Trees, cows, birds, and a mystery author...oh my...

I think I'm finishing up my series on getting a good author photo.  It is a sign that I am a novelist that I've already written two long posts on this subject, and this one will probably be longer than I intend, when really all I needed to say was, "Hire a professional to take your photo.  You'll be glad you did."

Okay, Artifacts came out in 2003.  I just couldn't bring myself to keep using the old publicity photo.  Now, people still recognize me from it, so I don't think I used it too long.  But I didn't want to see the day come when I arrived at a signing and the organizer greeted me with, "Who's that old broad?"

I know people who have been using the same photo for forty years.  Seriously.  And you have to have a little sympathy in your heart for us, because how many professions force you to watch yourself deteriorate over time?  But getting a new photo is the only alternative to the inverse Dorien Gray effect, wherein your photo is simply gorgeous and you look like the portrait of Dorien Gray.

I'm not stupid, so I called Randy.  We drove around to scout locations, and found some glorious spots on a prairie ringed with ancient live oaks.  Then we went back for the shoot, with his assistant Lindsay planning to meet us shortly.  Except we found ourselves in a cow pasture behind a locked gate, with Randy frantically calling friends far and wide because somebody had changed the combination.  We worked assistant-free for a while, then Lindsay sneaked through the gate by tailgating someone who knew the combination.  We got these shots.  (Among others.  I'm not stupid enough to show you the bad ones.)

Don't you just love how he used the background?  I'm tellin' ya.  Hire the best. 

Next, we needed to move to the other location.  But remember how Lindsay had to sneak through the gate?  This means that we still don't know the combination...so we can't get out of the cow pasture.  So we park by the gate.  Randy gets back on the phone.  We wait for someone to drive up who knows the combination.  And the sun sinks...

We decide to use the time by taking some photos right where we are.  We took these shots with no special background at all, just some trees, some nice light, and an artful photographer's knowledge of how to use fuzziness to advantage.  Imagine cows mooing peacefully in the background.

Finally, finally, we got out of the pasture and reached the last location, one of those humongous trees that make north Florida so glorious.  The light was fading, and we three artists shifted into get-er-done mode.  I leaned on the tree branches.  I crawled around in the tree in shoes that were not meant for such things.  The camera went snap, snap, snap, while Randy's did his photographer thing to keep me going.  "You're doing great, Beautiful!"

Then, as it was really getting dark, he told me to lean against the tree and hold real still.  His assistant held some kind of reflective thingie up to catch the last ray of light and reflect it on my face.  He explained that even a flicker of movement in my eyes would screw up this very, very long exposure.  Then he said, "Cross your arms.  Now...   Don't.  Move."  Apparently, I didn't.  In the background, as the sun set, I could hear the prehistoric rattling cries of sandhill cranes settling in for the evening.

That last shot was the one I chose for my website and the one I'll use most.  To prove this part of my story, I'm posting the uncropped, unretouched proof.  (In fact, that's what all of the photos on this post are.)  Look on the right hand side, and you'll see the blurred image of Lindsay's reflective thingie, capturing those last rays of sunlight.

Until tomorrow,

Mary Anna

And another thing about photos...

Let's see, where were we?  Oh, yeah, I was blathering on about how you should plunk down your hard-earned money for a professional publicity photo because...well...you want to look like a professional.

I have a few picture-taking stories to tell about my new publicity photo, and they involve cows and large migratory birds, but I'm going to let them wait until tomorrow, because I remembered something interesting about the old photo.  I think it achieved the primary publicity goal of being memorable, because even people who hated it remembered it.  I met a fellow writer for the first time at a mystery conference and she spent a good part of our first conversation telling me I should get a new photo.  This was back when that photo was new, so I wasn't inclined to go spend more money unnecessarily, unless that one was career suicide.  Apparently, she thought it was.

"People need to feel like they can approach you.  That picture makes you look scary!  And you have such a nice smile.  Why do you hide it?"  (There was also a little bit of an Italian mother twist to the conversation.)

Well, in mystery circles, there can be an unfortunately tendency to presume a woman's books might be a little lighter and frothier than the gritty realism written by men.  (Yes.  Even in 2010.  Good Lord.  And tell me how realistic is a book about a middle-aged mini-van driving man who finds himself being chased by bad guys from one exotic locale to the next, while in the company of a sexy young thing who persists in taking off her clothes?)

My work has its dark side, so I think a serious facial expression is appropriate when my books are being marketed.  And perhaps my perception of the need to be taken seriously is colored by my own experiences.  I started engineering school in 1979. I was the only woman in my Electric Circuit Theory class.  Also in Fluidized Bed Heat Transfer, and probably a few others.  I worked offshore during the summer of 1981. 

On my first day of my first job out of graduate school, a community college teaching position, I entered my FORTRAN class to find that I was teaching 25 male college freshman.  I was 22, and I looked 17.  (I know this, because I was carded in New Orleans about that time.  Come to think of it, the drinking age in New Orleans back then was 17, so I guess I looked 16.  And I really don't think folks in New Orleans care if you drink when you're underage.  None of the other twenty-somethings in my party were carded.  They abandoned me while I fumbled for my ID.  You know, I may be the only person who was ever carded in The Big Easy.) 

The only way to prosper as a woman in a man's world--and I did--is to cultivate a persona that says, "Take me seriously."  I'm southern, so my persona is more like, "I'm polite and friendly and warm and feminine but, at the end of the day, you'd be well-advised to take me seriously."  Some people are a little obtuse, so they don't get the subtlety of it all, but that is a topic for another day.  Anyway, I kept the serious mug shot, and I think it did its job.

And there's one funny thing I want to tell you, and then I'll shut up.  As I said, people remember the photo, but they don't always remember it well.  I can't tell you how many people mention it and call it, "that black-and-white shot."  A friend of mine who had worked as a model and had a head shot of his own even called it that.  Now another benefit of hiring professionals is that they know how to take a photo that looks good in both formats.  See--here it is in black-and-white:

The photo that's used more is definitely in color, but I'm sorta black-and-white.  (In my twenties, I learned that friends who were trying to describe me to people who'd met me once or twice but didn't know me would say, "You know...Snow White."  LOL.  I guess I did have a penchant for blood-red lipstick in those days.)  Here's the other one, one more time, so you can see that it's in color, even if I'm not.

Until tomorrow--

Mary Anna

Advice for writers--hire the best photographer you can get

As a public service to my sausage-making readership, let me share one of the first pieces of advice I offer to writers who have just had that most heady of experience--they've signed a book contract.

Soon enough, and in my case, on Day One, the publisher will ask for a publicity photo.  Please, please, if you are ever in this position, do not lean up against a wall and ask your husband to snap your photo.  We are all sensitive about our looks.  Most people who sell a book have been writing for many years, so the sensitivity ramps up with every wrinkle.  People let this fear keep them from showing their face to someone who knows how to take a picture.  DO NOT DO THIS. 

Readers do not care if you are beautiful.  They care if you are interesting.  Hire a portrait photographer who can take a picture that tells a story, and that story needs to be, "I am fascinating and you will love my books.  Rush out right now and plunk down enough cash to buy everything I've ever written." 

A good photographer is expensive, yes, but that money will come back to you in publicity.  A professional photo will get you newspaper coverage.  It has gotten me (small-circulation) magazine covers and local TV coverage.  Oddly enough, a good photo will get you radio coverage, although I can't imagine why.

I had the surreal experience of being asked on Wednesday if I could provide a photo by Friday, because the catalog was going to print.  I begged off until Monday, but that still ain't much time.  Fortunately, I have a friend who is truly a genius at portrait photography, Randy Batista.  If you don't believe me look at his website here.

I called Randy in a white-hot panic and he worked me into his schedule.  I called my hairdresser Irene in a white-hot panic and she worked me in.  I found a walk-in nail salon and I walked in, just in case my hands showed in the portrait.  (They did, so it was money well-spent.)

Randy asked me what I was going to wear and I said, "A suit?"  And he asked me where I wanted the photo taken and I said, "In the studio?"  Randy said, "Uh...no.  Tell me about the book."

So I told him it was a mystery about a woman desperate to save her ancestral home, and he said, "I know the place.  And we want you to look approachable, so wear jeans and a simple top.  Maybe black, but gray would be better."

I take directions well, so I bought a gray sweater and showed up at the location shoot.  Randy had chosen a dilapidated Victorian house as the backdrop.  I liked it.  Nevertheless, he asked me, "What's wrong?" and I said, "I'm forty years old and you're going to be pointing that thing at me."  He grinned and said, with just a touch of a Cuban accent, "Don't you worry 'bout a thing."

The experience was exactly like the modeling footage you see on TV.  "Lean into the light.  Turn your pretty face toward me.  More, more.  No.  Stop.  There.  Hold it!  You're GORGEOUS!!!"  I'm here to tell you that every woman should get this kind of treatment at least once in her life.

I'll show you the photo in a second, but be aware that we were going for a mysterious look for a mystery author, so I'm wearing what someone has called my "Take your best shot, buddy" face.  People have said that it doesn't look like me, because I'm a smiley sort, but my older daughter said, "Yes.  It does.  It looks like her when she's mad at me."  LOL.

It is also possible that I look stern because this house was not in the nicest part of town.  Periodically, a homeless man would pedal past slowly, calling out, "Aaaaayyyy...Bay-beeee!"

I've recently retired this shot because I figured five books per photo (and seven years) was probably enough.  Using the photo past that point would have been just dishonest.  I'll tell you about the new one (which I believe is somewhere on this page, so it's not like I'm buiding any suspense here) tomorrow, but just look what Randy did with a forty-year-old mother of three:

Where on Earth Do You Get Your Ideas?--Part Nueve

I've had a day to cool off after the piracy scare of yesterday.  The upshot is that it's not obvioius yet whether my work has actually been pirated or whether someone in the Ukraine is just trying to get a cut of the sales by funneling customers to Amazon in exchange for a kickback.  And that cut would be obtained legally (I think) and it would not come out of my pocket, both of which I consider positive developments.  My publisher is checking into it, so all will be made clear.  In the meantime, let's talk about...
Pirates!!!!

Yes, pirates.  How timely, considering yesterday's potential piracy!

When I was planning to set the upcoming book in the Keys, I did a lot of reading about pirates, and I'm finding that this knowledge is transferring well to the new setting, south Louisiana, which has had its share of pirates over the years.  Slave traders, too.  And sometimes those were the same people...

Since I like to have dual storylines in my Faye books, one in the past and one in the present, the notion of piracy past and present appeals.  Not sure what I'm going to do with that, but it's early days yet.  I'll figure out some way to get my 16-year-old guest character entangled with a pirate or two.

Considering this discussion through the lens of the sausage-maker, maybe it would be interesting to my readers to look at the publishing timeline as it relates to my schedule.  It is May 2010, and I am beginning to write a book intended for publication in October or November 2011.  (And yes, I'm behind.  I'll finish on time, but I'm pushing my luck.) 

I am beginning to do publicity for Strangers, which will be published in October 2010.  At the moment, I'm getting review copies to reviewers and setting up appearances for October and November.  It's early to be booking gigs, but I'm trying to make the most of the Columbus Day tie-in with this conquistador-themed book, and it's working.  So far, I've got five gigs in five days during the release week, and most of them pay an honorarium, so I get publicity, book sales, and some cash, too.  Score!

Personal appearances to promote the current book, Floodgates, are infrequent at this point in the book production cycle, but I have a few scheduled this summer.  I will also be politely reminding attendees at these events about my newest paperback, Findings.  And my backlist sells well, so I'll flog all of them, actually.  Which means that I may be asked to answer a question about a book I wrote in 2001, while my head is six books into the future.  It's enough to give a girl vertigo.

Returning to the book of the moment, I really need to name the thing.  There's some rationale for naming it after the Gulf oil spill.  Deepwater?  Slicks?  Drills?  Rigs?  Platforms? 

No?  I didn't think so.

I could do something Mississippi River-related--Pilots?  Gamblers?  Riverboats?  Paddlewheels?--but none of those sound like mystery titles.

I'm leaning toward that pirate theme again, so the frontrunners are Pirates,  Buccaneers, Plunder, Privateers, Brigands, and Brigantines.

Do any of you have any opinions or suggestions?

Mary Anna

The new technology giveth and the new technology taketh away...

Today, we're really going to look at the part of the publishing industry that's reminiscent of sausage-making.  How does one go about making money from intellectual property?

This is on my mind today, because I learned this morning that someone has uploaded one of my stories and one of my books to a site called 4sharing.com.  Which is an interesting name, since I understand the site is pulling in $65,000 a day in subscriptions (a rumor I cannot substantiate), but no one is sharing any of that with me.

I was not surprised to see the story Mouse House there.  I recently published it as an ebook.  I believe I included that mysterious DRM copy-protection technology in the upload, but I could have made an error.  Or some enterprising criminal has found a way to hack it.  Or some enterprising criminal in a country where labor is cheap has employed people to take screenshots of each individual page.

I am surprised to see Floodgates offered for free to people who have bought a subscription to this den of iniquity.  It's my latest book.  It's not even out in paperback.  I do not believe that electronic copies are flying around the internet from any source I know about.  Judging from the published profiles of the people who "shared" my work, these are not enthusiastic kids anxious to share a book they loved while remaining totally ignorant of copyright law.  My guess is that someone in the aforementioned cheap labor countries is standing over a scanner, stealing books page-by-page.

For those of you hoping for a publishing career, or for those of you who are just curious, know that when you write anything, even a term paper, the copyright is yours as soon as the words leave your brain.  (I'm not a lawyer, so I'm paraphrasing and interpreting.  Don't make business decisions based on the opinions of any amateur, including me, please.)  With the exception of situations like work-for-hire, a publishing house does not buy your copyright.  It buys specific rights to use your work.  For example, my publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, has the right to print my books in English and distribute them in the US, the UK, Canada, and the Philippines.  I have also granted them permission to publish them as ebooks and audiobooks and large-print editions, which they have done and I love them for it. 

Like any other business contract, there are responsibilities on both sides, and one of their responsibilities is to keep track of how many they sell and then pay me an agreed-upon percentage of the cover price.  The more books they sell, the higher my percentage becomes.  Yay!  There are also provisions in the contract that specify how the relationship can be severed, after which I'm free to sell those rights elsewhere...because they belong to me.

Prior to the invention of the Internet and scanners and even photocopiers, it was harder for people like me to participate actively in the marketing of their work.  But it also would have been much more difficult to infringe on their rights.  (Which is not to say that it didn't happen regularly, I'm sure.)

I am certain that people who pay for a membership in 4sharing.com feel like they're paying for the books they're reading.  I'm sure they're unaware that their money is going to people who did nothing but build a website that makes it easy to steal from people who are already are not making much profit from their intellectual property. 

Most people think that piles of money magically appear in your bank account when you sell your book, but no.  I had several surreal encounters with a nurse at my doctor's office who kept demanding that I bring in a book so they could all read it.  I'm too nice to say, "Even I have to pay for my books.  I can't afford to give them away.  And I don't notice any free medical services being offered," so I just kept demurring until she quit.  The truth is that it is very, very hard to get people to pay for intellectual property, and they tend to pay slowly.  There can be a delay of a year between the time a happy reader buys my book and the time that a small fraction of that money gets to me.  It is not okay for someone to decide that they're going to give it away online without paying me for the privilege.

I've sent emails to the people who uploaded my work, requesting that they take it down.  And I've filed complaints with the website.  I received a form letter from them asking me to provide information that I'd already provided and which smelled something like a stonewall.  In my second email, I mentioned that I was prepared to hire a lawyer.  We'll see what happens.

It's like making sausage.  Sometimes you really don't want to know the details of how the publishing business works...

Frustratedly yours,
Mary Anna

Where on Earth Do You Get Your Ideas?--Part Ocho

Part Ocho of my book ideas series brings me right up to the current release,Floodgates.  And I can't actually remember what I've told you people about Floodgates.  Hmmm...I've looked back and I can't see that I've told this story yet.  If I have, I apologize deeply and plead senility.  Or overwork.  Or overworked senility.  Onward...

I decided early on that I wanted to set a book in New Orleans, so I started the process of getting the benevolent approval of my editor, Barbara.  Imagine my consternation when she said she didn't want me to write about New Orleans, because it has "been done." 

I must confess now that I used to be afraid of Barbara.  I know now that she is a warm and completely wonderful person, but she's also an extremely competent woman who doesn't brook any nonsense.  This is cool.  I respect that.  I'd like to tolerate less of it myself, so she's a role model.  Anyway, I don't argue with her just for the heck of it, so I respectfully said I thought there was a story or two left in the Crescent City.

She suggested Baton Rouge.  Now don't get me wrong.  I've spent a lot of great time in Baton Rouge, because my sister lived there for years.  Love the people.  Love the food.  But Baton Rouge inspires me to write an archaeological mystery about as much as a government city ringed by oil refineries does...because that's what it is.  (I can absolutely see myself writing a legal thriller or an environmental suspense novel in Baton Rouge, but Faye tells me she doesn't want to go there.)

Sensing my reluctance--even through the internet, since we were working by email--Barbara suggested Vicksburg.  Again, my response was, "Great town.  Maybe for another book."  Hearing my desire to deal with the aftermath of Katrina, she suggested the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  (Also a possible future book.  I grew up an hour away and am heartsick at its slow recovery from Katrina.  But it still was not the story I wanted to tell.)   

I pointed out to her that New Orleans handed me American history on a silver platter--Andrew Jackson, Jean Lafitte, the Mississippi River, Native Americans, African-Americans, the Spanish, the English, the French, the Americans...  And I pointed out to her that New Orleans' suffering since Katrina was different than anything else our country had seen.  It suffered a flood, a total deluge, which is not the same thing as a hurricane.  An archaeologist digging in New Orleans will, forever more, go through a layer of history that was laid down in 2005.  Just because we remember it doesn't mean that it's not history.

Barbara liked this.  She was listening.  I could tell, even through the buffer of the Internet.  So I continued to push my luck.  I told her that New Orleans might have "been done," but I didn't believe it had been done by someone with family in the area and a personal history there and a work history there.  And I was reasonably sure that what I was proposing had not been done by a licensed engineer who just might have something to say about the levee failures.

Success!  She liked it.  She hated the title, but I figured I could come up with a better one later.  I asked what she wanted by way of a proposal--outline, synopsis, sample chapters?  She said, "Oh, what you wrote in your last email was fine.  Just send me a hundred pages when you have them."

Score!  I'd just sold a book with less text than I've crammed into this blog post.

Later, I sent her the hundred pages, and she said, "I see where you going with this.  I like the title now."

See how wonderful it is to work with someone smart and competent and logical who doesn't brook any nonsense?

Mary Anna

Off on a tangent...

How many of the people who use the phrase "off on a tangent" actually know what a tangent is? (I hear you thinking, "I don't know and I don't care," but humor me here for a moment.)

I'm deep into work on the book I'm co-writing with Dr. Faith Wallace--Mathematical Literacy in the Middle and Secondary Grades. Soon, I will be able to tell you scuttlebutt about the nonfiction and educational publishing world. Oh, the opportunities for making sausage simply abound...

At the moment, we're working on a chapter that looks at the interface between mathematics and language. If you've ever worked a word problem--"Johnny has 7 apples, but Suzie took one away. Sam gave him three more. It takes six apples to make a pie. Does Johnny have enough?"--then you've walked that math/language boundary.

The words "took" and "gave" really don't sound like math words, but in that context, they tell you to subtract or add in order to solve the problem. Most people, including lifelong math-haters, can solve Johnny's apple problem in their heads. What Faith and I are hoping to do in this chapter is help teachers recognize regular old words that can signal to a reader that a little math is coming their way...painlessly.

The cool thing about this project is that Faith is an academic and a trained teacher. I just play with words all day, then I send them out for people to enjoy. Because my education is in math and science, there are a whole lot of those painless math words buried in my work. Right now, I have assembled a list of words that appear in the prologue and first chapter of Artifacts, and I'm writing a chapter that takes teachers on a tour through those words.

"More" and "less" tell you something about quantity. Even the simplest word in the language, "a," tells you that you're dealing with just one thing. Prepositions are all about geometry--"over," "under," "around," "through," "by"--they all give you information about an object's location. That's geometry.

And so is "tangent," which to mathematicians is a line that touches a curve but doesn't cross it. That's not such a hard thing to imagine. Think of an upside-down bowl. Now imagine balancing a pencil on top of it. Voila! A tangent.

And you thought we were only going to talk about literary mysteries. No, here at "It's Like Making Sausage...", we will occasionally tackle the mysteries of the universe. Only the best for you, my readers...

Mary Anna