Tag Archives: D.B. Jackson

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, LonTobyn Chronicle, Tor Books, Winds of the Forelands, Writing

Professional Wednesday: My Best Mistakes, part IV — Managing Expectations

The Outlanders, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)For the past several weeks, I have been sharing “My Best Mistakes,” which have included inappropriate remarks at a convention, poor business decisions, and replies to reviews. This week’s “Best Mistake” is a little different, in that it’s less about interactions with others and potential damage to my career than it is about self-care and maintaining equilibrium in a difficult profession.

I started my career as a complete unknown in fantasy and science fiction. This was before Amazon had ever turned a profit. It was before ebooks had really become a thing. If one aspired to a notable writing career, New York traditional publishing was essentially the only game in town. So when I sold my first novel to Tor Books, one of the top names in speculative fiction, I was excited. My first advances, I now realize, were actually pretty decent, although at the time they felt small. But I dreamed of bigger things to come.

Jacket art for Bonds of Vengeance, book III in Winds of the Forelands, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Romas Kukalis)My first series, the LonTobyn Chronicle, did well. It won the Crawford Award as the best fantasy by a new author, and my sales grew steadily. Children of Amarid would eventually go through six printings. When I signed contracts for my second series of novels, Winds of the Forelands, Tor gave me significantly higher per-book advances.

I say all of this not to brag, but rather to set up a discussion of my expectations at that point in my professional development. Up through the releases of the first couple of Forelands books, my career had followed a steady upward trajectory. And — my big mistake — I began to assume that this was simply the way of things. I was climbing, just as I had hoped. My career, I thought, would build and build and build. Maybe I would never be a huge seller, but I would improve my sales with each publication, and improve my advances with each new contract.

It never occurred to me that the industry would undergo a set of seismic transformations, impacting everything from publishing’s corporate structures to the way we read books, and undermining all assumptions about the publishing business. On a personal level, it never occurred to me that certain mistakes made by others would have profoundly negative consequences for my sales. Nor did it occur to me that my luck — and yes, luck plays a large role in all of this — would turn on a dime from terrific to terrible.

To be clear, I wasn’t wrong to hope for progress. Ambition is good. Dreams of growth are good. Rather, my mistake lay in expecting that everything would keep getting better, in assuming that I could anticipate what the publishing industry would look like five years after I started or ten years after. I won’t even say I thought books would always be made of paper, or that the traditional New York publishing model would always remain ascendant. If someone had asked me if I believed such things I would have said no. Change is inevitable. But I certainly didn’t imagine such dramatic transformations would come so quickly.

I also should be clear in saying I know how fortunate I have been to have the career I’ve had. I love what I do. I get to play “let’s pretend” every day and I get paid for doing so! No, my career hasn’t followed the path I had hoped for. But twenty-five-plus years on, I am still writing, still selling novels and stories to publishers.

More to the point, I still love the work I’m producing. While my commercial performance might not improve with every novel, the quality of my writing and storytelling does. I am still learning my craft, and I take great satisfaction in the progress I make as a writer from one project to the next.

But the consequences of my mistake, of my unrealistic and unrealized expectations, were severe and long-lasting. It’s easy to look back now and see the magnitude of those changes in the industry, or appreciate the part chance can play in any writer’s fortunes. But in the moment, I blamed myself for things over which I had no control. I saw the vicissitudes of the business as personal failure. I convinced myself that instances of bad luck were an indication that on some level I didn’t deserve the success of which I had once dreamed. And I grew bitter with each new disappointment. So many times, I considered giving up on this job I love.

It took me years to come to grips with things I probably should have understood sooner. That in any profession, hard work doesn’t always guarantee success; that what we achieve and what we convince ourselves we “deserve” are often not the same; that in business, as in life in general, there is no point in complaining about what is “fair” and what isn’t; and that all any of us can ever do is work to the best of our ability, and treat people with respect and courtesy. The rest is in the hands of fate, or the divine, if that’s your thing.

In the years since those first books had me believing I was on a professional escalator to the proverbial heavens, my career has had plenty of ups and downs. I have had no choice but to adjust to the fact that there is no guarantee of more and more and more success. Waves and troughs, I now know, are the norm. And one of the reasons I am so happy in my work these days — happier than I’ve ever been — is that I have internalized these realizations. I write the stories I want to write, the books I know I would enjoy reading if they weren’t mine. And while I still do what I can to make my books successful, I no longer live and die with sales figures and reviews and such. I do the best work I can do, and that’s enough. It has to be enough. Because that’s life.

Keep writing.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Our Best Former President

Carter-Mondale 1976 Campaign pamphletIn 1976, I was thirteen years old. I couldn’t vote, obviously, but I could work for candidates I liked, passing out pamphlets and such. That’s what I did in my little (at the time) moderately conservative (at the time) hometown in suburban New York. I stood on street corners in the commercial district of our village and I handed out leaflets for the Carter-Mondale ticket. “Leaders For A Change,” they read. A message that resonated after Watergate and the hapless administration of Gerald Ford.

Four years later, as a more rebellious seventeen-year-old, I made phone calls for the insurgent primary campaign of Teddy Kennedy. My father didn’t approve.

I would be the first to admit that Jimmy Carter’s presidency was not a successful one. I won’t go so far as to say he was a bad President, because he did some very good things while in office, including trying to move the country toward energy independence and setting aside huge swaths of wilderness for preservation. He brokered the Camp David Accords with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, ending the state of war between Egypt and Israel. And he created the Department of Education, which, despite right-wing complaints, has done much in the four decades since to improve education in the United States.

But Carter could be prickly with the press and with other politicians. He refused to play the sort of games Washington likes to impose on new Presidents. Unlike Ronald Reagan, who defeated him, and Bill Clinton, who would win back the White House for the Democrats in 1992, Carter could be pedantic, taciturn, moralizing. Rather than being a happy warrior, he was more a grim crusader, deeply convinced of his own righteousness and uncompromising in his principles. In a way, he was too honorable a person, too unwilling to mince words, and also too nuanced in his thinking to be an effective leader. He came to office in the midst of an economic crisis that he was unable to ease, and he could do nothing to prevent the seizure of the American embassy in Teheran, Iran. The subsequent hostage crisis really wasn’t his fault, but it made him appear weak and ineffectual. It’s not surprising that he lost the 1980 election in a landslide, nor is it surprising that he’s remembered as a failed President.

Carter only began to flourish as a national leader after he left office. First, it should be noted that he never disputed his electoral loss or attempted to subvert in any way the transition to the Reagan Administration. A few years ago, that wouldn’t have been noteworthy. Now . . . .

More to the point, freed by his defeat from the constraints of electoral politics, he was able to focus on what he did best: advocating for social justice and casting himself as the moral conscience of an increasingly divided nation. The Carter Center, a non-profit founded after he left office, has worked across the globe to alleviate poverty, advance health care in under-developed economies, and advocate for human rights. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, have been steadfast supporters of Habitat for Humanity, working tirelessly to build homes for those in need. And he has helped several of his successors in the White House by serving as a roving diplomat.

While many (but not all) of our ex-Presidents have spent their post-Presidential years playing golf or painting or burnishing their legacies or even trying to redeem themselves and repair their reputations after repeated failures, ignominious electoral defeats, and illegal and immoral assaults on our republic, Carter has devoted himself to the humane causes in which he believes. He is a crusader for social and economic equity. He speaks his mind, calling out those in power who fail to live up to their oaths of office. He carries himself with dignity, humility, and grace. And he has set an example every day, showing us all what it means to be a public servant.

I believe a case can be made that regardless of who the best President in our nation’s history might be, Jimmy Carter has been the best former-President we’ve ever had.

Last week, the Carter Center announced that Carter, now 98 years old, was going into Hospice Care rather than continue to pursue medical treatments for his various ailments. He has lived a full and incredible life, realizing lofty ambitions, traveling around the world, and touching literally millions and millions of lives. In the time he has left, I have no doubt he will continue to speak on behalf of those whose voices don’t reach the ears of the wealthy and powerful.

And when he is gone, when we no longer hear his gentle Georgia drawl speaking truth to the better angels in each of us, he will leave a void in America’s ongoing political and social dialogue.

Wishing you all peace, the comfort of loved ones, and a good week ahead.

Bell Bridge Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, The Chalice War, Writing

Creative Friday: About That Celtic Urban Fantasy . . .

The Chalice War-Stone, by David B. CoeRight around the holidays, I was shouting from the virtual rooftops about my new Celtic urban fantasy trilogy, The Chalice War, which would be coming out early in 2023. The first book, I bellowed (virtually), would be coming out in February, and it would be called The Chalice War: Stone. It would be followed, a month or so later, by The Chalice War: Cauldron, and then a couple of months after that by the finale, The Chalice War: Sword.

So, about all that . . . .

Life happens. Lately it’s been happening to me. A lot. In this case, though, it happened to my editor/publisher at Bell Bridge Books, through no fault of hers, or really anyone’s.

The books are still coming. Really. Stone will be out in May. That’s the current plan. It will be followed a month or so later by Cauldron. Sword should be out by midsummer. The first book is ready to go. We have art; the manuscript has been revised, copy edited, polished to a high shine. We’re just scheduling it in a way that allows us to follow it quickly with Book II, which has now been through revisions and will soon be copy edited.

I apologize for the delay, but I assure you the books are on their way. And, as a way of thanking you for your patience, I offer another teaser from Book I. Enjoy!!

*****
While the woman’s heels still clicked on her walkway, Marti sensed a second source of power. The energy from this one was as turbid as the woman’s was clear, as tied to darkness as hers was wild. It took Marti several moments to spot this second presence, and when she did, she had to bite back a shouted warning.

A large animal—a cat of some sort from the look of it—crouched by the side of the woman’s house, partially concealed by the bushes growing there. It followed the woman with its eyes and the gentle swivel of its massive head, but it made no move to attack her.

Marti watched them both, motionless, holding her breath. The cat had to be a conduit, bound to a Fomhoire sorcerer. She swept the street with her eyes, not daring to turn her head, wondering if the sorcerer was close by or had sent the cat to scout. Or to hunt. If that last, was it after the woman or Marti herself?

After watching the cat for another few seconds, Marti convinced herself the creature was intent on her neighbor, not her.

For now, Marti had no access to her magic, and the stone was shielded. Power called to power, Alistar used to say. That cat—a panther by the look of it—would be drawn to a conduit as potent as itself, not to an unbound Sidhe sorcerer.

Marti stood smoothly, taking care not to make any sharp movements. She picked up the bottle and cup, tiptoed into the house, and locked and bolted the door. She lingered by the window, eyes on the cat. Her neighbor had made it inside; lights went on downstairs and, minutes later, on the second floor. Marti didn’t think the woman was in danger, at least not this night. But she had drawn someone’s interest, which promised to make Marti’s life even more complicated than it was.

After some time, the panther emerged from the bushes, padded out into the street, and with one last backward glance at the house next door, prowled off into the night. Marti remained at the window until the creature had reached the corner and trotted off of Fairlea.

Then she retrieved her protective herbs and stones, and went after it.

She understood the risks, but she wanted to find out who the cat belonged to. Having no conduit herself, and carrying the sachet and crystals, she didn’t think another sorcerer, even a Fomhoire, would sense her. Of course, having no conduit, if she was wrong about this, she would die.

She slipped back outside, locked the door behind her, and eased down the road. She made not a sound, kept to shadows, avoided the light that pooled beneath streetlamps the way she would patches of quicksand. At the corner, she caught a glimpse of the panther loping off the road into what appeared to be another yard.

Marti followed, and soon realized the cat had led her to the community playground she’d passed when driving in earlier. It was darker here; there were no streetlights or houses near the play area. But by the light of a half moon, she spotted two figures standing near the swings, one a good deal taller than the other.

The panther trotted to the shorter of the two, lay down at this person’s feet, and began to lick one of its paws. Marti crept closer, hoping to overhear something of value. She placed each foot with care, eyeing the ground in front of her for dry leaves, twigs, children’s toys—anything that might give her away. With fewer shadows here, she had to follow a line of trees—a less direct route than she would have liked. At one point, the cat raised its massive head and stared in her direction. She froze, deciding she had gotten close enough.

She couldn’t hear their conversation, but as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she was able to see the two figures in greater detail. The cat had lain at the feet of a man. He had dark hair and wore dark slacks and a pale dress shirt. The other figure was murkier, as if obscured by a black veil. She couldn’t imagine why, at least not until it raised an elongated arm to point at something above them. Marti suppressed a cry.

The moonlight revealed a translucent membrane of flesh underneath its arm, broadest at the shoulder, tapering to the wrist. No wonder it appeared to swallow light; no wonder it was so freaking tall. A Sluagh.

With nightfall, the air had grown stagnant, but in that moment, the smell reached her and her stomach heaved. Decay, disease, death. Smells, she’d read somewhere, could kindle memories that transported a person to different times, different places. This stench carried her to the old house, to Alistar’s brutalized corpse in the garden, to Burl’s blood-matted carcass in the kitchen.

Marti searched the sky and street for more of the demons—they rarely traveled alone. She saw none, but that did nothing to put her mind at ease. She resisted the urge to run—if the demon didn’t hear her, the cat would. Either would kill her.

Indeed, if not for the Fomhoire and his cat, the demon would have found her already. The panther couldn’t sense her talent for magic because she didn’t have a conduit, but the Sluagh could. It hadn’t because—only because—the Fomhoire stood beside it, no doubt reeking of magic. She shuddered.

A moment later, matters grew far, far worse. The Sluagh pointed skyward again and let out a rasping screech that made Marti flinch. From above came two answering cries, as harsh and chilling as the first. Two more Sluagh circled over the playground, their wings luminous with moon glow, the webbing between their long legs making them look like huge swallows. They wheeled, swooped toward the ground, and pulled out of the dive at the last instant, cupping their wings like billowing sails and landing near the other Sluagh.

The cat scrambled to its feet and bared its teeth. The Fomhoire caressed his conduit’s head and said something to the creature. The panther nuzzled the side of his leg, but it kept its bright eyes on the Sluagh and remained standing. For his part, the sorcerer had shifted his stance so that he could watch all three of the demons. He had also edged away from them; he would be no more immune to the fetor than Marti was. Likely he had a spell at the ready, just in case. Sluagh might serve the Fomhoire, but they would prey on any magical creature.

She almost hoped they would turn on the man and his conduit. Almost. The problem was, when they finished with him, they would sense her magic, and have her for dessert.

The Sluagh didn’t linger for long. The Fomhoire and the first demon spoke for another few seconds before the three demons leapt skyward and soared off.

The sorcerer watched them go, absently petting the panther’s head. When the Sluagh had vanished from sight, he glanced around and left the playground.

He headed straight toward Marti.

Blogging, Case Files of Justis Fearsson, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, LonTobyn Chronicle, Writing

Professional Wednesday: My Best Mistakes, Part III — Reviews, Damn Reviews, and More Reviews

Continuing the “My Best Mistakes” series of blog posts . . . .

Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)Very early in my career, when my first book, Children of Amarid, was the only one I had out, I responded publicly to a online review from a less-than-delighted reader. Amazon was still a novelty (no pun intended) as was the notion of online reader reviews. (Hard to imagine, right? That the idea of readers offering reviews of the books they’d read should have been new and different and even a bit odd?) I don’t remember what the reader in question objected to about the book, nor do I remember what I said in my public response. The original book is out of print now — only the 2016 reissues are available on the site, so our exchange is lost to the ages. All I know is that someone criticized the book, I didn’t take the criticism well, and I took it upon myself to write a reply and post it to the Children of Amarid Amazon page.

But that’s not quite what this post is about.

SPELL BLIND, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Alan Pollack)Some years later, soon after the release of Spell Blind, the first book in The Case Files of Justis Fearsson, another Amazon reviewer panned the book because my book was “a blatant rip-off” of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books, “a ludicrous case of copycatting.” For the record, I didn’t copy Dresden at all. I had only read the first two books of the series, and the “copycatting” the reviewer claimed I’d done amounted to using tropes of the genre, not elements of Butcher’s work. And so I responded to the review, wanting to set the record straight.

But that’s not quite what this post is about.

At this point, you might have sensed that I have a problem. There are writers out there, I know, who couldn’t care less about bad reviews of any sort. Clearly I am not one of them. It’s not that I’m thin-skinned. Well, not really. If people don’t like my books, so be it. I write for me, because I understand that we can never please every reader. Even if ninety-nine readers out of a hundred love our book, there will always be that one reader for whom something just doesn’t work — the characters or the setting or the magic or the prose. Something.

My problem, and I know I am not alone in this regard, is that I can get all those nice reviews, but the one on which I’ll fixate, the one I’ll remember, is the lone bad one. I think it’s tied to imposter syndrome, and to every other insecurity I have as a writer. And as I say, I know I’m not the only professional who is like this. Certainly, when I see a review that misrepresents my work, or impugns my professional integrity, I can’t help but obsess over it a little. That’s what happened with both of the examples I’ve already cited.

That’s what happened with another book in another series, which was reviewed in a fairly high profile publication. As it happens, this third review was mostly positive. The reviewer liked the book. But they also said something about the book, a mild criticism, that I felt was simply untrue. I didn’t respond publicly. I sent the author of the review a private message, thanking them for their kind words about the book, but pointing out that they had gotten it wrong in this one regard.

Why did I do this?

Because I’m an idiot. Because despite my protestations before, I AM thin-skinned about my books. I take editorial feedback really well, but I respond terribly to public criticisms that I feel are unjust or inaccurate. To my mind, reviewers — professional reviewers, those who merely comment on bookseller sites, and all in between — ought to keep in mind that their words can have an impact on people’s livelihoods. If they have legitimate criticisms, so be it. But they need to take care to get their facts straight. Okay, off my soap-box.

Where was I? Oh, right. I sent a private message to the reviewer. I never heard back from this person. But they reviewed my next book, and they took their revenge. Publicly. Brutally. Cruelly. Their review of that next book was one of the most humiliating things that has ever happened to me in my career. It was unfair. It was relentless. It misrepresented the book. The review left me heartbroken, because I loved the book. Still do. And I am certain this review came about as a direct result of that message I sent after the first review. It was my fault. True, the reviewer didn’t have to take their revenge in the way they did, but still, I should have known better.

Because writers are told again and again never to respond to reviews. Most people will tell writers that they shouldn’t even read their reviews. Clearly, I have struggled throughout my career to follow both these bits of advice. In fairness, I have finally gotten better about all of this. I do not respond to reviews anymore. I rarely read them. But as mistakes go, this was a big one, and it is one I’ve made too often.

Don’t do what I did. Write your book and move on to the next. Promote the hell out of every publication. Pay attention to your sales numbers. Don’t worry about your reviews. Don’t go to your Amazon pages and scroll through the ratings. If you have to read your journal reviews, so be it. Who am I to criticize? But don’t obsess over them. Don’t fixate on the negative phrases. And for God’s sake, don’t respond to them.

And if you can do all that, you’re a better person than I am.

Keep writing.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Title IX, Soccer, and My Family

This past weekend, Nancy and I went up to Nashville to see the U.S. women’s national soccer team play Japan in a group stage match of the She Believes Cup. The tickets were a gift to us from our younger daughter, who knows how much we love soccer, who shares that passion with us, and who has, since she was tiny, loved, loved, loved the U.S. women’s team.

When our daughters were nine and five years old, we took them to Birmingham, Alabama to see the women’s team play a “friendly” against Brazil. The teams have been arch-rivals forever and no game between them is ever actually friendly, but we’ll leave that for another day. Both girls has already been following the U.S. team for a while. They idolized the stars on that team — Julie Foudy, Abby Wambach, and, of course, the incomparable Mia Hamm. In fact, both girls played youth-league soccer in their respective age groups, and both girls wore number 9, which was Hamm’s number. They would both continue to wear number 9 through middle school and high school.

That day in Birmingham, they were in for a treat. We’d told them they would be seeing the U.S. women’s team, but somehow they had convinced themselves and each other that we were going somewhere to watch them on a big screen, or something. Honestly, Nancy and I weren’t certain what they thought. But when we got to the stadium, and they saw their heroes right there! — On the pitch! In the flesh! — they kind of freaked out.

The women won that game against Brazil 5-1. Mia Hamm assisted on three of the goals (including two by Wambach) and scored one herself. The girls were in heaven.

I bring all of this up by way of getting to the main point, which is this: Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 turned fifty years old last year. Title IX is a broad, wide-ranging law that prevents sexual discrimination in any and all private and public educational institutions, at any level, that receive federal funds. The law is designed to prevent harassment and violence, as well as discrimination, and it provides for mechanisms to combat these things. But for much of its history, Title IX has been most well-known — and, at times, most controversial — for its impact on school athletics.

For the record, here are some things Title IX does NOT do. It doesn’t require that men and women’s sports in various schools be identical, or even that they have the exact same budgets. It doesn’t require that women have a football team if the men do, or anything of the sort. Rather, it demands proportional equity. If men playing football have access to state-of-the-art safety equipment, then women playing field hockey must have access to the same. If both men and women are playing soccer at a certain school, then yes, the teams should have access to equal facilities and equipment.

It is, contrary to what many critics have said over the years, a fantastic law, one that has empowered generations of girls and young women with athletic ambitions. Like the stars on the U.S. women’s soccer team, and the stars in the Women’s National Basketball Association, and female U.S. Olympians in just about any sport. And like my daughters.

My sister, Liz, whose birthday it is today, was always a terrific athlete. She LOVED baseball as a kid and still does to this day. By the time Title IX became law, she had graduated from high school. She missed out on playing organized sports during her school years, and she wasn’t allowed to play Little League. If she had been, she would have been a star player in our small town. Title IX changed not only the rules surrounding educational institutions, but also our culture at large.

My daughters grew up playing soccer and also swimming competitively. Erin played volleyball for a while in middle school. Both girls were accomplished athletes (something they got from their mother, not me). But more than that, thanks to their involvement in team sports, both girls grew more confident, more resilient, more community-minded. Athletics made them into their better selves.

Nancy and I grew up in the early years of Title IX, when schools across the country were scrambling to catch up with the requirements of the new law. Nancy probably would have been more active in team sports as a high-schooler had the law come along a few years earlier.

Which might have been why last year she presided, as acting president of her university, over a singular celebration of Title IX’s 50th anniversary. At the university athletic hall of fame induction ceremony, her school recognized women sports pioneers — women whose matriculation preceded the passage of Title IX, but who nevertheless fought for inclusion in university athletics. Many of them trained with the men’s teams in various sports, and organized unofficial competitions with like-minded women from other schools. They had no official statistics with which to establish their credentials for the school hall of fame, so Nancy and others at the school involved current undergraduates in an oral history project that was designed to enshrine the stories of these women in the annals of university lore. What a worthy endeavor.

Title IX has done wonders for our educational institutions in many ways — preventing discrimination, addressing incidents of harassment and assault that years ago would have gone unnoticed or unacknowledged. And yes, we need to make far more progress in this regard. But the law has had an impact.

And with regard to women’s sports, it has inspired and enabled and drawn national, even global, attention to the athletic achievements of so many deserving women. I know from personal experience that in households like ours across the country it has enriched the lives of young athletes and of the parents who cheer for them.

By the way, at this weekend’s tournament, we watched the U.S. beat Japan 1-0, in a hard-fought match. We also saw the first half of the Canada v. Brazil match, which Canada won 2-0.

Have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Professional Wednesday: My Best Mistakes, Part II — A Bad Contract Is Worse Than No Contract

Last week, I kicked off the latest Professional Wednesday blog post series, “My Best Mistakes,” with a humorous story about my behavior at a convention early in my career. I hope you enjoyed it.

This week, I turn to more serious matters, because the fact is certain mistakes can have serious consequences for our careers. Before I begin, let me reiterate something I wrote in last week’s post: Some of the stories I tell in this series of posts will include other people in the business and/or will touch upon published works of mine that I am still seeking to market. In the interest of discretion, I will be keeping some details purposefully vague.

The events I’m going to describe took place many years ago, as I was putting the finishing touches on one of my early epic fantasy series, and I was looking forward to my next project or projects. This is common for writers even today. We are often a book or two ahead of the publishing schedule, particularly if we publish traditionally. And so as we are waiting for the last book or two of a series to wend its/their way through the production process, we are usually turning to the new shiny. And this was especially the case back in the years I’m talking about here, when self-publishing was not yet a Thing, and big-house traditional publishing was excruciatingly slow.

I had recently met a small press publisher at a convention, and this person expressed interest in publishing my next work. This publisher was ambitious, articulate, charming, and seemed to know the business. Put another way, they talked a good game. They had some big name authors writing for them already and they made it very clear they wanted to add me to that mix. It was flattering really, and they probably knew it.

To that point in my career, I had only written for Tor Books. Tor was and is a great house. Their reputation is global, as is their marketing reach. They brought me out in hardcover with all of my early books, as they did almost all their writers. They put out a beautiful product, they took out big, glossy ads in Locus and the Science Fiction Chronicle. They hosted THE big party at WorldCon each year. There was, in short, a certain cachet that came with being a Tor author. And I liked that. On the other hand, even as my star was rising early in my career, I remained a small fish in the big pond that was Tor.

And so, being a relatively big fish in the pond of this small publisher had some appeal. Add to that the fact that this publisher offered to match or beat the numbers in my most recent contracts with Tor, which had been generous, and I was eager to give working with this person a try. Never mind that all of it sounded too good to be true. I wanted in.

I signed a contract for several books. And if the publisher needed a little extra time to come up with the promised advance . . . well, it was a small press after all. It was understandable, right?

No, not right. That was our first warning that all was not as it should be, although it shouldn’t have been.

So far, I have made it seem the only problem with the contract I signed was that the small press publisher couldn’t do all they promised financially. But there was more to this episode than that. The books I sold them weren’t ready either. The concept needed a ton of work, something I didn’t realize at the time, didn’t WANT to realize at the time. But it’s true. I would later publish a much-changed iteration of this concept with a different publisher, but back in the mid-2000s, when all of this took place, the books were a shadow of what they could and should have been. The publisher’s failure to see the flaws in the original concept should have been a warning as well.

All of that said, I eventually did get my initial advance, and I eventually turned in the first book. When I got it back from the publisher, who was now also my editor, the manuscript was very nearly unmarked. “Looks great. Found a few typos and phrases that don’t quite work. Get the revisions back to me as soon as possible.” That’s a paraphrasing of the feedback I received, but it’s an accurate one and it set off alarm bells in my mind. I knew the book needed more. I didn’t yet know how much work it needed, but I knew it wasn’t essentially publication-ready. As it turned out, this was another sign that my publisher’s resources — financial, yes, but also in terms of time and human resources — were spread way too thin.

Within eighteen months of my signing the contract, the small press was on the brink of bankruptcy. We managed to get back the rights to the series, but only because my agent and I acted quickly and decisively. The series could have gotten caught up in the bankruptcy proceedings and then we might never have been able to sell the later iteration of the books to a different publisher. The publishing company folded not too much later. As far as I know, the publisher/editor I worked with briefly is no longer connected to the publishing world.

So, what are the lessons here? Let me start by saying that the lesson is NOT to avoid working with small presses. I have worked with several in recent years and, with one other notable exception, have had great experiences. Small presses are, to my mind, the future of the industry and a wonderful option for writers of every experience level.

No, the lessons are these:

1) If the promises made to you by a publisher (or, for that matter, by an agent) sound too good, too optimistic, too perfect, take a long, close look at the contract and at all the information you can find about the enterprise. Talk to other authors who have worked with them. Learn all you can. We all like to be told what we want to hear. We all want to feel wanted by our publishers. But flattery and rosy scenarios are no substitute for solid information. Because the old adage holds true: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

2) Don’t rush into anything. Don’t rush to get that first contract signed, unless you’re truly confident you’re a good match for the publisher. Don’t rush to bring a book or series to press unless you’re certain it’s ready. Don’t hurry into any publishing arrangement because you need the money quickly. Actually, that’s probably good advice for any business venture in any field. But it’s particularly important when we’re peddling our intellectual and creative property. If we rush into selling, say, a car, we might not get as much as we should. But if we rush into a publishing contract we can lose access to our artistic creation. If my agent and I had waited another month or two, that’s what would have happened with this series of books. Better to be patient. Better to delay the realization of our ambitions than to destroy any chance of realizing them.

And 3) Beware, beware, beware. The vast majority of the people I know in the publishing industry — writers, editors, agents, publishers — are honest and hardworking. They are in the business because they’re passionate about books and stories, and they want to do good by the people with whom they work. But there are a few — yes, I could drop names; I won’t — who are in it to make a buck, and don’t care who they hurt along the way. There are others who through malign intent or sheer incompetence seem to turn to shit everything they touch. Before you sign to work with anyone, make certain you know what category they fall into.

Keep writing!

 

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, LonTobyn Chronicle, Tor Books, Writing

Monday Musings: The Story of the Storyteller On My Desk

In May of 1994, Nancy and I took our first trip to New Mexico. (We have been back several times since, and we’re always looking forward to our next visit; it is one of our favorite places in the world.) By that time, we had been married for three years, and we had been talking about visiting the state since the beginning of our relationship. Early in that year, Nancy told me it was time to plan our visit, because she was ready to start a family, and, she said, “this time next year, I expect to be pregnant.”

Yes, ma’am. She was more than right, by the way. Our older daughter was born in May 1995.

At the time, I was still in the dreaming stage of my career. I had started work on the book that would become my first published novel, Children of Amarid, and an editor from Tor Books had expressed interest in the series. My agent at the time was negotiating terms with Tor, and already I was learning an early, nerve-wracking lesson about the slow pace of New York publishing. We had yet to sign a contract, and I despaired of ever doing so.

One of the many joys of visiting New Mexico is experiencing the artistry of the native peoples there. The various Pueblo communities produce their own styles of jewelry, pottery, wood carving, and other forms of visual art. During that first visit, I was drawn in particular to ceramic representations of the Storyteller, the embodiment of oral tradition, a symbol of shared history and community lore. Storyteller figures are typical rendered as open-mouthed (in the midst of relating some tale) with smaller figures — children, ostensibly — perched around and/or on them. The Storyteller can be of any gender. They can also take the form of an animal or bird, and they can support any number of smaller figures on their lap, their limbs, their shoulders.

I saw the figures as a symbol of my dream of being a professional writer, and I wanted desperately to find one to take home with me. Unfortunately, the figures are intricately crafted, and their price reflected that. I couldn’t find one that both spoke to me and was affordable.

As part of our visit to New Mexico that spring, Nancy and I made our way out to the Acoma Pueblo. Acoma is known as Sky City, because it is perched on a gorgeous, craggy mesa in the desert west of Albuquerque. It is one of the oldest communities in all of North America, and it is known for, among other things, its exquisite pottery. You can’t drive to the top of the mesa, but rather must park below and walk up. And you can’t just wander the community on your own. You can only access it by taking a tour.

The StorytellerDuring our tour, we encountered many people selling pottery in front of their homes. And at one table, a mother displayed her wares beside those of her young daughter. I think the girl must have been around 7 or 8, give or take a year, and she had made a few small bowls, seed pots, and dishes. And she had made a tiny storyteller. As one would expect, it was quite crude compared to those we had seen for sale back in Albuquerque (we hadn’t yet been to Santa Fe or Taos), but something about the figure spoke to me. Maybe is was just that the storyteller was so cute. Or maybe it was that the girl herself was so proud of it. Or maybe I saw in this child’s early effort to follow in her mother’s footsteps something akin to my dream of becoming a professional writer. Whatever the reason, I asked the girl how much it cost.

She looked at her mom, seeming surprised that she might actually sell something. Her mom said, “Five dollars.”

“I’ll take it.”

I handed the girl the money. She wrapped up the storyteller she’d made and gave it to me. And Nancy and I followed our tour to another part of Sky City.

Acoma Kiva, by David B. CoeThat was a magical day in many ways. Acoma was as beautiful as we had been told, the pale red stone of the Pueblo seeming to glow beneath a deep azure sky, wooden kiva ladders rising above their structures and reaching toward the clouds. At one point, I spotted a rainbow in the clouds overhead — there was no rain, just the prismatic color, which appeared for a moment and then vanished. I think I was the only one on the tour who saw it. I believed that, together, the rainbow and my little storyteller were omens, signs that my dream would, in fact, come to pass.

Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)Two months later, I got my first contract from Tor Books. Children of Amarid wasn’t published for another three years — that first book needed a lot of editorial work. But I was on my way.

Nearly twenty-nine years later, the storyteller I bought that day in Acoma still sits on my desk, right beside my computer screen. I look at it every day, and it still represents for me the dream that launched my career.

I wish you a wonderful week.

 

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, LonTobyn Chronicle, Tor Books, Writing

Professional Wednesday: My Best Mistakes, Part I

A new month, a new blog series. Not that I’m committing to doing a series every month. Really, I’m not . . . .

[Sigh] What have I done . . . ?

Over the course of my career, which has spanned more than twenty-five years, I have managed to accomplish a lot of things. But it has occurred to me that I have also made some pretty interesting mistakes. And maybe readers would learn something from hearing about a few of them. Certainly they might be entertained. And so, with this week’s post I kick off my “My Best Mistakes” series. I hope you enjoy it.

I’m going to start with a story a number of you might already know from one context or another. If you have seen me on panels or at readings, you might well have heard me tell it. If not, here you go. (And a note pertaining to this post and others to come — I will be telling stories that almost invariably include other people and/or published works of mine that I am still seeking to market. In the interest of discretion, some details of these mistake-stories will be kept purposefully vague. I hope you understand. If you don’t understand . . . well, I really don’t care.)

Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)Very early in my career — like, one book in — I attended a very large convention as a guest. It was by far the largest, best-attended con I’d been, too, and at first I was a bit star-struck by the whole thing. Unfortunately, that didn’t last. Read on.

One of my panels was on character-building. Or at least I think it was. Maybe it was on things that happen to us when we write. Or things we can talk about that will allow an impulsive, full-of-himself-young-writer-with-one-lonely-book-to-his-name to do stupid things. I was on the panel with three other authors. Two of them I didn’t know, though they seemed to be solid mid-list authors, each with several publishing credits. The third was a giant in the field. This writer also published with Tor, my publisher, and might well have been one of their three biggest names. I was nothing compared to this person. I was lint.

Somehow, the discussion turned to that wonderful creative moment when our characters begin to do things that we don’t expect, that we don’t necessarily plan. I have written and spoken about this quite a bit. To my mind, it is the moment when we discover that all the work we’ve done to create realistic characters has paid off. They are acting of their own volition in a sense, though of course we are still creating them. The creation is just happening deep in our hind-brains, making it SEEM that they are independent, sentient beings. That, at least is how I felt — and still feel — about it.

The big-name writer disagreed. This person responded to what I had said about this by telling me, in no uncertain terms, in front of a roomful of people, that if my characters were not doing exactly what I expected, I was doing it wrong. And be “it” this person meant “writing.”

“You are the god of your world,” this person said. “You control everything.” End of story. As it were.

The other two writers quickly dropped out of the conversation. They sat at the panel table, staring at their hands, keeping silent, and allowing this other idiot — ie. Me — to keep on arguing the point. Because they were very smart. Much smarter than me. I. Whatever.

Me? I just kept on arguing with the big name, the person who could crush me and my career like a bug if they chose to. Because I was right and this person was wrong. That’s what I thought. (Still do, honestly, but that’s beside the point.) Finally, in my growing frustration, I said (at volume, with heat) “If you write them like puppets, they’ll read like puppets!”

And then I realized what I’d done. Big name. Room full of people. Me saying, essentially, that this person wrote flat, boring, lifeless characters. Holy fuck.

As I have said before in other venues, in that instant the entirety of my tiny little career flashed across my eyes. I figured I was totally screwed. Worse, I had screwed myself.

Now, as it turned out, I was fine. The conversation shifted to another topic. I kept my voice down and my opinions blandly neutral for the rest of the panel. And afterward, I apologized profusely. The big name author was gracious, kind, generous, and forgiving.

I was fortunate. I also learned a valuable lesson. Panel discussions can grow heated; the best ones sometimes do. But even when they do, we must remain polite, and we must always refrain from making any of our statements sound personal or targeted. Because that’s the courteous thing to do. But also because we are always going to be on panels with a mix of people, some of them less experienced than we are (or at least equally lacking in experience) and some of them more experienced, with greater reach and a greater capacity to hinder our career advancement.

I got lucky that day. The person at whom I directed my statement understood I was speaking without thinking, in the heat of the moment. Other authors might not have been so understanding. I could have done real damage to my career.

So that is this week’s mistake. In future weeks, I will focus on different sorts of missteps — bad business decisions, bad reactions to reviews, etc. I hope you find the stories helpful.

In the meantime, as always, keep writing.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Monday Musings: Two Conversations With My Mom

Mom and meYesterday would have been my mother’s birthday — her 101st. I’ve written about her, and my dad, quit a bit in this space, though I haven’t written about my mother in a couple of years. She was smart and funny, classy and beautiful, quietly ambitious and deeply accomplished. She doted on her children and was, in turn, doted on by my father. She loved to travel and was passionate to the point of reverence about literature and the arts.

No one would ever accuse her of hands-off parenting. That wasn’t her thing. She was a constant and profound presence in the lives of my siblings and me. And yet, when I scour my mind for specific memories of her, I sometimes find them hard to gather. I’m not alone in this regard. My brother and I have discussed this at length and agree that she was, in a way, so constant, so engaged, that specifics give way to a sense of warm omnipresence.

But today, as I think of her, I find myself focusing on two phone conversations that took place rather late in her life and that have stuck with me over the years, for very, very different reasons.

The first took place when I was in graduate school. It was my second year — I’m sure of this, because I recall the project I was working on at the time. My mom loved that I was studying history, and I think she looked forward to me becoming a college professor. She never really approved of my decision to give up history for a career as a fantasy author, and she never saw any of my books in print, which I think would have won her over a bit. But I digress . . . .

She asked me about the project I was working on — a study of changing dynamics within the Democratic Party in the period between the landslide elections of 1964 (Lyndon Johnson) and 1972 (Richard Nixon) — and I told her about what I was learning, but also admitted there were elements of the story I was trying to tell that I had yet to figure out. She began to ask me questions, one after another, and eventually she pointed me to a crucial part of the narrative that I had been missing all along. I know — and knew then — it should have been obvious to me, but I think I was so immersed in the material, I just couldn’t see it.

But Mom did. She had such a nimble mind and was so good at synthesizing information and distilling it down to its most important elements. She was also a remarkable listener, and she liked nothing more than to speak with her children and help them deal with whatever was consuming them at the moment, whether it was a personal problem or an academic one. When I told her how helpful she’d been, and described for her how I could slot her insight into what I’d been writing, she was thrilled. I could hear her beaming. It was a wonderful moment.

Mom was diagnosed with cancer a couple of years later and was pounded by her chemotherapy treatments. Her cancer spread despite the drugs and at one point she needed to have brain surgery to remove a tumor. Not long after, early in 1995, mom slipped into dementia. Conversations with her became next to impossible. That brilliant mind lost its power, its coherence. It was truly tragic. We lost her long before she died.

Except I got her back for one last conversation — the most important I’d ever had up to that point in my life. In May of 1995, Nancy gave birth to our first daughter — after a labor that lasted some forty-two hours. Grueling for Nancy, exhausting for both of us. I called my parents to let them know, figuring I would just speak with my Dad. But Mom got on the phone, too. And for five glorious minutes, she was back. Fully. Miraculously, She asked all the right questions — “How is Nancy?” “What’s the baby’s name?” “Did everything go smoothly?” “Is the baby beautiful?” — and said all the right things, telling me how much she looked forward to meeting Alex, how happy she was for both Nancy and me. I think she even was cogent enough to ask who was taking care of our dog.

I hadn’t had a conversation like that with my mother in months, and the truth is, I never had another one like it. But in that moment, on the most important day of my life thus far, she was there for me. I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me, since being there for my siblings and me was what she did best.

I miss her every day. I wish she had seen my books in print. I wish she’d had the opportunity to meet my girls — she would have adored them. I wish I could speak with her today, to get her input on plot lines and her opinions on the issues of the world. I wish I could hear her laugh and see her gorgeous smile. But I will content myself with my memories, and with that sense of loving omnipresence that suffuses all my thoughts of her.

Happy birthday, Mom.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

A Friday Milestone

We built our house in 1998. Or, to be more accurate, we paid other people to build our house in 1998. We took a pre-made design that we found in a book of house floor-plans, and with some help from a local architect, customized it to meet our needs. At the time, our older daughter was three and Nancy was pregnant with our younger daughter. We needed a kid-friendly home that would give the girls space to play, and us room to watch them but also cook dinner and such.

We moved in just before Thanksgiving, and the house we wound up with was even more wonderful than we had hoped. Sure, it has its quirks. All houses do. But this one has served us so well over the past twenty-four years (going on twenty-five). We raised our daughters here, pursued our careers here, build a family and home here. We have loved and grieved in this house, celebrated and brooded in this house, and everything else under the sun.

Our first Christmas in the house, my brothers and sister came with their families to visit us. An ice storm knocked out power the day before Christmas, and we didn’t get it back for two days. It was very cold, but we managed to have a good time.

As the girls grew older, our lives and needs changed, so back in 2011 we remodeled and refinanced, turning a back porch into a teen-friendly den, and redoing our kitchen (and incurring additional debt). We’ve cooked some amazing food in that new kitchen, but of course, we cooked some great food in the old one, too.

I bring all of this up because today we reached a milestone: We paid off the last of our mortgage. The house is fully ours, which is pretty cool. Just thought I’d share the moment.

Have a great weekend.