If Christmas is about a word, that word is love. The thing about love is that our language, the English language is, at once, flexible and limited in interpreting that word. If you talk to a linguist or a Biblical scholar, you’d know that the word love can have any number of meanings, including philos or love of friends, eros or sexual love, and agape love, which is an all-encompassing love. Love is what we crave the most and you can see that in our art, music, and writing.

The other day in the car, as I got tired of listening to Tampa Bay’s official holiday music station, playing your favorite ten Christmas songs over and over again. I flipped to the oldies station and caught the end of Carole King’s I Feel the Earth Move. For years, I’ve never really gone beyond the surface of this song: it should be required for all radio stations in case there’s an earthquake and they need mood music.

Except this time I listened to the lyrics:

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
I feel my heart start to trembling
Whenever you’re around

Eros love to be sure, but what an incredible description. It’s even more powerful if you extend it to agape love. Imagine feeling that kind of love for someone at that level. But the point isn’t about love, it’s about writing, and the tools of writing. Using an earthquake to personify love is an amazing way to paint a picture with words. Most people use friendlier images. But to use an earthquake as metaphor…brilliant.

Much more powerful than Huey Lewis’s Power of Love.

The power of love is a curious thing
Make one man weap, make another man sing
Change a hawk to a little white dove
More than a feeling, that’s the power of love

Tougher than diamonds, rich like cream
Stronger and harder than a bad girl’s dream
Make a bad one good, make a wrong one right
Poewr of love keeps you home at night

Don’t get me wrong. It’s got a nice beat and I can dance to it, but the lyrics and approach are linear and somewhat cliched. But the strength of Carole King’s words are such that when she get’s to the more mundane “I just got to have you baby,” you get it. It’s an entirely different level of need than Huey’s was.

Humor is a tricky thing.

Can you fly this plane and land it?

Surely, you can’t be serious.

I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.

Classic. If you like that kind of thing. My wife thinks it’s stupid. Humor, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. That’s the problem. If you’re looking for timeless applicability, humor’s tough to do.

Take the reference above. To anyone younger than forty, it’s–at best–a line from an old movie. To people my age, it’s evolved to the point of being funny without being humorous. It’s become a catch phrase of sorts.

Another problem with humor is its context. In the United States, in the early twenty-first century, cultural humor trumps all else. Except culture isn’t universal. It’s localized and ephemeral. What’s funny today, like Leslie’s Nielsen’s statement above, isn’t going to be funny ten years from now. And it probably won’t be funny to people in the Middle East or Africa.

So how can you work humor into your writing? That’s an entirely different thing altogether.

That’s an entirely different thing.

If you celebrate Christmas, enjoy time with your family and friends, hopefully making memories that last forever and add spice to your writing.

I can’t really remember anything horrible that’s happened over the holidays. Most of my memories are good ones. I suppose the worst thing that happened was ten years ago, when my uncle–my father’s brother–went for a walk, then came home, laid back in the recliner and had a heart attack.

My uncle intimidated me when I was a small child. He was tall and his voice was deep, and when you’re little, that’s enough to do it. When my dad had his bypass surgery in the spring of that year, it was my Uncle who picked me up at the train station and took me to the hospital. He stayed with us and was wonderful to have around. If you have to go, going at home, with your family in the house, probably isn’t the worst way.

Other than that, my memories are good. Warm, cozy nights, stuffed in the car going to church, when it was cold outside. Family and friends coming over on Christmas Eve, with the inevitable orgy of boxes and wrapping paper Christmas morning. Later, when I got old enough, there was champagne. Nothing chills champagne as completely as a snowbank on a cold winter night.

With a few notable exceptions, the presents have fallen into a massive gray zone of half-memories. Until the children came, I could afford to get something big for my wife: the painting over the couch in the living room, her first bread machine, and a cappuccino machine. One year, I saved change through the year and got her a gift certificate for massages at a spa.

Reaching back, I remember the condensation on the windows when my mom baked the cookies. I can remember winters to cold that the metal front door fused to the metal doorframe and wouldn’t open. And I remember the winter we went to bed with little snow on the ground, and predictions of maybe an inch or two overnight. And then I remember waking the next morning to find a foot of snow on the ground.

Over time, the specifics of the memories aren’t as important as their existence. A lot of the people in the memories are gone now. My grandmother, whose coffee cake has been a Christmas morning tradition every single year, passed away more than ten years ago. When you eat it, you always come away with sticky fingers. It’s better than the present.

My aunt died in the spring of 2008. My grandfathers have both been dead for as long as I can remember, but my other grandmother passed away in 1982. A new generation is filling in the gaps, and within another ten to fifteen years, they’ll start having kids and the cycle will start again.

What’s this have to do with writing? Everything. We’re storytellers and our goal is to make our stories come alive so others can experience them. The best stories are the ones that mean the most to us, who tell them. Only a story told with passion is really worth listening to.

There’s a shirt that says something to the effect of “Be careful or I’ll put you in my next novel.” At this time of year, maybe that’s not a threat as much as a wish.

The fourth annual Do It! Write Writer’s Conference will be held Sunday April 11 at the New Port Richey Library at 5939 Main Street in New Port Richey. This year’s keynote speakers are:

• Jerry D. Simmons (AM) speaking about how successful publishing is a three-step process: prepare, market, publish.
• Molli Nickel (PM) talking about the truths for getting published–and some “poofs” as well.

Other presenters include:

• Claire Eddy — What acquisitions editors look for. Claire as 25 years experience as a senior acquisitions editor for TOR/Forge books. She’s worked with Orson Scott Card, Jacqueline Carey, Gordon R. Dickson and others.
• Molli Nickel — In addition to her keynote, Molli will also speak about writing a one-page synopsis.
• Charlotte Jensen — Writing for Children. Charlotte has created 20 different characters and numerous songs to help teach children life’s important lessons.
• Linda Neckel White — Make Your Poetry Sing. Linda is a performing poet, with performances in Florida, Georgia, and Michigan. She’s won a number of awards and has been published several times.
• Susan C. Haley — Susan is the published author of two books, a poet, a book reviewer, a poetry editor, and in her spare time, she’s the Sarasota Writers Group Leader for the Florida Writers Association. The audio version of her novel “Rainy Day People” was awarded runner-up Finalist in the 2008 Indie Excellence National Book Awards.
• Jerry D. Simmons — Trends in Book Publishing. Jerry has spent more than 23 years in the book division at Warner Communications. His experience with writers such as Scott Turow, David Baldacci, Michael Connelly, Robert James Waller, and Nicholas Sparks gives him a unique insight into the publishing industry, how it works, how it will work down the road, and what it means to you. He is the creator of Nothing Binding, a network for writers.
• Dr. Max Courson — Dangerous Words for Discriminating Writers. Dr. Courson has a Ph.D. in Ameircan Studies from the University of Hawaii and has been a director of public relations at Furman University and an associate professor of mass communications at Tennessee Wesley College.
• Linn Random — Driving Books Sales and Writing Mysteries. Linn will present two sessions. Her book Driving Book Sales offers the best of her marketing talent, sharing her strategy for online and real-life promotion to create a best seller. Linn is also a member of the Mystery Writers of American, International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, and Romance Writers of America.
• Dr. Joyce Daniels — Empowering Your Critique Group — Dr. Daniels (JD) has taught as a Fellow at Drake for three years. While living and writing in Cambridge, England she was honored with a prize for poetry at Emerson College/Cambridge University. In Turkey, she read her work throughout the country and published in several venues while teaching at a Turkish private  university.
• Barbara Cronin Harrington — Script Writing and Making Movies. Barbara is a former assistant casting director for major films, including Cocoon, Absence of Malice, and Stick. She’s currently writing screenplays, and conducting writing workshops.

Conference attendance is limited, so register today! Click here for complete information.

Way back when my grandmother used to work at the Schenectady County Public Library. She worked at a brownish brick building with the names of classic authors etched into the walls near the top. The building is now part of the campus of Union College, replaced by a modern brick cube a few miles away in downtown.

One year for Christmas, I got a large, heavy gift from Grammy (which is what we called her). I opened it up to find The Pro Football Experience, a huge NFL picture book by David Boss.

As a young football fan, the book was a treasure trove of excitement. Looking back now, it’s a period piece. The uniforms in the pictures inside are wonderfully dated. They even have sleeves.

That picture is beautiful when compared to what passes for a uniform these days. I could really have lived my whole life without seeing Chris Hovan’s armpits.

Aside from my anal-retentive bigotry when it comes to sleeves and football uniforms, the point of this post is that one gift, which still resides on my bookshelf, has outlasted a lot of gifts that seemed like a bigger deal at the time. It sparked something that, years later, made me an avid reader of the Uniwatch blog, which was built for anal-retentive uniform bigots.

There’s still a few days before Christmas–if that’s what you celebrate. If you’re looking for one more gift for your child or grandchild, maybe a book is the right gift. It might surprise you how much that gift means to the recipient.

The thing about writing, is that sometimes someone says it better than you. In this case, someone is Eric Cummings. In this blog post on Write to Done, he points out the golden rule of writing: intend every word you write. He also gives you seven tips to help you follow the one rule. It’s worth the read.

Murderati is one of my favorite websites, and it’s not just because I enjoy the mystery genre. The posts on their blog are frequently thought-provoking and well-crafted. The December 18 post is a case in point.

Mystery author Stephen Jay Schwartz starts the post off by telling a story of his teenaged best friend, a girl. One day, he came upon her crying. When he asked her what was wrong, she said that she was sad because they would one day die and she would be in heaven and she wouldn’t. She was Christian and he’s Jewish. He cited some other examples of that type of thinking. Mostly, it comes from not having encountered different types of people and working them into your thought processes.

As a white, straight, Christian male, I don’t need to consider a lot of things. I never gave homosexuality much thought, except that the Bible says it’s a sin. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m also colored by where I grew up, a rural part of upstate New York so white that if people went outside in the winter with no clothes on, they’d go missing. They called you gay if they beat on you, so it must not have been a good thing.

What changed my thought processes? I met gay people. I like a fair number of gay people. Some of them are the most decent, loving people in the world and some of them are schmucks. In other words, they’re pretty much like everyone else.

Except for one thing: I don’t know what it’s like to be gay. I know what it’s like to love and to have sex. I expect that with the exception of a few of the physical details, those experiences are nearly universal. But I don’t know what it’s like to be gay in a straight world. I don’t know what it’s like to be black when 99% of the people you see on TV are white. I don’t know what it’s like to be a paraplegic when the rest of the world walks.

Some of this is my fault. I know gay people and black people (no paraplegics). I can ask them. But the place I know most of them from is work, and there are certain lines it’s dangerous to cross. But I’d really like to know…what’s it like to have all the other teenage girls at Pirates of the Caribbean go crazy over Johnny Depp when you’re hot for Keira Knightley? What’s it like to be with a guy you know and like as a kid–maybe someone at college who group up around white people–and to have this supposed friend drop the n-word, then look at you in shame and regret? What’s it like when you have a job opportunity fall through and to wonder whether you weren’t good enough or whether you weren’t white/straight/male enough?

And if you are black, Asian, gay, non-Christian, a former convict, disable–or otherwise different–would you be offended if someone asked what it’s like?

Kirkus Reviews hung on just long enough to review FWA member Julie Compton’s new book Rescuing Olivia, and the review was stellar. Because Kirkus is (was) a subscription service, we’ll take what Julie posted on her website.

In the five months Anders Erickson has lived with Olivia Mayfield, he’s fallen ever more deeply in love with her and determined to propose marriage…Compton (Tell No Lies, 2008) burrows so deeply into Olivia’s and Anders’ troubled back stories and dramatizes in such psychologically compelling terms the swain’s attempt to rescue his princess—aided by his friends Lenny and Shel, complicated by Lenny’s ex-wife Crystal, a born siren—that the result is a pleasing hybrid of fairy tale and contemporary thriller.

Anders’ road is a long one, and the twists along the way won’t keep you on the edge of your seat. But Compton’s increasingly pointed questions about what exactly it would mean to rescue Olivia make the journey worthwhile.

Publisher’s Weekly was lavish in its praise, as well (scroll down).

Compton’s intense, entertaining second novel involves a horrifying coverup and a powerful new drug. A hit-and-run motorcycle accident in a Florida forest leaves Olivia Mayfield in a coma in intensive care and her live-in boyfriend, 29-year-old Anders Erickson, feeling guilty. “I was going to ask her to marry me,” Anders confesses to Olivia’s sympathetic nurse. Was the theft of the couple’s helmets from their parked bikes shortly before the crash just a coincidence? Had a car really been following them, as Olivia suspected? Olivia’s father, Lawrence, a pharmaceutical magnate who blames Anders for the accident, informs Anders at one point that his daughter has died. When Lawrence turns out to have a hidden agenda, Anders travels to Clifton, Conn., where Olivia grew up, and later to Kenya in search of answers. While sometimes stretching the bounds of credibility, Compton (Tell No Lies) pulls off a super-satisfying resolution to this romantic thriller.

Anytime Publishers Weekly uses the words super-satisfying in the last sentence of your review, it’s got to be a good thing.

I’ve met Julie. She doesn’t have super powers. As far as I can tell, she pulls on her pants one leg at a time like everyone else. She’s a talented woman who worked hard to succeed at her craft and has found success. FWA has a lot of talented men and women who work hard at their craft, who can similarly find success. Her success, though a testament to her hard work, talent, and determination, should be encouraging to the rest of us who are not yet published.

Congratulations to Julie!

Are you an FWA member with a success story? Drop us a line!

An article in last Friday’s USA Today exposes deep fizzures in the publishing and content-delivery world that go beyond what most people have considered. In a nutshell, the e-publishing portion of the industry is still in its infancy. Plenty of people are betting huge amounts of money on its future, and the only sure thing is that some will eventually lose.

Battling the Amazon Giant

Amazon is the giant, for the moment. On its face, Amazon has a lot going for it. It’s the number-one online retailer. It owns the number one e-reader and controls the format and pricing for that reader. Publishers are objecting to the ten-dollar cost for e-books, saying it’s not sustainable. They’re also bemoaning simultaneous release of hard-covers and e-books, saying they’d prefer to release the book in hardcover first, then e-books later. It’s similar to movies being release first in theaters, then on DVD.

The article quotes Publishers Weekly senior editor Jim Milliot saying that while the publishers don’t want Amazon to “be the only game in town,” they’d also best take care of not angering their number-one pipeline to customers.

Though Amazon seems unassailable right now, that reality may change faster than most people think possible. Amazon’s dominance is based on having the number one e-reader, the Kindle. While Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle, and it’s available for Christmas, some signs point to their lead in the e-reader market shrinking. Although Barnes and Nobles’ Nook is currently backordered, it will be a major player come the new year. Apple’s entry in the e-reader market is rumored to be released in the spring of 2010.

And some thing e-readers will die away, in favor of multi-purpose machines. Can Amazon effectively merge its Kindle with other functionality? Put another way, if I’m carrying an e-reader, why should I also carry an MP3 player? And if I can get a netbook for $50 more, why would I buy something I can only use for reading? If the market doesn’t support a stand-alone reader (and I don’t think it will), Amazon’s strength turns to a weakness.

Suddenly, Amazon and Barnes and Noble seem less dominant, and SONY and Apple seem more likely to thrive.

The Battle Over e-Book Pricing

If I buy an e-book, I eliminate the entire supply chain for the publisher. Production costs are slashed and the cost of getting the book from the printing plant to my hands disappears. Consumers know this and won’t pay $25-$30 for an e-book. And most of the early arguments that e-books should cost the same as printed books has faded.

But how much should they cost? Publishers are concerned about Amazon’s charging $10 for an e-book, saying it’s not sustainable. HarperCollins, owned by Rupert Murdock, is seeking to delay e-book releases to convince people to buy the hard covers. Understandably, they want to maximize revenue from book sales, but delaying e-books may not have the desired effect. Books aren’t movies. We haven’t been conditioned for our entire lives that we have to enjoy a movie in a theater before it’s available in our living room.

If I invest $250 in hardware, I expect return on investment. I’m not going to buy a hardback because it’s the only thing available. If the title I want is unavailable, I’ll move on to one that is available. And I may never come back to that original title. In other words, by delaying e-book releases, HarperCollins risks losing customers forever. Online and digital circumstances have trained customers to be in control, and if you don’t satisfy their needs up front, they may never return.

As an author, I’m bound to what my publisher decides, but if I’m trying to maximize my income (like everyone else), I never want to give a customer an incentive to go someplace else. People will wait for digital versions of titles by their favorite authors, but if they’re looking for something to take on vacation, they’ll take what’s available.

In the end, the technology and business model are maturing, but they aren’t there yet. In ten years, we may picture the Kindle as a latter-day version of Betamax. Or not. The smart money may be staying home just now.

The title is a nugget buried in a blog post in Publishing Perspectives, a newsletter about the global publishing community. The post is speaking about the demise of Kirkus Reviews, a death many in the industry are mourning with shouts of glee and raised glasses of champagne. Kirkus was well-known for being the crabby old guy down the street when it came to book reviews. Like my mom always said, if you can’t say anything nice, write for Kirkus.

The blog post wonders at the relevance of reviews for pre-published books, noting that booksellers can just return books they over-order and don’t sell. In short, there’s no risk to booksellers if the pre-publication reviews go away. The publisher eats the stock, which shows up a few months later on the remainder table or acts as kindling in a senior acquisitions editor’s fireplace.

But does that make good business sense? It’s a bind (ha ha ha) for publishers. Books are not typically non-perishables. Most books have a short shelf life before they’re yanked from the shelves for something else. If the publisher guesses low and prints too small a run, the book’s fifteen minutes of fame could pass and shoppers could move onto the next thing. But if the publisher guesses too high, the unsold inventory sitting in their warehouse will stink like last week’s hallibut.

Print-on-demand is typically worthy of scowls from those within the literary establishment. Along with self-published books, the POD books are the ones that don’t get picked up by regular publishers. Technology could change that, along with everything else about the industry. In 2006–back in the olden days–CNN ran a few articles about Espresso, the ATM for books. According to the article, 25 libraries and book stores in the New York City area were scheduled to take delivery in 2007. I’ve been to a number of book stores up and libraries in the past couple years and haven’t seen anything like that.

To be fair, the Espresso machine costs between $50,000 and $140,000, depending on who you listen to. And it’s roughly the size of a large SUV, and about as pretty to look at. But four years is an eternity in technology. Technology keeps getting smaller and other costs keep increasing. Borders is in financial trouble, and even Barnes and Noble is reducing the floor space used for books. Suddenly, if a company looking to corner the market (say, Google, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon) were able to assemble books on demand, while you have a latte a lot of problems would fade.

Book stores wouldn’t require huge overheads on space to carry a large inventory on books. Publishers wouldn’t be weighed down with first-run hardcovers and paperbacks that didn’t sell. The logistical costs of assembling, storing, and delivering books would plummet. And someone would make an enormous amount of money.

“But wait,” you say, “you can’t possibly bind a book that well in a store, onesy, twosy. People won’t go for the relative reduction in quality.” Why not. I don’t buy the book for the binding. I buy the book for the story inside. I’m probably not going to shell out $27.95 for the newest <insert author’s name here> if it’s coil bound. But I might shell out $20 for it. And if the market changes so that’s what I get unless I want to read electronically–which is coming–I might spend that much.

The economics of publishing aren’t sustainable in an on-demand world. No one knows what the next world will look like; it just won’t look like the current world.