Louise Marley

My long-awaited CD set of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings adaptation arrived yesterday!  It's not cheap, and so I put it into the system with some trepidation . . . As I first listened to it, I found myself a bit lost.  I guess I thought it would be like a symphony, with a sort of uber-structure.  It doesn't have that.  Then I turned to the liner notes and let my mind wander through Middle Earth--and I loved it!

In a way, this recording is like a Wagner opera, all themes and motives that are meant to remind the listener of specific things.  It's called program music, if you're a classical musician, and the essence of program music can only be truly understood if you know what the composer intended to describe in the work.   (Think Mendelssohn's Fingal Caves, or Ives' Rainbow--or Smetana's The Moldau.)   If a listener doesn't know the movies, I don't know how much she'll enjoy this recording.  But I, of course, adore the films, know them very well (I have both the director's cut and the original releases on DVD) and so the music carries me off into realms of imagination and memory.

It will be interesting to see how non-LOTR fans react to this music.  I hope they can let themselves be swept along on this curious journey without expectations that this is a classical--in a structural sense--recording.  It's beautiful, and moving, and evocative.  I expect to spend many hours enchanted by these four CD's.

I'll bet the Wildcat will have something to say about this!

Last night my friend and colleague Richard Paul Russo (The Rosetta Codex) and I shared a book reading and signing at University Bookstore in Seattle.  Duane Wilkinson is the bookseller there, and he's simply fabulous.  I mean, really.  Here's the thing about independent booksellers:  they know their stock, they know their authors, they know the market (local) and they care about it. 

I told Duane that The Maquisarde had gone out of print, and he said, "Thank goodness I stocked up."  Not rushing to return what he has, in other words, but wanting a stock to sell to his customers.  Duane knows the readers of the Pacific Northwest.  The national ordering system (it's probably a computer in New York) of a big box store doesn't.

Richard and I had a really nice evening, sold not a few books, and met each other's fans and friends.  It was cool.  Thanks, Duane, for last night and a dozen other great book events at your wonderful store.

Oh, and P.S.:  I spent $100 Christmas shopping while I was there!  Just in case management wants to know.

Would this cover appeal to you?  No, I was afraid not.  Lots of other folk felt the same, it seems.

Here's a tale of publishing woe:  The Maquisarde is a science fiction story set in the late 21st century, an adventure tale, a romance, a look at a possible near future.  The reviews were great.  The sales weren't.  And now the book is going out of print.

What did I do wrong?  I gave it a title most people can't pronounce.  What did my publisher do wrong?  Well, the cover isn't great, and it looks like a Star Trek character.  (I'm not being petty.  Booksellers told me, in so many words, that the cover put buyers off.)  Also, and this is no one's fault, but it was my first hardcover and came out not long after 9/11.  So . . . The Maquisarde joins the list of my other novels that have gone out of print--there are five of them.  Sigh.  Let this be a lesson to us all.  Watch your titles!  Those, at least, we can control.  Covers we can't.

Quoting George R. R. Martin again . . .

I had a nice book event Saturday at a Barnes & Noble in Olympia, Washington.  It was made nice by an energetic, well-informed bookseller named Joan Ashcroft--and I surely hope B & N know what a treasure she is!  Because there are too damn many books, and it's almost impossible for the author herself to make hers stand out from the crowd!  But there was Joan, well-spoken, attractive, lively, carrying my novel around the store and talking one-to-one with customers.  I think she hand-sold almost every book that day, except perhaps one.

You know how those things are?  The poor author sits at a table behind a stack of books that represent her time and energy and emotion, that are a triumph in themselves just by their very existence, and yet people walk by--of course they do--giving the author this sort of pitying glance.  I've done it myself!  You simply can't buy every book you see, even because you feel sorry for the writer sitting there.  Luckily for me, there were lots of people to talk with, and Joan kept things moving.  Those events can be agony otherwise.

All you aspiring writers--get ready.  There are some challenges in this business!  (Is it worth it?  Of course.  That's why I'm still here.)

This picture is of the Castello San Felice, in Tuscany, where I stayed for a month about ten years ago.  It's a beautiful refurbished castle, now a very nice residence hotel, and it featured prominently in The Child Goddess as the Mother House of the Priestly Order of Mary Magdalene.

My colleague Melissa Lee Shaw remembered something great yesterday:  "Fortune is where preparation meets opportunity."  I love that so much.  She was reminding me that although I have been lucky in my publishing career, some of that luck came because I was always working, honing my craft, as it were, so when the opportunity came along, I was ready!  She made me feel better about capitalizing on some good luck that had come my way.

Of course, I love to work, so it's not exactly a hardship.  It was the same for me in music.  I had trouble, often, being businesslike, because I simply loved making music, singing for audiences, working with orchestras and pianists and other singers.  I love writing, too, in the same way.  I think I'm a bit more of a businesswoman now, though.  I'd really like to make some serious money!  I guess I'll just keep being prepared . . .

Staring at clouds, surfing the 'net, Christmas shopping on Amazon, cleaning the house . . . this is a short list of the ways I avoid writing.  Now that I need to start my novel rewrite, I find there are a thousand and one things I MUST do RIGHT NOW, rather than begin it.  I know, in my heart, that once launched I will sit over my computer until my neck hurts, but getting going . . . putting the key in the ignition, pushing off, launching . . . ooh.  Hard.

Must.  Get.  To.  Work.

A couple of years ago I was part of a discussion on whether we should write "The End" at the end of a piece, novel, short story, whatever.  Really!  We're all so focused on doing what's correct.  Of course, editors and typesetters want to know it is "the end" so they're sure there's not a page missing or something.  There are other things to write:  # is one, and the old ### from newspaper days.  But how satisfying it is to write "The End" when it is the end! 

And I did, yesterday.  The rewrite begins now, but how fabulous to actually reach "the end."  At least, I think it's the end.

Sorry about the Amazon.com image . . . oddly, it's the only one I have of this, my favorite cover of all.  I'm remembering how hard it was to let this book, The Terrorists of Irustan, go out of my hands and into the publisher's.

There's something really sad about coming to the end of a book.  Something fabulous, too, of course, because you've done it again, you've completed a project, seen it through to the finish!  But you have to part with your characters, your world, with months and months of work and imagination and dreaming and obsessing (I'm great at obsessing.) 

Because Irustan was a tragedy, it was particularly difficult to finish it.  I kept thinking of ways Zahra IbSada could escape her fate . . . but no.  That wasn't the story, and she couldn't achieve her destiny if she ran away with Jin-Li . . . but it was oh, so tempting!  I loved the character of Zahra, and I still miss her, five years later.  A character from my own head, for heaven's sake!  Oh, well.  I'm not the only one who feels this way.

So now I'm almost to the end of Airs Beneath the Moon, and I've put off writing the last scene for two days.  Hmmm.  Seems familiar, somehow. 

Okay, so the cover is a nod to doing business on the Bloglet.  Have I mentioned that I won . . . oh, yes.  Ahem.  I believe I have.

A great quote from my friend Kelly Vomacka, a wiser girl than I: 

If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.
-Irwin S. Cobb, author and journalist (1876-1944)

All too true.  If we do it for the money, we're bound to be disappointed.  Nothing wrong with wanting to make money after we've done it, of course!  But if we're not motivated by the work itself, we are probably treading the wrong path.

So with that, I'm back to work.  You should be, too!

Elizabeth George, in her quite wonderful book on writing, Write Away, shares journal entries about the process of creation.  How comforted I am, as I struggle with the ending to my current project, to read this:

When I was creating For the Sake of Elena, I became so incapacitated by fear that I was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning.  I finally resorted to saying, "These are only words and I will not let words defeat me" in order to get up and get to work.  Thus I struggled to the end of the novel.  But now, nothing seems to work.  I flounder . . .

                                                                           Journal of a Novel,

                                                                           August 31, 1995

I read this aloud to my family.  "See?"  I cried.  "It's not just me!"