book tours

When an Author Meets Fans

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Though I’d been publishing stories all through the 1980s, it wasn’t until I was in my first anthology in 1988 that I started getting reviewed and meeting fans on a wider basis.

I was at an awards banquet in D.C. and the first person I ran into as I walked to the the banquet hall was one of my favorite authors, novelist Edmund White.  I told him how much I enjoyed his work and when he asked my name, he said, “Oh, I loved your story” and went on to talk about it in laudatory terms.  He dilated about career and getting started, warned me against dissing my peers in public, and when I said I was headed for Paris told me to look him up there.

edmund white youngI was just starting out, and soon I would be publishing books on a regular basis, getting reviews, doing radio, print and TV interviews and living the author’s vida loca.  I met fans all the time, often in large numbers.  It was always deeply humbling.

The coolest moments, though, would be the unexpected ones. no matter who the reader was.  Sometimes someone at an airport while I was on a book tour would come over to say they recognized me from a newspaper or magazine interview and tell me how much they liked a book or  a particular story.  Or I’d be having dinner or lunch by myself and a server would say, “Aren’t you–?” and thank me for whatever book meant something to them.

It’s continued to happen closer to home, too.  The other day I was checking out at a grocery store and a woman walked by said “You probably don’t remember me–”  But I did because she’d gone to a recent writing conference I keynoted.  She’d bought a copy of my first book of stories, which came out in 1990.  “I didn’t know if I would connect to them or not, but I did.  To all of them!”  She said she could never imagine readers connecting to her work like that.

I laughed:  “Every writer worries about it.  You just have to keep writing and find the heart of your work.”

I was tired that morning, but I left the store feeling great.  Yes, I’ve gotten standing ovations from crowds of 500, and awards, and sold my literary papers to a university library, and gone on book tours in Europe, and been reviewed in the New York Times more than once–but this brief conversation reminded me why I started to write so many years ago.  To touch readers, one by one by one.

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books in genres from memoir to mystery and you can find them at Amazon.

Author Blurbs Drive Authors Crazy

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Before I got my first book published, a novelist I knew quipped, “The only thing worse than not being published is being published.”  I had no idea what he meant, but I soon figured it out.

Take blurbs. Begging for blurbs for your forthcoming book is a definite downside of being published. It’s humiliating to have grovel for them rather than have your publisher take care of it (when they remember!). You can feel like Dorothy menaced in Oz.

wicked witchFar too many authors think blurbs will magically rocket a book to success. That the right, brilliant blurb by some famous author will impress the publisher, readers, reviewers–and of course our friends, family, and fans.

But do blurbs really make a difference in terms of sales? It’s hard to say. How can you quantify a blurb’s impact?  As a reader, there are actually some authors whose names make me not want to read a book because they’re blurb whores and seem to love having their names on as many book jackets as possible.

What you can be sure of is that not getting a blurb you hope and pray for is a major buzz kill, and getting it is often like July 4th on steroids. The entire world is ablaze with joy. Someone famous, or at least someone you admire, has given you their blessing. They’ve blessed your book–won’t their fame be contagious?

happy dance

Is it any wonder blurbs make us writers sometimes get a little frantic? A writer friend told me a hilarious, sad story about a new author asking a national best-selling author for a blurb. I can’t name the celebrity writer, but she’s huge.

The newbie waited and waited. No response. So the anxious author tried again. This time she got a swift and stinging reply:

“My Dear: I understood your letter to be a request, not a demand.”

I sympathized with the celebrity author feeling put upon, but I felt sorry for the writer who was embarrassed, and wished The Famous One had simply said “no” the first time.

Stories like that have made me determined never to ignore a request from an author asking for a blurb. If I can’t do it for whatever reason, I always reply.  Will my blurb make a difference if I’m able to do it? I hope so, even for a little while, and that’s good enough.

Still, you never know how competent a publisher is.  Once a publisher of mine in New York never got advance copies of my book out in time for blurbs and had to rely on reviews for my previous book.  That wasn’t a disaster, but it was frustrating.  And I recently did a blurb that the author loved, but despite her insistence, it didn’t show up on the book.  The publisher, Crooked Lane, wasted my time and the author’s, which is just more proof–if anyone needed it–that publishing is a crazy business.

Lev Raphael is the author of Writer’s Guide is Bunk and 24 other books in genres from mystery to memoir which have been translated into a dozen languages.  He’s done many book tours across the US, Canada, and Europe.

Blogging Brings Out Bitchery

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We all know how the Internet is a breeding ground for incivility and blatant hatred because you don’t have to face the person you’re insulting.

But there’s a lesser level of contempt that bloggers deal with when they cross an invisible line that brings out boors. These folks aren’t hateful, just sublimely convinced of their superiority.  They spring up whenever a blogger dares to even mildly criticize anything or anyone that’s popular.

Say, for instance, that you’re not crazy about Lemonade.  Blog about it and you can be damned sure that you’ll be accused by somebody of being jealous of Beyoncé’s success.

alx_beyonce-lemonade_originalNow, unless you’re a singer, a charge like that really makes no sense whatsoever.  But even if you were a singer, why would a critique necessarily mean that you’re jealous?  Can’t you have valid reasons for disliking one of her albums?  Or even her music in general?  Does that automatically make you a hater?

Boors have emerged whenever I’ve blogged something remotely critical about a book, movie, or TV show, targeting me because I’m an author.

I recently blogged that I thought Jon Snow’s resurrection on Game of Thrones was dull compared to other more dramatic moments in the first two episodes this season.  The inevitable response showed up from one reader: I’m jealous of George R.R. Martin and that person’s never heard of me.

That was truly devastating.

frank side eyeHere’s the thing.  Most authors aren’t on best seller lists and aren’t widely known.  Even writers like me who make a good living from their royalties, get sent on book tours at home and abroad, are paid well for speaking engagements, win awards, and have successful careers.

Why’s that?  Because the average reader in America reads or listens to only one book a month and there are 80,000 published every year.  Saying that you’ve never heard of an author is like a little kid whining “Nanny-nanny-poo-poo!”

hugh laurieSo if you’re a blogger worrying that your blogs don’t generate enough comments, there’s a major upside to that.  You’re not getting hateful remarks or mockery from people who think they’re smarter than you are–and feel the need to prove it with the weakest weapons they have.

BlogLev Raphael is the author of the novel The German Money–which a Washington Post rave review compared to Kafka, John le Carré and Philip Roth–as well as 24 other books in many genres.

Michigan Book Awards Discriminate Against LGBT Books

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Every year since 2004 the Library of Michigan has publicized as many as 20 Notable Michigan books “reflective of Michigan’s diverse ethnic, historical, literary, and cultural experience.”

notable bookBut that diversity seems to have a huge gap. No book with major LGBT content has ever been among the books annually celebrated and publicized statewide. That fact was confirmed to me by one of the judges, who had no explanation.

The 2016 Library of Michigan press vaunts the 2015 awards this way:

“The MNB selections clearly demonstrate the vast amount of talent found in writers focusing on Michigan and the Great Lakes region,” State Librarian Randy Riley said. “The list continues to offer something for everyone – fiction, short story collections, history, children’s books, politics, poetry and memoirs.”

great lakes regionThe awards program actually stretches all the way back to 1991 under different names. It sponsors statewide author tours for the winning authors, so it’s a big deal. The Detroit Free Press describes what it mean to be a winner:

While no cash award comes with making the list, there is a real economic reward for writers and publishers in terms of increased sales. Emily Nowak, marketing and sales manager at Wayne State University Press, said appearing on the list can lift sales by several hundred copies. For regional titles with small press runs of between 1,000 and 3,000 copies, that’s a significant boost and could push a title into a second printing. Many Michigan libraries often buy multiple copies of books that appear on the list.

And then of course there’s the free publicity, which has no valuation, and the invitations to speak that an award generates, and the prestige.

But evidently since 1991 there hasn’t been a single book with major LGBT content published by a Michigan press or written by a Michigan author living here or elsewhere worthy of recognition.

Think about it: No notable LGBT books by talented queer Michigan authors in almost twenty-five years the judges of this program thought deserved being honored. Not one. The Library of Michigan’s web site claims that the awards “help build a culture of reading here in Michigan.” Perhaps so, but the culture being built is limited in its diversity.

Before the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, Rolling Stone rated Michigan as one of the five worst states in the country for gay rights because of hate crimes, but there are other forms of oppression, including forced invisibility.

Isn’t it well past time that the sponsors and judges of the Michigan Notable Books stepped into the 21st century, out of the darkness and into the light?  What are they afraid of?

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books in genres from memoir to mystery which you can find on Amazon.

Authors Can Be Sitting Ducks

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Isn’t it amazing what people think they can say to authors at signings or readings?

They’ll criticize characters, plot, writing style, or the way a book ends–and rudely, too.  And then not even buy a book.  They’ll just unload on the author who’s a captive and has to be polite and just take it, no matter how unfair and uninformed the comments may be.

Sometimes events can work your last nerve, but sometimes the situation’s just different enough where you don’t just take it.  That happened to me once at a university where things went awry from my getting off the plane.  The minion picking me up announced that she had no sense of direction, and got me lost 1) in the airport 2) in the parking structure and 3) in the city on the way to my hotel when we went drove in the wrong direction for at least ten minutes.

When we finally got to it, the hotel room in a dinky “annex” was filthy with cobwebs and dust balls everywhere.  I called the host professor and asked to be moved somewhere else, but he insisted on seeing it for himself, assuming I was a diva, I guess.  He took one look and moved me to a Hilton Garden Inn.  But that was the end of his competence, because rather than do a short intro to my talk and reading, he read from my official, page-long author biography.  Slowly.

I timed him.  It took ten minutes.  And he stuttered.  Still, I made it through and was doing fine until the Q&A when someone raised my first novel Winter Eyes where a son of survivors is unsure of his sexuality and sleeps with a man and a woman at different times.  That gay reader accused me of “brutalizing” him with the open ending, and leaving him alone with his pain.

wintereyes-new

I wasn’t rude, but I said plainly that he had misread the book and the characters who believed at the end that labels didn’t matter at that moment in their lives.  And if he was in pain, it wasn’t the fault of my book, but his issues that he needed to deal with.

I’d never been that assertive in a Q&A, but it had to be said.

Would I have replied as I did if the afternoon and early evening had gone better?  Maybe not.  But I felt I had to stick up for myself as an author and stick up for my book.  And for authors everywhere….

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books in many genres which you can find on Amazon.  Follow him on Twitter at

Nightmare On Bookstore Street

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I stopped doing bookstore “black hole” signings back in the 90s.  The kind where the store asks you to just sit at a table for a few hours with a pile of your books, a table sign, and a desperate smile.  Every now and then, over the sound of the register, someone announces your presence in the store over a loudspeaker, but it doesn’t matter: you really don’t exist and your career was a delusion.  You’re lost.

I saw an author doing one like that the other afternoon.  I’d stopped at a local bookstore that had turned into a mini-mall selling candles, author dolls, DVDs and CDs, Christmas ornaments–you name it.   Her book had a tropical isle on the cover in pinks and blues and a hot title: Death by Destination.  The author was dressed in matching colors, but she looked pale and miserable.  The store hadn’t done her any favors by putting her in an out-of-the-way section.

Afternoon signings are the pits and I wondered if anyone had bought her book or even talked to her. The few people seeing her skirted the table, eyes down, or worse, bumped into it and didn’t even apologize.  She tried engaging the scant passersby, but was shunned ever single time.

It was mortifying. I wanted to go over and invite her out for a drink and tell her how I’d given up on this kind of giant boondoggle, how over time I’d found a niche at non-traditional venues that were much more satisfying and that if I did sign at bookstores, it was only after a reading or talk.

But just when I thought I might actually wade through the forest of peppy greeting cards to help salvage her day, I saw her resolutely get up and stride over to someone idly leafing through a dictionary in the Languages section.

“Hi!,” she chirped. “I’m Ibis Goldenroad!  I write travel mysteries.  I see you’re looking at a French dictionary.  Are you traveling to France?”

I moved forward to overhear the reply.  The appalled elderly woman, wearing a chic black coat, said stiffly, “I’m having a dinner party and wanted to make sure I spelled things right.  For the menu at each place setting.”  With that coat and carefully styled white hair, and the frosty tone, she reminded me of Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.

prada“Oh that’s so interesting!  You don’t like computers?”

“It’s not that, dear.  My Internet is down.”  The customer turned away.

The “dear” was a warning, but desperate Goldenrod didn’t listen and actually touched her shoulder.  The woman flinched.

“How fun!  Oh, I love to cook!  And so do my lead characters!  One is a master chef who works on a cruise line.  You’d love my mystery series.  Do you read mysteries?”

There was a reluctant nod.

“You do?  That’s wonderful! What kind?”

Without turning, the woman snapped, “The kind where annoying woman are killed.”

Lev Raphael’s 25 books range from memoir to mystery and beyond.  You can find them on Amazon.

What Authors Never Say At Book Signings

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Being an author on a book tour can be a wonderful experience, until things go wrong: missed flights, poor turnouts, noisy and uncomfortable hotels, cab drivers taking you to the wrong book store in the wrong part of town, hotel WiFi crapping out–and a host of other problems that can work your last nerve.

So sometimes your charm can wear very thin, and you start to feel that the same kinds of remarks or questions you’ve heard before feel like swings people are taking at a piñata.

The stress can leave you most vulnerable when you’re marooned at a table waiting for people to come over and get a book to be signed.  This isn’t after a reading, but when all the bookstore wants you to do is just sit and sign.  You end up feeling like you’re not much more than somebody’s desperate grandmother at a weekend yard sale trying to unload worthless junk rather than an artist selling a book you’ve slaved over.

Here are some moments many authors have experienced, and what some of them might have been thinking in their weary, frazzled, tortured little hearts.

Scene: Customer rifles through a book for five or more minutes while the author sits at the bookstore table grinning stupidly and helpfully, imagining alternative realities that would have kept her home: a stalled car or a civil insurrection or just a plain old flu.

Customer puts book down and mutters, “I’ll get it on Amazon.”  Customer trundles off.

Author would love to say: “I won’t sign it on friggin’ Amazon!”

Or Customer asks, “Will I like it?”

Author would love to say, “You will adore it.  It’s gonna improve your sex life, give you a green thumb, help you lose weight (and seriously, honey, it’s time because have you seen yourself from behind?), get your kids into their first choice colleges, and make your dog stop peeing on the couch.”

Customer says out of the blue, after inspecting as if it might have bed bugs, “I don’t read much.”

Author would love to say, “I could tell from the vacant look in your eyes.”

Customer sighs after putting the book back upside down and face down, “I have so many books at home that I have to read first.”

Author would love to say, “This is way better than the trash you’re used to.”

Customer bustles up to you and scolds you at length for some plot point in your last book and says you better not have repeated the same mistake in the new one.

Author would love to say, “I’m so grateful!  That was amazing advice! Nobody’s ever pointed that out to me before!  I’m dedicating my next book to you!  Here, take a free book!  No, take two!”

Friend_hugLev Raphael is the author of The Edith Wharton Murders and 24 other books in many genres.

Writers Are Not Machines

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Well, I’m not, anyway.

I do have writer friends who can produce a book (or more!) a year no matter what kind of crisis is hitting them at home.  Contracts pull them through.  That, and stubbornness.  I couldn’t work that way.

I was just at a party and someone asked me what I was working on.  I said, “Nothing. I published my 25th book last Fall.  I’m taking time off.”  He looked at me like I was a slacker or something.  But that’s not an unusual response.

I’ve been a member of the same health club for over two decades and lots of people there read my Nick Hoffman mysteries set in a college town not unlike East Lansing.  No matter when I publish a book in the series, someone will always ask, “So when’s the next one coming out?”

It could be the very same week there’s been an article in a local paper or a radio interview.  Really.  As if I’m churning them out with the help of a team of interns or androids.

And God forbid there’s no news within a year of another book due to appear.  Telling people that I just published a book in the past year doesn’t seem to penetrate.  I get blank stares. What’s wrong with me, am I lazy? seems to be the unspoken assumption.

Okay, publishing 25 books in different genres over the last 25 years isn’t shabby–but they haven’t come out on any sort of regular basis. Some years I haven’t published anything and one year I published three different books just because that’s how the publishers’ schedules worked out.

In case that sounds like I’m Type A, I should explain that my second novel took almost twenty years to finish.  Yes, twenty, working on and off because I kept re-conceiving it. I’m glad I did, because The German Money got one of the best reviews of my life. The Washington Post compared me to Kafka, Philip Roth and John le Carré and I was sent on book tours in England and Germany to promote the editions published there.

But some books took me only six months to write from concept to completion for various reasons.  And another book was fairly easy to put together because it was a collection of already-published essays.  So it’s all highly unpredictable.

You can’t explain that to the cheerful guys who call you “Dude!” and ask about your next book while you’re on the way to the showers just wearing a towel and flipflops. Or people who decide to chat with you while you’re sweating on the treadmill. or the people who think that popping out another book can’t be that difficult since it’s not like I have a real job, anyway.

Maybe I should ask them, “So, when are you doing your next brain surgery?” or “When’s your next super-messy divorce case?’ or “When’s your next multi-million dollar real estate deal?”

Nah.  I’ll just blog about it, or write them into my next book.  Whenever.

Lev Raphael’s latest book, the suspense novel Assault With a Deadly Lie, was a Midwest Book Award Finalist and deals with police militarization and out-of-control SWAT teams.  It came out at the time when the Ferguson story hit the news; he’d been working on it for about four-five years.  You can find his books on Amazon.

 

S*** People Say To Authors

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When you publish a book, it’s open season. Nobody tells you that being published gives total strangers license to say outrageous things to you that you could never imagine saying to anyone.

I’m not just talking about people who’ve actually bought your book. Even people who haven’t read your book feel encouraged to share, in the spirit of helpfulness.

Now at first, when you’re on a book tour it’s surprising, then tiring — but eventually it’s funny, and sometimes it even gives you material for your next book. All the comments on this list have been offered to me or other writer friends in almost exactly these words:

“I liked your book, but I hated the ending.”

“Your characters shouldn’t be so nice.”

“Your characters should be more likeable.”

“You need more sex in your books.”

“There was too much sex in your book.”

“The book doesn’t make sense unless there’s a sequel.”

“You used too many words I had to look up.”

“Too bad you’re not better known.”

“It was fun but it’ll never sell.”

“My bookstore doesn’t carry any of your books.”

“I found some typos in your book — you should fix that.”

“I’d like you to write my book.”

“Ewww.  What’s up with that cover?”

“Can you tell your agent about me?”

“You have a way with words.”

“Why does your English professor character quote books?”

“Your stories are too short.  Did they leave something out at the factory?”

“You need to put a nice lesbian in your next book!”

“I have a 2,000 page manuscript, I think you’d really enjoy editing it for me.”

Lev Raphael is the author of 27 books in genres from memoir to mystery.  His latest is Department of Death, which Publishers Weekly called “immensely enjoyable” in a starred review.

(Free image from Pixabay)

5 Things *Not* To Do At Your Book Reading

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I’m just back from reading from my memoir/travelogue My Germany in Windsor, Ontario.  I was at a fundraising event for BookFest Windsor and people asking me to sign books afterwards said they enjoyed it especially because most authors read from their books so badly.

I tend to avoid author readings myself because I’ve seen too many authors make basic, embarrassing mistakes.

Here are five things to avoid if you’re going to read from your book, whatever the genre:

–Don’t apologize in any way.  You may feel nervous, but you’re a performer and you have an audience.  You need to exemplify sprezzatura: the art that conceals all art.  Your reading should be smooth and practiced and not feel like you’re trying too hard.  The seams should never show.

–Don’t  read anything you can’t emotionally control.  If a part of your book might make you cry for any reason or even get misty-eyed, avoid it.  A reading isn’t a psychodrama.  And don’t announce that something often leaves you teary and go ahead anyway.  That can make an audience cringe.

–Don’t keep your eyes on your book.  This may sound impossible, but it’s not.  You need to study and rehearse your reading enough times so that you’re familiar with it–almost as if you were an actor.  Then you can maintain good, consistent eye contact with your audience.  If all you do is look down, you’ll be dull.

–Don’t get over-specific about how you and when you write, or how you wrote that book before your reading.  People do like detail and do like to get to know the person behind the book, but they don’t need TMI.  The book is the centerpiece, not the really gross flu you had when you were researching it.

–Don’t hog the stage if you’re on the bill with other authors.  Time your reading more than once at home, and then trim it.  If the organizer gives you twenty minutes, go for fifteen.  In situations with multiple readers, less is usually more because someone else is likely to run over.

Remember, the event isn’t all about you: it’s about your audience first and foremost.  Think about them, plan for them, respect them, connect with them.  They deserve your best, whether five people come to hear you, or five hundred.

interested audienceLev Raphael has done hundreds of readings on three continents, in more than one language.  He is the author of  Writer’s Block is Bunk (Guide to the Writing Life) and 24 other books in genres from memoir to mystery.