Location:  Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather:   As above

Wow! Here I am posting for the last time as an agent on the Books & Such blog site, and I realize for the first time that I can now be a “regular” blogger just like most of you.  You see, on December 15, I’ll move into the category of “retired” and am transferring my blogging duties to Books & Such’s newest agent, Mary Keeley, as part of the transition.

I confess that it will be something of a relief not to be posting for a week at each month’s end–no more wondering what blog readers want to know about, what is uppermost on my mind, or what turn the industry is taking at the moment. Looking back, I see that I’ve punched keys about a lot of things–titles, characters, censorship, comics, dogs, idioms, poetry, and series, to name several. And always, trying to be accurate and cogent.

But not posting any more blogs at this site is a bit of a downer as well because I will miss all the stimulating, humorous, and surprising comments you all gave back in our online conversations. You so often made me think deeper about the topic, and many of you shared personal accounts that came from the heart. Thank you.

Recently, Wendy asked me what I would miss most about being an agent, and I knew immediately that it was the connections with people on both sides of the publishing equation. There is such fulfillment in finding just the right publishing home for an author’s work and helping that author go on to write better, publish more, and give great reading experiences to whoever happens to pick up the book or open it up on an  e-reader. Being that bridge between author and publisher is exciting business. It also tends to keep one humble.

Of course, I will miss my wonderful cohorts at Books & Such. What a talented and caring crew! Thank heavens that I, like you, can continue to read their words –and yours–on this blog.

Note From Janet: I want to publicly proclaim my thanks to Etta for joining with the Books & Such team three years ago. What a joy it’s been to have her insights, years of publishing experience, kind heart, and Southern humor as part of our group dynamic. For those of you who might not know, Etta has had a fine agenting career that has spanned eighteen years. She’s represented a Caldecott Honor Book (Peppe the Lamplighter), the Elizabeth Orton Jones’ literary estate (Caldecott winner), and Firefighters to the Rescue by Kersten Hamilton, which was selected for use in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

We at Books & Such are proud of our association with Etta and wish her every blessing as she pursues travel, gardening, piano playing, and of course, reading and time with her charming and gentlemanly husband, Amos. We love you, Etta!

Location:  Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather:  Cold and clear

Here we are at Black Friday, named for the one day retailers can almost certainly turn a profit. It took me a a day or two to figure out the meaning of this term, when I first heard it, since “black” implied funereal to my mind. In our area, merchants started very early,and  in some cases they pulled out the Christmas decorations before Halloween was over. Why didn’t they call it “green Friday” or has cash as the medium of exchange become obsolete? Regardless, it’s really time now to think of what gifts and to whom we want to give.

At our house, giving often centers around books, which calls for special attention to the recipient as well as several trips to local bookstores. Who would have guessed that a college-age grandson wants a book about John Calvin? Or that the University of Tennessee Press would publish a new book on the ivory-billed woodpecker just in time to give a bird-watching brother-in-law? Don’t tell my husband, but a new book on black and white photography is coming his way. And I’m perusing recent historical fiction titles for one daughter and southern gardening titles for the other. Selecting a particular book for a loved one is sometimes as rewarding as reading one.

The ongoing slump in book sales has actually heightened my desire to give books, particularly books that may not be available in electronic format for some time. As a bona fide bookie, I wonder if I’m giving memorabilia for future years as well as reading enjoyment for the present. I also need to confess that I’m shopping for the newest edition of Kindle.

Without giving away any secrets, what titles are on your shopping list? How do you make decisions about what books to give others? Are you giving any electronically read editions?

Location: Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather: Warm and cloudy

We eat for so many reasons, and some of us don’t or can’t eat for a lot of reasons. Everything from psychological, allergies and other health issues, as well as poverty. Consider that one in six children in the US does not have enough to eat at home. Thus public schools in many areas provide breakfast as well as lunch for children. Some schools even send home packaged food when there’s a school holiday. I don’t know statistics on hunger among the homeless or the low-income employed on welfare, but state and federal agencies say the numbers of hungry people in the US are rising.

However, on the other extreme for those with adequate income, eating and eating out have become major pastimes, almost an obsession. We survey print publications and websites looking for the new “food experience.” Chefs constantly develop new food combinations to lure restaurant-goers. And what I find really astounding is that more cookbooks have been published in 2010 than any previous year! It seems incongruous while we are still in a period of economic downturn.

While traveling in France recently, the only obviously overweight people I saw were a man and his wife sitting near me at a restaurant. Their speech identified them as Americans, I’m sorry to say. I was a little puzzled to find such a trim native populace in a country that cooks with so much cream, eggs and butter. Then I noticed two things–their portions of food are small and a lot of them are either walking or riding bicycles.

What’s happened to us here? Have we taken consumption to such radical levels? Does a TV show like “The Biggest Loser” mean we know something is wrong, that some of us have a food addiction, or is it simply something the show producers hope we will find entertaining? And speaking of TV, where does “Hell’s Kitchen” fit in? (Note that chef Gordon Ramsay ‘s cookbook is entitled World Kitchen, not Hell’s Kitchen.) That show is not really about preparing food, but I wonder what kind of attitude all the foul-mouthed behavior may engender in viewers. Why hasn’t the Restaurant Owners Association called a halt to it?

Maybe we had better rethink what we are lifting to our mouths this Thanksgiving and perhaps whom we could share it with.

Location: Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather: Cold and rainy

Our feeling about cookbooks may be an indicator of our feeling about the people and events associated with food as much as the food itself. I used to wonder about my grandmother sitting for an hour or so just reading cookbooks when I knew she had no intention of cooking the recipes she was reading.

I was more inclined to take the utilitarian approach to reading cookbooks–you read to find the recipe you wanted– while she took the entertainment approach or perhaps the purely nostalgic approach to reading cookbooks. I understand her motives better now, as I see the recipe my mother used for jam cake or read one for roast leg of lamb from my husband’s family cookbook.

Not counting those cookbooks published as a collection from church members or local organizations as fundraisers, cookbooks are sold for two basic reasons–either for the buyer to give or for the buyer to use. The former category sold as gifts tend to be cookbooks around a theme or a particular food such as The Gourmet Cookie Book or the Williams-Sonoma Stir-Fry Cookbook. These gift books also include regional books such as the “Cornbread Nation” series, which is now up to #5 in the series.

The group of cookbooks for personal use is dominated by standards such the New York Time Cookbook, James Beard’s American Cookery, and The All-New Joy of Cooking (although I still love the earlier edition). These standards may become gifts within families or among very close friends.

I have some questions about how recipes on the web will affect the sale and collection of cookbooks. Has anyone explored that? I’m just starting to look at info@bookclubcookbook.com, and I know there are many others. Has anyone used their Kindle to read a cookbook? Will electronic publishing overtake print in the kitchen? Interested to hear your replies.

Location: Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather: Rainy and cool

Well, here we are in the season of Thanksgiving! For some of us making our list of what we’re thankful for this year may take a little more effort than previously.  For others we are more grateful than ever before. I’d be more grateful if I could just shoot one of the 30+ wild turkeys that wander through my yard almost daily!

Hearing a recent devotional on the topic, I was struck by how much our observance of this truly American holiday has changed since the time of the Pilgrims. Now we’re feasting and resting and often traveling, and I think we’re doing fairly much the same all across the country, whereas the earlier Thanksgivings were more regional and less about food and probably more about worship than watching football.

Maybe there are still regional dishes and differences that I’m not aware of.  What’s on your Thanksgiving table? Is there a new dish?  Or an old one rediscovered?

• More to the point for those of us who write, have you ever written a truly Thanksgiving story?
• Or made the Thanksgiving meal a significant event in a manuscript?
• And drawing the net even tighter, have any of you written a cookbook—besides Lauraine Snelling, that is?

If you read Publisher’s Weekly, you may see their promotion of cookbooks in regular e-mails, “Cooking the Books.” I certainly have a collection, including first editions of  Julia Child’s 3 volumes on French cooking.

Location:  Books & Such client retreat, Monterey, CA

Weather:  Sunny

So many good travel books are available now–almost as many as cookbooks, but that’s another topic for a later blog. Being here in Monterey opens up all sorts of opportunities to  use a good travel book.

Also, I went to the bookstore about two weeks ago to find a particular book on Paris, and I was astounded. In addition to the standard  Frommers, Fodors and Rick Steves, the clerk showed me a whole shelf of books just on Paris, including new specific versions of the standards. Selection of just one was very difficult. Publishers must know that travel is big business.

A recent example of travel’s lure and emotional healing is seen in the ongoing success of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love (it may not have translated to film very well, but I haven’t seen it).  Over the centuries, many authors have described their adventures away from home and the new viewpoints and sometimes wealth those travels afford. The Travels of Marco Polo comes to mind.

Even if writers are unable to travel, they often use the travelogue as a framework for other content, such as in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The steps of the journey, whether biographical or imaginary,  provide a framework for other content that actually is more significant.

Being away from the day-to-day life and routines opens new vistas, both outward and inward, and we are so blessed to have such opportunity to go to different places. Maybe it’s a long walk on a park trail; maybe it’s only a drive of 50 miles or so; maybe it’s a transcontinental flight; and before long it may be an interplanetary flight! Regardless, we can observe, be uplifted and perhaps even jot down a few notes for use in our writing.

Where do you long to go? Do characters in your writing travel much? And just to help folk with wanderlust like me–how do you balance the necessity of sitting to write with the urge to travel?

Location: Books & Such client retreat, Monterey, Calif.

Weather: Grand

All summer I’ve been longing to go to the beach. Instead, I traveled to Minneapolis and St. Louis–about as mid-continent as you can get. Even if time had permitted, the beach we usually head to along the southern coast was having problems with tar balls, thanks to BP.

Now, here I am in one of the nation’s most beautiful seaside spots–Monterey, California. Not only do I have the gorgeous coastline scenery and sea breezes, but also sea creatures and birds are readily visible that I haven’t seen in a long time. Several of them even caw and bark all night long!

Of course, those of us in the world of books associate Monterey with John Steinbeck, the quintessential California author and winner of both the Nobel Prize for literature in 1961 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for The Grapes of Wrath (a story about hard-bitten inlanders from Oklahoma heading for the sea and a better life in California–they hoped). 

At the recent Southern Festival of Books, juvenile author Louis Sachar was asked why he used a quote from Steinbeck’s Cannery Row in his new YA book The Cardturner. He said he happened to be reading the novel again while he was writing his book and couldn’t resist including the following for his audience even though he had to justify it as being admired by an adult character:

“It has always seemed strange to me,” said Doc. “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success.” (p. 248)

Interesting that Sachar was moved to share Steinbeck’s words with young readers, but an author’s inspiring words do live on from generation to generation. I wonder if part of Steinbeck’s great creative energy and advocacy for the poor didn’t flow his having lived close to the sea. There may be something about the natural force and rhythm of waves that inspire writers and artists to create great projects.

What strong stories created by writers who lived near the sea can you remember? I’m going on the Cannery Row tour now and think some more about Steinbeck.

Location: On the way to Monterey

Weather:  Mid-70s

Flying across this great land from Tennessee to California, I constantly was looking down to see which parts of the US were decked out in autumn’s splendor and which parts remain much the same from season to season. The landscape may seem not to change from year to year, and yet it’s never quite the same. I no longer dread the cold of winter as I once did because I know beneath the freeze new forms are emerging–something new coming forth from the old.

I was reminded of this recently in viewing a wonderful array of Impressionist paintings from the Musee D’Orsay in Paris and now on exhibit in Nashville. In the last half of the nineteenth century, Claude Monet and other painters in Paris were influenced by Spanish artists, especially Velasquez. The Parisians changed their style of painting from the elaborate, tightly-executed and highly-colored scenes much in favor in Italy to more monochromatic painting for impact or “impression” on the viewer.

Many of these first impressionist paintings were black and white portraits with perhaps a shade of another color. Think Whistler’s Mother. Monet painted a number of these pictures of individuals with little or no background, purely to capture the emotional effect before going on to do such works as Water Lilies in more abstract and colorful form.

It occurs to me that when something new is being conceived, it often happens in the dark or in black and white before evolving and bursting forth in color. This may apply to the taste many of us have for novels in which the stark black-and-white drama of early chapters is resolved in more harmonious tones at the end.

How do you introduce some radical new content in your manuscript? How do we present some new dynamic, especially those of us who write nonfiction? Is it as a natural progression from the old or a totally new element? How much are Americans partial to something that appears “new” versus the tried and true? Lots to think about here!

Location:    Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather:    70 and cloudy

We are definitely in the time of nature’s full color. Driving down the Natchez Trace last week, I was thrilled at every turn with a new array–the golden browns and yellows of elm and poplar, the bright orange to apricot of maples, the brilliant red of dogwood and deep crimson of sumac all interspersed with deep evergreen cedar and pine. Hard to keep my eyes on the road.

That same evening on television I happened to see a segment of 60 Minutes showing a remarkable b/w film of a San Francisco street scene made just days before the great earthquake and fire, which destroyed much of the city, including what the film had recorded. They also showed a b/w picture of the same scene after the devastation. Somehow the b/w photography seemed to imprint the effects of the terrible event more than color photography would have. It brought to mind the sickening b/w photos from bombed cities in WWII.

The comparison of these two visual impressions made me think about several things pertinent for those of us who paint pictures with words alone. How do we create pictures of what our characters see for readers? With more glowing narrative descriptions? With more modifiers, using the adjectives and adverbs that are almost verboten? Or with the emotional response of the character(s) viewing the scene?

One author who uses a combination of the above is Lee Smith in her book The Last Girls, which I’ve just started to read. In the first chapter, one of the characters has checked into the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and is reminiscing about the trip down the Mississippi she and 11 other college girlfriends had taken in the 1960s after studying Huck Finn in literature class. They are to meet again here, and the view of the river and the setting sun from Harriet’s hotel room window seem to open all sorts of windows on her past and her relationships. In a startling moment, the light from the river forces her to turn on the light in her room. I don’t want to over-deconstruct, and I have to read more before saying more, but it’s interesting to see the role of nature’s color in calling up the character’s thoughts.

How do you paint scenes in words and what do your characters feel as a result of what they see?

Location: Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather:  Mid-70s

British fiction is no doubt the parent of American fiction, and from the passion for the Victorian novel in Britain came the blossoming of novels here in the late 1800s. Building on the work of such early novelists as Sir Walter Scott, who idealized the past, Charles Dickens added sentimentality and intimacy in his novels with their sharp criticisms of English culture. These hallmarks of British novels made their way across the water and influenced the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and a little later Bret Harte and Mark Twain. American women were also writing novels, although we hear more about the poet Emily Dickinson than we do series novelists such as Martha Finley, author of the Millie Keith books (1876).

But we Americans still like to read British novels, and most of us know enough British history to appreciate a novel set in the Britain of yesterday. The great craze for anything by or about or related to Jane Austen proves it. How many of you have read Pride and Prejudice (1813) or Emma (1816)? The hallmarks of those early British novels remain true of historical novels written today–the love triangle, the mistaken identity, the separation caused by class distinction, and the terrible illness. Many titles by George MacDonald come to mind, and one more recent title is The Courtship of the Vicar’s Daughter by American author Lawana Blackwell (2007).

Who are your favorite British novelists (either from another era or who are writing historicals today)?