But that’s no good for consumers, apparently. Media Bistro (among many, many others), points out that a law firm is representing two clients (and opening up for more) in a class-action lawsuit against five big publishers and Apple.

I could explain the details but you’re better off reading some of the media reports, along with the (obviously slanted) post about it on the Hagens Berman website.

Wow.

Discuss.

We made this.

There were others that saw the light of day first, several books that have my name on their contracts, but they were already accepted before I started at Gray Dog; my signature was merely a formalizing of a previous decision. My work on those was largely proofreading and light copyedits, some cover design. And there’s the Zafiro book, And Every Man Has to Die, that I signed after BP, but he’s penned several books and it, too, was pretty well accepted before I started here. Burning Paradise is different. I picked it out of the slushpile, vouched for it when the time came, and now I’ve seen it through from a twenty-year-old manuscript to a brand-new novel. In many ways it encapsulates my experience as Senior Editor at GDP. Along the way there were many moments of confusion, frustration, exhaustion, celebration, and primal piss-in-your-pants fear.

Terry Hughes lived in California for many years, and was the Chief of the Paradise Volunteer Fire Department in the Santa Barbara area. He fought wildland fires and saw firsthand the damage that can be done by nature, and how that damage can be exacerbated by an arsonist who’s a little sick in the head. He called on that knowledge when he wrote the draft of Burning Paradise, which he entered into the writing contest at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference some years ago. He won. The prize was consultation with Sue Grafton, who helped him shape his characters and plot and refine his style. Not a bad prize, eh?

Yet there was still an unfinishedness to the manuscript when it came to me last summer. Bits of the plot were incomplete, some of the characters were outlines more than full people, that sort of thing. I took a chance on it. It was terrifying, knowing that it was the first book I was putting my faith in.

This week marks my one-year anniversary at Gray Dog. It’s unbelievable how much has happened. Gray Dog is small. Very small. Like offices-inside-another-business small. Two and a half employees small (plus an intern, now). Nobody-east-of-Idaho-knows-who-we-are small.

Or at least we used to be. In the last year we’ve started social media efforts, rebuilt the website, built more contacts at bookstores and chains, added online submissions, and many other things. We’ve upped the number of submissions by roughly 100%, and the geographical range has grown tremendously. In one week in March, we received submissions from 12 states and three other countries. For a small-time publisher with little to no marketing presence, that’s not bad.

The growth has been painful at times. More submissions means more submission reading. We cut our projected titles from 20-ish per year to eight or nine, which is still very ambitious for such a small team. But the mission has to be to create good books, books worth buying, and that takes time and effort.

Through it all there’s been the continual reminder that finances play such a vital role in publishing, and they can knock you out cold. It costs money to promote books, and we don’t have much (or any). The most difficult part of my job is tied up in the best part: there’s nothing more gratifying than telling someone we want to publish their manuscript. But alongside that I have to tell them not to expect a bestseller because we simply don’t have the resources to promote heavily. It’s incredibly painful to have to tell an author that they’re on their own when it comes to travel expenses, that I hope they have a fuel-efficient car.

It hurts not to be able to support authors the way I’d like to. I want to give them everything they ask for. But all I can offer is that I’ll bust my ass to make the text the best it can possibly be. That we should hope a good book is enough, that if it’s really worthwhile people will notice, grandiose marketing scheme or not. That I will give them all the support I can when it comes to revising and editing, that together we’ll make something special.

A book is a little like getting drunk on a first date, slipping into bed together, waking up the next morning wondering what happened, and six weeks later finding out the pee stick has you captive. You’ve made a new life, and now you’ve got to prepare for it. I don’t know whether the editing process is more akin to pregnancy or child-rearing; maybe this can be taken up in the comments. But regardless, it’s frightening and uncharted territory. Oh, sure, there are plenty of guides (for pregnancy and parenting and publishing), but every book is different and has different needs, different strengths. Same with authors and editors. Some writers hate revising. Some won’t stop. Some editors are better at structural edits than proofreading. Somehow we must make it work, because we’ve made a commitment, and neither of us wants to abort the book.

So I read the book three times and then sent Terry about fifteen pages of notes. He read them, digested them, asked for clarifications, and went to work. Revision came back, and I sent about ten pages of notes. Five the next time. Then it was little things, doing massive copyediting for characters’ voices and consistency, deciding where the paragraphs really needed to break, which sentences needed to be cut in half. That went on for weeks, like midnight runs to the all-night mini-mart where you leave your car doors unlocked because if they want in they’ll just break the windows anyway.

Gray Dog is such a small press that one person can shepherd a book entirely through the acquisition, editorial, and pre-production stage. I signed, edited, copyedited, proofread, did layout, designed the cover, prepped for printing and then printed the covers and book blocks. Everything except actually binding and trimming, though I’ve done that, too, on occasion. But to imply that this was “my” book would be pompous of me. It’s not mine at all. This book is the work of Terry Hughes. Its his, absolutely. I’m a part of it, as is our book production guy, the marketing boss, the office manager. We’re all part of it. This is, in a way, a baby being raised by a diverse group—one person to feed it, one to change the diapers, one to keep it occupied while the others make dinner, one to worry about every bump and bruise and what happens if it gets a tattoo someday.

There’s been so much work involved. So many posters, flyers, palm cards, review copies, press releases, review requests (LA Times has a copy in hand), etc. Distribution setup, ebook formatting, an hour just selecting the typeface for the interior. A last-minute addition of a QR code on the back cover, something that could be a really fantastic addition to our books in general. But the real work? That took place two decades ago, after some asshole arsonist lit the Painted Cave Fire and burned over 500 homes. In the aftermath, Terry Hughes realized there was a story to tell. These revelations come to writers at all times. Sometimes peacefully, just before sleep comes, sometimes on afternoon jogs, sometimes only after hours of fruitless pounding on the keys. Sometimes when you’re walking through the blackened hillside with the soles of your boots warming and you suddenly realize you’re standing in what used to be someone’s house, and the only way you know that is because there’s a little doll lying underneath a charred timber, sooty but somehow unburned. And you think, someone lost everything because someone else was angry. And you want to understand why. So you write a book, have Sue Grafton tell you it’s worth pursuing, and you move to Spokane, of all places, and send it to Gray Dog Press, of all presses, and some greenhorn editor takes a flyer on it because there’s some kind of feeling it elicits that he can’t shake, there’s something about the character that makes you want to root for him, and he says he’s behind you all the way, for better or worse.

Terry, your baby’s ready. Happy parenthood.

Due December 30th.

(Sorry if I missed a Bark baby in between. Have there been others?)

It worries me. Not that there are people concerned about grammar and language (that’s a great thing), but that they hold them to be the most important aspect of a written work. And that these people are professional editors with lots of experience in publishing.

Isn’t there more to writing than noun/verb agreement? Important? Of course. But not the end, just part of the means.

This does not even remotely compare; photo courtesy of CC licence, by DerekL on flickr (click through)

Went to an estate sale on Saturday for a guy who’d owned a used book store for many years, then closed up shop and took all his stock home. Basement was literally waist deep with books, the main floor and upstairs only knee deep. Had to climb on piles of books to get to other books.

Like nothing I’ve ever seen, and so terribly sad to hear the sound of pages rending from their spines when stepped on.

And so terribly sad to hear the estate salespeople say that it was the last day of the sale, 50 cents a box, on Monday they were all going to the dump because nobody wanted them. They’d tried the local libraries, high schools, prisons.

And so joyful to see so many people enraptured by all those old books, climbing to find treasure. And so terribly sad to know that all of us combined would barely make a dent, and in a day or two they would be food for a landfill, to decompose in its endless plastic belly and covered by old mattresses, broken vacuum cleaners, rotten leftover chicken.

Among us one old man on his hands and knees in the corner, picking trampled books off the floor and arranging them into neat stacks twenty books high, doing so when I got there and still doing so when I left.

In two hours I read a thousand titles, fought the urge to find a shovel, stopped and nearly cried once, nearly shouted with glee once, nearly elbowed a young woman to get at a hardcover set of Updike, nearly found the December 1923 National Geographic for a middle-aged man with a box full of faded yellow covers and one book on building patio furniture.

I saved seven boxes that day, and that night I mourned for the rest.

But not when it comes after rain. Then it smells like nothing; it has served its purpose and now what? There are places in the world, in the country, in the state, that don’t get enough rain, that would kill—have killed—for the water I find merely annoying. And this adds to the hatred, because I hate the rain, and I hate hating the rain, and I hate spending time thinking about hating hating the rain. And about how rain is water and how easy it is to extend it as a metaphor, how sloppy and almost pedantic in a way. How I too often did before I knew better. How I now know better. How I have no idea what else I am doing wrong.

2. Writing. It’s good that I’m not in an MFA program anymore. Like rain, writing feels best when it comes after something that is not writing. In the evenings after work is done and the chores are done and the needlings of the day are tended to, or in the early morning with a cookie before breakfast after a night of sleeping and dreaming and resting only because it’s what must be done. Or in the lunch hour at work, sneaking, an addiction, a vice that’s hidden from coworkers and savored in a bathroom stall or a nook out back that no one else knows about.

But writing is no good when it comes after more writing. Long stretches pull out the idiocy, the sloppiness, the bad metaphors and the uninteresting bile. Words for the sake of words is a common cry—just get it out, fix it later. This is the advice I’ve given, too, like a priest who savors his flask after a sermon. There are people in the world, in the country, in this city, who would kill for time to write, the time I spend looking for unattainable things on ebay. And this adds to the hatred; I’m not stopping them. I’m only stopping me. I hate stopping me because I hate writing because I love it.

Once, a decade ago, someone asked me a question. I didn’t care much for him at the time but he was the only person who ever asked me questions for which there weren’t easy answers. I hate easy answers but they were easy then. He said that love and hate are the same thing. I told him he was a fool, though not so eloquently. That opposites could exist not just alongside but within each other was illogical.

I thought I understood what logic meant.

3. People. It’s good that I don’t go outside much. People never feel best. People are constantly making stupid decisions, basing actions on idiotic judgments or false information. People are flawed, badly. We already know this. But people reinforce it every day, as if somehow we might have glossed over it, forgotten how purple we are from abuses.

There are places in the world, this country, this building, where people would kill to be something other than themselves. To be some other people, and then again they would find the promise of the world is limited only by one’s eagerness to embrace it, and fail again. And these are the moments that are to be savored, to be examined and dissected. To write a story is to perform a vivisection of a character who stands in for a person who stands in for humanity. Writing is cutting someone open for all to see, picking a vein and tracing it backwards to where it started. Being da Vinci with his stolen corpses and ligaments, mapping the mechanics of the hand so he would know how Mona Lisa folded her fingers so delicately.

One does not know how long it will take for such knowledge to pay off. How soon we can realize how much we do not understand, how poorly we knew what we knew. How the rain affects us. How it is an opportunity to embrace what’s hated and make it something else. If it still rains tonight when I go home, if the world smells like damp concrete and rot, I’ll cut someone open on my keyboard and puzzle out which neurons do what, which pumps of the heart do nothing.

A metaphor, of course.

If you feel like writing:

Isn’t a train the perfect getaway vehicle?

Should prisoners on death row be allowed to choose their method of execution?

Can a zombie commit suicide?

Remember the first time you went back home and found that the cupboards had been rearranged in your absence? How long did you cry that night?

Continue: “Last night was the worst of the storm. The vase had broken, the dead flowers scattered over the rug. Everything shook; the whole room shimmied against the fireplace. Now, this morning, the vase was gone, the flowers back on the bushes outside. And the woman from the hardware store was on the couch again.”

And I want it now.

The concept is simple: a tablet-sized device that’s used for input instead of output. You write, you sketch, you draw, you doodle, you take notes. With a writing utensil instead of your fingertips.

To be honest I’m not even entirely convinced this is real. The product itself is almost too ideal to be true, and the website leaves a lot to be desired in terms of copyediting and business planning. But the concept!

The idea is that there are people like me in the world, who like writing by hand, who aren’t looking for an alternative, but wish there was an easy way to put handwritten notes on the computer for later use. I used to have a Newton 2100 just for that purpose. I had a crazy dongle setup with three adapters and three cables and an emulator on my computer just to get the data off the thing, but it was totally worth it because I could write with a pen. The Newton’s handwriting recognition was great for its time and still adequate today; if the noteslate one-ups that input, it’ll be a winner for me. You take the thing with you, jot down notes, whip out a few pages of that story or essay you’re working on, then pack it up and leave. When you get home, you plug it in and keep working.*

Why nobody’s done this yet, I don’t know. The technology’s been available for years now, and if these folks do it right I’ll be an early adopter. The iPad is cool, yes, a great thing for lots of people. Probably not for me, though, since the only reason I would want my iPhone to be that big is if I was going to do composition on it, which, if I wasn’t at my computer, I’d want to do by hand anyway. It’s possible that I could eventually get used to the lack of tactile feedback when typing on a touchscreen, but I like writing by hand. The noteslate, at this price point, could be the perfect in-between device. Cheap enough for people to buy it almost on a whim, but useful enough for people to buy it and use it all the time.

The other problem with touch screens is that they are simply too good at what they do. They’re designed to be manipulated by the human finger (or sausages). As such, they detect pressure from a map instead of a particular point, in order to determine where the center of the pressure is and thus make sure it responds to the correct location you intended to press. It’s very cool, but it means a rather clumsy interface if you’re trying to be precise. Even styli designed for capacitive touch screens can only do so much. For pencil-thin lines the technology simply isn’t very good. That’s where the noteslate comes in; it’s not trying to be an everything device, just a digital notepad.

Some things remain to be seen, though. Their execution is a biggie. I haven’t done the research on the company yet. Who knows if they’re even capable of putting together a quality product? What will the support be like? How durable will it be? Etc. But I’m saving my lunch money to buy one. They’re due out in June. Anyone else interested in this kind of product? I love to write in my notepad, but it’s transferring those notes to the computer for extended work that is such a hassle. This could be a game changer. Who’s with me?

*The website notes that they are “preparing OCR recognition for written text,” which I understand to mean that currently, if you write in long hand, it won’t be able to transfer it to plain text that you can open up in your favorite word processing software. I’m assuming it simply stores screen input as image files for the time being. The OCR feature is the key to this product, I think, along with being able to save input as vectors for image manipulation. That’s the killer feature this can offer. If it has that technology when it ships (and it’s gotten at least moderately favorable reviews), I’m in.

This is what happens to me when I take the approach of just writing, of not waiting and perfecting and nurturing and combing as I go along. This is, I think, emblematic of the effect such go-forwardness has on art. There is a beauty, a naturalness, a manic flavor to it; it is art, but it is somehow wrong. For me, the same with writing. Go go go and end up in the same place but with no way to trace the way back. When you push forward at every cost, refusing to examine what it is you have created, how can it ever be perfect? How can it ever be corrected? Do words not bond as tightly as spider silk? What are we to catch if what we build is so full of holes?

Page three shows a breakdown of where money went for the 2009 median taxpayer earning $34,140 and paying $5,400 in federal taxes. Near the top are interest on the national debt and combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which combine to cost $516.20 for this hypothetical taxpayer. Combine the amount spent on education funding for low-income K-12 students and Pell grants for low-income college students, and it’s only $67.92. The FBI gets $11.21.

And way down at the bottom of the list is the line item “Funding for the Arts.” Its piece of that $5,400 pie? Twenty-four cents.

Sorry for contributing to the “woe is me” attitude of writerly types. Let’s all give one more frustrated sigh and move on.