An Epigraph, Unused 21 Jun 2010

When I wrote "All We Ever Wanted Was Everything," I thought it would be a nice character detail if Janice Miller drove around town cheerfully humming a song from her youth. I ended up structuring the novel's first chapter -- which takes place on the day that Janice becomes unfathomably rich, and is simultaneously dumped by her husband -- around the song "Happy Together," by the Turtles. ("Imagine me and you, I do, I think about you day and night" etc. Trust me, you know it). I wove the song into the entire chapter, starting with the second paragraph of the novel, using it in different places to trigger memories from Janice's past, her optimism for the future, etc. 

This was all well and good until my editor asked me if I'd secured the rights to the song. 

Oops.

My editor gently enlightened me to the fact that I needed permission to use these lyric snippets -- that, in fact, there are entire law firms that deal almost exclusively with this kind of thing. So I hunted down The Turtles' law firm, and got in touch. It turned out that the rights-holder (ie: the songwriter who composed the tune for the Turtles) was fine with me using the song ... as long as I paid him a chunk of money. A chunk of money so sizable, in fact, that I began immediately to rethink using the lyrics at all. Unfortunately, the surgery on the novel would have been so extreme that I decide to suck it up and just pay. Which is why you see the "Happy Together" lyrics all over the first chapter, and I stopped drinking lattes.

So I learned my lesson, right? It's true, I did. With my second novel, "This Is Where We Live," whenever I felt the urge to quote a song lyric in the text, I stopped myself and asked whether it was vital to what I was trying to achieve with the book. Uniformly, the answer was no. I managed to write a whole book (and one about a musician, to boot) without extensively quoting any song, and I don't think it suffered as a result.

But I did have an epigraph. Since "This Is Where We Live" was inspired in part by a Robert Frost poem called "Directive," I thought I would use four lines from the poem as my epigraph. "Great," my editor responded. "So, do you have the rights?"

Oops.

It turns out, the whole permissions question also applies to poems, essays, other novels -- pretty much any text from which you quote more than two lines. You'd think that after 15 years as a professional writer, I would have known this. Somehow, I didn't. And this time around, I had a baby with a college education I needed to save for, so the idea of spending the money was far less appealing. An epigraph would have been nice, but it certainly wouldn't be missed if it wasn't there. As a result, anyone who buys "This Is Where We Live" will notice that there is no epigraph. My daughter will get a month at Harvard (no pressure, kid), instead.

As a side note - Whenever I now read a book that quotes extensively from songs, or poems, or other books, I always wonder whether that person shelled out a small fortune for rights, or whether they personally knew those musicians/writers/poets and somehow received permission gratis. ("Lit" by Mary Karr, for example, is chock-full of poetry, but I imagine she got most of it for free from her fellow poets.) Perhaps this is the new literary bragging rights: Free words from famous people.

In any case, I'm fairly certain that it's fine to publish the epigraph here. If not, I'm sure I'll hear from Robert Frost's lawyers. Until then, here it is, for your edification, my epigraph:

Weep for what little things could make them glad
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
-- "Directive," Robert Frost. 

You can find me in Costco 25 May 2010

Last week, my mother called me on her cell phone from San Francisco. "I'm in Costco," she said, in a stage whisper. "They're selling All We Ever Wanted! I just moved it from the bottom of the pile and now it's sitting on top of the James Patterson books!" (My mother, bless her heart, is an adept reshelver of books -- after she departs a bookstore, it is quite likely that the annoyed staffers will find my two-year-old novel sitting front and center on the "new releases" table.) 

Then, this morning, a friend emailed me a photo of the fruits of his latest trip to a Los Angeles Costco: Diapers, Bombay Sapphire, and All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, for the very reasonable price of $8.99.

I have mixed feelings about this. Costco only sells 250 titles at a time. The fact that AWEWWE is being sold now, nearly two years since its release date, is a great sign that the book still has a life in it. (Which isn't a given in this dismal market). It's also flattering that Costco deems it worthy of a slot on their coveted tables. And yet! The book is being sold for a good third off its usual cover price, which is bad for independent bookstores who can't compete with these prices, and also not particularly lucrative for publishers, and ultimately, not so lucrative for authors either. And yet! Costco sells a vast quantity of books, being one of the top 5 sellers in the US, and anything that helps sell vast (or even middling) numbers of my book, thereby introducing Janelle Brown to people who might not otherwise have heard of me, is good for me in the long run. (According to a New York Times story, "A forgotten older paperback, recommended and featured by the book buyer at Costco, can sell more copies in six weeks than it did in the last few years combined.")

I hear that authors have even started doing signings at Costco (Sarah Palin and Bill Clinton have both stopped in recently to sign, and even smaller authors have started adding stops to their book tours). The bookish elite may be horrified by the idea of hawking literature alongside free samples of frozen pizza and shrinkwrapped underwear, but perhaps it's also a positive sign that an interest in reading is infiltrating even the most mass of markets. After all, snobbishness helps no one in the worst book market in decades.

So if you see me there, wedged between stacks of Twilight and Eat Pray Love -- or even in person, next to the salsa sample table -- be nice to me. Move my book to the top of the table, stop by to say hello. Throw a book in your cart alongside that bulk toilet paper and give it to your aunt Flo for Christmas. After all, at 30% off the cover price, it's a steal, and will (hopefully) provide her with even more pleasure than that six pound bag of salted nut mix, but with none of the calories.  

SoCal / NoCal freeways 3 May 2010

(photography by seismocat.)

I received an email from a reader recently, telling me that although she enjoyed AWEWWE, she had a problem with one aspect of it. "In chapter eight, on page 247, you write 'traffic on the 101 is light'," she wrote. " I was born and raised in Northern California and we never refer to our freeways as the 101, or the 880.  I immediately figured that you were from Los Angeles."

She's right, and I am mortified to have made the mistake. I also grew up in Northern California, and spent the first 28 years of my life driving up and down 101, taking 80 across the Bay Bridge, and cruising along scenic 280. But I've been living in Los Angeles for eight years now and clearly, I've gone native. Now I take the 10 to Santa Monica, the 101 into the Valley, and the 5 north when I go to visit my family in San Francisco (who are, of course, mortified by my new highway vernacular).

Apologies to my NoCal readers, but I actually prefer the SoCal manner of speaking when it comes to our roads. Here in Los Angeles, the highways seem to have personalities of their own. There's the stately, but precariously outdated 110; the goliath workhouse 5, with lane after lane of big rigs; the serenely quiet 2, so comparatively little-used that it feels like a secret; the 405, a parking lot that strikes fear in my heart; and the bipolar 10, a highway that is a clogged nightmare one minute, a utilitarian speedway the next, depending on the hour of the day. Not to mention the PCH, which is kind of like a virginal Disney starlet, pretty and show-offy but not going to let you get anywhere fast (just try driving to Malibu on a sunny Saturday in June). 

Highways in Los Angeles are such a part of our daily lives, I suppose we (note that I'm saying "we" now - another NoCal strike against me) feel the need to grace them with proper articles. As if we're granting them both specificity and respect: These aren't just any old highways, they are *the* 5, *the* 101, *the* 710. Local celebrities, the asphalt equivalent of *the* Helen Mirren or *the* Miley Cyrus.  Someone somewhere -- a semiotics student at UCLA? Mike Davis? -- has probably written a thesis about this.

In any case, I hope my NoCal readers will forgive me. I still consider myself a San Franciscan at heart, even if I drive the 5 to get there now.

Come chat with me on GoodReads 9 Jun 2009

It’s a summer Wednesday. You’re halfway through the week. Deadlines are piling up; emails remain unanswered. The weekend is too far away on either side. What better way to procrastinate away the worst day of the week than to come talk book with me?

Every Wednesday this summer I’ll be chatting up a storm with fans and friends on GoodReads, discussing not just All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, but the writing process, the joy of reading, favorite books, and pretty much anything lit. Come probe me with your most challenging questions!

click here to join me!

signing stock 3 Jun 2009

One of the most curious tasks assigned to a touring author is “stock signing.” This involves visiting every bookstore in a city and signing every copy of your book that they have in the store. The benefits are threefold: a) your book generally gets marked with an “autographed copy” sticker, which helps sell books; b) your newly-signed book often gets moved to a more prominent position on a front table, which helps sell books; and c) you get to meet the booksellers in person, who will then hopefully feel more of a personal connection to you and your novel, and, yes, sell books.

The other upside of doing this is that you get to visit bookstores where you’re not doing events. As such, I’ve managed to visit some of the most wonderful independent bookstores that I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered — like Elliot Bay Books in Seattle, an incredible brick edifice to books which just reeks of history; or Depot Bookstore in Mill Valley, with its wonderful cafe. Most bookstore salesclerks are happy to meet the author, want to chat about your book, clearly care about writing — including some great staff that I’ve met at assorted Borders and Barnes & Noble. But every once in a while you have an encounter like this:

Me: “Hi, my name is Janelle Brown, and I’m wondering if I could sign stock on my book?”
Clerk, chatting on phone with friend: “You wanna do what?”
Me: “Um, autograph my book?”

Clerk, clearly annoyed to be interrupted, huffs off to locate book. Returns, ten minutes later, smelling like cigarette smoke.

Clerk: “Can’t find it.”
Me, meekly: “Actually, it’s right there on your front table.”

Clerk retrieves books with aggrieved sigh. I sign books, hand them back to bookseller, who is now reading the latest US Weekly.

Me: “Do you want help stickering them?”
Clerk: “We have stickers?”
Me: “Just don’t put it over the title, please.”

Clerk begins haphazardly slapping enormous stickers on the front of the book, covering my name.

Me, still hopeful: “Thanks for taking care of my book.”

Needless to say, this is generally not something that happens at a little independent, but at a major chain store. And it makes me appreciate, more than ever, those bookstores where you feel like the booksellers aren’t just selling widgets to make money, but consider themselves stewards of literature. Places where booksellers lovingly post recommendations under their favorite books and are eager to hand-sell you an author you’ve never heard of. It’s horrifying to me that they are such an endangered species — the entire city of Los Angeles boasts fewer than half a dozen these days.

NY Times Extended Bestseller List 30 May 2009

The novel debuts at #30 on the New York Times Extended Bestseller List!

A tale of nine covers 15 May 2009

They say “don’t judge a book by its cover,” and after seeing what publishers in assorted countries have done with mine, I now understand why. It’s hard to imagine that they all belong to the same book.

Above left:  There’s the rather Victorian Italian cover (with a different title, since the American title didn’t work in translation).

Above right: And then there’s the more iconic and sly American cover, with nary a distressed lady in sight. This one got a fair amount of praise (though, oddly, also provoked Janet Maslin to lump it in with a “chick book” story in the New York Times.

Above:  My American publishers stuck with this cover for the paperback — although they changed the font to a serif font, added a number of quotes and a pink “bestseller!” medallion.

Above left:  An early (and fairly generic) Dutch cover that got scrapped...

Above right:  ...in favor of a version of American sundae cover with a more whimsical font.

Above left:  The British hardback cover, very American Beauty.

Above right:  And then the paperback British cover, which went in a completely different direction. (You can see a flower theme evolving here - trust me, the book doesn’t have anything to do with flowers.)

Above left:  There’s the German cover, which feels modern and sophisticated. I like this one because of the graphical feeling to it, and the way it’s divided into sextants.

Above right:  And the American Large Type cover, which, frankly, I just find perplexing. Are those Faberge eggs?

Authors love to complain about their covers — women often (rightly) argue that they’re being pigeonholed with covers that denote them as “chick books” and ethnic writers bemoan the “exotic” henna-tattoo-type covers that sell them as the next Salman Rushdie-Khaled Hosseini-Jhumpa Lahiri. It’s the rare author that says they’re thrilled with their cover — probably because most have absolutely no say over the finished product.

What I can take away from my own experience is that each cover was designed by publishers who had a specific demographic and marketing plan in mind — and they weren’t always the same. I’m sure they know better than me the tastes of the readers in their individual countries, but the wide spectrum of “tone” on these covers is still very curious. At the least, it provides an interesting glimpse into the minds of marketing departments around the world.

There’s at least one similarity between them all: My novel wasn’t written as a “woman’s book” - despite the fact that it has three women as characters — but it’s clear that across the globe, the marketing is being geared towards that gender. (And no wonder - women make up the majority of fiction readers.) Food, flowers, women in bikinis, women in pretty dresses, and bright colors like Tiffany blue and pink and purple — these, apparently, are considered lady-friendly imagery, no matter what country you live in.   

Tell me - which is your favorite? And for those of you who have read the book, which one do you think most aptly captures the content?

AWEWWE paperback 12 May 2009

It's out in paperback. Go buy it!

"On the Same Page" book club 9 Apr 2009

The San Francisco Public Library has chosen ALL WE EVER WANTED WAS EVERYTHING for its "On the Same Page" citywide book club, for July/August.

Book tour in the works 2 Apr 2009

The paperback release is impending - May 12, 2009 in the United States. A West Coast book tour is in the works -- look at the Events listings to see when I'll be hitting up an independent bookstore near you.