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For the Love of Dog
December 2nd, 2009Okay, so last week I told you that I put the Yule tree up a little bit earlier than usual. Here’s why.
Her name is Lillie. She’s four months old, give or take a couple of weeks. She weighs all of 2 pounds.
What? Her leg? I hadn’t noticed. She looks fine to me.
You’re not going to let it go, are you? All right, but you asked for it.
She had to have it removed. Why? Well, see, the people who originally had her (aka the Colossal Jackholes Who Should Be Thrown Off a Mountaintop into a Sea of Broken Glass) thought it was perfectly fine to leave a very tiny puppy with their kids. And the kids thought it was perfectly fine to put the puppy in a blanket, swing her around really fast, and let go.
In case you were wondering, a very small dog flying at high speed and hitting a wall does not end well. Lillie’s leg was shattered. The Colossal Jackholes then took her to the pound and said they wanted her put down because they didn’t want a damaged dog.
I know. Just breathe for a few minutes. It will help. A little.
Fortunately for Lillie, the folks at the shelter were not colossal jackholes and called A Leg Up Rescue to see if they could help the broken puppy. They said of course, and before you know it Lillie was in surgery and came out a tripawed.
We weren’t intending to get another dog. As some of you know, we had five of them until the death of our oldest, Sam, in September. This is Sammy. He was a good boy. We adopted him in 2005, when he was 10 and had been dumped at a shelter because he barked too much.
Sam died from what was m
ost likely a brain tumor. Until two days before his death he hadn’t had a single health problem, which is rare for a lab. Then one night he had a seizure. For two days we tried various things to control his seizing, but it got worse and worse. At two in the morning of the third day I knew it was time.
Anyone who still believes in God has never held a dying dog in their arms. Sam’s last night he was having seizures about every half an hour. Although seizures aren’t painful, they are scary, and Sam was howling because he didn’t know what was happening to him. He kept trying to crawl into my lap. All I could do was hold him and tell him what a good boy he was.
As far as I’m concerned, any god that would allow that to happen isn’t worth having.
Now that we were down to four dogs, Patrick said no more. And he was right about that. Five dogs is a lot, even if two of them are small and a third is smallish.
Then I saw Lillie. I was flipping through the channels one night and a local news station was holding their weekly adopt-a-pet segment. And there she was. I caught only the last fifteen seconds or so of her appearance, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her. The next day I went to the A Leg Up Rescue site and read her story.
“Isn’t that sad?” I said to Patrick.
“No more dogs,” he said.
I waited an hour or two before filling out the online application. She’s probably already adopted, I told myself.
The next morning I received a reply. Lillie was available. Also, the ALUR rep told me, we sounded like a great home for her.
“We’re going to meet Lillie,” I told Patrick that night.
“No more dogs,” Patrick said.
The next day we made the hour trip to Lillie’s foster home. That’s where the picture of her sitting on my lap was taken.
“She’s really sweet,” I told Patrick on the ride home.
“No more dogs,” Patrick said.
“We’ll need to get a bed for her,” I said. “And some little bowls.”
On Friday I drove to Lillie’s foster mother’s and brought her home. That’s why the tree went up early. I wanted it up before she got here, so she wouldn’t be freaked out by the boxes and whatnot. Particularly the whatnot.
Not that she would have been. She’s the calmest puppy I’ve ever met. Nothing fazes her. Not waking up with three legs. Not meeting three big brothers and a big sister. Not being in her third home in four months.
She loves to run around the backyard. She likes chasing balls. She chews sticks like a champ.
A vet friend once said to me that because dogs live in the moment, the way life is right now is more or less how they think it’s always been. That’s what allows them to bounce back from some really horrible situations. I hope Lillie doesn’t remember flying through the air, or how her leg hurt, or what it felt like when her people left her alone in a strange place. I hope she thinks she’s always been safe and loved and happy.
Obviously dogs don’t forget everything, which accounts for lingering fears about, say, people who speak loudly or the sound of fireworks. But they’re good at letting go. People should be more like this. Maybe then some of us would stop saying stuff like, “You don’t understand, my parents were really mean to me” and “I’m bad at relationships because twenty years ago my boyfriend slept with my best friend while I was in the hospital having my appendix out.”
Our dog Andy, who came to live with us in 2003 at the age of four or five, used to be terrified of Chinese men. Our neighborhood has a large Chinese population, and whenever we took Andy for walks he would shy away from Chinese men even if they showed no interest in him. He loved Chinese women, though, and would run up to them wagging his tail. And he wasn’t afraid of any other men.
I don’t know why. I don’t know what his life was like before he came to us. I do know he was hit by a car and left at a high-kill shelter. He was rescued by a volunteer from Pets Unlimited, where Patrick found him when I was away one weekend and he stopped by “just to see who was there.”
This is Andrew when we fi
rst met him. He wasn’t ready to leave the hospital yet, as he was still recovering from surgery, so we brought him that cow toy and played with him there.
Once we brought him home, he almost didn’t stay. He quickly displayed some decidedly unpleasant behaviors, including turning into a whirling dervish of teeth when he was told “no” or when we tried to take something from him. At the time we had only one other dog (more on him in a bit) and he had never given us a moment of trouble. We seriously considered returning Andy. I know that sounds harsh, but he was really awful.
Then he got sick. One morning about a week after he arrived we woke up and he was clearly not a happy camper. He crawled into my lap and just sat there while I rubbed his ears. And that’s when I knew I could never let him go. Defects and all, he was here to stay. It turned out that he had a throat infection, and I still say he did it deliberately because he knew he was on thin ice. He’s clever like that.
This is Andy now. He’s still a monster (my friend Brendon calls him Mad Andy) but he’s mellowed a little bit. And we wouldn’t trade him for anything.
One of the reasons why Patrick was reluctant to get another rescue dog now is that they don’t always stay around for very long. As I mentioned, we had four years (almost to the day) with Sammy. But before him there was Spike.
Spike was another surprise. One day I was looking at the site of Rocket Dog Rescue, which is a San Francisco group run by a former homeless woman whose only motivation to keep living was her dog. She told herself that she would get off the streets and start an organization to help dogs, and that’s what she did. She’s an interesting lady. Make sure you read her story when you visit the site.
Anyway, I was looking at the site and happ
ened to click on a link for Spike. Here’s what I saw.
He looks like a pup, right? He was 15. A woman who rescues birds got a call from a shelter to come get one. On her way to the bird room she saw this little black pile in the corner. It was Spike. When she called to him he wouldn’t even lift his head. She thought he was dead. The staff didn’t know anything about him and didn’t seem to really care. As far as they were concerned, his time had run out.
This woman doesn’t even like dogs all that much, but Spike broke her heart. She took him home not knowing what she was going to do with him. He was in bad shape and needed a lot of work done, but something told her that Spike was special and that it would all work out.
It did. Some friends offered to foster him. Other friends donated money to pay for his health care (his teeth were rotted and almost all had to come out, he had skin problems, he farted constantly). He was so bloated when he came to us that we nicknamed him The Football.
Spike was like one of those old people who figure they have nothing to lose and they’re damn well going to wear plaid with stripes if they feel like it. If he wanted to sit on the couch and one of the other dogs was already there, he pushed them off. If he wanted more food, he muscled his way into someone else’s bowl. Every time he pooped he did this strange little dance afterward. He was his own dog and he didn’t give a rat’s ass what you thought of him.
He was with us for only seven months. Like Sam would later do, he started having seizures. He slept in our bed, in a nest of blankets right next to my head, so that I would wake up when he seized. But he was a fighter, and he always bounced right back as stubborn as ever.
Then one night I woke up and he was licking my face. It was a surprisingly gentle act, and I remember feeling like he was comforting me. After a few minutes he curled up and went to sleep. The next morning he was scheduled to go to the vet for some more tests to see if we could pinpoint the cause of his seizures. Five minutes before we were supposed to leave he had a heart attack. He died in my arms. Personally, I think this was his way of saying “Bite me!” to death. As always, he was going to go out his way.
Because he was here for such a short time I have 
only two pictures of Spike. However, my friend Sarah Higdon painted his portrait. It perfectly captures everything I loved about Spike, and every time I look at it I remember how much joy he brought us.
That’s the thing. People often ask how we can take in older dogs, or dogs with health issues. “Isn’t it sad when they die?” they ask.
Of course it is. But even if they’re only here for four years, as Sam was, or seven months, as Spike was, they give you enough love and memories in that time to last forever. And you’ve given them the chance to live out their lives in a safe, happy place.
That’s totally worth it.
I’ve had two dogs who were with me from birth. One of them, George, is still here. He’s only four, so hopefully he’ll be around for a long time. He came from a friend whose Chihuahua got knocked up. He was born, fittingly, on Cinco de Mayo. That’s his baby picture on the left. Look like someone else you know? A bunch of stick chewers, those Chihuahuas. Or maybe they’re waiting for a pinata.
Before George I never really liked little dogs. I mean I liked them when they belonged to other people, but I never wanted one. I thought they were yappy. Especially Chihuahuas. Now I know better. Chihuahuas are big dogs in tiny bodies. They bark because they have Important News that humans are too stupid to understand. If we ever manage to figure it out we’ll have the answers to all the mysteries of the universe.
When George came home he was so small you could hold him on the palm of one hand. We were terrified that we were going to break him, and for the first year or two I wouldn’t let him in the backyard alone because I was afraid a hawk would make off with him. Even though he’s now only the third-youngest in the house, we still call him The Baby.
The other dog I was fortunate enough to have a lifetime with was Roger. He was my first dog. I got him in 1993, when I lived in New York. He was in the window of a horrible little pet store I passed by every day, and I watched him for weeks as he got bigger and bigger and more and more unhappy. Every time I saw him I told myself there was no way I could have such a big dog in a New York apartment.
Then, on the Fourth of July, I walked by and there were kids banging on the window and laughing at the frightened puppy. I couldn’t stand it. I walked in and took him home. This is what we looked like.
Roger was the dog love of my life. We lived together in six homes in three states. I spent the last half of my 20’s and most of my 30’s with him. We went through a lot together, and I spoke of him so often that one editor I worked with later told me that for years she thought that the Roger I talked about was my partner.
Roger’s last year was not easy. He developed cancer. Then he was bitten by a brown recluse spider and his face swelled up and had to be drained three times a day. The skin in the bite area became necrotic and sloughed off, leaving half of his face bare. We called him Labrador of the Opera. Through it all he never once complained, always meeting his vet with a wag of his tail.
One night in early August Roger w
oke me up in the middle of the night. I thought he had to pee, so I took him into the backyard. But he didn’t have to go. He just wanted to sit and smell the night air for a while. He and I had an agreement that he would let me know when he was too tired to go on. I knew then that he was ready. We came inside, I fed him pieces of steak, and then I slept beside him for the rest of the night, just like we used to do before Patrick came into our lives. In the morning we drove to the vet and I rubbed his ears as we sent him on his way.
For years I thought that when
Roger died I would fall apart. I didn’t, although I missed him terribly and still do. I did swear that I would never get another lab. Somehow it seemed disrespectful. But less than a month after Roger’s death I stumbled upon this picture. The next day Patrick and I drove to a shelter in Sacramento and brought Sammy home.
There are two other dogs in our family–Honey and Teddy. They came to us the same week in May of 2007, both from friends who realized that they weren’t able to give them the care they needed and deserved. Honey is a Border Collie/Aussie Shepherd mix and Teddy is a shiba inu.
I remember that week well. At the time we had three dogs–Andy, George, and Sam. Spike had died six months before, and after the stress of his illness we had decided to stick with three dogs. Then Patrick got a call asking if we would take Honey. We talked it over and decided we had room for one more dog.
A day or two later one of my friends called and asked if we would take Teddy. I said yes, but I knew Patrick was going to be hesitant. For one thing, we were about to have a fourth dog. For another, Teddy was a puppy. Puppies are a lot of work.
But I had a plan. I had my friend bring Teddy over one afternoon just before Patrick came home from work. He met Teddy and remarked on how adorable and well-behaved he was.
“Happy birthday!” I said. “How do you like your present?”
Teddy was a nightmare during his puppy period, but both he and Honey are wonderful dogs with great personalities and hearts as big as the sky. Teddy is a little put out now that Lillie is here, but I’m betting he’ll get over it soon enough. And Honey loves having another girl in the house.
So now we’re back where we started. While looking up dates for this entry I realized that Lillie came home three years to the day after Spike’s death. I can’t help but wonder if he engineered it. It would be just like him. “Ha ha!” I can hear him say. “They think they can get away with only four dogs? Let’s see them say no to a three-legger.”
That seems to be how it always happens. We think the house is full up. We say things like, “It’s nice being able to walk all the dogs at once” and “Wow, the bedroom feels a lot bigger with one less dog bed in it.”
But we know we’re just fooling ourselves.
Each of our dogs has come to us unexpectedly. It’s as if the universe knows when there’s just enough room in our house and hearts for another one. Although Patrick has started up with the “no more dogs” mantra again, I know if the right dog needs a forever home he or she will find their way to our door.
A friend who does not have animals said to me once, “You can’t save them all, you know.” I do know. But if I can save one, or two, or seven, then I’ve done something. That’s how things change, one step at a time, one changed mind at a time, one saved dog at a time.
So welcome home, Lillie. We’re happy you found us.
Merry Christmas, Comrade
November 27th, 2009
Neither did we, actually. We had fish and chips. At a restaurant. Our friend Jill had the turkey dinner, though. She’s a traditional kind of girl.
Not that we weren’t festive. We were. At least I was. I usually wait until the weekend after Stuff Your Face Day to start thinking about the Festival of Hysterical Consumerism and Unmet Expectations, but this year I decided to get a jump on things. You’ll find out why next week.
It surprises many people when they find out that I have a tiny obsession with Christmas ornaments. I admit to being a tad Grinchy when it comes to the holiday in general, but I’m all for pretty things that I can store in boxes and make lists of.
Patrick says I have way too many ornaments. I say that I have 417 (which I know because of the aforementioned lists) and that there is always room for more. Well, if I buy more acid-free tissue and boxes and storage bins. And a bigger house. But my point stands.
Anyway, yesterday morning I gave in to tradition and hauled all of the ornament storage bins upstairs. The tree I set up the night before so that I could test the lights, which by some miracle all worked flawlessly. This is a lesson I learned last year when I plugged the old tree in and it started to smoke.
As most of my obsessions do, my fascination with ornaments began accidentally. A couple of years ago I was trolling ebay and stumbled upon what I thought was the oddest ornament I’d ever seen. Here it is.
Fast forward a few days. After much googling and going hither and yon I discovered that the book my ornament friend was referring to was Il Romanzo di Cipollino (The Adventures of the Little Onion) by Gianni Rodari. Although little known in North America, Rodari was a very popular Italian writer of books for children, winning the 1970 Hans Christian Andersen Award for his body of work.
But why had Russians made ornaments of characters from his book?
This is where it gets interesting. During World War II, Rodari had been forced to join the Fascist party in order to work as a journalist. However, he was horrified by his experiences (particularly his brother’s incarceration in a German prison camp) and in 1944 he joined the Communist Party and became part of the resistance movement.
And this has what to do with Christmas ornaments, you ask?
Fast forward to 1951 and the publication of Il Romanzo di Cipollino. The book is the story of Cipollino, a little onion boy. Cipollino and his family live with a bunch of other vegetable and fruit people in their little town. Everyone is happy. But then along come the wealthy Mr. Tomato and the Orange Duke. They announce that all the land belongs to them and that the villagers have to work the fields and give it all to their masters. Cipollino’s father speaks out against the tyrants and is jailed. Cipollino sets out to find him and rescue him. Along the way he’s helped by a variety of characters, including the Cherry Boy, the Radish Girl, the Pea Lawyer, and the Mole. Oh, and Dr. Mushroom.
The Communist government of Russia thought this was a delightful story, which it is. But they saw something else in it–an opportunity for self-promotion.
WARNING! HISTORY LESSON APPROACHING
Way back in 1917, when the Communists took over following the Russian Revolution, the celebration of religious holidays was forbidden. But the people were a little cranky about having their holidays taken away from them, so the government took a cue from the Christians and did some syncretization.
See, in Days of Yore (DOY) when the Christians got all gung-ho about making sure everyone knew about Jesus, they encountered a little bit of resistance from the pagans of Britain and Ireland. These folks were pretty happy with their gods and didn’t see why they should start worshiping a new one they’d never met before.
The Christians tried beating sense into the pagans, but they found this did little for their popularity, so they hired a PR guy who came up with a brilliant idea. “Hey,” he said. “Instead of taking all of the pagan holidays away, why not just kind of smoosh them together with the Christian ones? That way people might not notice.”
It worked like this: They picked an already-existing pagan celebration and stuck Jesus into it. Yule (the winter solstice) was already a big deal. It was the time of year when the bleak, dark days of winter were the longest and everyone was pretty well sick of it. But then came the return of the young Oak King, who slew the aging Holly King and brought light back to the world.
Now back to the Communists. They had a PR guy too, and he looked at how well syncretization had worked for the people trying to get God into a resistant culture and thought it might work just as well in getting God out of a resistant culture.
I find these ornaments fascinating. But when I tried to learn more about them I discovered that most of the Russian sellers knew almost nothing. The person who is probably the most informed expert on their history is actually an American–Kim Balaschak–who discovered the ornaments while living in Moscow and working as an efficiency expert for Russian companies.
Okay, yes, the ornaments are a soldier and a goat. But they’re so much more than that. There’s a rich history behind them that is rapidly disappearing as young Russians raid their grannies’ attics to make some money on ebay. Most of them couldn’t care less what folktales are represented, or why anyone would make a Christmas tree ornament of a doctor who has the head of a chestnut (another of the Cipollino characters).
But I do, which is why I now have boxes of fragile, chipped Russian ornaments. I have a lot of the ornaments based on Russian folk tales, as well as some of those more obviously intended as propaganda. But the Cipollino ornaments are my favorites, and after several years I now have almost all of them. (We think there are 22, of which I have 16.) Sadly, the ones I don’t have might be gone forever. Kim knows of only one complete set, and the ornaments have virtually disappeared from the collector market. My Russian contacts (I love saying that, like I’m a spy or a heroin smuggler) haven’t seen them in years and don’t think they will. After all, glass doesn’t hold up well and many young people think these are junk and simply throw them away when their parents or grandparents die.
I have a ton of other ornaments as well, of the more common variety. And these are fascinating too, some because they’re just beautiful (to me anyway) and some because you just have to wonder why anyone would make an ornament of, say, a bellhop. But they did. And there are stories behind some of these as well.
But those will have to wait for another time.
When Bad Sentences Happen to Good Writers
November 25th, 2009I have written some very bad sentences. I’ve overloaded them with adverbs to the point where they resembled rococo drawing rooms. I’ve used seventeen words when two would do. I once compared a character’s uncircumcised penis to a sleeping bat.
Lynn reads much more quickly than I do and goes through maybe seven or eight books per trip. I get through two or three. The problem is that bringing more than a couple of books uses up valuable luggage space. What with the dive gear and assorted this and that there isn’t much room to begin with. Also, books are heavy, and now that the airlines charge you twice the price of a ticket for bringing more than 8 pounds of stuff we’re totally paranoid about that.
Because of this we rely on the ship’s library. Guests leave the books they finish and take ones left by other passengers. It’s a nice system, and every year we find ourselves with a new crop of books from which to choose. Except for Mercedes Lackey’s The Black Gryphon, which has not moved from its shelf in the seven years we’ve been going on these trips. Every year I’m tempted to read it just because I feel sorry for it, but now ignoring it is something of a tradition.
Depending on the library for our reading material is of course something of a gamble. If the previous guests were of dubious taste you can end up with a lot of stuff you don’t want to read. Or–as happened to us one year–if the departing guests are German you’re left with books you can’t read even if you wanted to. But usually there’s something.
Because we are horrid people, Lynn and I like to share with one another the worst lines of the books we’re reading. It’s something of a competition to find the most awful one. On this last trip I found a doozy. In fact, when I came across it I knew without a doubt that I had found our winner for the entire trip.
Ready? Here it is.
“His praise was so effusive that, even reading it by herself, in her own kitchen, she was slightly embarrassed by the effusiveness of the praise.”
Isn’t it brilliant? We thought so. It’s practically a structural palindrome of hideousness. Every time I read it we would shriek for two or three minutes. Then Lynn would ask me to read it again.
Okay, it’s not bad in an “It was a dark and stormy night,” Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest way. It’s almost worse, because it’s such a nothing little sentence. Ordinarily you wouldn’t even notice it, skimming past to get to the murder, or the sex scene, or the part where the kraken swallows the ship whole. But because it shouldn’t stand out, it does. Kind of like the mousy girl who comes out of the restroom with the back of her skirt accidentally tucked into the waistband. You wouldn’t normally look at her twice, but now you can’t stop staring at her pink-and-purple-polka dotted underpants.
Here’s the thing, though. According to various Koontz bibliographies, The Eyes of Darkness is his 38th published book (including books done under other pseudonyms). That’s a lot of books to have written, so many that you might be tempted to think he wouldn’t be writing sentences like that.
But he did. Because that’s what writers do. We write bad sentences. Not always, of course, but from time to time. Readers just don’t usually see them. Often we find them and get rid of them before anyone else sees the manuscript, and if we don’t then usually an editor or copyeditor finds them and tells us how awful they are.
But not always. Sometimes things get through. That’s just how it is. And inevitably some smart ass reader will send you or your editor a note letting you know that this horrible sentence made it past all of you. Sometimes they will helpfully offer to read future manuscripts for a small fee to prevent this kind of thing from happening to you again. Every so often they just tell you they hate your book and you should be ashamed of yourself for thinking you can write.
And sometimes they’re right and their comments are helpful. Several times I’ve used the wrong character’s name in a sentence. Occasionally I’ve made factual errors. (Did you know there are no laundromats in Provincetown? I didn’t.) In one novel I confused the nicknames for the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) with that of Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). And people let me know so that I could fix the errors in the paperback editions of the books. Which I mostly did.
It’s interesting to note that the version of The Eyes of Twilight that I read is the REVISED edition, published in 2008. That means, I assume, that Koontz looked over the original and did some tinkering. I wonder if he saw this sentence and decided to leave it alone because it amused him or if he saw it, was blinded by its awfulness, and like a victim of some terrible event (the Blitz, maybe, or someone who stumbles upon Glenn Beck’s show by accident) developed amnesia to protect him from the memory of it.
By the way, if you want to read a very, very funny account of the experience Koontz had with turning this and several other novels into made-for-television movies, check out this entry on his website. It’s hysterical.
*Handy Travel Hint: If you ever find yourself touring a Haida village, do not ask them where the Haida bed is. They don’t think this is funny.
Whatever
November 20th, 2009Today’s blog is not brought to you by the letter N.
Sarah Palin, Library Journal, and Me
November 18th, 2009
So Sarah Palin’s book came out yesterday. Did you pick up your copy? If not, you can get one cheap. Amazon (where it’s #1) is selling it for $14.50. So is Walmart. Since those two sellers account for a huge chunk of book sales in this country, chances are they’ll move quite a few copies.
They’ll have to if Palin is going to earn back the reported $5 to $7 million advance HarperCollins paid her. Just how many copies? Let’s do the math. For the sake of argument, split that estimated advance down the middle and say she got $6 million. The best-case scenario for Palin is that she gets a 15% royalty on the book’s list price of $28.99, meaning that for each copy sold she’s credited approximately $4.35. At that rate she needs to sell 1,379,319 copies before her advance is earned back and she sees anything more.
She very well might. HarperCollins reportedly shipped 1.5 million copies of Going Rogue to booksellers. That’s a huge number. Granted, Palin will have to sell nearly every single one of them if she wants to see any more payouts, but it’s not impossible to imagine. There are a lot of Walmarts.
And I hope she does.
What? You’re surprised? Why? I wish every author nothing but success and happiness. Palin worked really hard on her book, and she deserves the attention she’s receiving.
Okay, that’s not true. I have ulterior motives in wishing her success. Did I mention that Palin and I share a publisher? Well, we do. True, her book was published by the adult division and mine are published by the children’s division, but we’re all one big happy family. Why, I bet my editor could just pick up the phone and ask Sarah’s editor if Palin would like to exchange autographed copies of our books and next thing you know Sarah and I would be chatting over steak and endless salad bar at Sizzler.
Or not. I doubt Palin would want to read my Harp
er books. She might like my upcoming zombie novel, Z. There are guns in that one. But my last one, Suicide Notes, is about a gay boy. Sarah’s not a big fan of the gays. Neither is Lynn Vincent, the ghostwriter who actually penned Going Rogue. She really doesn’t like us. In fact, she went so far as to compare us to Communists and declare that “the homosexual ethos depends on an abandonment of truth.” I know, rude much?
There’s a little bit of irony here. See, the success of Palin and Vincent’s book is due largely to the work of Jonathan Burnham, the HarperCollins publisher who shepherded the project. Burnham is gay (calm down, it’s not a secret), and enough people have pointed out the irony that it’s hard to believe Palin is unaware of it. Then again, that would require reading a paper or something, so perhaps not. But you’d think someone would have mentioned it, maybe right after telling her about Levi Johnston’s Playgirl shoot.
Anyway, Burnham has taken some heat from folks who think he shouldn’t be dealing with the likes of Palin and Vincent. But I think they’re missing the point, or at least not seeing the bigger picture. Think about it. Going Rogue is going to make a heap of money for HarperCollins. And that will make it possible for them to keep publishing writers like myself who don’t bring in all that much for them.
So a big thank-you to Sarah and Lynn! And to all the people buying their book! Every time a Walmart checkout person scans another copy of Going Rogue and another $4.35 goes into Sarah’s account, there’s a little something going into HarperCollins’s pocket as well. Eventually that little something gets passed on to me as a littler something and I get to write another book.
Yes, critics aren’t being very kind to Sarah. And sure they’ve found one or two or a hundred factual errors in the book. But she was on Oprah, and that’s something. Give the poor woman a break. And buy her book. Heaven knows I she could use the money.
One more thing. Jane Bites Back got another review. This one comes from Library Journal. And they love it. Check it out.
In this clever paranormal tale, YA author Ford has created warm, witty characters that will appeal to both Janeites and vampire fanciers. Literary humor and intriguing snippets from Jane’s book are the icing on the cake. Two more books are promised in this series, so readers who fall under Jane’s spell will be eagerly awaiting her next adventure.
I know, they call me a YA author. Which I am. I’ve written what, 30 novels for that audience? But it’s not like this is my first novel for adults. It’s my seventh. So it’s kind of funny. And anyone who writes in different genres will tell you that this is one battle you’ll never win. Reviewers of your YA novels will always say something like “Ford takes a break from his popular fantasy series about Jane Austen living as a modern-day vampire to try his hand at a story for younger readers,” and reviewers of your adult novels will say something like “YA author Ford moves into grown-up territory with his latest.”
Hey, as long as they like it, it’s fine with me. (Cue Sally Field acceptance speech music.) And they do like it! They really like it!
No Clowning Around
November 16th, 2009
I know today was supposed to be the premier of Creepy Clown Monday. But something magical and wonderful has happened and I can’t wait to share it with you.
The first two chapters of Jane Bites Back are now available to read and/or download on scribd.
FOR FREE.
That’s right, you can trot on over there and see what all the fuss is about. So get to it. And tell your friends. They’ll thank you later, but I’ll thank you now.
Again, if you want to read the first two chapters of the book Publishers Weekly called “fang-tastic,” go here.
Creepy Clown Monday will debut next week. I promise.
S.O.S.
November 13th, 2009It’s been an odd day.
When I got up this morning I thought I would spend the day answering copy editing queries on the manuscript for Z, the zombie-themed young adult novel I have coming out in 2010. But first–in a blatant concession to procrastination–I checked in with one of my online groups to see what was going on. I’ve been in this group for three or four years now. There are maybe thirty or so of us who make up the core group, and although only a few of us have met in real life, I consider a lot of them good friends.
The nature of this group runs to the sarcastic, which is why most of us enjoy it. We tease each other. We say terrible, outrageous things. We occasionally get our feelings hurt and don’t speak to each other for a while. It’s definitely not for everybody, but particularly for those of us who have been around for a while it’s a place where we can be ourselves and not worry about being judged.
Having a dark sense of humor is par for the course in this group, so when I saw the thread in which one of my friends claimed to have attempted suicide last night I at first assumed it was another of his jokes. But it soon became apparent that it wasn’t. Fortunately, his attempt failed, yet the feelings that prompted it (triggered by going off his meds) were obviously still there. Most distressing was that after half a dozen posts our friend disappeared, and those posts had been left hours before most of us read them. For all we knew, he had tried again, maybe had even succeeded.
The general feeling was that someone should call him or go and check on him. The thing was, we only knew bits and pieces about him. One person knew in what city he lived. Another knew–or thought she knew–his last name. Somebody had an address from a CD swap we did last year but didn’t think he still lived there. And anyway, what would we do with this information? No one lives close enough to go make sure he was okay. Should we call the police and ask them to check on him? Try to find a phone number and call him ourselves?
We found a phone number for a listing at his address. It turned out to be a book shop. I called and discovered that the building was actually a huge complex of stores and residential units. The woman I spoke to had never heard of our friend. Also, I think she thought I was either lying or insane.
All of this information was relayed to the rest of the group in real time. As new pieces of information were collected people threw out new possibilities. Meanwhile, a Google search of our friend’s screen name connected us to his blog and to other groups of which he is a member. One of them mentioned the university he’d begun attending last year.
It occurred to me that we could call the student services department of the university and that perhaps they could contact our friend or send emergency services to check on him. The question was, what if he was joking. We’d look like idiots and he might get in trouble. Or, even if he had in fact attempted suicide, what if he resented our interference in his life?
I decided to make the call. I don’t think the woman who answered the phone believed me at first, but eventually she transferred me to someone who did. “I don’t even know if we have the right name,” I told him. “This is all guesswork. But we figure if he is registered there and you can check on him it’s better to have him mad at us than dead.” I think that like the lady in the book shop he at first also thought I was insane, but the more details I gave him the more concerned he became.
Because of privacy issues, the man couldn’t even confirm if our friend really was a student at the school, although the tone of his reply suggested that we did in fact have the right name. When I hung up, I definitely felt as though something would be done. Whether we would ever know what it was or not was another matter. And how our friend would react to our attempt at helping him was yet to be seen.
Maybe half an hour later there was a post in the group. Our friend was fine, or at least he was awake. He had, he said, been sleeping since making his earlier posts. He was about to go see his psychiatrist. He had yet to read all of our responses, but was grateful for the offers of help and genuinely surprised that we would go through so much trouble for him. He promised not to do anything stupid. As far as I know, he hasn’t.
Patrick sometimes teases me about thinking that people I know only through online interactions are real friends. But I do. At least some of them. Still, deciding to get involved in this person’s life in a fairly intrusive way tested that. It would have been easier to ignore the situation or to write it off as a really bad joke. It would have been easier to “let someone else worry about it.” After all, we only know this guy through an online group, right?
But I’m glad we did something. I’ve been where he is. I know what it feels like. Sometimes that darkness seems so welcoming and part of you doesn’t want anyone to turn a light on. But then someone does and you realize that you were hoping all along that they would. Hopefully our friend feels that way tonight.
Oh, the other part of the day. Well, first I got a pile of creepy clown videos in the mail, so look for the first review on Monday. Also, the audio rights to Z sold and the pet store got silk worms back in stock and Ocho Patas is totally pigging out. So yay for us. Good times. Good times.
To Be, or Not To Be
November 11th, 2009
The other night my friend Jill and I ventured to the theater to see An Education. It was a no-brainer: period setting (1960’s England!), fantastic costumes (pearls and gloves! Odile Dicks-Mireaux!), great music (Juliette Greco! Brenda Lee!), a scandalous romance (He’s 30! She’s 16!), and so on. We live for that kind of thing. Patrick, who does not, elected to skip it.
Oh, and it was good. Especially Carey Mulligan, who plays Jenny, the young woman swept away by Peter Sarsgaard. She’s so absolutely fantastic you just want to hand her an Oscar now and tell everyone else to go home. Peter Sarsgaard is pretty good himself, although his British accent is a little awkward and he’s so adorable that it’s hard to watch him be a jerk. And despite her freaky deer eyes–and even though last month I couldn’t fully enjoy Surrogates because I spent most of it trying to figure out where I’d seen Bruce Willis’s wife before (I eventually remembered that it was in Pride & Prejudice way back in 2005)–Rosamund Pike is so good in her role that I totally forgive her and we can be friends again.
Anyway, go see the film. Even though you don’t leave all thrilled about life, it’s worth seeing just for Cary Mulligan’s performance, Rosamund Pike’s outfits, and Peter Sarsgaard’s goofy smile.
One of my favorite parts of the movie is the script, which is by Nick Hornby (who wrote the novels High Fidelity and About a Boy) from the memoir by Lynn Barber. There are too many great lines to remember, but one that stuck in my head is spoken by Jenny’s father. Earlier in the movie Jenny goes away for the weekend with Peter (Peter Sarsgaard’s character), who has lied to Jenny’s parents and told them that they’re going to Oxford to see the university there and to visit C.S. Lewis, who Peter claims is a friend of his. He even fakes Lewis’s signature on a copy of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe as evidence of their closeness.
Later, when things with Peter begin to unravel, Jenny gets into a heated discussion with her father, who has completely fallen under Peter’s spell and doesn’t want Jenny to stop seeing him. In an attempt to convince her to give the relationship another chance, he enumerates Peter’s virtues, among them the fact that he knows a famous writer. Jenny counters that her school friend Graham (who has an obvious crush on Jenny, and who is constantly outdone by Peter throughout the film) might actually write books one day, to which her father responds dismissively, “Becoming one isn’t the same as knowing one.”
Jill and I roared at this (well, we tittered, as we loathe people who make noise during films), although no one else seemed to find it all that funny. Probably because they aren’t writers. Because, see, this is so true. Although slightly intriguing in theory, in reality writers tend to be anxious, unsocial people who find life tiresome and always want to borrow money. Being a writer essentially means committing your life to your work, which is to say that you’re always stressed out about deadlines, perpetually convinced that you have brain cancer, and seldom get to go on vacation and when you do you don’t enjoy it because all you can think about is the deadlines and brain cancer. There are of course writers whose lives are not like this, but we don’t like her and only go to her parties because we can’t afford that kind of imported cheese on what we make.
Knowing a writer, however, now that’s a whole different thing. When you tell people you know a writer it’s like announcing that you know, say, a unicorn, or a mermaid. Something mythical. People are impressed that you know someone who writes books (or at least books that they’ve heard of). But this is only because they don’t know the writer in question. If they did, they would just roll their eyes. And should they happen to subsequently meet your writer it will end badly for you. I once had a friend pay me a visit and bring along someone I didn’t know. It turned out this person was just dying to meet my friend’s writer friend. That would be me. And apparently I was not what she was hoping for. At one point during the long, tedious afternoon I overheard her whisper to my friend, “I thought he would have nicer furniture.”
I know a few other writers, some of whom people have actually heard of. Occasionally it will come out that I know So-and-so, and not just in a “we have the same publisher” kind of way. Inevitably the person who hears this asks, “What is he really like?” Even people who should know better ask this. And I always say to them something I heard a friend of Stevie Nicks say she tells people who ask her what Stevie is really like: “She’s exactly the way you think she is.”
Because the illusion is what makes knowing so much better than being. Being involves, well, being. Knowing gives you all the benefits of being associated with fabulousness but without any of the icky stuff that comes with it. You don’t have to actually write the books or make the movies or go to rehab, you just have to know the person who does. And that’s really what most people care about. If you tell them you know a prostitute*, for example, they will more often than not think that you’re a daring sort who leads a very interesting life. Tell them that you are a prostitute, however, and now you’re just a whore who has crashed the party.
I have to get back to being a writer now. Try not to get too excited about it. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you.
*In the above example you may, for prostitute, substitute paroled felon, film agent, and Scientologist, among others.
From the Mail Bag
November 9th, 2009
For some reason Mondays bring the most reader mail. I don’t know if it’s because people have more time over the weekend and decide that writing to me is preferable to cleaning out the garage or what, but the mailbox always seems to be particularly stuffed come the start of the week.
Today I received two e-mails that–for very different reasons–made me happy. Here’s the first one. (Note: I’ve changed the writers’ names, but the text is unedited.)
Mr. Ford,Were you born a homosexual or did you choose to become one (long story short I’m writing a research paper for my English 104 class and I came upon your book, and I just HAD to email you)?
Thank You,
Debbie in Dubuque
I get a lot of mail from students writing papers, mostly from kids who have read one of my young adult novels. Usually they arrive on Sunday evening and end with “my paper is due tomorrow morning, so please write me back before 8:30.” Also popular is the “My teacher told us to write to someone who wrote a book and ask what it’s like to write a book and where do you get your ideas so I picked you and could you send me a signed book kthxbi” letter.
Patrick tells me not to answer these letters. But here’s the thing–they’re not letters, they’re blackmail notes. Oh, they might sound all cute and friendly, but read between the lines. Do you see it? Right there? The part that says:
“You could ignore this but if you do I’ll tell all my friends that you’re mean and your book sucks, and they’ll tell all their friends, and then I’ll tell my cousin Amy in New Jersey and she’ll tell all her friends, and this summer I’ll tell everyone at Camp Monkewinnemac and then pretty soon every kid in the whole United States will hate you, and once I write to my penpal Jeanine in France so will everyone in Europe, and also I’ll tell everyone in my Jonas Brothers online group and then it will be all over the internet and you might as well die.”
So it’s a problem.
But I like Debbie’s letter. First, the subject line was: REALLY Quick Question! Clearly, she understands that a world-famous author such as myself is terribly busy and can’t possibly have time to interact with his readers. A clever girl, our Debbie. Thoughtful. It makes me wonder about her. Who is she? What is this English 104, and what kind of teacher does Debbie have who is encouraging the students to write to world-famous homosexual authors? It gives me much to think about. Why, it’s practically the foundation for a thrilling novel!
Then there’s today’s second e-mail.
Mike, I am a Viet Nam veteran. I remember the exact moment I came out to myself. I was sitting on a pile of dirt, filling sandbags, getting ready for the Tet holiday, 1972, feeling like shit. And a sergeant walked by on his way to the shower, with only a towel wrapped around his waist and flip/flops on his feet. I realized whatever joy, happiness, fulfillment there is in this life; I would find it only with another man. Your descriptions of the night of the draft lottery, the first smell of Viet Nam when getting off the plane; these are memories that few people I know can identify with. And you described them so well.Thank you.
A Soldier
Now, I kno
w what novel this man is talking about. It’s Full Circle. And I’ve received this letter before. Not the same one, of course, but similar ones. And every time they make me cry.
I am not one of those writers who gets feelings of well-being and contentment from having written a book. I am one of those writers who is almost constantly overwhelmed by feeling that there isn’t a point to anything, including the writing of books. At least until I read letters like this one. Then I remember that there is a point–sometimes you tell a story that allows someone else to realize that their story is important.
This is a good feeling. It usually doesn’t last long, sometimes an hour, or a day, maybe a week or two at most. But often it’s enough to lift that oppressive wet wool blanket of doubt that often makes writing an impossible task. For me, anyway. I know there are writers who get up every morning and do cartwheels over the thought of working all day. But I hate those writers and don’t talk to any of them, and so occasionally I need people like A Soldier to remind me why I do this.
So thanks to Debbie in Dubuque and A Soldier for brightening my day. Debbie, I hope you get an A. Soldier, it was an honor to capture some of your experience in my novel.
Oh, what did I answer Debbie? I told her I was born fabulous and grew into it.
Book News!
November 4th, 2009Two good things today.
First up, I got the cover for my next Kensington novel, The Road 
Home. After making a slight detour with the cover for What We Remember we’re back to the look of the earlier novels. Once again the cover art is by painter Steve Walker. It’s called “Tender in the Grass.”
The Road Home is a “smaller” story than my last couple books have been. It focuses on one man–Burke Crenshaw–who following an accident finds himself recuperating in his childhood home in Vermont with the help of his widower father. When Burke, who is a photographer, becomes interested in the story of a Civil War soldier who lived in the area, he begins a journey of discovery that unearths not only the secrets of the past but of Burke’s own life.
Oh, did I mention that there’s also a torrid little romance involving the son of Burke’s best friend from high school (with whom Burke once had a never-again-mentioned encounter)? And that during the course of his investigation into the Civil War mystery Burke meets an oddly-appealing librarian who forces him to rethink everything he believes about what it means to be happy?
No? Well, that’s all in the book too. You can find out for yourself when it comes out in June of 2010.
Of more immediate interest is the latest review for Jane Bites Back. This one comes from Kirkus.
Keen readers will perhaps pick up on the semi-snarky remark in the closing lines of the review. Do not be alarmed. Kirkus reviews are required by law to contain at least one bitter morsel*, and for them this is radiant praise. I am very pleased.
And now to their verdict:
Armed only with her vampire powers, 192-year-old Jane Austen hits the publicity trail to promote what fond readers think is her first novel. Though the standard reference works agree that the author of Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park died in 1817, they’re all wrong. After being turned into a vampire by a bite from a contemporaneous celebrity author, Jane Austen faked her own death and went into hiding. At first she sought the company of her own kind, but she drifted away from vampires and ended up as Jane Fairfax, owner of Flyleaf Books in cozy Brakeston, N.Y.
The only blots on her happiness have been her inability to return the love of widowed carpenter Walter Fletcher—what would she tell him when he grew older but she didn’t?—and the 116 rejection slips awarded her novel Constance. (There’s some justice here, since excerpts employed as chapter epigraphs are rather overripe for Austen.) Now, however, the second of these trials seems to be at an end. Kelly Littlejohn of Browder Publishing loves Constance and wants to publish it in time for the beach-reading season. Jane promptly scores a spot on the TV show Comfort and Joy and an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Soon after she’s invited to a conference on romance fiction and Constance debuts as #1 on the NYTBR list. But Jane’s Cinderella story is comically curdled by her discomfort with airplanes, makeup and publicity, the need to keep her private life private, dark accusations of plagiarism—not to mention her thirst for the blood of an English professor, one of the talk-show hosts and, most satisfyingly, the philistine author of a self-help volume entitled Waiting for Mr. Darcy.
Ford (What We Remember, 2009, etc.) approvingly cites Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but his own mashup is better integrated, more knowledgeable about Austen and considerably funnier—although not quite as funny as his gorgeous premise might suggest. First of a promised trilogy.
We’ll just ignore that “not quite as funny” part. It’s a fine line. Go too over the top and they accuse you of parody. Try to keep it just this side of that line and you’re “not quite as funny.” And so it goes.
*This is not true. No one makes them do it. They just do.