Kids and Grown-Ups: Different as Knight and Day

You don’t realize just how grown up you really are until you have a kid.

We like to say things like “I’m a kid wrapped in an adult body” or “I feel like a kid again.” But aren’t we really just, ahem, kidding ourselves?

As much as we like to think of ourselves as kids, our bodies and our hearts are always there to remind us that we’re grown up.

I suppose I knew this all along but the realization hit me the hardest while engaged in a little friendly jousting.

What, you don’t joust? It’s the hottest thing going, at least in our house.

Jousting, the competition between two knights on horse-back, wherein one knight tries to knock the other off his mount, was at one time the sport equivalent of soccer in Europe or football in the United States. But that was about eight hundred years ago.

Try to explain that to a toddler, though, and all you’ll get is an empty stare, followed by “Come on, Daddy, joust.”

So between my legs goes a makeshift horse, which is, in reality, a cardboard tube left over from wrapping paper. In my right hand goes a makeshift lance, which, in reality, is also a cardboard tube left over from wrapping paper. I am, almost always, Bad Knight.

About thirty feet away is the condensed version of me, about three feet shorter but packing about ten times the energy. He is, almost always, Good Knight.

Our eyes meet. We raise our lances. And then, in unison, we call out, “Charge!”

Almost always, the battle ends with Daddy in the moat, which also happens to be the cat’s water bowl. The cat is not a fan of jousting.

There are things that you do as a parent that before you became a parent you would have sworn you’d never do. Jousting is one of those things.

I liked thinking of myself as a kid at heart. But the lesson I’ve learned from jousting is that I am an adult in both body and spirit. Not only do my knees creak when I struggle to get up after being knocked down, but I also lack the heart of an honorable knight.

While I stand there holding a cardboard tube between my legs, I find myself frequently turning my head, just checking to see if any of the neighbors can see me through the sliding glass door.

Lately I look for excuses not to joust. “Not right now,” I tell the Good Knight, “Daddy’s washing dishes.” Yes, I’d rather wash dishes.

The Good Knight looks down, dejected for a brief moment, but then returns those battle-worn eyes to mine with that childlike glimmer of hope and throws the dagger-like response: “After?”

Beaten once again, I sigh and surrender to his magical powers over me.

After the last dish is washed, I stride to the horse stable, which is, in reality, a large wicker basket. I pull out my trusty steed and grab hold of my lance. The Good Knight beams as we square off on opposite sides of the room. Finally, we raise our makeshift lances and call out that one word the Good Knight has been waiting to hear all day: “Charge!”

Selling Yourself Large

What surprised me more than any other thing at my first writer’s conference?

That’s an easy one.

The biggest surprise was that other writers, ones whom I’d never met, some quite successful and established authors, knew me.

How did they know me if they’d never met me? The same way you know Stephen King or John Grisham. You know of them because you know of the books they’ve written.

The difference being of course that Stephen King and John Grisham have written dozens of books and sold millions while I’ve written just one and sold maybe hundreds.

Still, somehow people know of me and my one little book. I swear it happened over and over again. Usually my name alone wasn’t enough. But when you put my name together with my book, Lost in the Ivy, there was almost always a glimmer of recognition. Before I said a word about my book, they’d say things like: “Isn’t that the Wrigley Field book?” “That’s the Cubs book, right?” or “I’ve heard of that. Didn’t it get reviewed in the Trib?”

That all goes to the power of marketing. I’ve spent a small fortune marketing my book. And the greatest amount of that money has been aimed at two markets: Chicagoans (Cubs fans, in particular) and mystery readers. Even if I hadn’t sold many books, had I at least bought some kind of name recognition?

Of course, I have no empirical data to prove that I spent wisely. But if Love is Murder, a mystery writer’s conference that takes place in Chicagoland, is any kind of litmus test, it would seem that the money didn’t go completely to waste.

And if nothing else, it’s pretty cool that respected, successful authors like David Ellis and Brian Pinkerton knew of me before they even met me.

Dead Men Don't Wear Platform Shoes

I have to get me some platform shoes.

That’s the single most important thing I got out of attending the Love is Murder mystery convention in Rosemont, Illinois this past weekend.

What, you think platform shoes were a fad that went out in the seventies?

Well, you couldn’t be more wrong. In the highly evolved world of book publishing, platform shoes are all the rage, man. They’re what separate those that get noticed from those that don’t.

And this makes sense, since it’s well known that tall people are more likely to get noticed than those that are, well, vertically challenged. Think Yao Ming.

The beauty of platform shoes is that you can instantly elevate your stature. Be Yao Ming.

You can’t deny that an agent or a publisher isn’t going to take notice when you’re wearing these.

By this point you’ve undoubtedly figured out that I’m wearing my clown shoes. But I do not write completely in jest.

My opening is by way of lead-in to the serious topic of “platform”, which, aside from perhaps Joe Konrath, was the one thing I heard being discussed at the convention more than any other.

Platform was the subject of the opening night speech by David Morrell, the author who created Rambo. His daughter and publicist, Sarie Morrell, writes about platform on her Beyond the Spine column on ReadersRoom.com.

What is platform? Basically it’s a buzzword from the book marketing world. It’s your hook, the way that you sell your book in two minutes or less not based on plot but on the theme surrounding that plot.

Take my book, Lost in the Ivy, for illustrative purposes. What’s it about? Well, there are different ways to answer that question.

One way is to summarize the plot. Here’s how I used to do it for radio interviews:

“The book follows the story of reporter Charley Hubbs, who has been drawn to Wrigley Field after leaving behind a mysterious past in California. Charley just wants a fresh start in Chicago. But just as he begins to put the pieces of his life back together, they unravel all over again when he becomes entangled in a murder mystery and ultimately is charged with killing his neighbor.”

Are you hearing the yawns yet from the marketing department?

The other is to focus on a theme that surrounds the plot. What audience is most likely to buy Lost in the Ivy? Baseball fans, in general. Cubs fans, in particular. So that’s how you pitch it. Here’s how I’ve woven the Cubs theme into press releases:

“Lost in the Ivy follows reporter Charley Hubbs in a race against time for the truth. Against the backdrop of Chicago’s storied Wrigley Field, a baseball shrine cursed by a billy goat, Charley is caught in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that plays out in two seasons--one of futility and the other of hope. Only by unlocking the mysteries of his past and opening his heart again will he be able to find if hope truly does spring eternal.”

Is my book about baseball? No. Is it about the Cubs? No. Is it about Wrigley Field? No. But they're all intertwined themes running through the book and they're the platforms that make it marketable. When I’ve done appearances, roughly 90 percent of the books I’ve sold have gone to baseball fans or Cubs fans.

At Love is Murder, for instance, Terri Ridgell, author of Operation Stiletto (notice the recurring shoe theme in this blog entry) was signing books at a table with Robert Goldsborough, author of Three Strikes You’re Dead. Someone came up and bought Goldsborough’s book because it was a "baseball book." Ridgell kindly pointed that same book buyer to my book and I got a book sale as a result. Thanks, Terri.

Book publishers increasingly are being driven by their marketing departments, David Morrell told his audience Friday night.

That is a rather depressing statement but it should not be all that surprising. I’ve written before that fiction is a hard sell. When you look at the top sellers on Amazon.com and see that about 90 percent of the top 25 books are non-fiction, it’s not hard to figure out why profit-driven publishers would begin to adopt a sales model for fiction that has dominated non-fiction for years.

Although Morrell urged writers to always keep platform in mind, he also acknowledged that you must first and foremost write what is in your heart. And I think that is key. You may be able to write a novel about NASCAR even if you have no passion about stock car racing, but it would almost certainly show and you’d have a clunker of a book.

So the three lessons for today:

1. Write passionately.
2. Think platform.
3. Don’t wear platform shoes. You’ll only stumble and fall.

Update on Monday, February 6, 2006 at 12:52PM by Randy Richardson

Many thanks to the wonderful people who organized Love is Murder 2006. You put on a great conference. Special thanks to Julie Hyzy and Robert W. Walker for convincing me to come. I’m so glad that I did.

Finally, there were some true literary stars at the conference, like Morrell and Judith Guest, the author of Ordinary People. Although it was pretty cool just basking in their presence, the real highlight for me was meeting some of those whose names are not yet known. Jason Cole traveled all the way from Rocklin, Calif.; R.J. Baker came in from Goles, Mich. The three of us met at the hotel bar and talked about our ambitions and dreams as writers and how cool it would be if one day we all met up again as the conference’s guests of honor, the Morrells or Guests of the future. How cool, indeed.

Never Lose the Faith

Here's an example of the power of the press, the volatility of Amazon sales rankings, and the reason why authors should never lose the faith.

And it has nothing to do with Oprah or James Frey. Well, almost nothing.

Two days ago, A Story of Afflications, a Frey-like memoir of recovering from drug addiction written by Dr. Kenneth Nave that was published a year ago by Lumen-Us Publications, an obscure small press out of Richton Park, Ill., had an Amazon sales ranking over 1.5 million. How small of a press is Lumen-Us? So small that I couldn't even find a website for them.

This morning that same book is ranked among Amazon's top 1,000.  

How did this happen?

The answer to that one is easy. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell devoted an entire column yesterday gushing over the book.  She even begins her column by writing "Forgive me if I gush like Oprah." Ugh.

I don't mean to take down either Nave or Mitchell, but there are probably hundreds if not thousands of stories just like Nave's Afflications  out there in the book world. The only difference between this one and all the others: it ended up in Mitchell's hands.

I go back to my lead: This is a story of the power of the press, the volatility of Amazon sales rankings, and the reason why authors should never lose the faith. You just never know who might pick up your book.

On the Road Again

After a two-month-plus break from touring in support of my book, I hit the road again.

I won't be going far. A distance of about 20 miles. I'll be at the Love is Murder mystery writing convention in Rosemont, Illinois.

This is my first "con" and I must confess to being more than a little anxious about it. To the rescue comes fellow mystery writer J.A. Konrath, who today on his blog, "A Newbie's Guide to Publishing," not only gives a glimpse of what is to come at the LIM con but also informs on what an author should do to get the most out of a con. 

I've written about Konrath before, after meeting him at the Joliet Regional Author Fair way back in October. His blog has become must-read material for newbie writers like myself. He's also a good guy. Recently I interviewed him for ChicagoWrites.com, the website that my writers' group launches in the next week or two. Konrath made me laugh out loud when I was in need of a little humor. You'll get to read the interview when it posts to the site next month.

Back to the LIM con, I'll be on two panels, one late Friday afternoon titled "Pro Bono: Lawyers Help for Free!" (which is about the going rate for my legal advice), and the other Saturday morning titled "First Time Authors Tell All." I'll be signing my book after both panels. It promises to be both an educational and exhausting weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze a little fun out of it, too.