HelenKay Dimon

I saw this April 2006 chick lit release cover for Girls Who Gossip by Theresa Alan – sorry but that’s as clear as I can get it. Then I looked at it a few more times. I don’t mind cartoon covers or fun covers. Others do. The potential here is for chick lit readers to take a pass after deciding this cover is too teen-looking.

Having obssessed about this for far too long, and having jumped to all sorts of conclusions without knowing a thing about this book, I researched it further. Because, of course, I’m going to end up buying it. Now, look at the cover one more time. With that in mind, here’s a description of the book from Kensington’s website:

Yes, the rumors are true…

…I’m actually coming home to Colorado for the summer. Maybe it won’t be so bad. After all, I’ve got cocktails, shopping, and gab sessions with my girlfriends to look forward to. Plus time with my dysfunctional family. Yippee. I’m Helaina, by the way. Helaina Denner if you’ve known me since junior high, like Hannah and Marti. Helaina Merrill if you know me from film school at NYU. See, I lead a bit of a double life: “starving” student when in Manhattan, daughter of privilege when in Denver…

And it gets even better…

…depending on your definition of “better.” First off, I’ve picked this time to try and reconnect with my father. Which would be easier if we’d ever had anything resembling a relationship to begin with. I guess this is one of the pitfalls of having a parent as rich Bill Gates and as accessible as the pope…

Seriously, some of this stuff you cannot repeat…

…like what I’ll tell you about Owen, the adorable journalist I just met. He’s sweet, sincere, sexy…real soul mate material. But something’s keeping me from letting him get too close. What’s my problem, anyway? No need to answer: that’s what friends are for. Now, amid high-altitude parties in Aspen, bikini waxes gone mad, and caught-on-tape blackmail fodder, I’m about to find out exactly what one heiress’s problems amount to in this crazy world. Just remember, whatever I discover is off the record—for the moment, at least…

The copy seems to match the cover. All is fine so far. But, Harriet Klausner’s review suggests that this book is more serious than either the cover or back cover copy would lead you to believe:

Helaina Denner mourns the death of her beloved mom when she decides to end the estrangement and reconcile with her wealthy dad because she needs family at this moment. Thus she travels to Colorado where she tries to hide her feeling of appall from her aloof father and her aunt, who are having an open affair while the relative who connected to both of them lies warm in her grave. — Unable to cope Helaina turns to alcohol, but that only leaves hangovers. Her friends feel for her but she detests the pity she senses behind their sympathy. She knows she must find closure with her mother’s sudden mysterious death and move past her rage at her dad and aunt for desecrating her mom. Helaina finds some solace with poet Owen, who helps her inch closer to emotional harmony, but the weights on her back make progress seem snail-like. — GIRLS WHO GOSSIP is a deep character study of a despondent grieving young woman feeling all alone since her mother died trying to connect with her father, but makes no progress on that front, which in turn depresses her further. Helaina’s relationship with Owen seems very realistic with its ups and downs as both have problems, but the emotionally battered female finds herself in the crosshairs of needing and wanting a loving relationship but fearing to embrace one as love hurts. Fans of contemporary fiction will want to read this strong insightful tale.

Character study? Alcoholism? Grief? Dead mother? That cover doesn’t telegraph any of that to me. Now I do have to read it…

I can spend hours in a bookstore. Wander here. Wander there. Check out the new arrivals, bestsellers and those rectangular racks right near the front where the mass markets stick out kind of sideways and you walk around looking at the titles until you get dizzy. But, some days I don’t want to pitch a tent, pull up a latte and settle in. I want to get a specific book and get out.

Such was the case last evening. I went to the local B&N to buy Every Which Way But Dead by Kim Harrison. This actually was my second attempt to purchase this book. I traveled to a smaller metro area B&N last weekend but couldn’t find the book there either. I now know why – the B&N employees clearly have been directed to hide this book in the most obscure place possible. That is the only explanation.

Sure, I could have stopped by the information desk and asked the brunette with the nose ring and black nail polish but…well, she scared me a little. I didn’t want to disturb her for fear she’d whip a book at my head. So, instead, I did my usual wandering even though this started as a non-wandering trip. I went to romance – not there. To general fiction – not there either. To mystery/suspense (because this section is right behind romance, and I was hoping my wandering would be limited to a small area) – nope, not there. As I walked to the escalator, resigned to a smackdown with the scary information lady, I spied the science fiction section. Since the book has a witch in it, I thought why not and gave it a try.

There it was. [can you hear the angels singing?]

The book marked fiction on the spine, with a quote on the front by Diana Gabaldon that says, “Great sex, and even better plot!” – the same book with a sexy female leg on the front cover – there it was, sitting right on the top shelf in science fiction. The one section into which I never wander. That is not a knock against science fiction. Building a new world in addition to plot, characters, dialog and all that other book stuff sounds hard as hell. I’m impressed people even try it. The genre just isn’t, in general, my thing.

While thrilled I finally had my hands on the book and did not have to take my wandering to the information lady who, unquestionably, could have kicked my butt without standing up (did I mention that she outweighed me by about 100 pounds – and, trust me, that’s saying something), I was a tad disgruntled that I had to hunt it down. I kept wondering if Kim Harrison views her books as science fiction or if she assumes they’re somewhere else in B&N. Maybe she doesn’t care. All I know is that I came within 4 seconds of leaving the store ’cause I was tired and wanted to get home and show the hubby my new haircut (okay, hair cut and color).

Seems to me fiction and romance likely outsell science fiction. Yes, that is a total guess and one for which I have absolutely no basis. But, still, I think I’m right. Either that or all of those RWA statistics are a lie. Why put Harrison’s book there? Marketing decision, bookseller mistake or author preference – I don’t know. I just know hunting down the book I want makes me grumpy.

The good news is that my hair does look great…I know everyone was concerned about that issue.

I blogged about Emily Davies’ sale here and pointed out my confusion over the popularity of fashionista chick lit. Davies’ agent, Simon Trewin, was nice enough to stop in and talk about why he took on Davies as a client.

Now we have this from Women’s Wear Daily - yeah, not the usual place I find literary information, but this is worth noting:

Does the fashion industry have its very own James Frey in the making? Several New Yorkers quoted by name in the proposal for an upcoming memoir insist they’ve never met the author, Emily Davies, a former fashion writer for The Times of London. The book, “How to Wear Black: Adventures on Fashion’s Front Line,” recently fetched a reported $900,000 bid at auction. Simon & Schuster’s Scribner division is set to publish the U.S. edition of the book, described as a cross between “The Devil Wears Prada” and “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People,” in 2007.

But while the 79-page proposal presents the book as an account of Davies’ own experiences, a closer look reveals material clearly drawn from the work of another writer. The precis of chapter 12, which describes Davies’ June 2002 trip to interview for a job at American Vogue, includes scenes of her meeting the magazine’s then-features associate Alexandra Kotur and publicists Paul Wilmot and Nadine Johnson, all three of whom advise her on how to attain a “glamour job.” “I have no idea what each day will bring,” Kotur told Davies of her own job, according to the proposal. “One day I could be in someone’s home on a photo shoot, the next night I’m talking to Minnie Driver and Sigourney Weaver.”

According to a Vogue spokesman, however, the conversation never took place. “Alexandra Kotur has never met this person,” he said Thursday. The quote appears to be taken from a 1998 article in The New York Times, “The Glamour Girl’s Guide to Life,” by Monique P. Yazigi. The encounters with Wilmot and Johnson, which Davies describes as having taken place at a party at Bungalow 8, also look to be fabricated, the quotes lifted from Yazigi’s piece.

Davies’ explanation goes like this – actually, it is this:

Davies, who reportedly departed The Times of London last year amid an inquiry into her expenses, responded to WWD’s questions with a statement defending her actions in the proposal. Saying it was “not intended for public consumption,” Davies claimed, in effect, that it was easier for her to give prospective publishers the flavor of her memoir by appropriating other writers’ words than by relying on her own memories. “The first thing I did when I began putting together my proposal…was to dig out a mass of notes, cuttings and stories I had assembled over the years.…Although I used these notes in the proposal, there would be no question of my using any unoriginal material in my finished book.”

Why, oh why…

Okay, let’s establish a new bright-line rule. It’s a simple one, really. Kind of figured it was one of those unspoken things, but I guess not. Here we go: I [insert name here] will not use other people’s words, experiences, plots and ideas and pretend those words, experiences, plots and ideas are my own. Ever.

Carla Neggers is one of the reasons I enjoy anthologies. A hundred years ago when I started reading romance, I went on a quest to read the entire backlist of Jayne Anne Krentz. In that venture, I found an anthology called Everlasting Love. Both Linda Howard and Carla Neggers had novellas in the anthology. I loved them both – already loved Krentz and Linda Lael Miller, two other authors included in the anthology, and I picked up the fifth, Kasey Michaels. As a result of Everlasting Love I found/discovered new authors and became convinced anthologies provided a good opportunity to try new authors without investing a huge amount of time and money.

Why this book:
1. It’s a NYT bestseller and has been at the top of the bestselling romance book list on Bookscan for weeks.
2. She writes solid and believable romantic suspense. She’s sometimes a bit short on the romance part – which makes me grumble – but she’s someone I pick up knowing I’ll be entertained.
3. She’s one of those folks who wrote for Harlequin Temptation/Bantam Loveswept in the 80s. She’s had a steady rise in popularity and book sales without having her face plastered all over the place.
4. Her next book is a hardcover (The Widow, October 2006). If hardcover prices scare you, now is a good time to work on her backlist paperbacks.

People ask authors all the time where they get their plot ideas. The answer is simple – from the Plot Idea Store, of course. For $19.99, you get a ready-made plot for a 90,000 work romantic suspense…not.

Ideas come from everywhere – newspapers, things you see, things you think about, things that happen to you or others. Everywhere. Having the idea isn’t the key. That’s the easy part. The actual plotting and writing and selling – that’s the really hard part. Most people can think – sure, that may be debatable and we can all offer examples showing how this premise is flawed, but let’s assume. If it is true most people have working brain cells and can come up with books ideas, it’s also true most can’t translate that thinking into a manuscript. Into a salable manuscript? Yeah, the percentage gets lower and lower.

As an example of the ideas-come-from-everywhere theory, I offer this: Laura Hillenbrand wrote Seabiscuit. She suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, some days can barely move, and considered swallowing a bottle of Valium, but she pushed through to become the successful writer she is today. Seabiscuit was a NYT bestseller and stayed on the list for 120 weeks. Between the hardcover and paperback, 42 of those weeks were at No.1. She sold the movie rights and, well, I’m assuming paying the mortgage isn’t an issue for her.

Hillenbrand’s next book is about Olympic runner and WWII POW Louis Zamperini. She came up with the idea one day when, while reader as newspaper clip about a racehorse named Seabiscuit, she flipped the clipping over and saw a story about Zamperini. If she hadn’t checked to see what was on the other side of the article, who knows what she’d be writing right now.

Some deals listed in Publishers Marketplace surprise me because, while I like to think I have a base level knowledge of what’s getting published and by whom, I see great sales by authors I’ve really never heard of before. Now, I’ve heard of Lynsay Sands. Her book A Quick Bite is on my TBR pile. But…A Quick Bite was the first time Sands came onto my radar screen. Had no idea she was a NYT bestseller.

I’m not saying Sands doesn’t deserve a great advance. I’m not saying anything about her books. I’m pro-big advances and pro-authors doing well. Good for her! My only point is that there are a bunch of romance authors out there who I hear about all the time – sometimes to the point where I get sick of hearing about them and then can’t buy their books. Then there are those out there who are writing and doing well, and I haven’t stumbled across them yet. Makes me wonder what else I’m missing out there in Book Land.

The deal:

NYT bestselling author Lynsay Sands’s THE ACCIDENTAL VAMPIRE, a three-book continuation of the romance series, featuring the Argeneau family of vampires, to Erika Tsang at Avon, in a good deal, by Jenny Bent at Trident Media Group (world English).

A “good deal” means Sands received an advance in the neighborhood of $100,000-$250,000.

Author/reviewer Lev Grossman is a personal favorite. Whenever I read one of his articles – usually in Time – he cracks me up. I’m not sure if he always means to, but he does. This time he interviewed James Patterson. The article contains the usual and obligatory shots at Patterson – something that’s become a favorite author pastime. This one sums up the debate nicely:

Patterson is the world’s greatest best-seller factory, and depending on how you look at it, he’s either a damn good writer or the Beast of the coming literary apocalypse.

Lev seems to kind of, sort of, like Patterson…I think:

Literature is not a democracy. In the book world, being popular does not necessarily make you great. But if it were, and if it did, then the man sitting across the table from me in a canary-yellow mansion in Palm Beach, Fla., would be president-for-life of the literary universe, and Philip Roth would be a comptroller in North Dakota.

Patterson is 58 and writes 4-5 books per year. He’s sold some ridiculous number of copies like 100 million and has earned a breathtaking $40 million. He’s co-written 8 novels – see, this is why I sometimes forget he’s an author and think of him only as a corporation. According to Grossman, Patterson is “…he’s amiable, chatty and deeply unpretentious–he refers to his writing as ’scribbling’.” I met Patterson at a RWA conference and my impression was a tad different, but I’ll defer to Grossman.

On this issues of covers and artistic control, I offer this:

One of the things that’s fascinating about Patterson is his total lack of interest in received wisdom; another is his complete confidence in his own judgment. With 1992’s Along Came a Spider, the first novel in his Alex Cross series, Patterson knew he’d written a best seller–so he took control of the way it was designed and marketed. When his publisher told him it wasn’t interested in running a TV campaign, he called in a few favors at J. Walter Thompson and shot the ad with his own money. He wasn’t jazzed about Spider’s cover, so he redesigned it. “They’d done a cover that had a kid’s sneaker on it, with a little blood on it, and I went, I don’t know, it didn’t do anything for me. I want the reaction to be, ‘I want this!’” He blew up the title into huge letters that practically shouted across the bookstore that this book was going to give thriller readers exactly what they were looking for. Spider became Patterson’s first best seller. He still designs all his own covers. Harvard Business School now teaches a case study on his marketing techniques.

Money doesn’t mean respect:

Patterson probably outsells Toni Morrison 10 books to 1, but his success comes at a price. He will never get respect from the literati. Most reviewers ignore him. In a culture that values high style over storytelling, pretty prose over popularity and pulse-pounding plots, he’s at the extreme wrong end of the spectrum, and he knows it. And, yes, it irks him a little. “That’s probably my biggest frustration,” he admits. “There’s something going on here that’s significant, and it’s not easy to do. If it was easy to do, a lot of people would do it.”

Even if you dislike Patterson you have to love that quote.

Some miscellaneous book pimping…

First – According to Barnes & Noble, When Good Things Happen To Bad Boys is shipping. Wonder if that means the rest of my author copies are on the way. Maybe I should order a few from here…hmmm. Regardless of whether I do, you should. Follow that link, order, then do it again – lather, rinse, repeat.

Second – When Good Things Happen To Bad Boys is (or was when I wrote this) #29 on B&N when I wrote this. Since it could be #800,000 by the time someone clicks on the link, here is my proof:

Product Details:
ISBN: 0758209339
Format: Paperback, 352pp
Pub. Date: April 2006
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
Barnes & Noble Sales Rank: 29

How many times can I thank Lori Foster, Erin McCarthy and Kate Duffy for this good fortune?

Third – Viva Las Bad Boys! is showing up for pre-order here and there. I got the cover flats over the weekend. They are awesome. Really. The colors. The look. The fact my name is spelled correctly for the second cover in a row. Just wait until you see the live version. B&N hasn’t listed it yet – very, very bad B&N. However, it is (or was when I wrote this) #410,176 on Amazon. I don’t feel the need to verify that rank. Trust me on this. But, if you want to buy 500 copies and help push the rank under 100,000, please do.

Once you’re done buying my stuff, you should think about buying the books I bought this weekend:

-Perfect Weapon by Amy Fetzer
-Deep Breath by Alison Kent
-Have Your Cake And Kill Him Too by Nancy Martin
-The Instant When Everything Is Perfect by Jessica Barksdale Inclan
-A Changed Man by Francine Prose

In a post-deadline haze, grande vanilla skim latte in hand, I wandered into my local B&N. This time, like usual, my first stop inside was the new trade paperback table. Love that table. Someday soon hope to be on that table. On this trip, I saw the book Murder on Naked Beach by J.J. Henderson. Had a catchy cover. Had “naked” in the title. Never heard of it before. Never heard of the author before. Naturally, I picked it up, flipped it over and read on. The copy reads like this (is this, actually):

It’s the ugly side of winter in Manhattan and Lucy is itching to escape to a warmer climate. She manages to talk her way onto a press junket to Jamaica to photograph a posh new resort. Once her photo shoot is done, she’ll have plenty of time left for windsurfing and catching up with her traveling companions. Instead, Lucy finds one of them dead in the hot tub on the resort’s little island, known as Naked Beach. Although everyone claims the writer died of a heart attack, Lucy smells mischief and is determined to find out what really happened. But her curiosity leads her way off Jamaica’s beaten tourist path, and straight into danger, drug smuggling, and the bed of an undercover DEA agent.

Now, the book I just finished writing has a DEA agent, a beach and a photographer heroine. The similarities between mine and this book appear to end right there, but I thought it was worth a try for $10. The odd thing – to me, maybe not others – was the publisher: CDS Books. Never heard of CDS Books either. So, in my usual OCD fashion, I went a-hunting. As luck would have it, Publishers Weekly had a little blurb on the publisher on Monday. It went like this:

Roger Cooper has been named publisher of Perseus’s CDS Books imprint. Cooper will work to add commercial fiction and nonfiction authors to the imprint, which employs a different business model than most publishers, including other Perseus imprints. CDS Books offers authors no advances in exchange for higher royalties on their books and a firm commitment on marketing and publicity for their titles. Cooper’s career includes top jobs with Berkley, St. Martin’s, Bookspan and ibooks.

No advances but a “firm commitment on marketing and publicity” – eh? I vote for an advance plus marketing and publicity support.

This description from the publisher caught my attention: “A hip chick from Newport Beach, California, who’s just turned thirty, discovered she’s the incarnation of the Hindu goddess Kali, and happens to be unemployed and still living with her parents. Saving the world, though, may prove to be a curry-scented breeze compared to dealing with her extended Indian family. In their eyes she isn’t just the black sheep — she’s low-grade mutton.”

Despite my allergy to curry, why I picked this one:

1. How many Hindu goddess chick lit novels have you read? Yeah, me too.
2. Thought the cover was pretty cute.
3. B&N online has this listed as a bargain book, so I got it for $3.59. Tough to say no at that price.
4. The reviews are all over the place. On Amazon, readers either loved or hated it. All the B&N reader reviews are positive.
-Library Journal says: “…this is a fun page-turner full of current pop culture. But it’s also a bit preposterous.”
-Kirkus is a bit nasty: “Too bad that Maya [heroine] is a vulgar, shallow, self-involved, unappealing narrator, given to puking and profanity when she’s not busy telling us about her Manolos, Tommy Bahama sandals, Armani jeans, and pink cashmere Ralph Lauren top. Witless and lame debut.”

With all these differing opinions, I wanted to decide for myself.