HelenKay Dimon

I’m over at AR’s All A-Blog today. Go there…

To prove there still is a home for vampires out there – other than Broadway – I give you this book sale announcement:

FICTION: WOMEN’S/ROMANCE
Erica Orloff’s THE HALF-BLOOD COUNT, about a dhampir — half vampire, half human — and a comparative religion professor searching for her lost brother in Prague, who must help each other in order to survive a band of vampires, to Tara Gavin at Silhouette Nocturne, for publication in January 2007, by Jay Poynor of Poynor Group/Orloff Literary Agency.

Vampires may be all the rage in romance novels but not so much on Broadway.

Here was the theory:- Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles + Elton John’s music + an undead guy named Lestat + a bunch of people singing in vampire costumes = Broadway hit.

Here’s the reality (or, maybe I should say, here’s what the reviewers think): Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles + Elton John’s music + an undead named Lestat + a bunch of people singing in vampire costumes = a vomit-filled mess.

Technically, I haven’t seen the word “vomit” in a review yet…but, it’s implied. Really. If you don’t believe me, try this one from The Book Standard:

They’re not making it any easier to refrain from the inevitable comment that “it sucks.”

One would think that, after the expensive debacles that were Dance of the Vampires and Dracula, the Musical,” lessons would have been learned about the unsuitably of singing bloodsuckers on the Great White Way. But the folks at Warner Bros., apparently under the impression that the association of Elton John and novelist Anne Rice would make all the difference, have bravely charged ahead with Lestat, inspired by Rice’s “The Vampire Chronicles.” The result is a third entry in an unholy theatrical trinity that should hopefully discourage any future such attempts.

The Washington Post said this:

To bite or not to bite? What’s a conflicted vampire with severe identity issues to do? That seems to be the question haunting the troubled title character in “Lestat,” the morose new musical that opened Tuesday at Broadway’s Palace Theatre.

Based on “The Vampire Chronicles” of Anne Rice, this lavish show is a rather joyless affair, glum and sober-sided despite yeoman work by a strong cast that throws itself into the musical with gusto.

But I most enjoyed The New York Times review. My favorite part goes like this:

Somewhere along the way it was decided that vampires were meant to sing and dance, leading to a series of undignified stage portrayals that should have had the Undead Anti-Defamation League up in arms (or wings) long ago.

Looks as if vampires should stick to print.

Since no one has accused Meg Cabot of plagiarism, let’s talk about her for a second. The same author who gave us Princess Diaries provided the best quote I read yesterday here . And, again, no one has accused her of stealing it from someone else, which made the quote even more special.

“That’s my calling,” [Cabot] says. “To put the blowjob back in literature.”

Beautiful sentiment, isn’t it? Seems Cabot is leaving the kingdom (sort of) behind for a second or two and coming out with something a bit more, shall we say, mature. It’s called Queen of Babble. Kirkus Reviews describes the May release as a ” Chipper European romp for adult girls who have graduated from The Princess Diaries.” Chipper? I guess that means funny.

Cabot also provided my best laugh of the weekend when I read her blog entry about writer do’s and don’ts at booksignings. Basically, she talked about how fellow authors need to stop acting like freaks. The entire entry is here, but my favorites are:

-Under #2 DON’T BE A WEIRDO she says of those authors who insist their characters made them do something:

And I find myself going, “Uh-huh. Really? Your characters actually talk to you? That’s so interesting, because you know, I made my characters up, so they can’t talk to me, because they ARE NOT REAL.”

The truth is, authors, characters cannot act and think independently of you because they are FIGMENTS OF YOUR IMAGINATION. When your character says or does something, it is because YOU MADE THEM DO IT. Your characters DO NOT ACTUALLY EXIST except on paper and in your head.

-Under #4 DON’T BE SUCH A BIG BABY – and this is my favorite – she says:

Often when I go on a book tour I hear from booksellers about authors who were in their store the night before, who are also on a book tour, and who signed so many books that they had to ice their hand. Very often, these poor, tender things needed to have a bookseller stand next to them to flip the books open for them, because their little author fingers are too precious and weak to do this task themselves.

Authors, seriously: Unless you are physically challenged, Harper Lee, JD Salinger, Beverly Clearly, or some other beloved but aged author, YOU MUST STOP DOING THIS. It just confirms what the rest of the world already thinks about us: that we are a bunch of badly groomed little namby pamby prima donnas with spirit guides who think our characters are real.

This is why people love Cabot…

The plan for today was to do a new Author Spotlight. But, since in the last 24 hours my last Author Spotlight managed to get accused of plagarism and then admit to it…well, I just feel like sighing.

If you somehow missed this – and, if so, I can only assume you don’t own a television or read a paper – the story goes like this:

1. Kaavya Viswanathan, a then-Feshman at Harvard, got a six-figure two-book contract. Her debut – How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life - came out in March 2006.

2. I’ve been waiting for this book and did an Author Spotlight on it here. Thanks to the blog entry, I’ve gotten some unbelievable number of hits from people looking for Kaavya Viswanathan on various search engines. Just so we’re clear – I don’t know her. So, those people who emailed me to ask me how Viswanathan was taking all this? Uh, really, I swear I don’t actually know her. I only know about her and her story thanks to the glories of the internet and newspapers. That’s it. No secret code here.

3. The Harvard Crimson came out with a story saying Viswanathan had been accused of plagarism (Article #1). That was Sunday.

4. By Monday at 6:00 p.m. The Harvard Crimson’s report changed (Article #2). Now it said Viswanathan’s publisher was “certain” passages were borrowed.

Publishing giant Random House is “certain” that a novel by Kaavya Viswanathan ’08 contains “literal copying” from its own author’s works, according to a letter obtained by The Crimson.

“We are continuing to investigate this matter, but, given the alarming similarities in the language, structure and characters already found in these works, we are certain that some literal copying actually occurred here,” Min Jung Lee, the assistant general counsel of Random House, wrote in an April 22 letter to Carol Ross, the general counsel of Little, Brown, which released Viswanathan’s debut novel “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life” this month.

5. By 7:32 p.m. on Monday, Viswanathan made an admission. The Harvard Crimson article (Article #3) this time announced that Viswanathan had apologized for “unintentional errors.”

“When I was in high school, I read and loved two wonderful novels by Megan McCafferty, ‘Sloppy Firsts’ and ‘Second Helpings,’ which spoke to me in a way few other books did. Recently, I was very surprised and upset to learn that there are similarities between some passages in my novel, ‘How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,’ and passages in these books.

“While the central stories of my book and hers are completely different, I wasn’t aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty’s words. I am a huge fan of her work and can honestly say that any phrasing similarities between her works and mine were completely unintentional and unconscious. My publisher and I plan to revise my novel for future printings to eliminate any inappropriate similarities.

“I sincerely apologize to Megan McCafferty and to any who feel they have been misled by these unintentional errors on my part.”

6. Over 500 additional blog hits later, I still don’t know this young woman. I now know she “borrowed” parts of her work from another author’s work. This makes me sad. It’s scary. It’s bad for writers, readers, booksellers and publishers. I’m also guessing that those of us turning in books soon will go through each line and panic that we “inadvertently borrowed” it from a book we read years ago and then buried the memory deep in our subconscious.

I wonder how Viswanathan’s finals are going.

I wonder if Megan McCafferty got a six-figure deal for her debut.

Again, I sigh.

UPDATE via PW:

An apology by Kaavya Viswanaathan, author of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life and a promise by publisher Little, Brown to immediately begin revising sections of Viswanaathan’s book that closely resembled portions of author Megan McCafferty’s Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings will not be enough to end the dispute over Viswanaathan’s “unintentional” copying from McCafferty’s work.

While McCafferty publisher Crown is expected to issue more details about the issue later today, Random House spokesperson Stuart Applebaum called Viswanaathan’s explanation about how she came to use passages from McCafferty “at best disingenuous and at worst literary identity theft.” He noted that there are approximately 40 cases where Opal mirrors passages from McCafferty’s works. Although Applebaum declined to comment if Random will file a lawsuit against Viswanaathan, he said “Crown and Random House support our author in seeking a proper and full resolution to this matter.” McCafferty is one of Crown/Random’s rising stars. After releasing her first two books as trade paperbacks, Crown/Three Rivers has just published Charmed Thirds in hardcover. There are about 350,000 copies in print of the three books.

More sighing…

First, an unrelated item: Forget to announce a contest winner on Saturday? Who me? Yeah, I forgot. So, here’s the newest winner: Robin Flaig. Robin, email me with your contact info, and I’ll get the book out to you.

Now, the warning part. I walked around 10 bookstores this weekend – don’t ask – and checked out some books other than my own. The new erotica lines are flooding the shelves and “New in Fiction” tables. I looked at covers. Read a bunch of back cover blurbs. The Spice covers seem tame to me next to, say, the Aphrodisia covers. Here’s my question: what’s with the Aphrodisia books having an explicit material label? Specifically, it says: “Warning! This Is A Really Hot Book (Sexually Explicit).” Anyone know?

You’d think Renee Alexis’ cover for He’s All That and Deanna Lee’s Undressing Mercy cover aren’t exactly unclear about what you’ll find inside. Just wondering if this is a marketing gimmick a legal requirement or what.

Authors debate the effectiveness of certain promo items like bookmarks, postcards and other handy little gadgets given out to booksellers and readers. The New York Times Sunday Book Review ran an article on a different promo item – book parties. The title was: The Party’s Over. Does that give you an idea if this one falls into the pro or con column?

Some thoughts from the article:

-”I think they’re practically passé, book parties, don’t you find?” said Nan Talese, the publisher of Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, whose mellifluous voice itself seems to hark back to a more lustrous era.

-”In these cost-cutting days, the book party is no longer to be counted on as a well-earned prize,” [writer and editor James] Atlas lamented. For one, publishers see book parties as a waste of money. The marketing budget, they argue, is far better spent on advertising or placement in bookstores. Unless you’ve written a surefire best seller — something about, say, sex, Hollywood, God, dogs, dieting or Abraham Lincoln — publishers are hesitant to spring for more than a few bottles of wine and some snacks from Fairway.

-”It’s more helpful in getting attention city by city with influential people in the book world,” said the literary agent Ira Silverberg. “You could take over Yankee Stadium for Salman Rushdie and I don’t know if it’s going to matter to an independent bookseller in Pasadena.”

-”I often used to say, the more parties there were for a book, the worse the book was,” [Fran] Lebowitz said.

The good news here is that bookmarks are cheaper anyway. If you’re going to pick something, maybe go with one that doesn’t include buying booze and renting a room. Unless, of course, you go with Lebowitz’s theory:

“It’s like coal mining. The only people I feel sorrier for are coal miners. And they never have parties, they sometimes don’t live through the day. But I’m sure if you ask them each day when they come out of the mine if they think they’d want people passing around canapés, they’d say yes.”

Huh?

I stumbled across Lara Rose’s blog entry about a Blaze she recently read. First, I have no idea what book this is or who the author is. Her comments on the idea of “chick lit, Blaze style!” as to this book were pretty interesting.

On the women-become strong-when-they-wear-sexy-clothes idea she says:

Main heroine wrote a book that’s supposed to empower women. Cool! What a great idea. Changing one’s self for a man, just to impress said man, is always a bad idea. Only all the book did was empower her to dress all slutty and ask for sex when she wanted it. And when she should have worn something slightly conservative for a business dinner, she was all everything’s going wrong! my man wants to change me and I’m letting him. Have I learned nothing? waaaaah. Seriously, if the question is “what have I done for me lately?” It’s not forcing myself into six-inch heels and super tight clothes just because men think it’s sexy. (and that completely goes against the whole doing for me, don’t it? duh.)

This is a popular romance theme. It popped into my head while I was writing one of my novellas for Viva Las Bad Boys! At the start of the novella Jackpot, the heroine is wearing a wedding dress (don’t panic – she’s not a bride or an abandoned bride – she has other reasons unrelated to an actual wedding for wearing the dress). At a later point, the hero (not a groom) gets her out of said wedding dress and sees that she’s wearing sporty cotton underwear (at the time I was picturing underwear Jennifer Love Hewitt wore in a magazine ad I saw). I never thought about going the sexy underwear route. Didn’t work for this heroine or make sense in the context of why she was in the wedding dress. It would have been trite and too romance novelish.

Lara is talking about something slightly different, but it’s all about character and believability, isn’t it? Sometimes what seems the sexiest in one context doesn’t work at all in another.

Look at all the sales!

1. In the “wow” category – notice the word “debut” in this announcement:

FICTION: DEBUT
Tana French’s INTO THE WOODS, a psychological crime thriller, to Kendra Harpster at Viking, for six figures, in a two-book deal, by Emma White at the Darley Anderson.

2. For those who think the vampire romance craze is over:

FICTION: WOMEN’S/ROMANCE
Sarah McCarty’s four-book vampire series, to Leslie Wainger at Harlequin HQN, by Roberta Brown of the Brown Literary Agency (World).

3. In the He Is Not A One-Hit Wonder category/Why Doesn’t Anyone Offer Me Millions Of Dollars subcategory, we have this from the NYT (or you can just read this excerpt):

Four years after agreeing to sell his second novel to Random House for an advance of more than $8 million, Charles Frazier, the author of the best-selling “Cold Mountain,” has handed in the first half of his final manuscript, and is expected to turn in the remaining half next week.

The publishing industry is likely to watch the progress of Mr. Frazier’s new book closely because at the time he signed the deal four years ago, his advance was considered extraordinary for a literary writer who had only written one previous book, although it was a huge best seller. With just a one-page outline of the planned work, he sold the second novel in an auction, and in so doing left behind the editor, Elisabeth Schmitz of Grove/Atlantic, who had discovered and nurtured him to success.

4. For those who love him, we have a Harlan Coben sighting…go here.

Every now and then I see a book and think – damn, I have to put that on a list and remember to scoop it up. I had one of those moments while looking through the New Releases section on the Kensington website (and, yes, I was checking to see if my August release Viva Las Bad Boys! was up there yet and, no, it isn’t).

This one is Friday Night Cocktails by Allison Rushby. It’s an August 2006 Strapless release. Like the cover. Like the cover copy. Here it is:

Two best friends, one killer hangover, and a whole world of badly behaved men. Let the games begin…
Gemma Barton, here—single girl and website creator. Okay, so I’m not here to decry all men as commitment-phobes and complete dogs, but you know, sometimes they are. After one more date with Mr. Oh-I-Didn’t-Tell-You-I-Was-Already-Engaged and a round of giant margaritas, my friend Sarah and I decided to make “the list”: a chronicle of all the guys who’ve ever lied, cheated, or tried to have a threesome with your best friend.

Well, our little revenge website seemed like a brilliant idea at the time—and soon disgruntled women all over the world were chiming in. It was great. Suddenly Sarah and I were stars, I had a male personal assistant, and all was right with the world. Or so I thought, until big trouble started brewing on my computer. There’s someone out there in cyberspace who’s just made me see the error of my ways. Maybe the male of the species aren’t out to get me after all. Could it be time to stop listening to my inner rage queen and start listening to my heart…?

Here’s the cover:

Actually, it looks as if this came out for the first time in 2004 with this cover:

I prefer the new cover.