen came along. Among that dedicated cadre of serious readers that have not already jumped ship for nonfiction, there remains a market for quality fiction. Not a huge market, but a market nonetheless.

What's the problem? The characters in literary fiction spend so much time thinking; they never get around to doing anything. They constantly are confronted with deep issues of: Who am I? Why am I here? What should I do? Where am I going? Why can I not love/be loved? What if I'm wrong? What if I'm right? Why is life more difficult than it has to be? Who out there makes my life more difficult than it has to be, and a myriad of other "Oh, woe is me" considerations. There just is no time left to do much. This leaves heaps of the reading public wondering, "Is something ever going to happen in this book."

Yet, during this stultifying process of self-examination, these characters and we readers constantly rub up against all of God's creatures both large and small. Some of these creatures we make into pets. Some we watch with unfeigned interest in the wild or in cages. Some we feed. Some we nuke with pesticides. Some we eat. Some we squash unknowingly underfoot. Some we train to do tricks. Some we shoot for sport. Some we just enjoy. But none of these do we assign any cognitive powers except for "fight or flight" responses, and occasionally mistaking the attention our pets pay to us as affection - when in reality they probably are thinking, "Oh, boy! It's the food guy."

I have a friend, Leopoldo Solis, who is the guru to the tequila producers in Mexico. He has developed processes that tamed tequila from a muy macho kick-your-ass drink, into a delightful sipping beverage. One of those processes is playing Mozart to the yeast as they contentedly munch away on cactus juice during fermentation. He has presented academic papers illustrating the increase in ethyl alcohol production and the decrease in impurities created by these music loving yeast.

If the lowly yeast can enjoy classical music, then maybe we do Nature's woodland creatures a disservice by denying them any cognitive powers. Here might be the salvation of literary fiction. What if we let the characters do lots of fun, interesting, creative, exciting, mysterious, fulfilling, and/or amazing things - while letting the creatures that the characters encounter do the heavy thinking about what is happening to them. The reader gets the best of all genres - plus completely new perspectives on life and the world around us.

I had this idea while in the shower. I shouted the traditional, "Eureka," ran naked though the house to my computer, and launched this entirely new genre of fiction.

The result of my effort is not great literary fiction for the reason stated above by Stephen King. But nestled amongst all this whirl of activity, adding depth and meaning, are the musings of the creatures encountered by the characters. Ruminations like, “Who out there keeps jerkin’ me around? Why? and, How about cuttin’ this crap out?”

I’m enough convinced that this new genre of fiction has a future, that I am well into the second novel. I urge all of you literary authors, more gifted at birth than myself, to let a few cognitive critters do some thinking to free up your character’s time. They then can get off their butts and do something; possibly winning back some of the literary fiction market.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

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Exception Rejection

I’ve been doing serious agent querying for my current project, and I’ve learned that agents have discovered something more demeaning and insulting than the “Dear Author” form letter/post card/email rejection. I’ve dubbed it the “Exception Rejection.”

Here’s how it’s explained on the agent websites: “We receive such a high volume of queries, that we respond only to those in which we are interested. If you have not heard from us in four to six weeks then consider that we have passed on your project. Do not under any circumstances inquire about your submission or we will put your nuts/tits in a vise and force you to watch us eviscerate your first-born. ” Actually that last part I added.

Back in the Underwood Typewriter days, agents/publishers would not accept carbon copies of query submissions. There was the taint of multiple submissions. They expected authors to query exclusively with original drafts. Then wait six to eight weeks for a response. That meant an author could query a maximum of six agents/publishers per year. Any author over fifty years old might not live long enough to get an agent acceptance.

I ran the numbers and here are the statistics of agent querying:
65% will accept only email queries. (“We are a green company blah, blah)
20% will accept both hard copy and email queries
Of the 85% who will accept email queries, 80% will only accept a one-page query (“We will contact you if we wish to see more of your material.”)

Reading these one-page email queries from the screen takes less time than printing them, so I did some research on the time required to respond to an email query after reading:
1) Click on “reply” - 3 seconds
2) Paste in the “Dear Author” rejection - 15 seconds
3) Click on “send” - 2 seconds
Total time required to respond to an email query - 20 seconds.

So what the “Exception Rejection” agents are saying is, “All the time, money, and expense you’ve invested in this query is not worth 20 seconds of my time.” So we authors sit around for a month or two wondering did the query even get to the agent, will I get a response, or what the fuck is gong on here – when the agent could have responded in 20 seconds. Oh! Yes I did study the time taken responding to the SASE. The response averages 30 seconds to stuff the “Dear Author” rejection into the SASE and seal it.

Some “email only” agents set up auto responders on their websites that notify the author that their query was received. This is very easy to do and costs almost nothing. I think this shows a little respect for the author’s efforts.

Short of asking authors to write their own rejection letters, I don’t see any worse affront coming down the publishing pipe than the “Exception Rejection.”

It leaves me wondering why bother with the whole agent/publisher (or self publishing, for that matter) thing, when July 1st, an author can place his or her book in the Kindle Store and receive 70% commission on every download sold. Hook up with a good Internet marketer and laugh all the way to the bank.

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Holy Mole

I’ve never liked mole sauce since trying it as a young teenager. It was a thick brown intensely flavored sauce spread over chicken. It was bitter and reminded me of scorched chocolate. I’ve only tried it once since and had a similar reaction.

Mole translated into English runs the gamut from sauce, to paste to stew, but pragmatically it means to take a combination of ingredients and grind them together to form a paste with initially the constancy of bread dough. It is then thinned to a sauce texture before serving. In our culture today quacamole, mashed up avocados with some other ingredients, is the most commonly known example. However, lurking at the heart of Mexican Cuisine are dozens of other moles that come in all flavors and colors.

When you see Mole on a restaurant menu, the chances are it is Mole Poblano which according to Wikipedia is prepared with dried chili peppers (commonly ancho, pasilla, mulato, poblano and chipotle), ground nuts and/or seeds (almonds, indigenous peanuts, and/or sesame seeds), spices, Mexican chocolate (cacao ground with sugar and cinnamon and occasionally nuts), salt, and a variety of other ingredients including charred avocado leaves, onions, banana and garlic. Dried seasonings such as ground oregano are also used. In order to provide a rich thickness to the sauce, crushed toasted tortillas, bread crumbs or crackers are added to the mix. Okay, with this in mind, it is easy to see that only the most dedicated restaurants make their own mole, while others buy it in jars and just spoon it over their dish.

It has been decades since I’ve ordered a mole dish, but I found myself in a friend’s restaurant that produces an array of dishes over and above the usual Tex-Mex for which San Antonio, Texas, is famous. For some reason, a dish of chicken enchaladas and mole sauce caught my eye. But I don’t like mole, right? In a burst of spontaneity, I ordered the dish.

Oh, my God! What a flavor explosion – such richness. A complexity of flavors that flooded the palate and my soul. It was one of the best meals I’ve had in recent times. Our tastes change with time and certainly mine had changed as far as Mole Poblano. Now I look back at all those years that I could have been enjoying Mole, and it makes me sad over what I’ve missed.

Maybe we should peridically check back into all those things we once decided we didn’t like: art, music, food, people, etc. just to make sure we are not missing out on something.

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Proactive Compassion

Two months ago I had a knee replacement replaced a second time. I now convalesce with the required rehabilitation exercises, and I move through my life using a walker with wheels and Teflon skids (no tennis balls on my walker legs).

Since it was my left knee, I am still able to drive, so I lead an active life on my walker. On my first outing to a doctor’s office I was entering a building with a large foyer. As I opened the door to push the walker through, someone leaped up from across the foyer, rushed over, and held the door open for me. Amazing! He was the first of hundreds who have gone out of their way to help me open doors through which I pass on my walker.

As time passed, I started taking note of just who these people were -- these people who were proving that proactive compassion still exists in our society. They are equally divided between men and women. I live in a city with a large Hispanic population and those offering help are Hispanic in a larger percentage than the percentage of Hispanics in the general population. There is probably a reason for this. Hispanics are a family oriented culture and as such are nurturing by nature.

However, few, if any, of those offering help are under twenty years of age.

The truth is, getting the walker through a door, even one with a heavy closer on it, is much less problematic than it must appear to others. I am actually quite skilled at it. But it is so gratifying to see these wonderful people who inconvenience themselves to be helpful, that I always accept their help and show real appreciation.

What I think about sometimes after and outing is, were I able to move normally, and I saw someone on a walker getting through a closed door, would I leap up and help? I frankly cannot recollect similar situations, but I hope that I would do my part to help prove that proactive compassion is still alive and well.

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A Beary Merry Christmas

I was five years old and my parents, even though hard working, still had not achieved middle class status. We lived in a rented house, and we never went hungry due to Mom’s creativity and thrift in the kitchen, but they had no concept of discretionary income.

With winter coming on, they wanted to buy my father a new pair of winter trousers and my very first pair of church-going pants. My brother could still wear his, so they were not ready for hand-me-down. On several Saturdays we rode the bus downtown and shopped in many different stores looking for the right, affordable trousers. One of the more upscale stores we visited had an amazing teddy bear in the Children’s Department. It was a big bear covered with glistening down-soft fur, and it smiled out at me through happy, glass eyes.

I climbed on a chair, pulled down that bear, and hugged it. I was love at first squeeze. On each successive shopping trip I insisted we return to that store so I could hug that bear. Then, as now, quality plush toys were expensive, so my pleas to buy the bear went unheeded. That also was the probable reason my bear always waited there for me .

Christmas was approaching, and I ask my folks to take me to the big department store to visit with Santa Clause. I had figured since my folks wouldn’t buy me the bear, I would ask Santa to bring it to me. After waiting through the line and sitting on Santa’s lap, Mom asked me what I had asked for.

“My bear,” I announced with pride. The look that shot between my parents puzzled me. Mom’s eyes glistened when she explained that sometimes Santa knows better what little children need.

The agony of Christmas Eve faded into a dream-filled night that exploded into the light of Christmas morning as I leaped from bed and ran into the living room. There under the tree sat a teddy bear. It was a bit smaller, the body and arms were sewn from pink patterned gingham with the ends of the chubby, round arms and legs closed with white flannel circles. The smiling white flannel head had chubby flannel ears and two bright, black button eyes.

I squealed with delight and grabbed that bear, hugging it as if it were Mom after an extended separation. I don’t remember one second’s disappointment that this was not the big beautiful white furry bear. I loved that bear.

About five years later, I had grown out of the teddy bear stage, even though he still sat in a position of prominence in my bedroom. Relatives came to visit who had a young toddler who loved to play with the bear. They decided to remove the two button eyes to keep the young one from pulling them off and strangling on them. I still remember the sadness I felt for weeks that Ted was now blind since Mom never got around to sewing them back in place.

Now, over sixty years later, I know exactly where Ted is, and I get a fuzzy glow inside appreciating that he is warm and comfortable and loved.

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A Major Discovery
originally posted: December 15, 2009

I made a major discovery today. I learned how to turn off my electric toothbrush. I’ve had the toothbrush for almost three years. My two previous electric brushes had toggle switches; i.e., you push the button – they come on; push the same button – they turn off.

When I bought the current brush the “on” button would not turn it off. I discovered; however, that replacing the brush on the charger turned it off. Deciding there was a congenital design problem or a flaw in my particular brush, I lived with it. For almost three years I've put the toothpaste on the brush while it was running – no mean feat.

Today, the brush slipped in my hand, and it turned off when I caught it. Amazing! An examination of the brush showed a microscopic circle under which was the “off” switch. For three years I have struggled and wasted toothpaste because I assumed that the brush was flawed. It was simply different from those with which I was familiar.

Did I read the instructions? Are you kidding? I’m a graduate engineer. You think I’m going to read how to run an electric toothbrush?

As I thought on the irony of my great electric toothbrush discovery, life parallels could be drawn. Maybe we should not assume something or somebody is flawed/bad because they are different. Possibly when things aren’t working right, we should stop, step back, and discover why. And for God’s Sakes, when we are fortunate enough in life it get instructions, read ‘em and heed ‘em

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Ice Cycles on My Testicles
originally posted: December 4, 2009

Que paso, Global Warmers? I’m freezing my nuts off down here in San Antonio, Texas. They’re talking about it snowing. Snowing? It hasn’t snowed here in 15 years. I need you Global Warmers to crank it up a few degrees. But now I learn there has been no global warming since 1995. What’s with that?

If I wanted cold weather, I’d live in North Dakota. But then I’d have to talk with a Scandinavian accent instead of a Texas Drawl. Wearing long sleeves is too cold for me. Give me heat. Something that makes me want to go skinny dipping and lie naked in the shade of a big pecan tree.

Now I learn that scientists believe the last big Ice age 16,500 years ago occurred in a matter of weeks or months, not years or decades. They predict this could possibly happen again in the near future. Not to worry though, that ice age only lasted 1,500 years. Of course we could forget about “Cap in Trade” and all those things we are doing to stop global warming and maybe we could heat up the old globe and reduce that 1,500 year thaw by a year or two.

As I see it, it’s time to look for real estate somewhere around the equator. It might not be ice age proof, but could make a cold natured guy like myself a little more comfy.

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During the last twenty years Bill Stephens has written over 1,000 weekly columns and features on wine, food, travel, and outdoors for Murdoch, Harte Hanks, and Hearst newspapers. His features and contributions have appeared in national periodicals like Chef, Wine Spectator, Wine News, Wine Enthusiast, Field & Stream, and Food & Wine. He has published two short stories “The Decanter, A Christmas Story” and “Toby Tire and His Erratic Curve Ball”

At one point during his three-decade food service career, he concurrently owned and operated a leading white tablecloth restaurant, three airline in-flight kitchens, three employee feeding facilities, catered a dinner train, and his company was third largest full service off-premise caterer in South Texas.

Stephen’s catering clients included Texas governors, presidential candidates, the family of the King of Saudi Arabia, The Prince of Wales, Pope John Paul II, Tom Jones, Neal Diamond, Willie Nelson, and many other notables.