Membership Drive Has Begun

I put the word out on facebook yesterday in a few places that WhipCity Wordsmiths is accepting applications for membership, with information that the applications are available at Blue Umbrella Books and via email by contacting Kelly at kellybuffumauthor@gmail.com.

We currently have 13 members.

I was wondering how much interest there would be in a very informal meeting on the lawn at Stanley Park on a Sunday afternoon in August? Bring a blanket, a chair, or whatever will keep you comfortable, a snack and a cold drink or two and we'll get to know one another and begin hashing out what we want and expect from this group and kicking around ideas for a local author book fair- or just talk about projects we're working on and whatnot.

I know there's tons of stuff going on this summer, but some of you have also expressed a desire to get things rolling...so I'm throwing this idea out there.

   This is a story that I think many of you will enjoy.

    A few years ago I was co-hosting a blog-talk radio show with Gordon Osmond where we interviewed international authors weekly.
     If you are not familiar with Gordon, most people aren't, he was a Wall Street lawyer for thirty years, author of eight success full plays, author of six books, and a book reviewer on Book Pleasures. He also taught English in Brazil in his final years.
    During one of the interviews Gordon asked the author what genre her book was in. Her response was, " Non-fiction with some fiction thrown in." 
   At that point I lost it. My response was, " What? What? That is not possible."
   Gordon spent the rest of the interview holding back his laughter.
   It is my opinion that we need to understand our genre and our target audience. Without that we as authors will have no success at all.

Gone Girl ... a Red Flag Warning

The publishing world seems fixated on Gone Girl comparisons to market books! Have you noticed? Invariably however, at least for me, the comparison to the blockbuster novel by Gillian Flynn always ends in disappointment.

My latest experience with the Gone Girl marketing ploy was The Dinner by Herman Koch, a NY Times best selling novel that was recently made into a movie. Positioned as "A European Gone Girl ...", I finished the book this morning feeling, "so what is the big deal? Gone Girl this ain't!" Don't get me wrong, The Dinner is an interesting read, laced with darkness, a warped sense of mortality and an incessant undercurrent of mental illness, but far from extraordinary that is Gone Girl. Using Gone Girl as a branding mechanism raises expectations but in this case, The Dinner underdelivered relative to my heightened expectations. I think this marketing strategy hurts rather than helps an author.

Which brings me around to my thought about literary branding, merchandising and marketing. What do you find the most effective way to position your books in the marketplace? Do you think about your brand? Do you have a brand? Is marketing a consideration at all?

Additional insights from The Weird World of Words

Here are some other things I learned this afternoon that should be interesting to writers/authors/readers/reviewers/etc. while breezing through Mitchell Symons' The Weird World of Words A Guided Tour-

"John Milton used 8,000 different words in Paradise Lost."

"The average reader can read 275 words per minute."

"The vocabulary of the average person consists of 5,000 to 6,000 words." (So, if you're hearing the same thing from someone over and over again, you probably are.)

"The nine words: the, of, and. to, it. you, be, have, and will make up a quarter of all the words used in English."

"Accommodate is the most misspelled word in English."

"Strengthlessness, eighteen letters long, is the longest word in the English language with just one (repeated) vowel."

"The only fifteen-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable."

"Just 1,000 words make up 90 percent of all writing."

Fascinating fact because for many of us this has a local connection- "Dr. Seuss invented the word nerd for his 1950 book If I Ran The Zoo."

"Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words."

And because you've probably always wondered about this, "Aphthongs are silent letters (in words such as the 'k' in know and the 'p' in psychology.)

And, bear with me here, a little history of where it's from:

Ever wonder about the words blog and blogger? Here's the history in a nutshell:  "It was an American blogger-one John Barger- who set the blog rolling when he started what he called a 'weblog' in 1997 on the basis that he was 'logging the web.' Almost immediately, another American (Peter Merholz) broke the word 'weblog' into 'we blog' and later just 'blog.' From blog to blogger was inevitable."

So- always play with your words and have fun- you're a writer or author, after all! No license is required to have fun with words!

That word is...um.....

I was reading  Mitchell Symons' The Weird World of Words A Guided Tour this afternoon and found the word I needed a few days ago when I couldn't think of the word I wanted. Here is a quote from the book: "The word lethologica describes the state of forgetting the word you want."

I suffer from lethologica quite often. My lexicologist has prescribed me a thesaurus and a dictionary. All writers should seek the help of a professional lexicologist when they are having trouble word finding.

Delilah of Sunhats and Swans

I finished Delilah of Sunhats and Swans last week. Great little story that left me with a warm feeling of peace and contentment. My review is on Goodreads.

Musing on a Friday Afternoon!

"It's not the heat it's the humidity" is the saying that comes mind as I walk around the parking lot of my office building, working towards my daily movement (steps!) goal. My conversation with a fellow book reader and reviewer helped distract me from the sweat running down the center of my back and the discomfort of the heavy, sticky air pasting my hair to my scalp. Did I mention that I detest heat and humidity? Suffering the indignity of both at the same time drives me crazy.

But this is not a weather report or a message to the meteorological complaint department. This is about reading books and talking about books and how books can bring different people, even complete strangers, together. This is about my call of distraction today.

Kelli and I were strangers. We met on Goodreads. She lives in Norwell, MA, attended UMass-Amherst, and is a prolific book reviewer.

I spend a lot of time on Goodreads, maybe too much. Coincidentally enough I went to UMass-Amherst albeit over a decade earlier, drank my share of really, really cheap beer at the Blue Wall and equally have a love affair with the coast of Maine.

I was introduced to Kelli through mutual Goodreads friend Lisa from the CT shore. I don't remember why but I was afraid of Kelli. Maybe it was her sharp tongue or superior whit. I read her reviews and watched her vehemently defend her positions on books and authors. Maybe it was not fear at all. Perhaps it was intimidation. Yes, that's it. She intimidated me even though we had not one iota of interaction. So if we never met or interacted in any way, then I am intimidating myself right?

Lisa, from somewhere in CT, one of the shore towns I think, highly recommended I befriend Kelli on Goodreads. I did. Now we talk once a week about books and the folks who write them. We critique the plot, dig into the language and the flow of the story, poke at the believably of the tale and share our relationship with the characters.

Nothing personal my literary friends but somethings, often times really, we question the author's judgement, challenge the story-line and walk away with some very strong opinions about the books we read that we share on Goodreads

The power of books and the people who write them can bring total strangers together to not only discuss your creations but forge lasting and enduring friendships centered around your written words.

Thank goodness for the authors in the world!