Cynicism

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By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

I’m not making this up:

About seven or eight years ago, a former business colleague of mine called to tell me that his twenty-something son wanted to write a novel, and to ask if I would be willing to show him the ropes. I said yes, of course, and we all gathered at a Northern Virginia restaurant for dinner.

His son—we’ll call him Mark because I can’t remember his name—sat quietly through most of the meal while his father, Lloyd, explained this lavish plan he had put together to make his son a fortune by writing a hit book. Writing is a business, Lloyd explained, and since Mark wants to write full time, Lloyd pulled some strings to assemble a board of directors to fund the start-up costs (folding money for Mark) and to provide quality control for the product (the book). Mark would submit each new chapter to the board for approval, and then together they would determine the plot points that would generate the most revenue, based on market analyses of what sold well. With proper business oversight, they would have a product that they could all be proud of.

As this presentation ground on, complete with market charts, I watch Mark sink further and further into his chair. When Lloyd was done, he got to the reason I was there: to give some tips on what plot points sell the best. I was also offered a seat on the board, but I refused. Instead, I told him that if torturing his son was really the point of this exercise, then pulling out his toenails with pliers would be more merciful. Toenails grow back with time; that kind of assault to self-esteem lasts forever.

The meeting ended shortly after that. We didn’t even have dessert.

I think about that meeting often, especially when I talk to my writing colleagues who are losing their publishing contracts and editors who are losing their jobs because the suits at the top of the corporate chart decided that we need more of X, and that Y just doesn’t sell the way it used to.

I believe that if the publishing industry as we know it dies (and I don’t think it will, even though I think painful times lie ahead), it will be at its own hand; under the weight of the business model it has chosen. Gone are the days when art producing businesses were run mainly by lovers of the art form. Now those art businesses are run as profit centers of behemoth companies. It’s not enough to turn a profit at the end of the year; you have to hit target goals.

Hey, I’m a free market guy, a great believer in capitalism, so at face value, the model makes sense. After all, a publicly-owned company has responsibilities to its stockholders. I’m all over that. If cinnamon toothpaste doesn’t sell, it makes no sense to keep the cinnamon toothpaste division in business. You gotta go for mint toothpaste. People like mint toothpaste. You build your market share by differentiating your product in other ways, but you start by acknowledging that everybody’s doing mint.

Thing is, art is not toothpaste, and it defies market analysis. Sure, we can declare Painter X to be the best gol-durned artist on the planet and talk people into buying his mass-produced canvases at ridiculous prices, and in the process we can have success. With enough success, we can push the independent art gallery on the corner out of business and flood the market not just with Painter X’s work, but with knock-offs of his work.

But what about people who want something else—people who dare to like what others don’t? They might try a Painter X just so they can talk about it with their friends, but they’re not going to buy another one. In fact, maybe they’re going to move away from galleries altogether and just paint murals on their walls. A few years down the line, people will wonder why the art market is shrinking.

The big publishers today anoint “lead titles” on which all the “co-op” money is spent to “package” the book in a way that will give it the best “placement” in the store. The idea is to hit a home run every time. If the ball falls inside the park instead of blasting over the wall, then it will of course be the author’s fault, and we all know how many more of those are out there to take his place.

To hedge the bet, the B-school graduates at the top look at what people have bought in the past, and they push writers to create more stuff just like that. That’s what they buy, and that’s what they push. There’s very little future for a writer these days who merely earns out his advance. It’s The List or nothing, baby.

And then we wonder why the public prefers the fresh, unlimited (even occasionally awful) content on the Internet over plunking down $25 for a rehashed version of a book they’ve read a dozen times already.
I’ve vastly over-simplified here, and I of course exempt myself and my Killzone colleagues from any of the above. What do you think?

Title Trauma, Part Trois

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Recently, both Joe and John have been kind enough to share their title traumas. Funny how these things seem to go around, it’s like lice in a schoolyard. I thought I’d seize the opportunity to discuss what’s been happening in my neck of the woods.

More of the same, sadly. A few weeks ago my new editor (which bears discussion in a later post, the revolving door aspect to the editor/author relationship these days) announced that she no longer liked the title for my next book. Neither did anyone else at the publishing house, apparently. The words “it induced grimaces at the editorial meeting” were mentioned. She gently suggested that they would, in fact, much prefer a new title. Ideally in a week or less.

Now, I’m already up against a killer deadline with this book. I need a finished draft by January 1st, which means I’ll ideally finish my extremely rough, nightmarish, barely-legible draft by December 1st, then spend the next four weeks frantically trying to fill in all the bracketed spaces marked “physics stuff.” (Sadly, I am not kidding about this. Since nuclear physics has never been my strong suit, and the contract negotiations dragged on interminably, I was unable to devote much time to research prior to starting the book. So “physics stuff” it is, until I figure out exactly what I need to ask my wonderful, kind, and knowledgeable friend Camille Minichino during the editing process.) At some point in there, I’m presumably expected to celebrate the holidays, too, with everything that entails.

Facing a grueling schedule like that, when I’m trying to crank out 10 pages a day, minimum, the last thing I wanted to think about is coming up with a new title. And as John said, you become attached to titles, develop a certain affinity for them. I’d already changed the working title once, from “K & R” (which stands for Kidnap & Ransom) to “Tiger Game,” something my agent and I settled on after long consideration. And I thought, all things considered, it was a solid title for a thriller. Paired with good cover art, possibly a great one.

But no: the publishing house had decided that “Tiger Game” simply would not do. New title, please. Oh, and by the way, we’d really like it to be something powerful, with a lot of punch. But not something that’s been done to death. So please steer clear of “War and Peace” and it’s ilk.

Yikes. Part of the problem was that my previous two book titles derived largely from their settings. Both took place in small, relatively-contained locales. I knew the titles before writing a word of either story, and no one ever complained. In fact, they loved “Boneyard” so much that the main comment has been, “Can’t you come up with something more like “Boneyard?”

The new book is a bit of a departure for me, however, in that it jumps around the country, from San Francisco to New York to San Antonio, and the story involves everything from skinheads to border crossings to dirty bombs. Not exactly something that lends itself to pithiness.

So I did what I could. I canvassed my friends. Who are lovely people, but as it turns out, not so good in the title department. Offerings included “Watch Your Back!” and “The Obama Project,” which, as my book has nothing whatsoever to do with the President-elect, I chalked up to pre-election day exuberance. “Bungee Jumpin” was also mentioned, although there are neither bungees nor jumping anywhere in the storyline.

Thrown back on my own resources, I rounded up the usual suspects. I scoured a 181 page book of gang slang terminology, which produced such gems as “Diamond Shine” and “Thunder and Rain.” I searched the web for nuclear terms, eliciting “Top Off” and “Kill Radius.” I pored over quotes from militia members and other extremists, and (oddly enough) while following this vein skimmed through speeches of our forefathers. Books of poems were opened, then shut in frustration. I sent email after email to my editor with potential titles, over 100 in all. “Dirty Chaos,” sounded too negative. “Invictus” was too esoteric. “The Patriot Project” generated a ripple of excitement, until it was shot down by higher-ups.

Things started to take a grim turn indeed. There was talk of postponing the book launch, which until then had been scheduled for November ’09. Which was not necessarily the worst thing in the world: when it comes to a book purchase most people are swayed by the title and the accompanying cover. So if it came down to going to market with a title we were lukewarm about, or waiting for inspiration to strike, I was all for waiting, The question was, if that happened, when would I get on the calendar? A crime fiction author wants their books to come out yearly, ideally around the same time every year. We were already going to miss that window with a November release date, but if forced to wait until 2010…

It was stressful, to say the least. I spent every spare moment poring through books on the border patrol. I started a contest through my newsletter, offering a $50 Amazon gift certificate to anyone who supplied the perfect title. (This generated a lot of responses, but although some came close to the mark, none quite hit it).

It’s not an easy thing, to find a title that resonates with me as an author. After all, I was the one whose name was going to be on the book. The one who would be referring to that title ad infinitum, mentioning it nightly on a tour. Years into the future (with any luck,) this title might even be included in my obituary (I’ll admit, I have a tendency toward morbidity. Those of you who have read my work are probably not surprised to hear that). The search became somewhat all-consuming. I’d wander through my house, chanting titles over and over to myself until the words lost all meaning. I typed them out, all caps, in enormous font sizes to get a better sense of how they’d look on a cover. I agonized.

And then I woke up one morning, after spending hours the night before clicking through an online “random word generator,” contemplating “Desert Day,” “Rock Sundae,” and (I kid you not) “Saint Cobbler.” “Bungee Jumping” was starting to sound pretty darn good in comparison. “Bungee Jumping” could be a winner.

Thinking that, I opened my trusty “Alternate titles” file, which was now pages long, and there at the top were the words “THE GATEKEEPER.”

I have no idea where that title came from, honestly I don’t. I initially thought it must have originated via the contest, and went back through all the emails I’d received in the week prior: nothing. Checked my internet history: nothing. It’s a mystery.

But I loved it. It struck a chord. Turns out there was a Clinton-era border patrol initiative called “Operation Gatekeeper,” which jibed perfectly with my storyline. Sent it to my agent to double-check that I hadn’t lost my grip on these things: he loved it. And my editor practically swooned.

Phew.

So, barring any unforeseen circumstances (and as every author knows, unforeseen circumstances are the nature of the publishing beast), THE GATEKEEPER will be released as planned next November.

Now I just have to finish the darn thing.

So I’m curious: what do you all think? Is it a winner? Or should I have gone with “Bungee Jumping” instead?

Please say you love it.

Just say no

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by Joe Moore

731 I was a guest at a recent writer’s event. I got to discuss my new book, THE 731 LEGACY (co-written with Lynn Sholes). Afterwards I took part in a meet-and-greet with the audience. Among the questions, someone asked me: What was the most important advice I could give a new writer? My answer was to realize that you can just say no.

I explained that publishing is a manufacturing industry. But unlike most other industries, publishers don’t manufacture anything. Instead, they have an endless tsunami of writers constantly beating down their doors with pre-manufactured product. Yes, they have to know what the customer is looking for. And yes, they need to edit, package and market it in a professional and appealing manner. But publishers will never run out of product because there will always be writers wanting to be published.

New writers want to be published in the worst way. Unfortunately, their journey to publication can turn over time from excitement and enthusiasm to desperation and fear. You write a book, send out queries, start getting rejections. But you don’t give up. You revise your query, send it out again, and get more rejections. So what happens? You become desperate. You think that maybe you’ll never get published or never find an agent. Never see your precious work on the shelves of Borders or B&N.

Out of fear, you become so desperate that you are ready to take the first offer that comes along. Because when it does and you don’t, you may never get another shot.

Then the call or letter finally comes and someone is willing to issue a contract. What do you do? You jump at it without a moment’s hesitation. You just want to be published. And you finally got an offer. You go for it.

Now, stop and consider this. Did you marry the first person that asked you out? Did you buy the first car you saw for sale? Or the first house?

When that offer to publish finally comes along, ask yourself: Is this publisher perfectly matched to my writing? Will this publisher put in place the appropriate marketing and distribution to get my book to the correct audience? Do they have the expertise? Do they understand the genre? Will I get the quality and personalized service I need? And most important, do they have the ability to help me grow my career as a writer?

Remember that desperation is not a reason to say yes. It’s a reason to stop and realize that you can say no. Because getting married is blissful, but getting a divorce is not. Always remember that you can just say no.

What is the most important advice you can give a new writer?

Talk me down—is the book biz doomed?

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Clare’s post yesterday about the demise of publishing sent me scurrying around the Web. I was
searching for signs of hope that the book publishing industry is not modeled after a Model T or a dinosaur, doomed by an era of digital entertainment to be consigned to the museum or bone yard.

What I’ve found so far is not encouraging. For example, I stumbled across a piece by Boris Kachka in New York Magazine, “Have We Reached the End of Book Publishing As We Know it?” Per the well-researched, well-argued article, the book publishing industry as we know it is doomed, as evidenced by the following:

  • Upheavals in the corporate executive suites
  • The mad rush to e-book publishing
  • The continuing woes of midsize publishers
  • The declining fortunes of in-store booksellers, including Borders
  • A “vertical market grab” by Amazon

Kachka’s article contains a scary message for publishers and authors. Everyone in the industry that he interviewed seems to agree that the old business model of publishing is going away, but no one has a lock on how the future will look. Kachka posits that the new “big thing” in commercial publishing might be—I kid you not—true-life stories about heroic pets who teach humans lessons about being human. The rest of the publishing landscape might consist of reduced advances for authors (not an adjustment for most midlist writers, whose advances are already paltry), some form of POD and e-book distribution, and an uncertain future for everything else, including so-called “literary” fiction.

I hope the article exaggerates, but just in case, I’m getting prepared. Did I mention I have a great story about our newly adopted cat? Her name is Bianca–she’d a lovely blue-eyed Siamese who is teaching me how to be more human. Tie-ins include a lovely “Wisdom of Bianca” cat calendar. Details to follow.

Now, about that million dollar advance…


Please someone, talk me down. Is the publishing business model really broken? Is there no hope?

If you can’t reassure me, then tell me about about a heroic puppy who teaches a cat how to be more human.

Otherwise I’ll have to order the e-book version from Amazon.

It’ll be here in ten seconds.

The Model T of Publishing

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by Clare Langley-Hawthorene
www.clarelangleyhawthorne.com

My husband and I were walking with out boys to our favorite coffee shop – Peets in Berkeley when we saw a model T Ford parked on the road in all its early glory. The boys were (of course) fascinated but seeing this anachronism made me reflect on the world today – the model T Ford converted what was a luxury that few could afford into something attainable to ‘the masses’. Now GM veers towards bankruptcy…hmmm…what’s wrong with that image? Publisher’s today are hardly on the verge of bankruptcy but GM’s position makes you think – GM once had over 50% of the US market share but they failed to see change coming and didn’t adapt to the market in time…
So what about the publishing industry (not known for being fleet of foot at the best of times)?

Are we in danger, just as the auto-makers are, of failing to see our own redundancy? Failing to heed the warning signs? What about the publishing industry as a whole – are they equipped to cope with the changing market – hell, are they equipped to cope with the changing world?

I have a biography on the man who established my own publisher – Penguin – who strived to bring (affordable) literature to the masses but now we have a system in which a few major players dominate and the lure of what is ‘affordable’ and ‘accessible’ as lost some of its attraction. If it’s all about the bottom line, you have to wonder, how do publishers survive and how will they survive into the future? Are they merely waiting for the next Dan Brown to deliver his manuscript? Are publishers (the way we know them) going to rise and fall on the fortunes of the few at the top? Will there even be a ‘reading public’ in twenty years or are we just kidding ourselves? I have to admit that most of my readers are well into their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s (and beyond) – so what happens when those who buy the books are no more? How will the industry adapt so my children will be as excited about books (in whatever form they may be) as I was?

We certainly live in interesting times – so what do you think? How will the publishing industry adapt to survive in the future? How will writer’s adapt – hell – how will we even survive???

The inspiration for The Memorist

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By guest blogger, M.J. Rose

rose-mj Once upon a time, my husband and I went to Vienna on a vacation and fell in love. Not with each other – we’d already done that – but with the city.

Growing up in Manhattan you don’t bump into history on every street corner – mostly you’re bumping into other people or great shopping or eating experiences. In New York you have to go out of your way to find eighteenth century history, but it’s still alive on every block in Vienna. There’s so much of it you are literally breathing it in. Arts and sciences have flourished here for centuries and whatever your passion you can visit museums, monuments and memorials to art, music, architecture, literature philosophy and psychology.

And visit them we did including making visits to homes of many famous people who’d once lived there, and since my husband is a musician, the trip turned out to be what I now jokingly call our Beethoven pilgrimage.

There are several of the great composer’s residences in the city proper and its environs, and we visited every one of them as well as churches, cafes and music halls Beethoven frequented. We walked the streets he walked following the routes he took and spent one day wandering the woods he wandered during the summers he spent in Baden, a spa town an hour out of the city.

memoristBut it was in the Heligenstadt house that the idea for my novel, The Memorist, was born.

The house at Probusgasse 6 is in a neighborhood called Heligenstadt at the bottom of the Kahlemberg, which in Beethoven’s time was outside the city and filled with vineyards that are still growing there. And it was there at the end of the summer of 1802 that the 31-year-old Beethoven wrote the heart-wrenching Testament to his two brothers documenting his anguish at the onset of his terrible deafness.

The upstairs of this small apartment is open to the public, and we walked through the ordinary rooms where he lived. Wandering over to the window I looked down at a simple courtyard where there was a single tree growing.

I stared at the gnarled, twisted trunk and the rich healthy verdant green leaves and realized that Beethoven must have once stood there and looked down at that same tree. Suddenly the composer’s ghost was standing there with me looking out the window.

Later I told my husband what I had been thinking and he said: “You’re going to write about that aren’t you?” Until that moment I hadn’t thought about it but after he said it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

image At home I read several biographies about Beethoven and in one discovered the great composer had been fascinated with Eastern philosophy which includes a strong belief in reincarnation. His own notebooks contain quotes of passages from Bhagavad-Gita. As well as a quote from William Jones that was included in his Hymn to Narayena; "We know this only, that we nothing know."

And with that piece of information the idea at the heart of my tenth novel revealed itself.

The Memorist is not about Ludwig Van Beethoven although he does play a small part in it. Rather it’s a suspense novel about a woman on a search for her own ghosts, but it was Beethoven’s spirit that inspired the book and his everlasting gifts to us are at the heart of the mystery I attempted to unravel.

The Memorist has been chosen as the People Magazine Pick of the Week (11/10), garnered starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, is on the November Indie Next list. Please visit MJRose.com and Reincarnationist.org to read an excerpt and find out more about M.J. Rose and her work.

Excuse My French

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By John Ramsey Miller

I’m tickled shitless the Presidential elections are over. I despise the process. As an old advertising practitioner I saw the election race as one big three card Monty game fueled by a billion plus dollars and piloted by armies of self interested suits. Call me cynical because I am. I used to get angry, but I’m older now, and I get to say, “I told you so” …a lot.

I hate the constant ads, the barrage of invasive robo phone calls from urging me to dislike this candidate, or to love that one, or to believe the worst or the best small minds could come up with to wrestle my vote from me by any means necessary. I resent the fact that a president is selected in what is no more than a long and tiresome beauty pageant. I resent that we are just buying one product over another based on largely inaccurate, untruthful, and manipulative ads. We are asked to choose a leader the way we are asked to decide between a Ford and a Chevrolet. And no politician ever does what he or she says they will do to get elected. “They” are all always going to give us “change”, but what we get is the same sack of wind spray-painted a different color.

My kids supported Obama because of his promise of affordable health care. I told them to listen to what he was actually saying. He said that he believes everybody “ought” to have it¬¬, never promising that he would “give” them affordable health care. I told them as soon as he was elected he would start explaining why he couldn’t come through on most of his “promises”. I told them that he’d say something like, “Due to the failed policies of the W guy, I can’t give you what I said I could. (This is always the case because a politician “never” admits they made a mistake or lied). Maybe I can do what I said I’d do in my “second” term.” And it would have been just as true with McCain. I’m not a psychic, I’ve seen it over and over. Politicians rarely make good on their promises because that old reality thing gets in their way. If you buy a product that doesn’t do what it advertised, you can take it back. With defective or non-performing politicians you’re stuck with them for years.

I’ve known quite a few politicians, and none are in danger of becoming my close friends. I think you have to be sociopathic to be a successful politician–-to want to rule supreme over some little corner (or large corner) of the world. And I don’t think it really matters all that much who the president is since they are all owned by the people they owe who are going to be calling the shots, or actually steering their course for four or eight years. It isn’t that they don’t do some good, because most do some good even if it’s incidental. After all it’s necessary to please some people in order to stay in office and keep gathering a power base.

The truth is I didn’t vote for Obama, but I am willing to support him as long as he doesn’t betray the people who did vote for him as well as those of us who didn’t think he was the right choice of the two we ended up with. I’m proud that we have a black President, and I’m praying he can impress this old cynic by governing in the best interests of all Americans, not to the detriment of those who didn’t support him due to philosophical differences. I am a centrist, which is a schizophrenic blending of liberal and conservative philosophies. I can live with, and even support, a liberal president. All I can say is I’ll be watching what he does and who he hangs with, and whether he can reach across the aisle and govern from the center, because he won’t have to do that unless he wants to be the president who’s better than the last one, not the same one in a different suit.

Yes we’re the greatest nation on earth, maybe in history, but I truly believe that America is great despite her leaders, not because of them.

Oh, yeah, this is suppose to be about writing. Okay–– All of this watching and listening to politicians gives us (authors) great material, insight into the human animal––especially villains, and into the human condition as well as the state of our country.

All I Need Is A Couple Of Words

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By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

So there I was on Tuesday—election day—giving a presentation to about a hundred people as part of my big-boy job when my cell phone buzzed. A casual glance at the caller I.D. revealed a 212 area code. New York City. The source of some of my life’s most exciting calls—and some of the most disappointing. But you can’t very well answer the phone in mid-speech, can you?

Maybe a minute later, the phone buzzed a second time, and I knew that the caller had left a message. Twenty minutes to go.

Applause. Questions. Finally, the phone. The message was from my editor. “We have a major problem with GRAVE SECRETS,” she said, referring to the book that comes out next June. “Call me.”

So much for another of life’s most exciting calls.

“We can’t use GRAVE SECRETS for a title,” she told me. “The name Grave—” It’s a reference to my protagonist, Jonathan Grave; it has nothing vaults for the dead. “—makes every cover concept we come up with look like a horror novel.”

Oh.

So all we have to do is change my baby’s name. No problem. Yeah, I’d been living with GRAVE SECRETS as a title for a couple of years, and yeah, I’d planned a franchise of similar titles for the series, but that kind of attachment is all emotional. It should be easy to overcome. Publishing is all business, after all, and nowhere do market concerns play a bigger role than with the title.

So change it already.

Right.

Hey, I stitched 120,000 words together to write the damn thing in the first place; how tough can it be to stitch two or three more to get a title?

Right.

But we need a title! It’s almost time to go to press with the advance readers copies. C’mon! Two or three lousy words!

Right.

Nothing.

I’ve got long lists of two-word phrases, but none that really work as a title.

I can do this.

Right.

A Tribute to Michael Crichton

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It’s been a tough few weeks for fiction. We’ve recently lost some of our greats, including Tony Hillerman, Elaine Flinn, and yesterday, Michael Crichton.

While I had never had the privilege of meeting Crichton, when I opened my Yahoo page and saw his obituary, I experienced the sort of shock you normally feel when you’ve lost an acquaintance.

May of 1993. I had just finished writing my senior thesis, a series of short stories based on my Grandfather’s WWI diaries. I actually finished the book a few days early, shockingly enough (and, as my editor would assure you, not at all true to form). Connecticut was in the full throes of spring, and on a warm, sunny day I brought a copy of Jurassic Park onto the lawn in front of the library and dove in. I generally didn’t read thrillers, but the back cover copy had lured me with the promise of a complete escape from the tomes I’d been struggling with for eight semesters.
And I was completely swept away. That book was such a breath of fresh air, I was riveted. What a genius concept: a theme park, with real dinosaurs created from ancient DNA preserved in amber. It hooked me, and from then on I was a devout thriller fan.

Despite the fact that I didn’t agree with all of his political stances, you have
to admire a man who never shied away from hot button issues. And Crichton undeniably possessed the Midas touch, prior to JK Rowling storming on to the scene he was the most successful author in the world. It can be argued that he not only revitalized the techno-thriller, paving the way for the success of Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child, and James Rollins, but he also made medical dramas sexy again with ER. In addition to his novels, he collaborated on screenplays for films like “Twister.” He was remarkably prolific, once claiming to churn out 10,000 words a day. As someone who considers herself fortunate to clock 10,000 words in a week, that’s simply staggering.
Not to mention the fact that he was once chosen as one of People’s 50 Most Beautiful People, a title that few writers have possessed (shall we call it the “paper ceiling?”)
A remarkable writer, and a remarkable person. He will be missed.

Fair Winds

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bo1 There have been a number of significant events in my lifetime that personally changed or affected me such as the tragic losses of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Lennon. And there have also been the joyful moments including seeing an American astronaut walk on the moon, my marriage, the birth of my two sons, and seeing my first book published.

Growing up as a son of the South, I witnessed bigotry and hate—I still remember signs declaring “Whites Only”. As an adult, I discovered that prejudice wasn’t exclusive to the Deep South. But as Mr. Dylan sang, “The Times, They Are A Changin’”.

At 11:00 PM on Tuesday night, an African American was elected to the highest office in America. Barack Obama was not appointed nor did he inherit the Presidency. He won it. And this may prove to be the biggest milestone in my life. Because it tells me that people can change. Countries can change. Times and thinking, and the world can change. It tells me that we have matured as a nation.

There was a time when I would have bet this day would never come. But it has. And if we can collectively change our hearts and minds like we did on Election Day, what other great things can we do?

President-elect Barack Obama is about to set sail on a great journey. Soon he will step onto the bridge, take command and set a new course. We are all passengers on this great ship of America. I wish him fair winds.