Post Halloween Guest Post: Chuck or Treat or Welcome to My Nightmare

"Relax and have a seat, let us get you a drink. You'll need it..."

Photo and caption, by Marilyn Smith

Hi,

CooKoo Charlie the Cannibal Clown is in the house.
While the witches brew, I'll cook my stew
a little pigs feet (swine or human) one brown mouse
Hey, be thankful one of the ingredients isn't you.

This is my first appearance on the well-bled, I mean Well-Read Donkey. And it truly is a horror, I mean honor.

I want to take this moment to talk to you about monsters.

Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolfman and that amphibious abomination, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I love how he swims in sync with the ladies. Grace with gills. Rage that kills. A perfect combination.

Anyway, these are the monsters of the past. Today we have Freddy, Michael Myers, Chucky and...Pumpkinhead!

Good or bad, monsters make an impression on all of us. There's nothing like a cool, scary as hell, monster that invades your sleep and terrorizes you until you wake up screaming with your sheets soaking in sweat.

Although, truth be told, nothing scares old CooKoo. Hell, I'd make Freddy whimper like a whipped pup.

Way before Hollywood silver-screened monsters and writers put their nightmarish visions on the printed page, humanity has gone to bed with horror stories. Frightening folklore is in every culture. It's a given, no matter where you're livin', where there are people, there are monster tales.

Which leads me to an amazing book by Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker award winning author of the chilling Pine Deep trilogy, and David F. Kramer. They Bite Endless Cravings of Supernatural Predators is a copious, cultural compendium of creepy creatures that should fuel your inflamed imagination. Lurking and preying in these predatory pages are vampires, werewolves, hell hounds, seducers and many more monsters of mayhem.

Point is: whether you're a budding novelist searching for inspiration or an average Joe, I prefer sloppy Joes, although they don't have to be Joes, they can be Franks, Chucks or whomever, leisurely scanning the sections for entertain and education.

Me, I'm always looking for new ways to stir up my ravenous repertoire.
Stir it up; ...Little darlin! Eh, Bob.

Oh, hey, before I vamoose, to cook livers and goose, I want to make sure you check out my video CooKoo The Clown reviews Pilo Family Circus, by Will Elliot and Maneater, by Thomas Emson.

I also want to give a shout out to John Ray whose savory directional and editorial skills made this eerie endeavor a truly appetizing artform.

Maybe I'll invite him over for dinner. Don't worry John Ray, I actually won't have you for dinner. I'll cook you up something special...but I won't tell you everything that's in the pot.

Hahahaha!

Text written by Chuck Perunko

Day FIVE of Five

For anyone who checked in early, apologies! I set this post to appear at 12:01 AM, but must have missed a step. In any case, welcome!

My last day to post and I'm wondering how to close. With a dramatic moment...or a quiet walk into the sunset? I thought I'd put out a question that has always intrigued me and see what an expert says. Have you ever wondered why a publisher creates a hardback version of a book, followed months or a year later by the paperback? Especially considering that the paperback is less expensive and more often selected by book/reading groups. I posed this question to Brooke Warner, Senior Editor at Seal Press, and her response is very interesting:

This is a great question, certainly one we talk about a lot since Seal used to be an exclusively trade paper house that now publishes at least one hardcover a season. My take on hardcover publishing is that there’s still a belief among publishers, reviewers, and authors themselves that hardcovers have more clout, and will be taken more seriously. My personal opinion is that this is misguided and that it’s the result of hanging on to a model that’s no longer working. For the vast majority of books, it’s not cost effective. It’s also not good for the buying public. However, it used to be that the New York Times and other major media would only review hardcovers. I’m not sure what the statistics are on this today, but it’s still true that hardcover first editions get more attention because of the industry practice of putting the most money behind those books. Publishing in hardcover means that you paid more money for the book and that the author does or should have a platform that can support sales of a hardcover book. Meanwhile, booksellers and distributors are often against hardcovers. We’ve had experiences of our distributor trying to talk us out of doing a book in hardcover. In at least two instances they’ve been successful. They are more difficult to sell through. The only upside is that you can do a strip and rebind, so if a hardcover doesn’t sell well you can literally turn it into a paperback. I would love to see the industry as a whole stop publishing hardcover books. I know that’s not going to happen overnight, but it’s an expensive practice and it would be amazing to just level the playing field and save consumers lots of money at the same time.


MORE BOOKS TO THINK ABOUT...AND READ!
I had the pleasure of working with Mary Jo Eustace in the anthology, The Other Woman. Many of you know her story: weeks after they adopted a baby, her actor husband left her for Tori Spelling. For several years, Mary Jo has been hounded by journalists, torn apart in cheesy magazines, and excoriated on talk shows. All the while, she has remained dignified and focused on the well-being of her children. After all of this upheaval, she's written a book and it comes out next week. Divorce Sucks. http://www.keplers.com/book/9781605506555


Masha Hamilton is more than an exceptional writer. She is also the founder and heart behind the The Afghan Women’s Writing Project, which she created in May 2009. To quote the project's website, this program is "an effort by U.S. women authors and teachers to work with young Afghan women on developing their literary voices in telling their stories." In Afghanistan, women might be permitted to attend school, but higher education is often discouraged. Nevertheless, they persevere, which is why this project is not only reaching out to many women, but Afghan women are reaching right back. Writers and educators volunteer their time to work Outstanding author/teachers volunteer their time on a rotating basis to work online, connecting with women from all parts of the country. I urge you to visit the website and learn about this very important project. http://www.mashahamilton.com/world_literacy.php


Masha's new novel, 31 Hours, is getting wonderful reviews and you can order it through Kepler's at http://www.keplers.com/book/9781932961836


This is the end of my week on this blog and I've loved every minute. I hope you've enjoyed the viewpoints about writing, the mention of a few new books, and a smattering of programs and courses. Again, thanks to Kepler's, Aggie Zivaljevic, and Bobbi Emel for the invitation and the continued support...given to me, authors everywhere, and the community. If you'd like to contact me with questions, suggestions, information about my online UCLA writing course, whatever, I can be reached through my website at www.victoriazackheim.com. Just click on Contact and you're there!

Day FOUR of Five

I met Arabella Grayson at a writers' conference and was drawn to her at once. In addition to being a beautiful woman, she sat in the lecture alert and ready, those lively eyes truly sparkling with the anticipation of learning something new. It was no surprise to learn that she had a very unusual "hobby"...a passion, truly, and one that she has developed into what will soon be a book. Arabella has amassed what is possibly the world's most comprehensive collection of African American paper dolls, one of them going back to 1863. I've asked her to visit the blog today and post more about her collection. She'll check in during the day and again tomorrow, so please ask questions!

(Arabella has posted a fascinating response, so be sure to scroll to the bottom of today's post and click on comments!)

I'm often asked about writers and their processes, so I decided to put out two questions and see what kind of responses I received. Here are their responses. If you have questions for them, click on "comments" at the end of this post and I'll try to get responses before my time's up on Friday night.

Question One: With one (or more) of your books, how much time passed between writing that first sentence and submitting a final manuscript to the publisher?

Sandra Gulland: Finding that first sentence is what takes a long time! The original Mistress of the Sun was a short story, written in 1992. I started the novel version the following year, but put it aside after signing a contract for a trilogy. I picked it up again in 2000, when the last of the trilogy was published. Mistress of the Sun was published in 2008, a genesis of 16 years.
Christine O'Hagan: My novel took 2 years to write. My memoir a little less than 2 years.
Amanda Eyre Ward: About 3-4 years of cozy, wonderful, nerve-wracking, despondent, thrilling, slow and lightning-fast typing. (Which adds up to approximately 4681 cups of coffee and 1429 glasses of evening Chardonnay, 54 margaritas, 1856 pages written but never used, 13-23 characters completely developed but yanked from the novel when they don't belong, 754 nights of reading others' brilliant books, and 530 mornings where I wake up at 3am and scribble for a while, convinced that I know something more and better about my novel.)
Beverly Donofrio: For my first memoir, seven years; my second, two and a half.
Eileen Goudge: Takes me about 9 to 10 months, with three drafts.
Liza Nelson: 10 years from first sentence to submitting to agent. Two months from agent to publisher. It was my first fiction book written. Also, it has taken me another ten years to complete my second (and no publisher yet).
Carrie Kabak: Cover the Butter: 4 months; Deviled Egg: 4 years and still going

Question Two: When your book was published as "first novel/book"...was it the first you had written...or the first published? And if you're willing to share this, how many books did you write before you were published?

Sandra Gulland: I stole the title of [my] first one, The Last Great Dance on Earth, to use as the title of the last novel in my Josephine B. Trilogy. I imagined that the characters in the original Last Great Dance were hopping mad about it, too. Plus, I ballooned a chapter of the second unpublished novel into the Trilogy. So you see: nothing is wasted!
Caroline Leavitt: I never intended to be a novelist. I wanted to be a short story writer. A short story, Meeting Rozzy Halfway, that I had entered into Redbook's Young Writers Contest, won first prize (to my astonishment--it was a bleak story of mental illness in 1960s Boston suburbia) and immediately it got me an agent—and a book deal. I had no idea how to write a novel, or how the short story could grow to a novel, but my agent helped me map out an outline so I wouldn't feel like hurling myself out the window!
Christine O'Hagan: My first novel/book was the very first I had ever written. Up until that time, I wrote newspaper and magazine articles.
Amanda Eyre Ward: I wish! I wrote a whole long novel called Between A River and A Sea—a mother disappears during Hurricane Bob on Martha's Vineyard. The book is hundreds of pages of beautiful sentences strung together with absolutely no plot or resolution. Then I wrote four versions of Sleep Toward Heaven, which was rejected by every big house in New York, and finally published by MacAdam/Cage in San Francisco. Close Your Eyes will be published by Random House in 2011.
Eileen Goudge: I published a number of teen novels before I wrote Garden of Lies, my first adult hardcover, 34 in all—I was one of the original Sweet Valley High stable of writers. My very first novel, though, was published by a now defunct press, for the princely sum of $1,500, under a pseudonym which will never be revealed. Needless to say, it was flawed.

So all of you writers who think you can't write because it's taking forever, don't despair! And those of you who have never written, but are burning with a story that must be told, please tell it!