Happy All Hallow's Eve

Because we're all too old to go trick or treating today, Cat Brown helped me to find a fun way to celebrate Halloween.

There's a website called Jigzone here. If you like jigsaw puzzles, you'll love the Jigzone where they post new puzzles every day. You get to select the photo and the level of difficulty--from 20 pieces to 247 pieces. The site provides a timer to keep track of your score and permits you to try the puzzle again and again if you're competitive with yourself.

For Halloween, Cat--who owns and operates the Romance Junkies website here--developed two Bad Girl puzzles for me--an easy one here and a more difficult one here.

To make it fun, I'm going to suggest that you choose one of the two Bad Girl puzzles to complete. You only get one try. When you've completed the puzzle of your choice, email me at MayaReynoldswriter@sbcglobal.net. Give me your name,
mailing address, tell which which puzzle you did and the time in which you completed it. There'll be prizes although I'm not going to tell you the nature of the prizes or the criteria on which they'll be awarded.

Happy All Hallow's Eve!

Why It Ain't The Library of Alexandria

Thanks to Publishers Marketplace for drawing my attention to a very interesting article dated November 5, 2007 in The New Yorker titled "Future Reading: Digitization and Its Discontents."

The article is written by Anthony Grafton, a historian at Princeton University. Wikipedia refers to his "preoccupation with the relations between scholarship and science," which is an excellent way to describe The New Yorker piece.

Grafton discusses the various digitization initiatives by Google, Microsoft, Amazon and the Open Content Alliance from the perspective of an historian whose world view encompasses far more than the five hundred years since books became widely available as the result of Gutenberg's press.

Almost two years ago, on November 23, 2005, I did a post here comparing Google and the Open Content Alliance's efforts to copy the world's books to the famous Royal Library of Alexandria, Egypt. Legend has it that all of the world's knowledge--perhaps as many as 700,000 parchment scrolls--was stored within the Library's walls.

Grafton also makes reference to that fabled library when he says, "The greatest and most famous of the ancient collections, the Library of Alexandria, had, in its ambitions and its methods, a good deal in common with Google’s book projects."

But he sneers at that ambition, saying "In fact, the Internet will not bring us a universal library, much less an encyclopedic record of human experience. None of the firms now engaged in digitization projects claim that it will create anything of the kind."

Why? Because these copying initiatives cannot possibly touch all of the information stored around the world in archives and obscure libraries. As Grafton points out, "Google, for example, has no immediate plans to scan books from the first couple of centuries of printing. Rare books require expensive special conditions for copying, and most of those likely to generate a lot of use have already been made available by companies like Chadwyck-Healey and Gale, which sell their collections to libraries and universities for substantial fees."

The comment that Grafton made which had the most impact on me, however, was this:

Other sectors of the world’s book production are not even catalogued and accessible on site, much less available for digitization. The materials from the poorest societies may not attract companies that rely on subscriptions or on advertising for cash flow. This is unfortunate, because these very societies have the least access to printed books and thus to their own literature and history. . .Sixty million Britons have a hundred and sixteen million public-library books at their disposal, while more than 1.1 billion Indians have only thirty-six million. Poverty, in other words, is embodied in lack of print as well as in lack of food. The Internet will do much to redress this imbalance, by providing Western books for non-Western readers. What it will do for non-Western books is less clear.

That quote is a harsh reminder that we Westerners tend to think in terms of our own history and accomplishments, discounting the experience of much of the world's peoples.

It would be a mistake to forget that Google's scanning initiative is not a philanthropic quest. Just six days ago, I quoted The New York Times here, saying "Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services."

Google is, first and foremost, a commercial venture. While it is scanning books for free, it does so in order to increase the value of its own search engine. In exchange for providing free digital copies to libraries, it demands that those institutions not open their doors to Google's competitors in the search engine business.

While I understand Google's position from a business standpoint, it dulls the sheen on their company motto: "Don't be evil." It's also a reminder that no matter how friendly the huckster at the door is, we need to always read the small print in the contract he offers.

I highly recommend reading the Grafton article. He reminds us in great detail of the many obscure places where the world's information is stored.

He also has the historian's preference for working with the original document. I was amused by his reminder that "[o]riginal documents reward us for taking the trouble to find them by telling us things that no image can." He points to a story in which "a fellow-historian systematically sniff[ed] two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old letters in an archive. By detecting the smell of vinegar—which had been sprinkled, in the eighteenth century, on letters from towns struck by cholera, in the hope of disinfecting them—he could trace the history of disease outbreaks."

Read the entire article here.

Tribble Goes Home

This morning, I said my last goodbye to Tribble, my calico Manx.

I've been praying to know when the right moment arrived.

Tribble--as gracious in this as in the rest of her life--told me it was time. For the last six months, she has not slept in my bed. She has preferred to sleep where she could look out the French doors into the night. If I brought her into bed with me, she would wait until I fell asleep and then leave.

Last night, I woke up to find her beside me, purring. She stayed the entire night.

In the past, I have had cats who were not purring machines that began purring when their time drew near. I think it is a form of self-soothing. Tribble found a way to soothe both of us.

Friends and family had offered to go with me, but it felt right for Tribble and I to take that last drive together alone. Tim, my wonderful vet, spent thirty minutes talking with me and petting her. He didn't try to talk me out of euthanizing her, which, in itself, said a lot.

The two of us stood together stroking Tribble until long after she'd breathed her last. We shared our viewpoints on death. Not surprisingly, we both regard it as the Last Great Healer. We hugged, and--as always--he refused any payment. I know that he will send me a note that I'll receive in a day or so, and I'll send him my own note of gratitude.

I'm having trouble typing this because three-year-old Bob is draped across my arms. He leaped up when I sat down at the laptop and will not be denied.

Bob--a confirmed glutton--usually gobbles the food Tribble leaves in her dish the minute I turn my back. To my surprise, her dish was still sitting untouched when I got home from the vet. Maybe it was his own tribute to her.

Tribble and I had been together twenty-two years and eight months. They were good years, and I wouldn't change a thing--not even this last long, slow farewell.

Something New . . . And Something Old

I love trashy B movies. For every Oscar-nominated film I see, I probably watch two trashy movies.

I say this to explain what I was doing in the theater this weekend--watching 30 Days of Night.

I was intrigued by the plot. According to the script, Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost town in the United States, goes dark for one month every year when the sun goes below the horizon and the temperative stays below freezing. This lack of sunlight entices a band of vampires who knock out all power and communications and then settle in to nosh on the local residents.

I had a bit of a problem with the film. I happen to prefer my vampire movies scary but light. Fright Night and The Lost Boys are two of my favorites. To show you what I mean by scary and light, here's the trailer for 1987's The Lost Boys.

Unfortunately, 30 Days of Night had no sense of humor and was mostly a bloodbath, making it instantly forgettable for me.

But the afternoon wasn't a total loss. The previews included a trailer for an upcoming event that sent me right back to my childhood.

One of the first TV shows I became addicted to as a child was the original Star Trek. Most Trekkies know that the show, which ran from 1966 to 1969, was the second version. The original 1964 pilot starred Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike. When NBC saw the first pilot titled "The Cage," studio executives were concerned that it moved too slowly and was "too cerebral."

NBC requested that Gene Roddenberry, the producer, film another pilot. Hunter, who was already making salary demands, refused to film a new pilot and asked to be released from the contract. Roddenberry filmed the new pilot with William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk. The only actors who moved from the first pilot to the second were Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock and Majel Barrett, who went from being the first officer to the ship's nurse. She was dating Roddenberry and later married him.

Since the original pilot had been very expensive, Roddenberry was asked to find a way to use it. He wrote a bookend story to wrap around "The Cage," using the original pilot as a flashback in time. The new two-part show was titled "The Menagerie" and ran as episodes #11 and #12 in 1966.

Why am I telling you all this now? Because while we were watching the previews at the theater today, they announced:

On Tuesday, November 13, and Thursday, November 15, the two-part Star Trek Remastered version of "The Menagerie” will beam onto the big screen in a special engagement with selected theatres. The screening. . .will be seen in more than 300 venues across the U.S. and Canada. This two-night-only event will also feature a special introduction by Eugene "Rod” Roddenberry, son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, plus an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Remastered series.

Boy, I'll bet there'll be some wild looking Trekkies out those two nights. Here's the opening of the original pilot:

Note how white the entire cast is. When Roddenberry cast the second pilot, he focussed on the multi-racial mix that fans came to know.

In researching this post, I discovered a bit of a creepy coincidence. Jeffrey Hunter died of a stroke at age 42 on May 27, 1969, one week before the last episode of the original series was aired on June 3, 1969.

This I Believe

Texas is glorious in October. The days are brisk, but not shivery cold, and the daylight seems brighter than at any time during the rest of the year. I love to be outdoors and spend as much time as possible in the yard or just walking.

Since my neighborhood is dog-crazy, there is always someone's pooch happy to be borrowed by a dogless person for a walk. Today I took Penny, a big yellow Lab, who was overjoyed to see me approaching her fence with a leash. We circled the neigh-
borhood, and I was reminded of how much I miss by not having
a dog. But I won't upset Tribble's last days by forcing her to deal with a new puppy.

While we walked, I listened to NPR on my Sony Walkman.

Regular readers of this blog know I love NPR. It provides much of the backdrop to my day. Whether I'm in my office at the university or in my car or at home, NPR is usually on the radio.

One of the programs I enjoy is This I Believe. The program is based on one hosted by broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow (yes, the same Edward R. Murrow played by David Strathairn in Good Night, and Good Luck) in 1951. Murrow said the reason
he started the program was because of "...the uncertainty of
the economic future, the shadow of war, the atom bomb, army service for one's self or loved ones, the frustration of young people facing the future."

Famous and not-so-famous people wrote short essays that could be read in three and a half minutes, sharing their core beliefs. Those essays were read on the air.

According to the program's website, "[f]ifty years ago, millions
of Americans sat by their radios and listened to This I Believe.
For five minutes each day, they heard from statesmen and secre-
taries, teachers and cab drivers, all of whom spoke about their most deeply held beliefs."

If you go to the website here, you can find essays by some of the most famous people of a generation ago, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Helen Keller and Harry Truman. The program ran on CBS Radio from 1951 to 1955.

This I Believe was revived in 2005 on NPR. You can read (or listen to) the modern essays here.

Since the program returned to radio, I've thought about writing an essay. This spring, NPR actively sought people in the D/FW area to contribute essays. I started one or two essays, but none felt "right." I had a lot of other things going on and finally decided to forget about the project.

Earlier this month, one of the writers' loops I belong to began discussing This I Believe. Two members shared their essays, reminding me that I had never completed one.

On my way home from work one evening last week, I had a brainstorm. I arrived home, went straight to my laptop and, in less than an hour, wrote an essay and submitted it to the program. I was surprised at how quickly they posted it on the website.

You can read my essay here.

The Largely Indispensable Nathan Bransford

Nathan Bransford may be the bravest, the most impulsive, or the most generous agent alive.

Back on September 10, he announced a contest to find "The Stupendously Ultimate First Line" here. He had over 450 entries.

The winning first line was: "That summer, the arsonist struck every home on the block but ours."

Just a month later, our Nathan announced "The Largely Indispensable First Paragraph Challenge" here.

This time, the man got more than 600 entries.

Nathan and his assistant judge, May Vanderbilt, selected six finalists here.

Two of the six finalists were also finalists in the first line contest.

Here are the winning paragraphs:

1) Oh no, it's some kind of infestation, Rosemary thought, prodding the ground with her boot. Next to the barn were several fist-sized holes, just big enough for rats, or worse, imps. She hated imps. They were always getting into the larder and causing a fuss.


2) There’s this girl I’ve never met that I know everything in the world about. Well, most everything. Not the big stuff, I guess. Like what she prayed about when she would cry at her bedside or whether she really believed those prayers might get answered. And I never knew all of the reasons for the crazy shit she did, but hey, who really does? I did know other stuff though. The real freaky-deaky shit. Like how she would crack open her father’s disposable razors with a pair of pliers she kept stashed behind her dresser and how she’d slice herself up. Sometimes I think she left her window blinds open that way just so somebody, anybody, me--a guy she never met--would know. Not that she was some kind of attention whore. Just about everybody is some kind of attention whore. Not Scissors, though. And I could testify in court to that, since, I’m like, some kind of authority on the girl.


3) Brooklyn didn't know very much about me. Actually, the girl knew surprisingly little, which was exactly what I needed in a friend. She didn't ask intrusive questions and I didn't have to lie or have my heart pound while I searched for acceptable answers. She wasn't into meaningful conversation and heartfelt talks. She was light, snappy, and never depressed. And most importantly, she wasn't my responsibility.


4) Life inside a piano isn’t all knitting cobweb sweaters and napping. It’s dangerous. Every time a clumsy student flings himself at the bench and bangs on the ivories, just to see his fingers walk across the black and whites, I face death. The action’s unpredictable. If I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time, I could lose my head.


5) He was short and skinny, shorter than the others, and never wore a shirt when he ran. His thin arms flailed as he kept ahead of us and we all wondered how. He was so fast. But mostly we watched the bouncing scars on his back and thought about how he got them. We called him the Wizard. It was because of his hair, wild black mass with a white shock hanging in the front. That’s how I thought of him. The Wizard. I wish I knew what names they had given him but I never asked. Between us, there was an unspoken rule: everything would remain unspoken.


6) The great flaw in the system was that some of the Children remembered what it felt like when they were taken. It was impossible to tell who would remember--temperament, age, gender, none of them seemed to matter. The flaw persisted despite all of the technicians' attempts to eradicate it. In rare cases a Child, newly imprinted, would awaken at odd hours of the night, crying for reasons she couldn't explain or shaking with a nameless dread and a desperate feeling that something wasn't right.

Let's take a look at the six paragraphs Nathan and May chose and see what we can learn.

First, these choices reflect two judges who enjoy fantasy/sci-fi. Half of the winners are either fantasy (two) or sci-fi (1). Keep in mind that not all agents represent these genres. Always check the agent's website for the kind of books s/he represents.

Second, they've selected four first person POV (66%) and two third person POV (33%).

I think of first person as being more immediate and intimate. Along with that immediacy, notice that all of these paragraphs begin right away; there are no long lead-ups with lots of explanation. The writers just jump right into the story and expect (Nathan says "trust") the reader to catch up.

One of the biggest newbie errors is a tendency to start with a long narrative to provide the setting or establish the world they've built. Resist that tendency. Just start with your action. You can drop in clues along the way as to what's going on. For instance, #1's mention of a "barn" and "boot" suggest that the setting is a farm or a ranch while #4's use of the word "student" implies that the piano the narrator inhabits is in a school.

Most importantly, all of these entries made you want to read further. Why were the children taken? Where did the Wizard's scars come from? What lives inside that piano?

This was a terrific exercise in what one agent is looking for in new material.

Thanks, Nathan. Your blog is wonderful.

Time For Tribble?

This has been a tough week. My sinus/migraine problems paled against the possibility that it was time to put my almost-23-year-old calico Manx down.

Tribble and I have been together since she was six weeks old. She has mostly been a delight, a low-maintenance companion with a gentle disposition. In all our time together, she's had only one physical ailment--a little cancer on her chin, which my vet removed about six years ago.

The only difficulty has been her moodiness. She was already ten years old when Lucy, my border collie, came to live with us. In a fit of pique, Tribble jumped up on one of the chairs in my breakfast nook and didn't come back down for nearly a year. I never saw her on the floor although I noticed she cleaned her dishes each night and made periodic visits to her litter box.

When Lucy, an exuberant puppy, would approach Tribble's chair, she'd swipe the dog's snout. Lucy would come running to me, whimpering with outrage.

Then, one day, as suddenly as she'd jumped up on the chair, she jumped down. She made no effort to avoid Lucy--even occasionally walking over or under the border collie to get where she wanted to go.

By contrast, Lucy froze with terror whenever Tribble drew near.

Far more troublesome than her moodiness has been Tribble's tendency to periodic fits of depression. When Shadrach, our little disabled cat, died Tribble quit eating and grooming herself. I tried offering new flavors of cat food, Bumble Bee tuna and even my sure-fire method for getting an animal to eat: lamb-flavored Gerber baby food. Nothing would entice her to eat. My vet warned that we might have to put her on intravenous feeding.

I was desperate. One night about a week after Shadrach's death, I came home to find Tribble's long, silky hair unbelievably knotted and snarled. While I couldn't convince her to eat, I decided I could do something about her terrible coat. I drove to Petco and purchased a dog grooming kit. Returning home, I spread newspapers on the dining room table, plopped Tribble down and started shaving her.

Midway through the haircut, Tribble began to purr. I suspect that, without her heavy coat, she could feel my massaging fingers more easily.

I left her head and legs full, but trimmed everything else. Within two hours of my petting her smooth skin, she began eating Lucy's liver treats out of my hand. To this day, dog liver bites are her favorite treat. And, whenever she slips into one of her depressions (she did it again when I had to put down Shadow, my 20-year-old grey-and-white tabby), I shave her tiny body and give her deep skin massages.

Earlier this week, Tribble began to pee indiscriminately--outside of her litter box. She has NEVER exhibited inappropriate urinary behaviors.

A Famous Anniversary

I love history, although I'm not a particular fan of military history--with two notable exceptions.

I've studied two battles with great interest and mark their anniversaries each year: March 6, 1836--the day the Alamo fell
(I am a Texan after all)--and October 25, 1415--the day the Battle of Agincourt was fought.

Today is the 592nd anniversary of Agincourt. This battle between the armies of England's King Henry V and France's Charles VI was a part of the Hundred Years' War.

Henry had invaded northern France in August, 1415. After two months of a long siege and many losses, he decided to travel northeast toward the port of Calais, which was held by the English, before winter set in.

The French army under the command of the Constable Charles d'Albret forced Henry due east toward Agincourt. According to Wikipedia, "[t]he English had very little food, had marched 260 miles in two-and-a-half weeks, were suffering from sickness such as dysentery, and faced large numbers of experienced, well equipped Frenchmen."

At Agincourt, the English army, which numbered about 7,000, found themselves facing a French army of at least 21,000 (some estimates are that there were as many as 36,000 Frenchmen).

The battle was fought on a narrow strip of open land between two woods. The French blocked Henry's way north to Calais. Heavy rains the night before had left the recently plowed ground muddy, making it difficult for the soldiers to move about.

Henry had his men drive pointed stakes into the ground on either side of the open area so that the points faced each other across the 750-foot field. He placed his archers behind these "palings" as the stakes were called. The intent was to prevent the French horsemen from trampling his archers, who carried the now well-known English longbows.

Both French and English accounts tell of the stirring speech Henry gave his badly outnumbered men the night before the battle. Shakespeare immortalized that speech in his play Henry V. In it, Henry uses the famous words, "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."

I'm going to stop here and share a video clip from the 1989 film Henry V, starring Kenneth Branagh. YouTube would not let me post it so you'll need to go here to see it. I suggest you watch the clip and then I'll tell you about the battle. Be sure to look behind the herald as he speaks to see the palings in the ground.

Remember that mud? The French were wearing heavy armor and found themselves weighed down by their full plate. The English were dressed in much lighter armor and were better able to manuever.

Accounts of the battle indicate that there were so many Frenchmen on the field that they couldn't move around or even wield their swords. Row after row crowded in on the men ahead of them. When the heavily armored French knights fell, they could not get up again. Reports from the battle indicate that a number of French nobles drowned in that sea of mud.

When the French cavalry charged at the archers, their horses were stabbed by the sharp points of the palings. The leaping horses simply churned up more mud. Wikipedia reports on one account that said "the panicking horses also galloped back through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight."

The French, bogged down by the mud, made easy targets for the English longbow archers. The French Constable was killed in battle and his undisciplined troops were in such turmoil that their commanders were forced to surrender.

I've located another clip from the same film, in which Henry asks for the lists of the dead French and English. See it here. Once again, note the lines of palings on the sides of the battlefield. Wikipedia describes the use of palings at Agincourt as a battle-
field innovation.

While it makes a good story, most historians agree that Shakespeare overstated the French casualties while understating the English. Even so, most accounts agree that the English were outnumbered by between three and four to one, making their victory truly amazing.

So, today, I salute the brave men who fought at Agincourt--both English and French--and the remarkable courage that drove Henry into battle despite such overwhelming odds.

The Scanning of Libraries

The New York Times had an article on Monday about the various initiatives underway to copy books from the world's libraries.

Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections. . . Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services. Microsoft places a similar restriction on the books it converts to electronic form. The Open Content Alliance, by contrast, is making the material available to any search service.

I first posted about the Open Content Alliance almost two years ago here.

The Times points out that, while Google doesn't benefit directly from making books available on the Internet, the additional pages on their website does make their search engine more useful and, thus, more profitable. Google plans to scan 15 million books in the next ten years.

The Boston Public Library and the Smithsonian have turned Google's invitation down . . . "some libraries and researchers worry that if any one company comes to dominate the digital conversion of these works, it could exploit that dominance for commercial gain."

The Library of Congress has a pilot program with Google to digitize some books. But in January, it announced a project with a more inclusive approach. With $2 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the library’s first mass digitization effort will make 136,000 books accessible to any search engine through the Open Content Alliance. The library declined to comment on its future digitization plans.

Read the entire article here.

How to Pitch

Sorry to be so late posting today, but I had a rare migraine headache.

I'm grateful not to suffer from migraines on a regular basis. Once or twice a year, I will have a headache so debilitating that I have difficulty lifting my head from my pillow.

I usually hop out of bed at 5:00 AM, ready to go. This morning, I had to drag myself out of bed at 8:00 in order to make it to the university by 9:00. I felt as though I were sloughing through waist-high Jello all day. About the best I could say for the day was that I stopped by the Health Office and got my free flu shot in less than five minutes.

Agent Kristin Nelson had a great post today titled "Pitching And All That Jazz." Read it here.

Newbie writers frequently make the mistake of trying to cram fifty pounds of synopsis into the ten-pound pitch sack. Kristin starts with the advice most agents give: Your pitch should sound exactly like the back cover copy for your book.

Mine certainly did. Here's the pitch I used for Bad Girl:

Shy teacher Sandy Davis has been spying on her neighbors across the street from her Uptown balcony. It seemed like harmless fun until the night she received a phone call from an anonymous stranger telling her, "You've been a bad girl." Now Sandy must decide whether to give in to his demands, or run the risk of being exposed as a voyeur.

Note: My editor convinced me to change Sandy's profession from teacher to social worker before the book went to print. The change worked because it allowed me to add a scene in which Sandy is threatened by two thugs. That scene grew out of one of my own experiences in the field as a social worker.

My pitch was sixty-two words. It described my hook and set up the central conflict of the story without revealing how the story ends.

Kristin promises to give examples of pitches on her blog "Pub Rants" this week. Be sure to pay attention.

What's Up At Google--Besides The Stock Price?

This will be a short, quick post. I'm doing a presentation Monday evening at 7:00 PM for the Irving Writers Connection, and I still have work to do to get ready.

I'll be presenting helpful information for writers on the publishing industry. It's a talk I've given before, and I enjoy doing it.

On Thursday Google reported their third quarter results and the announcement was an impressive one. Quarterly revenue for the period ending September 30, 2007 was $4.2 billion, up from $2.7 billion for the same period in 2006--an increase of 57%.

According to USA Today, "[n]et income of $1.1 billion, or
$3.38 a share, rose from $733 million, or $2.36 a share, a year ago."

Google's stock price closed at $644.71 on Thursday evening.

To put this in perspective, Google's stock price on the date of its initial offering (August 19, 2004) was $100.34. Two months later, on October 19th, the stock was at $150.50. A year later on October 19, 2005, it had risen to $303.96 (at which point I tried to convince the men in my life to purchase the stock--without success). Last year on October 19, 2006, the stock was at $426.06. So, it's risen more than $200 a share over the last year.

The Washington Post reported on Friday:

More than half of all U.S. search queries in August were conducted through Google, according to Nielsen Online. While users don't pay Google anything for its search service, the popularity of its search engine has helped make it the leader in online advertising, particularly through its text ads based on search terms. Google owns 28.9 percent of the Internet ad market, nearly twice the share of its next-biggest rival, Yahoo, according to estimates from market research firm eMarketer. Yahoo reported a year-over-year quarterly earnings decline of
5 percent on Tuesday.

Still...there are a lot of rumors flying around about Google. USA Today says "[t]here are signs that Google is up to something. The company hired 2,130 employees during the quarter, for a total workforce of 15,916. (Rival Yahoo has about 13,600 employees.) . . . 'They're continuing to hire like drunken sailors,' says equity analyst Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray. 'They have a bigger plan in play'."

USA Today wondered whether it could be a GPhone while the Washington Post speculated on new ways to make money from videos on YouTube.

Stay tuned . . .

More Questions About Plagiarism

On Friday, I was working on a post about Jerry Seinfeld's wife being accused of plagiarism. I posted to the Dear Author website (under a thread titled "How To Fling About Legal Insults") at the same time Jane Litte of Dear Author posted this blog. When I saw Jane's post, I decided to save the Seinfeld story for a secondary post today instead of using it for my primary post Saturday morning.

Friday’s Wall Street Journal had a story about similarities between the cookbooks written by Seinfeld (released October 5) and by a relatively unknown author (released April 4).

Jessica Seinfeld's cookbook was titled Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food (HarperCollins). After Oprah invited Jessica to guest star on her show on October 8th, the book took off.



Then Running Press, an imprint owned by Perseus Books, contacted HarperCollins. The independent press was concerned about “similarities between Deceptively Delicious and RP’s The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals by Missy Chase Lapine, published almost exactly six months earlier.

Jessica Seinfeld strenuously denies any plagiarism, and it appears that HarperCollins is accepting her at her word. They plan to sell as many as 1.5 million copies of the book between now and Chrismas.

According to today’s Publishers Lunch, Perseus CEO David Steinberger says Missy Lapine “first raised concerns about the Seinfeld book this spring after seeing promotional materials for the book. Steinberger says they were struck by what seemed to be uncanny similarities…. One of the most obvious was that their cover had the same image, a drawing of what looks like a mom hiding carrots behind her back’.”

Steinberger also says after his publishing house contacted Harper by letter in May, they were told some changes would be made, including alterations to the cover. The carrots were moved to a cutting board in the final cover for Seinfeld’s book. The mom hiding the carrots behind her back was the rear cover of Lapine's book.

It will be interesting to see how this situation resolves itself.

Jane became interested in the story from reading an article in The New York Times while I'd been piqued by articles in The Wall Street Journal and Publishers Marketplace.

Copyright Rules Agreed Upon By Coalition

The Associated Press (AP) reported on Friday: "A coalition of major media and Internet companies Thursday issued a set of guidelines for handling copyright-protected videos on large user-generated sites such as MySpace. Conspicuously absent was Google Inc., whose YouTube Web site this week rolled out its own technology to filter copyrighted videos once they've been posted."

The coalition included both Internet and media giants as well as some lesser known names: CBS Corporation, Dailymotion, Microsoft Corporation, MySpace, NBC Universal, News Corp., Veoh Networks, Viacom Inc., and the Walt Disney Company. They've agreed Internet sites will use filtering technology to block copyrighted material from being posted without permission.

NBC's CEO Jeff Zucker was quoted by the AP saying: "Today's announcement marks a significant step in transforming the Internet from a Wild West to a popular medium that respects the rule of law...By recognizing the mutual benefits of a technology-based framework to control piracy, technology and content companies have laid the foundation for the lawful growth of video on the Internet."

There were some caveats mentioned. Attorney Andrew Bridges noted that these guidelines constitute more of a treaty than a contract and still permit companies to seek legal redress during a dispute. Further, the guidelines "do not apply to search engines, e-mail or browsers, are designed for sites that host user-generated clips--like YouTube."

Raisin Bran, Cheerios or . . . The Other Serial

Nathan Bransford had a post on Thursday that should be required reading for all newbie writers.

Agent Nathan, who is always entertaining, offers solid advice on whether or not to pitch a series with your first book here.

He doesn't think it's a good idea, and he gives a very good reason as to why he believes this.

I learned this lesson two years ago under the fabulous Miss Snark. To read her take on pitching a series, go here and scroll down to the post titled "There's More Where That Came From Too!"

Although these are words I never expected to write, Nathan expands and improves upon Miss Snark's answer when he says, "...this is a fairly good distinction between professional writers and for-fun writers."

I have harbored the same opinion for some time now.

I belong to several writers' loops. Every one of them has half a dozen unpublished fantasy writers who are in the middle of Book #4 or #7 or even #9. They keep churning this stuff out, all the while nurturing the belief that one day they'll find a publisher who will buy the entire series.

If you engage them in conversation, you'll invariably learn that the series began when they were told their first book was too long at 223,479 words.

Rather than do what a professional writer would do . . . go in and edit out 120,000 words . . . they opted to break the magnum opus into three novels--the beginning of the series.

Do you really need me to tell you what a staggeringly bad idea this is?

First of all, if there ever was a plot arc, the writer has disrupted it. Second, the books no longer stand alone. Anyone reading the first one is going to be denied a satisfying conclusion. Third . . . and I'm sorry, I can't help myself . . . it's just stupid.

Early on, I actually agreed to read one of these manuscripts only to discover the author had been almost horrifyingly self-indulgent. Under the guise of dialogue, he included pages of political rants as well as pointless scenes that served no purpose beyond showcasing what the author believed to be a particularly good description of a character or place.

Worst of all, like the Perils of Pauline films, the manuscript ended on what the writer believed was a cliffhanger. After reading a rambling, boring 70K words, there was no payoff. It took everything I had not to smash my laptop's screen.

So, go read Nathan's post and commit his words to memory.

A Dark Horse Rears Its Head

About five months ago, on May 20th, when talking about the challenges the Internet offers publishing, I said:

The large houses face competition on two fronts: from the Internet giants and from the e-publishing industry.

When I say Internet giants, I'm talking about Google, Amazon.com, Yahoo, eBay and Microsoft. Of the five, I suspect the biggest direct competition will come from either Google or Amazon.com. My money is on Amazon. The biggest dark horse IMHO is eBay.

Quick! Who founded eBay?

Don't know?

You're not the only one. While the founders of Microsoft (Bill Gates and Paul Allen), Google (Larry Page and Sergey Brin), and Amazon (Jeff Bezos) are almost household names, no one knows Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay.

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal (WSJ) had an article on Omidyar and his current passion.

Mr. Omidyar is no shouter. At age 40, he has been retired from day-to-day duties at eBay for years, though he remains chairman of the online auction company. He lives in Henderson, Nev., where taxes are lower...Mr. Omidyar may be a low-key engineer, but he likes to defy tradition...

Omidyar's new passion is what the WSJ calls "Participatory Media," which I'd describe as targeted social networking. To this end, he has invested in "a wide array of Web-based communities."

He "has backed Digg Inc., which lets ordinary users play editor and highlight the news stories they find most interesting...helped fund Linden Lab, creators of the wildly popular Second Life simulated world...[and] Federated Media Publishing Inc. [which] sells ads for bloggers, making thousands of them more economically viable."

His current plan is to make investments in other participatory media companies over the next year, "which would more than double that part of [his] portfolio."

Mr. Omidyar and I are on the same page philosophically. I've said on this blog and elsewhere that I think digitization and POD technology will democratize publishing in a way nothing has since the Gutenberg press. Mr. Omidyar tells The Journal: "At a very fundamental level, the Internet gives ordinary people a global voice."

His investment chief, Matt Bannick, offered a quote that I think should be posted in the boardroom of every publishing house: "It's really tough for the incumbents to make decisions that are as decisive as they need to be. They've got models that worked for 50 years. It's really hard to cannibalize yourself..."

Most of the big publishing houses are now digitizing their stock and taking what I would describe as baby steps toward changing their business models. I can think of only one CEO who is really thinking outside of the box: Michael Hyatt of Thomas Nelson Publishing, the world's largest Christian publisher. Read my post on how he "cannibalized" his publishing house here.

IMHO, traditional publishing houses need to get used to the idea that their stranglehold on the industry will be broken when they no longer own the only means to publishing a book and when a viable e-reading device captures the public's fancy the way the iPod did for the music industry. Traditional publishers need to find ways to add more value to their services in order to retain their place in the food chain.

Deborah Kerr Dead At 86

On Tuesday, Deborah Kerr (pronounced Carr) died.

I've mentioned before on this blog that I grew up watching old movies on television with my mother. It was the one thing we did together without my father or three brothers. Most of the time, the males ruled the household, but sitting together watching old black-and-white films was our girl thing.

Mom would tell me stories about the stars we were watching on film. I possess an absurd amount of trivia about movies made before I was even born.

Deborah Kerr was one of Mom's favorites. We saw her in An Affair to Remember, where she played a singer who falls in love with playboy Cary Grant; in From Here to Eternity, where she played a bored military wife who falls in love with sergeant Burt Lancaster; in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, where she played a nun who falls in love with Marine Corporal Robert Mitchum during a shipwreck; and in The King and I, where she played a governess who falls in love with the king of Siam played by Yul Brynner.

I was a scrawny little kid with orange-colored pigtails, freckles and knobby knees. Deborah Kerr was a cool redhead who inspired passion in the men around her.

I ate it up.

Last summer, a poll of three thousand movie fans voted Deborah Kerr's kiss with Burt Lancaster on a beach in Hawaii as THE most memorable screen kiss.

The New York Daily News reported today: "In a moment regarded as shockingly erotic by 1952 standards, Kerr's married Karen Holmes and Lancaster's conflicted Sgt. Warden give in to their forbidden desires by sharing an impassioned kiss in the surf as the waves roll over them."

Here it is:

May she rest in peace.

I Have No Excuse . . .

. . . except that it's late, and I'm tired, which is usually when I'm the silliest.

I was watching the late news when this commercial came on and made me laugh.

So, of course, I had to share.

I am SOOOO easily amused {grin}.

Needed: A Publishing Translator

I'm thinking about agents today and about my own agent in particular.

Periodically, I see posts on the Net by people complaining about the 15% fee most agents collect.

While there are some expenses in this world I begrudge, there are two costs to which I never give a second thought. One is the annual fee for my AAA motor club membership. The other is the 15% my agent, Jacky Sach of BookEnds, receives on the revenue from my work.

Jacky is a voice of calm in the hurly-burly world of publishing. She answers questions and smooths over rough spots. And she acts as translator.

Sometimes I feel like a tourist who planned a trip to Denmark. I did lots of research on Denmark, even learning to speak the language. When I arrived in Copenhagen, everyone welcomed me and exhibited great patience for my grammatical errors and slow speech.

Now, more than a year later, my tenses and speech have im-
proved. However, I'm still having difficulty with the col-
loquialisms of publishing although I may not always realize it.

I love my editor. A lot. But sometimes we don't speak the same language. I can be very concrete in my thinking. Occasionally--no matter how hard either of us tries--we just talk at cross purposes. That happened on Monday after I'd sent 13K words to my editor last week. Fortunately, she had the good sense to contact Jacky to ask her to translate for us.

Jacky emailed me Monday to set up a phone call. During the call, I explained that I simply didn't understand what my editor from me.

With the skill of a born teacher, Jacky promised to find examples of what was needed from the book I'd already written. After our call, she went through Bad Girl, identifying samples of what my editor was looking for in the sequel. I did tell you I was concrete, didn't I?

The bell finally rang for me, and I realized what was missing. Jacky asked if I needed another phone call. I said, "No, but let me send you a sample." I worked on it last night and sent her an excerpt this morning.

Just like that, I'm back on track after days of angst.

Do I begrudge Jacky her 15%?

Hell, no.

A Chilling Reminder From the Past

Everywhere I turned on Wednesday--ABC, NPR, Yahoo--I heard reports of an opportunistic infection that had killed a teenage student in Virginia.

The infection--Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA--is a staph infection that is resistant to antibiotics.

The first time I heard the report this morning, I felt a cold chill across the back of my neck. You see, I had a MRSA three years ago this month.

I was hurt in an accident that broke open the skin on my left thumb. I didn't realize it at the time, but the accident also broke the bones in my thumb. I was distracted because my two dogs were also hurt. I was more concerned with getting them medical attention than I was with a wound to my hand. I wrapped some paper towels around my thumb and headed for the vet. Lucy, the border collie, spent a week at the vet while Molly, my red Heeler, was treated and returned home with me.

I cleaned my hand and bandaged it. For a couple of days, I soaked it every night in Epsom salts. The thumb was so swollen that I had no idea I'd suffered a compound fracture.

On the third day, it looked very bad and I decided to go to a local outpatient clinic. The doctor reamed me out for not coming in sooner, telling me the bone was broken and I had an infection. He gave me an antibiotic shot and oral meds and told me to come back the next morning.

The following day, we repeated the process. I was actually feeling better because I was now under a doctor's care. I took a nap that afternoon. When I woke up, there were red streaks going from my wrist to my elbow. I jumped in the car and headed for the hospital.

The ER physicians admitted me immediately (in quarantine) and started IV antibiotics. They watched my arm like hawks, fearful the infection would continue up my arm. They also wanted to call a hand surgeon for a consult. I insisted they call the general surgeon who had operated on my broken leg two years earlier. I'd slipped on ice and broke my left leg in four places (both bones in two places each). The surgeon had been so skilled, my leg had healed beautifully. Even though the ER doc tried to convince me to bring in a hand specialist, I told them to call Dr. T. Late that night, one of the nurses told me I'd made the right decision. She said Dr. T was the best surgeon in Dallas. She said he was the surgeon the nurses used.

The next morning, Dr. T came to see me. He was very upset and explained I had a MRSA. His concern was that the infection might have metastasized into my bones. If so, I was in deep, deep trouble. Frankly, I didn't hear anything past his opening statement, "If you had waited another twelve hours to come to the hospital, you'd be dead."

I was rolled down to the MRI room where I spent an hour inside that metal tube. I was frightened to my core.

The infection WAS in my bones. An infectious diseases doc was brought in.

I'm not going to go through everything that happened over the next eight weeks. I spent more than a week in the hospital where they put an open IV port into my left arm and taught me to give intravenous antibiotics to myself. For seven weeks after my discharge, I had to hang two bags of antibiotics on a pole every morning AND night and give myself two different drugs and saline. The meds were delivered by messenger every week, a nurse came to redo my IV line every week, I had to see the infectious diseases doc twice a month and see a general doc on alternate weeks. It's not a time I like to remember.

Six months after my ordeal was over, a handyman who had done some work for me hurt himself on a job up in Dallas. Although it was a small wound, he was dead four days later from a MRSA. I only learned of his death when I called to schedule him to do some work for me.

I thank God every day for the additional time in this world He's given to me.

Postscript: I forgot to say: The day Dr. T showed up, he operated on my hand to clean out as much of the infection as he could. The anesthesiologist came to talk to me beforehand. One of the things HE told me was that there was a 50/50 chance I'd lose the thumb. When I saw Dr. T before surgery, I asked him. He nodded grimly, but said, "You know I'll do everything I can to save it."

The second I woke up after surgery, I asked, "Do I still have the thumb?"

The OR nurse (whom I'd never seen before) said, "Of course, you do. You had Dr. T."

A Nice Way to Jumpstart Hump Day

Stephen brought my attention to a story from the September 23rd Chicago Tribune. It was such a positive article that I shelved my plans for today's post to write about it.

Regular readers of this blog will remember a post from January about the writing contest sponsored by Simon & Schuster and Gather.com, the social networking site. You can read about it here.

The Tribune article explains that more than 2,600 writers posted chapters of their work on Gather.com. The visitors to the site voted on the entries, submitting more than 90,000 votes. Five finalists were selected, and their first three chapters were given to a panel of expert judges from the publishing and bookstore world.

First place was awarded to a mystery by Terry Shaw titled The Way Life Should Be. However, the judges were so impressed by 31-year-old Geoffrey S. Edwards second-place entry, Fire Bell in the Night, that he was told his manuscript would be published as well and he'd receive a $5,000 advance against royalties.

"The novel is set in Charleston, S.C., in 1850, and follows a newspaper reporter from New York as he uncovers a conspiracy whose origins will lead to the Civil War. The title comes from Thomas Jefferson's description of the Missouri Compromise as a 'fire bell in the night,' which 'awakened and filled me with terror'."

The book was released last month, and Edwards sounds as though he still cannot believe his luck, describing himself as "horribly unsuccessful" at finding an agent or publisher prior to the contest.

Edwards was born in Guam, raised in Jacksonville, Florida, and moved to Chicago when he was a high school student. He's a textbook editor with a history degree and is now working on a second novel about the Revolutionary War.

Gather is currently sponsoring two more writing contests. The five finalists have been selected for the "First Chapters Romance Contest," and you can vote on their entries here.

And, ten days ago, I posted about the "Next Great Crime Writer Contest" here. You can read the details about that contest here.

If you'd like to read the entire Chicago Tribune article on Edwards' book, go here.